The European Commission has unveiled proposals that will strengthen consumer rights and make it safer and easier for the 27-nation European Union's consumers to shop online across European borders. Around 150 million consumers within the EU already shop on the internet, but only 30 million of them do it cross-border and the new rules are aimed at encouraging more shoppers to buy goods from e-retailers in other European countries.

The new proposals will ensure online shoppers within the EU will have clear information on price and additional charges and fees before agreeing to make a purchase. The rules will also give increased consumer protection against late delivery and non-delivery of goods and ensure robust consumer rights across the EU on issues including cooling-off periods, refunds, repairs, returns and guarantees. The proposal will have to be approved by the European Parliament and EU governments before it becomes law.

Retailers will have a maximum of 30 calendar days to deliver goods to consumers, under the new proposals. Consumers will also have an extended cooling-off period of 14 days and an easy-to-use standard withdrawal form.

The EU's Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said: "The new rights significantly strengthen consumer protection across the European Union and guarantee equal protection for consumers wherever and however they shop, online or on the high street."

IMRG - October 10th http://www.imrg.org/8025741F0065E9B8/(httpNews)/9C2A9EE4732A873E802574D7003AD069?OpenDocument

UK marketers spent £1.7 billion during first half of 2008 to increase online market share to 19%. Search, classifieds, rich media and video boost total advertising market. Total advertising market would have fallen 4.6% without the internet's growth.

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

Despite tough trading conditions, internet advertising expenditure grew to £1,682.5 million in the first half of 2008, a 21% year-on-year like-for-like increase, according to the latest online adspend figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) the trade body for digital marketing. The research was carried out in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC).

Marketers demonstrated overwhelming confidence in online advertising at a time when all major advertising mediums – TV, press, outdoor and radio – experienced falls in expenditure. The total advertising market was £8982.5 million, down 0.7% year-on-year, during the period January to June 2008. The advertising market would have experienced a 4.6% decline without the internet's growth.

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In yesterday's post on Google Chrome, we promised to let you know when it would be available for everyone to try -- and that time is now. Visit http://www.google.com/chrome to download and start exploring. (For the moment, it's available only for Windows users, but you can sign up on the download page to learn when the Mac and Linux versions are available.)

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager on http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ on 9/02/2008 at 12:02:00 PM

At Google, we have a saying: "launch early and iterate." While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

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An academic study from parity and Bournemouth University shows that by not using Web 2.0 you can seriously damage your businesses health

While the public seems to "get" Web 2.0 business seems to be lagging far behind. In a recent research study "Web 2.0 - More than Social Networking" , conducted by business services company Parity and Bournemouth University that looked at current levels of web 2.0 adoption and understanding among UK businesses. The survey found almost half (47.1 percent) of UK senior managers do not understand the business benefits associated with embracing web 2.0 technologies, while almost a third (32.4 percent) of IT managers lack an understanding of the capabilities of web 2.0.

The results of the survey reveal endemic misunderstanding and misperception amongst both senior managers and IT personnel that has deterred investment. Indeed, only one third of businesses have made any investment in Web 2.0 and the majority of these have done so to attain tangible benefits from enhanced content management rather than embrace the benefits of collaborative working that Web 2.0 can deliver.

As a result, for the first time, the use of professional technology at home is far outstripping that in the office. Given the much lamented information overload being experienced in offices across the UK, it is time for the IT industry to ask why so few organisations understand the role Web 2.0 and collaboration can play in transforming working practices.

One of the major fears of Web 2.0 is that it will lose you control of your IT and your business, but as the Parity study points out unless industry wakes up to Web 2.0 it will remain a consumer-only tool "at a significant cost to business" can you afford to absorb that cost?

This post came from Marcus Austin at Internet Retailing for more great articles visit them here

People in the UK spent a record amount using the internet during the month of February, according to a new study.

Figures from IMRG and Capgemini revealed that over the course of the month, £4.2 billion was spent online, which is equivalent to £69 per person in the UK.

This means that online spend grew by 46 per cent compared to the year before, with the beer, wine and spirits sector seeing 38 per cent growth.

Clothing, footwear and accessories increased 3.2 per cent, while the electrical sector declined 12.46 per cent and health and beauty decreased 7.9 per cent.

"In the light of the clear pressures that the current economic climate is placing on retailers, it is startling to see how online sales growth shows no sign of abating," said Anthoula Madden from Capgemini.

"However, the global recession fear is a good reminder that e- retailers cannot be complacent and need to be even more creative to keep existing customers and attract new users."

Data from comScore revealed recently that Google remained the most visited internet property during February, with Microsoft, eBay, Yahoo! and BBC making up the top five.

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