Online holiday spending has reached $23.82 billion, representing a 12 percent increase over the same time period last year, according to the latest report from comScore. The most recent week )week ending Dec. 12( reached $5.31 billion in spending, an increase of 12 percent over the corresponding week last year. Monday, December 13, known as Green Monday )the second Monday in December when online spending has historically tended to peak(, reached $954 million in spending,

The majority )90%( of Americans want more control over the information that is available about them online, according to a new survey by Harris Interactive for Intellius. Because people use websites and search engines to find out information about others, 80 percent believe their online identity is now as important as their offline personal or professional reputation. "We believe 2011 will be the 'Year of the Online Reputation,

CNN has launched a new free app for the iPad aimed at offering a more visual news experience. The CNN App for iPad combines images with reporting from CNN, including text stories, blog posts, photo galleries, and live or on-demand video. Users have the ability to toggle between U.S. and international news. The app has a user comment feature that runs alongside content on the screen. Users can share text stories, images and videos from the app via email,

Kodak has introduced a Social Photo Album Creator for Facebook that lets people combine photos from the site and work with others to make an album together. There are three steps to using the Social Photo Album Creator : 1.Create an album from your Facebook photos. 2.Invite others to participate and add their pictures to your album. 3.Visit a Kodak Picture Kiosk and print from your Facebook account at the kiosk. "With the new Social Photo Album Creator from KODAK,

Google has introduced a new website called TeachParentsTech.org aimed at helping people teach others about computer basics. The Google Blog offers more details. TeachParentsTech.org lets you select from more than 50 basic how-to videos to send to mom, dad, your old college roommate, your neighbor or anyone else who could use a little help with tech taskswhether its how to copy & paste to how to share a big file. Wrap up your video with a custom email and off it goes!

Tax preparer Jackson Hewitt has launched an online Discount Shopping Network that offers cash back rewards from more than 800 retailers, including Target, Sears, Kmart, Best Buy and Staples. The Discount Shopping Network is part of the first phase of the company's roll-out of MyTaxManager, a new online tax management tool. By visiting MyTaxManger and clicking on the My Rewards tab, users can earn cash back rewards on apparel, sporting goods, electronics, office products,

U.S. online holiday spending has reached $21.95 billion during the first 40 days of the season, an increase of 12 percent over the same time period as last year, according to the latest report from comScore. The most recent week )week ending Dec. 10( reached $5.15 billion in spending, an increase of 11 percent versus the corresponding week last year, as two individual days each surpassed $900 million.

Google has introduced a new feature to its voice service that allows people to send and receive free personalized calls from Santa. Users can visit sendacallfromsanta.com and choose from a number of options to send unique, often humorous , customized phone calls to anyone in the U.S. Users can also send the messages from Santa via email, Facebook and Twitter. The Google Blog provides additional information. If you or your kids have a special request or message for Santa,

YouTube has narrowed down finalists for its second YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 to be held at the Sydney Opera House and is calling on users to vote on the best musicians. Users can vote on the remaining 336 finalist from 46 countries over the next seven days to determine who will be going to the Sydney Opera House from March 14-20 to perform for a global audience. The YouTube Blog offers more details. You can vote once per video, per day,

E-reader sales are on track to total 6.6 million units in 2010, up 79.8 percent from 2009 sales of 3.6 million units, according to a new report from Gartner. In 2011, global e-reader sales are forecast to surpass 11 million units, a 68.3 percent increase from 2010. "The connected e-reader market has grown dramatically during the past two years, driven by sales of Amazon's e-readers, primarily in North America. This is the dominant region for e-reader sales,

Amazon.com said today that authors who use its Author Central service can now view Nielsen BookScan's weekly geographic sales data for their print books for free. Author Central is a free service that helps authors promote their books and reach more readers. Also announced today, Author Central has added a feature that shows authors past history on the Amazon bestsellers rank for their books. Authors are an important community for us, said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President,

Cyber criminals are using a hacking program to create fake receipts for items sold through Amazon.com and its retail partners, in an effort to receive refunds or new products, according to security firm GFI Software. The free program available online allows scammers to create an HTML receipt for phantom Amazon.com purchases, said Christopher Boyd, senior threat researcher, GFI Software . By capturing a screenshot of the fake receipt,

U.S. online holiday spending has surpassed $17.5 billion in the first 35 days of the November -December shopping season, up 12 percent, according to a new report from comScore. The most recent week saw four individual days eclipse $800 million in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which became the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.028 billion. Tuesday, November 30 reached $911 million, making it the third heaviest online spending day on record,

Nearly three-quarters )74%( of Americans feel that the easiest way to complete their holiday gift purchases is online, while 87 percent favor brick-and-mortar stores, according to research firm StrategyOne. When it comes to finding the best deals overall, Americans are divided with 52% stating they found the best deals online, while 48% say they could find the best deals in retail stores. From its recent public opinion poll of 1,052 Americans, StrategyOne,

Netflix and Disney-ABC Television Group have reached a new licensing agreement that will allow Netflix to stream episodes from the ABC Television Network, Disney Channel and ABC Family. Under terms of the agreement, Netflix will not be allowed to stream current shows earlier than 15 days after the initial broadcast. TV content streamed from Netflix has proven to be immensely popular with our members," said Ted Sarandos, the company's chief content officer.

Amazon.com has expanded its Kindle for the Web to allow anyone with access to a browser to buy and read Kindle books. Retailers, authors, bloggers and website owners will be able to offer Kindle books from their own sites and earn referral fees through the Amazon Associates Program for sales made through their site. Amazon said its expanded Kindle for the Web will be available in the coming months.

eBay has added local shopping results from Milo, its most recent acquisition , to its RedLaser barcode-scanning application, now available on the iPhone and Android. With the integration of Milo, shoppers on RedLaser can find out, through a single scan, which local retailers have an item in-stock along with the best price. Shoppers can scan products from 50,000 U.S. stores. RedLaser brings countless pages of shopping sites, and now the shelves of local stores,

Data management firm TigerLogic has introduced PostPost, a real-time personal social newspaper that collects and curates posts shared by a user's Facebook friends into a newspaper style layout. To access PostPost, users can login in using Facebook Connect, and all shared links, pictures, videos, articles from their Facebook friends will be displayed on the front page of their personal paper.

Shopper satisfaction with online retailers during the holidays indicates they are more satisfied with prices this year than they were at the same time last year, according to a new report from ForeSee Results. Customers' ratings of prices this year )72.1 on the study's 100-point scale( are more than half a point higher than they were in 2009; though still slightly lower than on Cyber Monday, due to fewer online incentives and specials.

Amazon Web Services )AWS( has launched Amazon Route 53, a Domain Name System )DNS( in the cloud that allows businesses to direct Internet traffic to web applications. Amazon Route 53 can be used to route end users to multiple AWS services including Amazon EC2, an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer or an Amazon S3 bucket, and to infrastructure outside of AWS.