Looking to gain another edge on its rivals, Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc. on Wednesday will begin testing a new e-mail folder designed to make it easier for people to track the latest information posted on their favorite Web sites.

The free feature relies on Really Simple Syndication, an increasingly popular technology that can compile content from a wide array of Web sites catering to a users personal tastes.

Millions of people have signed up to receive automatic feeds on everything from the international news to family recipes since Yahoo first began providing its RSS service last year, said Scott Gatz, the Sunnyvale, Calif-based companys senior director of personalization products.

Until Wednesday, Yahoo relied on Web pages as its RSS hub. RSS feeds will still be accessible through Yahoos Web site.

Competition is a great thing as we the consumers benefit in many ways…This new service from Yahoo is another step forward in their pursuit of a larger market share, read more about how you can gain courtesy of ap.org

One in six U.S. Internet users have sold goods and services online and 2 percent do so on a given day, a new study found.

Sales are typically done through such online classifed ads sites as Craigslist or through an auction like eBay, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said Sunday.

Those who use the Internet more frequently, have high-speed broadband connections or have been online longer are more likely to be an online seller, the study found.

Online selling is also higher among men, the more affluent and the better educated.

The study is based on a random, telephone-based survey of 1,577 adult Internet users conducted Sept. 14 to Oct. 13. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

These statistics show the real growth that has come about in Internet sales, are you one of the many benefiting from this?

Courtesy of ap.org

Hitachi Ltd. said on Friday that it would set up a joint venture this month with MasterCard International Inc., Australias Keycorp Ltd. and a U.S. venture capital firm to promote advanced smart cards.

Japans largest electronics conglomerate will invest $2.41 million to take an 18 percent stake in the venture, to be established in San Francisco.

MasterCard will take a 20 percent stake, while Keycorp, a provider of smart card operating systems, is set to hold 18 percent and Oak Hill Venture Partners will take the remaining 44 percent.

Smart cards have built-in microprocessors and memory for identification or financial transactions. They offer greater functionality and are generally more secure than conventional cards that use magnetic strips.

I will be following this story with interest…more details to come soon.

Story courtesy of reuters.com

U.S. online holiday sales are expected to hit nearly $20 billion this year and should take off on Monday, when consumers return to work and their fast Internet connections after the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Cyber Monday, the term coined for the Monday after Thanksgiving, comes on the heels of the busy Black Friday shopping day when many brick-and-mortar retailers begin turning a profit.

The good news for online shoppers this year, is that Cyber Monday is becoming the Web shopping equivalent to Black Friday when retailers launch major sales and discounts to drive traffic, analysts said.

Are you and your online businesses ready for the rush?…read on to se why you should make the most of this period courtesy of reuters.com

A Dutch technology company has breathed life into a project to rid the Internet of suffixes such as .com, and instead offer single names which can be countries, company names or fantasy words.

Such a system, which enables countries, individuals and firms to have a Web address which consists of a single name, offers flexibility and is language and character independent.

The plan is to offer names in any character set, said Erik Seeboldt, managing director of Amsterdam-based UnifiedRoot.

UnifiedRoot offers practically unlimited numbers of suffixes, unlike the short list of suffixes currently in use. Its offer is different from other alternative root providers such as New.net which offers to register names in front of a small range of new suffixes, such as .club and .law.

Interesting…I wonder if this will set off another round of domain name speculation, Maybe there is an opportunity here, I will keep a watching brief.

Read more courtesy of reuters.com