online

Spending on deals found online -- including the daily deals, instant deals and "flash sales" offered by Groupon and the like -- will reach $3.6 billion by the end of 2012, according to new research.

The figure means the online deal market will grow 86.9 percent compared to 2011, market research and advisory company BIA/Kelsey found.

Deal spending is expected to grow by a further 23 percent in 2013, with between 1 percent and 9 percent growth in the following few years. As a result, deal-hungry U.S. consumers could boost the market to $5.… Read more

People know how to upset people.

These days, perhaps the most natural method is to reach for one's laptop and say bad things about those people to all the world.

It is quite some power, one that was exercised to its fullest by one in Ottawa against another.

The first, Elayna Katz, posted two unhappy reviews of the Mambo Nuevo Latino restaurant. The Mambo's owner, Marisol Simoes, didn't react in an entirely sanguine manner.

As the Daily Mail tells it, Simoes decided to publicly besmirch Katz's sexual proclivities.

Why she went this route many might speculate. … Read more

I just learned that my 12-year-old daughter is an app scofflaw. So, in fact, are the hordes of her fellow tween-agers -- kept off Facebook by their well-intended parents -- who have turned to Instagram as a seemingly innocuous social-network workaround.

As it turns out, just like Facebook, you technically have to be 13 to have an Instagram account. And, just like Facebook, Instagram is more or less a social network, dark sides included. Kids post photos, their followers comment... and then those not invited to said birthday party or shopping excursion get hurt feelings.

Many of us adults discovered … Read more

When you've sold millions of books and won awards for your writing, the pressure is off.

You can saunter from one party to another. You can perform readings to packed auditoriums. You can, just occasionally, wander into bookstores (if you can find one) and simply enjoy yourself while counting the number of times you see your name on the shelves.

Then you come home, pour yourself a substantial snifter, log on to Amazon and write a gushing review of one of your own works. Just as a nightcap, you add a scathing anonymous review of one of your rivals'. … Read more

Amazon's online shoe seller Zappos is combining the popularity of Pinterest with its own products in a new service.

Dubbed Pinpointing, the service delivers Zappos products based on what a user has pinned. In addition, the service will list products that had been pinned recently. Pinpointing lists a host of product categories, including shoes, skirts, dresses, and jeans.

In order to take advantage of the features, users can enter their own Pinterest username to see what sort of Zappos recommendations might relate to their previously pinned items. They can also input another person's username to see recommendations based … Read more

It's easy to accumulate too much stuff. Sometimes it's because you receive a lot of random gifts or couldn't resist a sale item; other times, it's because you want to make room for new stuff. But now you're trying to sell your rarely used items or collections and you have no idea what to ask for them.

Why spend time scouring the Internet looking for what everyone else thinks an item is worth? Wouldn't it be easier to just see how much people are paying for similar items right now? Luckily, eBay … Read more

InSpeak - The Voice Chat Communicator is the freeware version of inSpeak's premium chat app. It's got a lot going for it, including good audio quality for voice communications, decent security, and an emphasis on customer support, even for free members. The freeware also offers other features from the paid nickname version, though with some limitations. For example, you can view up to six Webcams, use handwriting in messages, add up to 1,000 contacts, display a colorful icon, customize your space, create rooms, and more. It helps to have someone to chat with, though, and inSpeak has … Read more

People in the U.S. have an insatiable appetite for watching online videos.

According to new numbers released by market research firm ComScore, 85.5 percent of people in the U.S. with Internet access watched online videos in July -- that's 184 million people who watched a total of 36.9 billion online content videos in only one month. For comparison, that is equal to every single person on Earth watching at least five videos each.

And U.S. viewers' venue of choice is Google, which is not really surprising given the growth and popularity of YouTube. However, … Read more

Zappos, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Yahoo, LastFm, the Environmental Protection Agency, Stanford, and Columbia University -- all suffered online data breaches recently, says the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

In fact, this year alone, there have been 276 data breaches, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. Statistics indicate that private sector businesses and the health-care industry were most vulnerable, falling victim to, respectively, 37 percent and 34 percent of the breaches. Educational institutions and the government/military sector had breach rates of 14 percent and 11 percent, respectively. The rate for financial companies came in at just more than 3 percent, according to … Read more