E-Commerce Blog

Fewer than one in five U.S. consumers are willing to pay for access to their favorite news site, according to a report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Only about one-third of Americans even have a single favorite site, the 2010 State of the News Media report found, though the majority don’t roam far: 57 percent use between two and five news Web sites, while only 12 percent use more than six such sites. A full 79 percent of online news consumers, meanwhile, rarely if ever have clicked on an online ad.

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Report: News Media Running Out of Time to Find a New Model

Google and Dish Network reportedly are testing a service that allows television users to search for television programming and Web content from set-top boxes. Google software installed in the boxes allows users to create a personalized programming lineup, anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal. It’s no secret that Google and Dish have been collaborating since 2007, when the companies entered into a partnership for Google to deliver ads to the satellite network’s audience and develop mechanisms to more accurately measure how they are viewed.

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Google Dabbling With TV Set-Top Search

With its $99 price, the new Android-based Motorola Backflip clearly stands apart from Apple’s iPhone on more than just appearance. Both are smartphones, to be sure, and both are offered through AT&T. They also provide many of the same features and functionality. However, in addition to their different form factors and operating systems, the divergent pricing on the devices suggests that they occupy very different positions in AT&T’s strategy.

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AT&T Makes Makes Room for Android Backflip

Recently, Amazon announced that it was offering 70 percent royalty rates to authors interested in self-publishing for the Kindle platform. That rate is considerably higher than the 10-ish percent standard in the publishing industry today for print and 25 percent for digital. So where are all the new authors with books flying off the e-shelves and onto the iPads? And if publication is so cheap today, why can’t authors demand higher royalty rates?

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Publishers: The New Filter-Tips

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer extolled the benefits of cloud computing and spoke about the software giant’s increasing commitment to it in a speech at the University of Washington on Thursday. Microsoft has clearly been moving toward the cloud over recent years. All of its products, including Windows, Office and Xbox, are in some way connected to it. However, reading between the lines of Ballmer’s speech suggests the company may be ramping up for a major new cloud-based initiative.

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Microsoft Puts All Its Eggs in Cloud Basket