E-commerce

Google is giving its Google Play marketplace app a makeover, with an emphasis on a simpler layout and content discovery.

Rolling out today to Android phones and tablets, the app's redesigned user interface specifically is intended to improve the entertainment experience, whether it's listening to an album, reading a book, or playing a game. The new interface features a lighter background and larger images that are set in cards, the same presentation format Google uses in its Google Now predictive search feature.

The makeover also automatically groups together similarly themed content to help users discover related magazines or … Read more

In the tech world, crowdfunding is most associated with Kickstarter and raising money for technology-centered projects like the Ouya gaming console, the Elevation Dock, and the Pebble smartwatch. But, the concept has a far wider reach than just consumer devices.

Global crowdfunding raised nearly $2.7 billion for more than 1 million campaigns in 2012, according to a new report by Massolution. This means that the crowdfunding market grew by 81 percent over the year prior.

"While lending-, donation-, and reward-based crowdfunding have thus far been leading this global financial revolution," CEO of Massolution Carl Esposti said in … Read more

Mozilla is hoping to streamline payments for Web apps by adding a new API into its forthcoming Firefox OS that is designed to make the process easier and more secure.

The organization announced the first draft of a new payment system API last week in a blog post. The API will be integrated into Firefox OS with the aim of making payment processing simpler and provide better security and control for users. Firefox OS is Mozilla's upcoming mobile operating system.

Mozilla said that while online services such as PayPal go some way to simplifying accepting Web payments, they aren'… Read more

Apple may finally step its toes into the digital wallet world over the next year or two, forecasts Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

The analyst believes a payment option for iOS users may launch with the iPhone 6 in the first half of 2014. Apple will use a technology other than or in addition to near-field communications (NFC), but its system will work with existing mobile payment solutions.

The company already has one major asset ripe for a digital wallet system -- its users.

Apple holds the key to around 500 million iTunes users and their linked credit cards, which … Read more

The value of Bitcoin has been skyrocketing of late, gaining more than 50 percent in the last few days, but two unrelated events today knocked the virtual currency back down a bit.

The peer-to-peer currency, which was languishing in the midteens in January, surged past $100 on Monday and was trading as high as $147 today before an hour-long outage at Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, pushed its value down to $115. The currency rebounded a bit to close at $123, a 500 percent increase in the past two months.

Mt. Gox initially blamed the outage on … Read more

A decent shrink costs at least $100 an hour.

A decent pair of shoes can cost you the same and they last a lot longer. They understand you better too.

Surely, therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that more than half of all Americans admit that if they want to feel better, shopping is their chosen Xanax.

With just a click or two, you can be clicking your heels and forgetting the awful lover who told you that this was surely forever before becoming surly last night.

I have on my screen the results of a survey performed by TNS … Read more

Forget gold. The hot investment during this time of economic uncertainty in Europe appears to be Bitcoin.

Earlier this month, the peer-to-peer virtual currency was trading at a record $40 for one Bitcoin, more than doubling its value since January, when it was languishing in the midteens. In the past three weeks, it has doubled again, trading as high as $95 today.

All told, it's an increase of nearly 350 percent in the past two months, and much of it is because of the banking crisis in Cyprus.

Bitcoin "is clearly having a breakthrough moment here, and a … Read more

E-commerce site eBay looks to be moving into high gear.

CEO John Donahoe announced today that by 2015, he expects the company to be handling $300 billion in transactions per year, according to The Wall Street Journal, nearly twice what it did in 2012. That means, for 2015, between $21.5 billion and $23.5 billion in revenue from both eBay and its payments processing unit PayPal. In 2012, the company earned $14 billion in revenue.

According to the Journal, the company also plans to double the number of active users on its site over the next two years -- … Read more

New York state's highest court today ruled that out-of-state online retailers must charge state tax on New York State customers. Now it gets interesting since the 4-1 judgment by the New York State Court of Appeals makes it all the more likely that the question will get an airing, sooner rather than later, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Along with New York, eight other states have similar laws on the books ending the hidden tax break people got when buying products from companies on the Internet. Those statutes require the states in question to collect sales tax … Read more