11 July

October E-Commerce Growth Slows To 1% — October was the slowest growth month ever for e-commerce, according to new data from comScore. The market research firm reports that October e-commerce grew just 1% from a year earlier, the lowest monthly growth rate since comScore began tracking the data in 2001. “The overall softness in online retail spending was precipitated by curtailed spending across mid-to-lower income segments, with households earnings less than $50,000 exhibiting negative spending growth compared to a year ago,” according to conScore. This was the sixth straight month of slowing growth: April: +15% May +12% June: +11% July +8% August: +6% September: +5% October +1%... [Tags: 11 july, comscore, earnings, financial market meltdown, fulgoni]

E-Commerce Sales Growth Slows For 5th Straight Month — E-commerce sales growth slowed in September to 5%, the fifth consecutive month in which the growth rate has moderated. Take a look at the year-over-year growth rates for the last six months, as measured by ComScore (SCOR). The data excludes, auctions, autos and large corporate purchases: April: +15% May +12% June: +11% July +8% August: +6% September: +5% A year ago, growth in many months was north of 20%. The 5% growth rate is the lowest level since ComScore started tracking the data in 2001. For the third quarter, ComScore, says growth fell to 6%, from 13% in Q2, and... [Tags: 11 july, auctions, comscore, consumers, corporate purchases]

iTunes, financial woes, and Tina Fey/Sarah Palin give NBC super-successful week — If anybody has any lingering doubts about iTunes’ value to NBC, and NBC’s value to iTunes, doubt no more. Since returning to iTunes Sept. 9 after nearly a year’s separation, NBC racked up more than one million downloads for NBC Universal shows, according to the Hollywood Reporter and Apple. The spike most likely is a result of a free-offering agreement between NBC and Apple as part of the network’s return to iTunes. NBC pledged to offer one free standard or high-definition download for its top series for two weeks. It’s worth noting, however, that these numbers were achieved without NBC’s... [Tags: 11 july, cnbc, depiction, financial woes, hollywood reporter]

Weekly wrapup, 11-15 August 2008 — Here’s a summary of the week’s digital lifestyle action on last100. Note that you can subscribe to the weekly wrapups, either via the special weekly wrapup RSS feed or by email. Enter your email address: [Ed. Apologies for the sparse wrapup this week. Normal transmission will resume shortly :-)] PlayTV: Sony cripples portable features of its PS3 DVR We7 signs Warner Music for ad-supported streaming and MP3 downloads Vudu now offering 99c rentals Why Google should have developed its own Gphone Surprise, surprise: Why I refuse to upgrade to iPhone 3G Exclusive first look: Livestation on Mac (screenshots) The real... [Tags: 11 july, apologies, cripples, digital lifestyle, google]

Handset hacked Hands On Apple released the iPhone 3G on 11 July and nine days later, iPhone hacking crew the iPhone Dev Team posted the latest version of the their jailbreaking and unlocking utility, PwnageTool. I just had to give it ago.…... [Tags: 11 july, 3g, apple, iphone, iphone dev team]

Eurowonks take fun out of open source [Bureaucracy] — The European Commission's Software Quality Observatory for Open Source Software has released a "software quality checking platform" called Alitheia Core, designed to formalize quality control over open-source code. It doesn't boost my confidence that the demo site is throwing 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable errors this morning. You'll have to settle for the press release: European consortium releases Open Source quality assessment platform * Submitted by: Sirius * Friday, 11 July 2008 The European Commission supported Software Quality Observatory for Open Source Software (SQO-OSS) project has announced the release of its software quality checking platform, Alitheia Core. Developed by a... [Tags: 11 july, alpha release, based user interface, code quality, core functionality]

We've had Edith Piaf singing "Le Marseillaise" since cock-crow here, so it must be Bastille Day! Go behead some aristos and tell 'em "Edith sent ya!" On 5 May 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General to hear their grievances. The deputies of the Third Estate representing the common people (the two others were clergy and nobility) decided to break away and form a National Assembly. On 20 June the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not to separate until a constitution had been established. They were gradually joined by delegates of the other estates; Louis... [Tags: 11 july, 9 july, absolutism, aristos, bastille day]

Dreams in High Fidelity by Scott Draves (Spot) - A Maker interview — One of my favorites artists just had an opening at NYC's 3LD (Three legged dog) - Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 60,000 daily participants. Dreams in High Fidelity is a painting that evolves. The artwork was designed and rendered with the Electric Sheep, a cyborg mind composed of 60,000 computers and people mediated by a genetic algorithm. It's one of the few acceptable uses of "crowd sourcing" I can think of :) Physically it consists of a small computer driving a large high... [Tags: 11 july, abstract animation, acceptable uses, animations, creative commons]

It's time to review the week that was on ReadWriteWeb. It was a very busy week on the product side, and not surprisingly it was dominated by the release of Apple's 3G iPhone and the accompanying App Store. Also this week Google launched a virtual world, Yahoo opened up its index and search engine to outside developers, and there was a (unconfirmed) rumor that Twitter had bought Summize. On the trends side: we analyzed the problem of spam in social networks, and investigated why 'old school' bloggers dominate in new apps like FriendFeed and Twitter. Web Products iPhone 3G Released... [Tags: 11 july, browser plugin, coherent world, countries around the world, free applications]

The Cycle Archive - 11 July 2008 — Some great response to a number of new tunes, this week.  Lots of new stuff from Command Strange, Stunna, Amaning and many more. Snag the show here!... [Tags: 11 july, new stuff, snag, tunes]

Carla Bruni sings of deadly luuurv — Je t'aime, Sarko available free online The crooning missus of French prez Nick Sarko this morning unveiled her latest album free online - ahead of its official release on 11 July.…... [Tags: 11 july, carla bruni, je t aime, missus, sarko]