marketplace

Webware Radar: TripAdvisor adds new restaurant features

Responding to its users' desire for more restaurant review offerings, TripAdvisor announced Tuesday that throughout 2009, it will be adding features that will allow visitors to do more than review eateries on the site. So far, the site features 2 million reviews and ratings on 500,000 restaurants worldwide. To help users search through those more effectively, TripAdvisor added price, cuisine, and "recommended for" filters to its restaurant page Tuesday.

Also, the company has partnered with OpenTable.com to allow U.S. users to make a reservation directly on TripAdvisor's site. The company's new iPhone app, … Read more

Can we have an economy without spending?

You are familiar with Zen koans like "What is the sound of one hand clapping?". They are designed to open up consciousness with paradoxical or impossible questions. Well here's one: Can we have an economy that is not so dependent on rampant consumer spending?

After 9/11, Bush's solution was to exhort consumers to spend more as the way to propel ourselves out of the downturn. Today we are hearing similar advice.

Problem is, people are saving (or at least not spending, which I don't think is quite the same thing) rather than spending.

According … Read more

Job posting reveals Zune-Xbox integration

Zune speculation is an armchair sport here in the tech sector of the Pacific Northwest (especially when we're all housebound because of a few inches of snow), and today Todd Bishop at TechFlash posted some interesting excerpts from the Zune team's job listings.

Based on his post, it looks as if the Zune Marketplace will begin to use the back end from Musiwave, the European provider of music for mobile phones that Microsoft acquired a little more than a year ago--and if that doesn't point to a Zune service for mobile phones, nothing does--and will continue … Read more

Start-up to help people sell unwanted MP3s

This blog was updated first at 12:30 p.m. PST with some reader feedback and then at 1:40 p.m. PST to include an interview with Bopaboo's CEO.

"Stop illegally sharing, and start legally selling" is the tagline for a start-up that wants to enable music owners to sell their unwanted MP3s.

Ernesto at the blog TorrentFreak has a story about Bopaboo, which has created a digital marketplace where users operate mini download stores.

Bopaboo buyers can search for music in all the usual ways, and the site offers a seller rating to help shoppers … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 860: Close Enough for Nuclear War

On today's show, we learn that there's little difference between nuclear war and horseshoes, at least in the "close enough" department. Also, a new segment: This Week in Cooley! Plus, a flurry of online news including mobile scheduling for your TiVo, the travesty of the teacher and the porn pop-ups, and Chrome is the king of speed! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 860

Cooley debriefs: - Just drove in in the new 370Z with SynchroMatch transmission. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10102550-48.html

- From iPhone to Bold: how it's going, why I did … Read more

Microsoft launches second retail site

Update at 2:17 p.m. PST, with comments from Microsoft on fate of Windows Marketplace.

Microsoft is doubling down on retail, with the launch of a second online store at the start of this year's especially critical holiday shopping season.

The Microsoft Store, which opened for business Thursday, is designed to carry the largest and most up-to-date selection of the software giant's product lines, such as Office, Windows, Xbox, and Zune.

The one-stop shop will carry Microsoft hardware too.

Microsoft currently operates its Windows Marketplace e-commerce site, which it began testing in 2004.

There are many similarities … Read more

Facebook moves into micropayments for gifts

Since its launch in early February of last year, Facebook's online gift store has run off of standard U.S. dollars, letting users purchase gifts one at a time, or in bundles at a slight discount. However, starting Monday the popular social network has moved to a micropayment system where each point represents a cent, opening up its gifts marketplace to items outside of the $1 standard.

There are several benefits to using such a system, the least of which is user convenience. Microsoft, which has had its own points system since the advent of the Xbox Live Marketplace, … Read more

Android apps: What would you want?

Arguably one of the best things to come out of the iPhone 2.0 firmware update, as well as the launch of the iPhone 3G, is the ability for the iPhone to install third-party applications directly to the phone via the App Store. Well, Google's new Android OS will also support such a service in the form of the Android Market.

As Google announced on Thursday, the Android Market is an online marketplace that will let you find, buy, download, and rate applications (which sounds eerily similar to the iPhone App Store). And, as you can see from the … Read more

eBay ends online ads sales system

eBay has pulled the plug on Media Marketplace, a controversial pilot program designed to buy and sell radio and TV advertising on the Internet. The Internet auction house confirmed the closure of the program after one year with the brief message: "We have ended our pilot program in this market."

The system got off to a rocky start, receiving little support from the cable network industry and none at all from the broadcast networks, according to a report in AdWeek. The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau refused to endorse the system, and only a few of its members--notably Oxygen and … Read more