Online shoppers did not wait around till Cyber Monday to start their holiday shopping.

U.S. consumers spent 20 percent more online on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, this year than last, while online sales jumped 39 percent on Thanksgiving Day, according to IBM Corp. research unit Coremetrics.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Coremetrics measures sales data from more than 500 online retailers, including half of the top 50. It doesn’t reveal its partners or specific dollar figures.

Both Coremetrics and e-commerce payment site PayPal, a united of eBay Inc., said shopping by mobile phone is increasingly substantially this year. PayPal said it saw five times more mobile payments worldwide this Thanksgiving, compared with last year.

And Coremetrics said about 17 percent of Black Friday visitors to retail websites came via mobile devices, up from about 5 percent a year ago.

“People keep spending money online, so that’s a great indicator that the sites are running,” John Squire, an executive with IBM’s e-commerce marketing unit, said.

If you are planning to purchase a web hosting account, this piece of information will be of great use to you.

One of the biggest advantages of paid web hosting services is that visitors can easily remember or spell the domain name, unlike free hosting services that has extensions such as blogspot.com or WordPress.com that makes it difficult for your visitors to remember or spell the domain name. Moreover, such a webhosting account allows flexibility over your website files that make it easier to install scripts, forums, software, etc to enhance your website.

A website with your own domain name hosted on your own web hosting account would remain in the search engines forever, as long as you continue paying the yearly costs. Having a web hosting account lets you create web pages that are search engine friendly that allows you to easily create your own title, description and keyword meta-tags, heading tags, optimize image descriptions, and name your own files.

Furthermore, paid web hosting services help businesses get rid of a future concern such as a possible scenario like the free host provider discontinuing its free services. Your webhosting plan allows you to create e-mail accounts that include your domain name, making it professional as well as appealing before potential customers and third-parties such as vendors.

The Bank of England (BoE) is gearing up to pump billions more into a program to stimulate a faltering economy, but not yet, according to the minutes of its last rate-setting meeting.

The BoE poured 200 billion pounds ($320 billion) into the economy in 2009 through asset purchases.

From news.yahoo.com:

Though only one of the nine members voted in favor of resuming asset purchases, minutes of the September meeting released Wednesday said that some members believed “a continuation of the conditions seen over the past month would probably be sufficient to justify an expansion of the asset purchase program at a subsequent meeting.”

All nine rate-setters voted for keeping the main interest rate unchanged at the record low of 0.5 percent.

A comprehensive range of warning signs are used by law enforcement and traffic management agencies these days. Traffic safety cones, which are also known as road safety cones, are one of these signs that are slowly but steadily gaining popularity among general public as well.

These traffic cones are routinely used by police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) for preventing access to areas that are not to be encroached by unauthorized people or trespassers. This could be to avoid panic situations or collect evidence or even for providing uninterrupted medical or law assistance to casualties or others.

These traffic safety cones are also useful for issuing an alert to oncoming traffic about a broken vehicle, accident-prone area, or damaged road. These cones are also used to inform traffic about repair work of a vehicle being done so that damage to property and life could be avoided in the first place itself. In addition to these benefits, these safety cones are also used to indicate a wet floor or suggest a reserved parking area. Since these road safety cones are collapsible in nature, they can easily withstand weight or collision of heavy vehicles without getting damaged. Moreover, they are highly portable and the square base of these cones prevents incidents of rolling down or damage.

If you want to purchase traffic safety cones, the best place to get them at affordable pricing is the Internet. If you are new to the world of safety care equipments, you can enter words such as “Boston Safety road safety cones” or “Traffic cones Bostonsafety.”

The use of full color LED billboards is the latest development in the segment of on-premise advertising. This is not just because this advertising mode is affordable but also because these billboards are proven attention-getters and draw the attention of potential, busy customers far better and for far less than one might think possible.

One of the best things about LED billboards is the ability to communicate with imagery, which is the most powerful and result-oriented form of communication in the world. If that is not all, an LED billboard can easily turn itself into a landmark or message center used by potential customers on a regular basis. Moreover, LED billboards put the message front and center in a way that just cannot be missed by the targeted audience. This advertising mode also offers a high degree of flexibility and the message can be changed at any time or any way.

The list of benefits associated with these billboards does not end here – the associated cost per view is incredibly low, far lower than that of advertising via radio, newspapers, and television. A business opting for LED billboards can easily experience gains of 15 to 150 percent in the context of saved money that could have been incurred, in the absence of the LED billboards. In addition to that, businesses opting for LED billboards can even write off the entire asset as a business expense in the year of purchase, subject to income limitations, even when leased (under IRS Section 179). These and many more advantages allow advertising companies to schedule multiple clients per day, provide customized packages, and sell more of advertising space at one location.

Static billboards, on the other hand, do not offer such advantages. One of the hurdles before static billboards is instantaneous communication. The message to be conveyed cannot be changed at ease and will. Moreover, resources such as time, money, and manpower are wasted on setting up a static billboard or relocating it to satisfy the ever-evolving needs of a modern day business. In addition to that, static billboards do not offer the same advantages (such as incredible uptime, image quality, maximized ROI, streamlined efficiency, and safety) as LED billboards.

In short, the advantages of LED billboards work together for streamlining every facet of digital billboard advertising to help your grow business at an incredible pace.

Sony has suffered another online security breach in the latest in a series of hacker attacks against the electronics and Entertainment Company.

The breach has affected 2,000 customers of its Sony Ericsson joint venture in Canada.

From news.yahoo.com:

More than 100 million online accounts are affected in a suspected hacking of Sony’s PlayStation Network gaming service and other online services that began last month, tarnishing the brand behind the Walkman portable music player and Vaio personal computer.

On Tuesday, Sony said it found a security breach affecting 8,500 user accounts in a music entertainment website in Greece, involving names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Tokyo-based Sony has been battling production delays and sales losses after supplier factories were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan.

On Monday, it lowered its earnings projection for the fiscal year ended March to a 260 billion yen ($3.2 billion) loss, its third straight year of red ink, largely because of a charge it must take related to damages from the March disaster. It had initially expected to return to profit.

Names, e-mail, and encrypted passwords may have been stolen from the Sony Ericsson Canada website but no credit card information was taken as per Sony Corp. spokesman Atsuo Omagari.

HMV has revamped its famous dog and gramophone mascot for giving it a more contemporary feel.

The revamped logo appears in a black and white square instead of a pink circle and is detached from the main HMV logo.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

The dog mascot – called Nipper – will take on the role of a quality mark to “gently reassure” customers about HMV’s heritage and expertise, the firm said.

Nipper first appeared in an 1898 oil painting called His Master’s Voice.

HMV’s previous overhaul of its logo took place around 15 years ago.

The music chain’s new branding will feature the pink-coloured letters HMV with the addition of the words “get closer” underneath.

It was developed as a result of a major brand review to engage with shoppers “in a more relevant way”.

HMV’s new marketing campaign encourages shoppers to “get closer to the songs, films and games they love”.

The pink HMV Get Closer logo plus the black and white Nipper mascot will launch next week.

The dog logo had been changed to make it look more contemporary, HMV marketing director Graham Sim said.

Microsoft Corp is planning to buy Internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion in its biggest-ever acquisition.

The acquisition interest places a rich bet on mobile and the Internet to try to best rivals such as Google Inc.

From news.yahoo.com:

Microsoft’s interest in the money-losing, but popular service highlights a need to gain new customers for its Windows and Office software. Skype has 145 million users on average each month and has gained favor among small business users.

But investors expressed skepticism over the deal, sending Microsoft shares down 0.62 percent to $25.67. If those losses hold, the software giant’s market value — already exceeded by Apple Inc last year — will slip behind General Electric Co’s and begin to approach IBM’s.

Led by private equity firm Silver Lake, eBay Inc and other investors including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz, would make $5 billion, or three times their investment, a source familiar with the deal said.

Microsoft is putting more energy and resources into mobile and the Internet as the personal computer business underpinning its Windows and Office franchise appears to be under threat.

Skype could be combined with Microsoft software like Outlook for appealing to the corporate users, while the voice and video communications could link to Microsoft’s Xbox live gaming.

Microsoft Corporation’s Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in an internal memo that the company is planning to broadly raise salaries and stock awards to attract and retain top talent.

The company is presently losing top employees to hot upstarts like Facebook.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

“Through our history, we have been THE place people came when they wanted to make a difference in the world through software, hardware and services,” the chief executive said in a memo sent to all employees on Thursday morning.

“This is as true today as it has been at any time in our history, and the changes we’re rolling out today will help ensure Microsoft continues to be the place that top talent comes to change the world.”

The action follows Google’s 10 percent increases this year. Microsoft plans, among other things, “important” compensation increases for divisions with fast-moving markets, including research and development and certain geographies.

All employees will have a portion of their stock awards shifted into base salary, according to the memo. Microsoft’s shares are at the same level as 10 years ago.

Ballmer said Microsoft needs to retain talent by improving the way it rewards and support its most talented staff.

According to a survey, Asian investors are betting on equities as the most preferred hedge against inflation followed by gold in attempt to fight inflationary pressures.

The survey by investment bank Barclays Capital revealed that equities followed by gold are the most sought after hedge against inflationary pressures.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Equities continue to be the most recommended asset by wealth managers for the next six months to produce a global balanced-risk investor portfolio, it added.

This year investors are being advised to hold an average of 37 per cent of their portfolio in global equities a marginal decline from 42 per cent a year ago, the report said.

US equities are more favoured today, with an average allocation of 10 per cent, up from 5 per cent three years ago.

Moreover, 65 per cent of respondents said they are likely to raise this allocation over the next six months.

However, advisors are recommending a reduced allocation in equities in Latin America, the Middle-East, Eastern Europe and Africa compared to a year ago. The recommended asset allocation for these regions has fallen from an average of nine per cent to just five per cent, the report said.

A large majority of respondents expect revenues to grow by more than five per cent in Asia, excluding Japan, over the next two years, wherein the most attractive countries for business expansion in the region would be China and India.

Barclays Capital Head of Distribution for Asia Pacific Philippe El-Asmar said, “We continue to see a positive attitude among investors for Asia’s emerging markets. It’s no surprise that China and India appear as the top picks for growth with the outlook for these economies remaining upbeat.”