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Good E-Reader reports today that Amazon plans to launch a retail store in its hometown of Seattle "within the next few months." It will be a small boutique emphasizing its Kindle e-readers and physical copies of its Amazon Exclusives book titles. It will also stock accessories for Kindles, such as cases, screen protectors and USB chargers.

It's not a new rumor (it dates as far back as 2009), and it would be a departure from Amazon's strategy thus far. In December, LAUNCH reported the retail store rumor, adding that Amazon plans to sell its own branded merchandise. Amazon is better known for threatening real-world retail than for promoting it. But Amazon's moves in the past few months make the strategy seem more sensible.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review earlier this week, Ron Johnson talks about his experience building the Apple Stores. Who is Johnson? He used to be the SVP for retail at Apple and now is the CEO of JC Penney department stores. Going from the height of cool to running a second-tier department store chain might be an odd career move, but it makes sense when you read his post. This is a man who likes challenges.

As many ReadWriteWeb staffers plan their Thanksgiving meals, we wanted to turn today's Big Question towards the turkey-themed holiday. In the U.S., the day after Thanksgiving is a major retail event, complete with $10 televisions and stampeding crowds. Though most of the staff confessed to ignoring the event totally, we wondered if our readers were going to brave the retail battlefield on Black Friday.

Will you be leaving your house this year to join the Black Friday madness?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

California lawmakers may give Amazon.com a one-year reprieve in their contentious battle over state taxes, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Amazon has been fighting a new law that demanded Internet retailers collect state taxes starting this past July if they had offices, workers or other connections in California. Lawmakers hoped the tax would earn the economically depressed state $200 million annually. Amazon fought the law viciously, pulling out of the state and leaving 25,000 affiliates without the online platform that extended their sales reach.

Internet analytics firm comScore released a report today that shows the most visited retail and auction sites on the Internet. Amazon, to no surprise, is the big winner with 282 million visitors in June. That correlates to 20.4% of the entire worldwide Internet population. Auction site eBay trailed Amazon sites by nearly 60 million visitors to land in second with 223.5 million, or 16.2% of all Internet retail consumers across the globe.

A relatively new entrant into this chart is Alibaba.com, a Chinese Internet retail vendor. It had 156.7 million users to come in third at 11.3%. China has the largest base of Internet users of any country in the world, and it is drawing heavily from the Asia Pacific region, with 85.7% of its visitors coming from the region. One interesting note from comScore's research is that it seems to have pinned the approximate number of global Internet users at 1.38 billion and change. Web-based retail has been a major force in the U.S. for more than a decade but is just now starting to change how the rest of the world interacts with consumer products.

How do you get from Hot Topic to Orange Julius? With Bing Maps for Mobile, of course! Microsoft's innovative but too-unloved mobile map search service announced today that it has added floor plan maps for 400 shopping malls to m.bing.com. I'm not able to access the feature yet, but this wouldn't be the first time an announcement like this preceded go-live time.

This is honestly the kind of thing I can imagine using and I can imagine other people using it too. "I often cannot find my way out of Baby Gap," confirms ReadWriteWeb's Dan Rowinski. Mall navigation is a serious problem genuine inconvenience that mobile technology ought to solve.

There was a whole lot of money passing between hands today and we want to know which of these freshly funded companies interests you the most! There's a motley, but exciting line-up featuring companies that will help us find storage space, keep us from using our phone as we drive for work (I'm so guilty of this!) and a buzz-worthy new group messaging app. Join us as we dive into today's world of venture capitalism.

Don't worry - Apple isn't trying to launch the next Foursquare - but the company has developed its own check-in service that integrates with Apple's in-house applications. The new service went live this week.

The lineup of Apple-owned applications that make up the service includes "Concierge," a push-enabled app used by employees to receive notifications of customers with appointments entering the store and an app called "Scout" used by managers to establish precise physical locations within the store as part of the setup process.

Foursquare has quietly added a new feature to its website this afternoon that you won't want to miss: a new "add to my foursquare" button that can be embedded on any website.

If you own a business or publish a web page about any real-world location, this very simple button will allow visitors to your website to add going to your location as a "to-do" item and receive a push-notification to their phones whenever they check-in anywhere nearby. This small button could deliver a substantial part of the promise of Foursquare - tying together our discoveries online with our experiences offline.

Fresh on the heels of yesterday's launch of location-based mobile discounts app Shopkick, yet another geo-targeted mobile shopping service prepares its own take on mobile couponing and promotions. But don't worry - you can breathe a sigh of relief - it's not yet another iPhone app to download.

Instead, the new "ShopAlerts" service is actually a white-label platform that allows retailers and other businesses to send location-triggered mobile text messages to consumers who've opted in to receive them.

Yes, geo-fenced, geo-targeted mobile couponing, discounts and promotions have arrived.