With the worsening economy and state budget deficits, states are increasingly considering adding sales tax to online retail transactions. Legislation could be implemented as soon as 2009, according to Forbes.

“States are coming up with huge deficits and looking for places to make money,” says Eric Menhart of CyberLaw. “All of a sudden, Internet taxation appears a lot more viable.”

The legislation will be introduced as soon as January; if passed, changes could be implemented within six months. It is estimated that these taxes would generate several billion dollars in revenue: the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board (SSTGB) estimates that uncollected sales tax revenue was between $19 and $27 billion in 2006.

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While consumer spending is down, PC sales have continued to grow in 2008. Much of this growth is being credited to the rapid growth of the netbook market.

“Netbooks are the biggest thing to hit the PC industry in over a decade,” said IDC analyst Bob O’Donnell.

Asus’s Eee PC, launched in 2007, was the beginning of netbooks’ popularity. The small, ultra-light netbooks (9-10 inch screens, 2-3t pounds) are designed mainly for web access and office productivity applications, and sell in the $350-$500 (and falling) range.

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Gigom called it. It looks like 2008 is the year of LinkedIn, which is, not surprisingly, one of the few companies that has experienced significant growth since the recession’s acceleration in September. Surprisingly, though, the professional network’s traffic has grown exponentially more than other career sites in that period.

Linkedin has seen a 25% percent membership increase since September. There has been a 15% increase in Linkedin invitations in the last two months, and a 14% increase in the number of recommendations of members. LinkedIn has 30 million worldwide users and is now adding 1 million new users every two weeks.

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With all the focus on Windows 7, Microsoft’s Monday announcement that it was entering the world of cloud computing seemed to come out of nowhere.

Azure is the foundation of the Azure Services platform, which Microsoft says will make the development of cloud applications simple. The release was announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

Despite recent high-profile pronouncements by Richard Stallman, Larry Ellison, and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer companies like Amazon and Google are showing the potential for cloud computing.

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New data was released Tuesday reveals that most people will sit through a fair amount of advertising in order to visit Web sites. Including pop-ups, out-of-frame ads, floating ads, etc., 61 percent of US adults using the Internet would watch between one and five online ads for free Web content per hour in 2007 with a median response of 2 per hour.

66 percent of those polled thought that the amount of over-content ads on the sites they visited had increased over the last six months, up from 57 percent in 2005. The Center for Media Research said Internet users thought they were seeing more interruptive ads because they visited a wider array of sites, which exposed them to a greater variety of ads and ad types.

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EBay announced Monday that it plans to cut its global workforce of 16,000 by 10%, which is expected to save the company around $150 million a year. This is the first time they’ve had to lay off employees, though rumors of impending layoffs have been circulating for nearly a year.

Silicon Valley Insider calls these cuts “long overdue.”

“Unless the company can rapidly begin to reaccelerate gross merchandise sales, moreover, more cuts should follow.”

EBay shares closed at $17.89 Monday, their lowest in nearly six years.

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Online retailers are following under-30s shoppers to social sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. “Generation Y online buyers” participate in Internet activities more than any younger generation, and this influences their online spending habits.

The Society for New Communications Research study entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” confirms the importance that this demographic holds for online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs.  These sources of information seem to be divorced from traditional marketing strategies, and therefore have more credibility.

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Recent interest in People Search sites has created many options, but seldom a success. One such success is Pipl.com - its motto, “The most comprehensive people search on the web.” This holds true thanks to its unique method of using content from Facebook, Amazon, Friendster, etc. via what it refers to as the “Deep Web.” Pipl.com’s Deep Web page defines the term as “a vast repository of underlying content, such as documents in online databases that general-purpose web crawlers cannot reach. The deep web content is estimated at 500 times that of the surface web, yet has remained mostly untapped due to the limitations of traditional search engines.”

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Welcome to day one of the first cell phone to support Google’s Open Source Operating System, Android. With the age of the iPhone well under way, one is moved to wonder what a single-touch screen and a community-based application network have in store for us.

TechCrunch let loose some specifications yesterday:

• In-store, immediate sales only available in stores within 5 miles of a 3G covered area. If a store is beyond that range, representatives will walk customers through a T-mobile.com purchase
• One touch access to: Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, and Google Talk
• Gmail account and data plan required
• GPS
• 3.1 mp camera, no video recording
• No stereo bluetooth (A2DP)
• Dimensions: 4.6 x 2.16 x 0.63 in
• Weighs 5.6 ounces
• 480×320 65K color screen
• 5 hour talk time, 130 hour standby time
• Expandable up to 8GB

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Google is the fastest growing global brand, according to Businessweek and Interbrand’s Best Global Brand Survey.

The online search company first appeared in the top 100 list in 2005, at number 38; today, it is 10th on the list. Google’s brand value is calculated to be more than 25 billion dollars, and has risen 43% from its 2007 value of $18 billion. The key is Google’s quest for omnipresence:

“Innovations like Google Mobile, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Book Search extend the brand’s reach and ubiquity and make it an increasingly important part of our everyday lives.”

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