According to a new study from Web analytics firm Compete, 74% of smartphone owners now primarily use their devices for personal reasons, and they often spent the most amount of time with the device at home.

Location-Aware Coupons

While it doesn't come as a surprise that a lot of consumers would like to receive coupons, one surprising result from Competes report is that 21% of respondents would like to get SMS alerts with promotions when they walk by a store. Another 15% also would like to receive ads via SMS. Chances are that a lot of marketers would like to offer these kinds of location-aware ads and coupons that catch a consumer while they are already out shopping and close to a retailer. At the same time, though, most modern smartphones don't allow developers to create these kind of applications. The iPhone, for example, doesn't (yet) allow developers to run application in the background, which would be necessary if a developer wanted to create a service that could send out ads via SMS based on your location.

Another bonus: if you're not actually in a store doing some shopping, you can use the app as a custom interface to Google's Product Search portal. With the provided search box, you can either type in a product name or just speak into the phone's microphone and Google Shopper will retrieve results - much like how Google's standalone mobile application does with web searches.

Why Does Google Need Another Mobile App?

If you own an Android mobile phone, then you've probably already installed one or more mobile shopping companion applications. ShopSavvy, for example, was one of the first barcode scanners on the scene. Designed mainly to scan high-end goods like DVDs, CDs, books, and consumer electronics, after scanning a barcode, you're provided with a list of both local and online prices for that same item.

Amazon, on the other hand, wanted to go beyond the barcode. With its Amazon App for Android, you can scan barcodes but you can also snap a photo of an item using the phone's camera. Amazon then searches through their inventory for that item and displays either the item itself or a similar product if the catalog doesn't have that exact item available.

Then, of course, there's Google Search for mobile and the related downloadable application. From either web interface, the Shopping vertical is easily accessible - only a tap away under the "More" section. So what prompted Google to release a dedicated shopping app like Google Shopper? Perhaps they saw the success of Amazon and ShopSavvy and wanted to redirect mobile users back to their engine and their search results?

While that's obviously a major factor in the decision, it's notable that Google Shopper is only available at launch time as an Android application. If there was ever any doubt that Google plans to favor their own mobile platform over rivals from Apple, Windows Mobile, RIM and others, we can put that to rest now. Whether Google is or is not working on a version of the app for other mobile platforms is almost besides the point. If they are, then how clever of them to launch the Android version first instead of waiting until everyone could use it, and if they aren't...well, then specialized Google apps for Android just became a huge selling point for the phone, didn't it? If we had to guess, it's the former - after all, as much as Google wants to promote their mobile OS, they're more interested in search traffic and multi-platform mobile applications are the way to get more of that.

For Android owners, Google Shopper is available now. You can grab your copy from here.

Someone, somewhere has been forgotten on your gift list, and you're scrambling. As per usual, we at RWW have got your back. Here are five ideas that will not only save you from certain disgrace but just might make you look a little more with it and wired than your loved ones expected.

Flowers, beers, books, even dog treats - for every hobby, there's a club membership that will bring the recipient monthly or even weekly gifts. With this kind of gift, you'll be the hero all year round - in fact it'll give you and the lucky recipient added incentive to communicate more often if you don't now.

2) Netflix Membership

For the movie buff or couch potato in your life, this gift says you condone and embrace the cinematic lifestyle. Memberships are tiered, so you can be as budget-conscious (or as generous) as you like.

3) Pro Apps or Paid Features

For all the free web apps we use and enjoy, there are often pro versions with special benefits. I've personally enjoyed a pro Flickr account for ages, and the RWW gang love the speedy, unlimited-HD goodness of our pro Vimeo account. If you have new parents in your life, try a kid-centric subscription model web service such as LilGrams.

4) Multimedia Gifts

Piracy is a dying art, so for the music, movie and game aficionados on your gift list, look around the web for legitimate sources of multimedia content. Gamers will love Microsoft Points for XBox Live or similar goodies for Wii and PS3. And for the youngsters and musicians, you can't go wrong with an eMusic or similar subscription.

5) Know Thy Geek: Fonts, Domains, and Software

I've been lusting after a particular domain name for a few months now. If someone knew me well enough to buy it, that lady or dude would be the most awesome Santa to date. And I won some brownie points myself for buying a special person a very special font he'd been wanting for quite some time. Likewise, if you've heard a hobbyist or nerd enthusing about a software update that might qualify as a bit of a splurge, the holiday is the perfect time to surprise him or her with a shiny, new email notification or ZIP file.

These kinds of gifts show that you know the person well enough to understand and support his or her need to geek out. And what better gift is there, after all?

You have to wonder how often this happens these days. High-speed coverage (or at least coverage that's advertised that way) is now widespread, and there have to be times when a solid 3G connection can beat an understaffed checkout line hands-down.

Which means customers are bringing the competition into the bricks-and-mortar stores with them -- and they can switch allegiance as easily as point, click, swipe, call up the keyboard, tap tap tap, dammit, backspace, no, that wasn't it, tap tap (repeat eight or nine times)... submit.

How about you, have you bailed on a big box store mid-expedition in favor of a virtual shopping spree recently?

It's ridiculously simple as a concept, yet it allows for more creativity, freedom, and portability than any other tool we've seen for mobile developers, hands down. The product of a design shop and a web development lab, both based in Australia, these nifty and inexpensive toys have been popping up in offices all over Silicon Valley. Read on to learn the secret behind your favorite mobile dev's favorite Christmas present.

Yes, the Notepod is the Moleskine of the digerati, an ingenious little sketchpad shaped like an iPhone. The front of each sheet features "52mm by 77mm of blank space floating in darkness," and the back of each piece is a blank grid of graph paper, perfect, as the site says, "perfect for notes or jotting down the phone number of a hot geek."

Notepods each contain 100 pages, and you can snag a 3-pack for around $18USD. Shipping will take between 7 and 12 business days, unless you're lucky enough to live in Australia or New Zealand.

As we all know, the best ideas often hit you at inappropriate or inconvenient times. As Inventive Labs posted, "It's incredibly fun to come up with an idea in the pub over a few beers;" however, how fun is it to decipher those indecipherable, scrawled-on and soggy cocktail napkins the next morning? Keep one in your bag, one on the nightstand - wherever inspiration strikes. It might be made of paper, but we think smartphone developers will find it a fun and simple productivity tool.

However, this Black Friday showed a 4 percent increase in site visits versus Thanksgiving Day traffic - a stat that usually falls between those two days. The retail site that got the lion's share of traffic this year was Amazon.com, which netted 13.55 percent of the traffic seen by the top 500 retail websites. Read on for a few surprising stats that might signal changes in the U.S. economy - and changes in how U.S. consumers will be doing their holiday shopping.

The lesson: If you want to see a ridiculous upswing in traffic on a major American retail date, maintain relative stinginess and secrecy, then "leak" good tidings of great joy just before the big day.

Other sites that saw a significant traffic increase in this 48-hour period include Staples (47 percent), Dell (40 percent) and Amazon (9 percent).

So, Apple, Staples and Dell take the cake for getting the greatest traffic spikes overnight; how did websites fare on Black Friday overall?

As you can see in the graph below, Amazon and Walmart each performed admirably. What's more, most sites saw a marginal increase in traffic over last year's Black Friday traffic - as you'll recall, the global economy had recently tanked. Do we see this as a sign of tentative optimism about the economy, at least on the part of American consumers?

Finally, who got the most downstream traffic from Black Friday websites? That would be our friends at Walmart, Best Buy, and Target - the latter of which more than doubled its downstream traffic from last year:

Details for Cyber Monday - traditionally the online retailer's biggest day during the holiday season - will be available shortly.

However, those of you with an Apple iPhone can get a leg up on the other shoppers who have to fumble through old-fashioned newspaper printouts that list each store's bargains. You can have all the deals at your fingertips, thanks to new iPhone applications that list everything on sale. And that's not all, either. Read on for our guide to preparing your iPhone for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season beyond.

First and foremost, you need to download the apps that list this year's Black Friday Deals. Our favorite is the Black Friday app (iTunes link) put out by Dealnews. This app not only features the "official" deals already revealed through company press releases, but also includes "leaked" deals that have found their way to the net without the company's consent. Although today's paper is likely to now reveal those leaked deals to the world, we already trusted their accuracy thanks to a Best Buy employee who fact-checked a few of them against what he knew would be on sale. Spot on, he told us.

The Black Friday app is simple to use as there are only three buttons to deal with: a deals buttons that lets you scroll through a long list of tomorrow's bargains, a Black Friday button that list deals by store, and a shopping list button which stores the save while browsing through the other two sections. A search box at the top of the stores listing also lets you find a store by name instead of having to scroll for even faster lookups. Another bonus about this app is that its life extends beyond Black Friday. After tomorrow, the app will be updated to show you Cyber Monday and After-Christmas sales, as well as year-round deals.

Other contenders: Powered by TGI Black Friday and DealCatcher.com, another great app (iTunes link) lists deals and stores, too. Plus, this app lets you search by category and browse through the latest ads.

2. Price Comparison

Having already established itself on other mobile platforms, ShopSavvy (iTunes link) finally made its way to the iPhone just in time for Black Friday. This barcode scanning application lets you know if you're really getting a deal by comparing the store's price with more than 20,000 other retailers who provide their pricing data to ShopSavvy. The app isn't limited to online deals, either. It also compares prices with local stores so you can find out if it's just a matter of heading down the street to save a few more bucks. ShopSavvy works on all iPhones (2G, 3G, and 3GS). Just aim the red laser over any barcode and the pricing info will automatically appear on the screen.

Other contenders: Red Laser (iTunes link) is another popular barcode scanning application for the iPhone, but unlike ShopSavvy which is free, this app costs $1.99. The Amazon Mobile app (iTunes link) is nice to have as well thanks to its experimental feature called "Amazon Remembers." Using your phone's camera, you can snap a picture of an item to store it in a virtual shopping list. The app will then seek out that item on Amazon's website and post the pricing information and other details to the app for you to view.

3. Store-Specific Apps

A few big name brick-and-mortar retailers also have their own iPhone applications listed in the iTunes App Store. With these store-specific apps, you can search for deals, reserve products, check local availability, makes lists, and more.

Some of the best apps in this genre include the following:

• B&N Bookstore: Browse products or search through millions of books, DVDs, and CDs. You can also use your phone's camera to snap a photo of the cover of the item in question to get product details, reviews, ratings, and local availability.
• Best Buy: The electronics retailer offers two iPhone applications - Best Buy Weekly Deals and the Best Buy Gamers Club. The Weekly Deals app lets you scour through the weekly ads (great for after Black Friday is over, too) to get product details, read reviews, see the ratings, and even purchase using a special mobilized version of the Best Buy website. The Gamer's Club app is similar, but focuses just on video games, consoles, and accessories.
• Wal-Mart: Wal-Mart does have an app, but it's nothing to get too excited about since it just focuses on electronics. And when you need to get more details, it redirects you to the company's mobile website. However, it's worth installing if only to remind you to compare that big screen TV you're eyeing with the often cheaper prices found at Wal-Mart.
• Target: Target's app is a bit better since it lets you search for all products at your local store. You can check availability and it even shows you where inside the store the item is located. Great for scoping out your Black Friday route in advance! Plus, if you don't know what to get someone, a handy gift finder feature will make recommendations based on age, gender, price, or other attributes.
• Toy "R" Us: The Toys "R" Us app lets you virtually shop through the company's "big book" for toys by popularity or category. You can see product details, read reviews, and add toys to a list of favorites which can later be emailed to you. A "Find a Store" button also helps you find the closest store to your current location.

4. Don't Get Lost - Download Mall Maps to Your iPhone

MEDL Mobile's Mall Maps app (iTunes link) is an essential download for Black Friday shoppers. Featuring the maps and store lists for over 1,000 shopping centers across the U.S., this app saves you time as you no longer have to fight the crowd gathered around the mall's directory board. Instead, you can view detailed floor plans and store lists with corresponding numbers all within the palm of your hand. This app isn't free (it's $2.99), but committed shoppers will agree the price is worth it.

5. Didn't Find It? eBay It Instead

If your shopping expeditions left you empty-handed, there's still eBay. But now you don't need to be at a computer to find items, bid, watch, or makes purchases. The latest update to the eBay Mobile app (iTunes link) also takes advantage of the iPhone's pop-up notifications to remind you when an auction is about to end or if you've been outbid.

A new eBay app called eBay Deals specifically focuses on finding you deals based on personalized searches that you can create, edit, and save. This is handy if you're looking for a hard-to-find item that isn't always available on the site or if you like regularly browsing a particular category or genre. Like the main application, eBay Deals is also free.

Mint analyzed spending data and compared it to one year ago. The data is for top performers in the third quarter this year, based on "average monthly spend per user versus recession lows."

Check out the charts below and compare them to Forrester and comScore's data.

The highlights, via Mint.com:

• Aeropostale - the clothing retailer is up 10% year-over-year, having grown consistently quarter over quarter.
• Best Buy - the electronics retailer is up 1% Q3 year-over-year, hit a recession low of -7%.
• Fry's - while competitor Best Buy's sales exceed where they were at this point last year, Fry's remains down -7% year-over-year (though it's up from a -16% recession low).
• J.Crew - the clothing retailer's lowest point was -3%, but it has since entirely corrected and even improved sales 4% year-over-year.
• Sears - the department store's sales are up 8% over this time last year, having dipped to -10%.
• Target - after an initial drop to -8% in Q109, Target has halved that loss and is currently down only -4% year-over-year.

See also:

• Online Retail Thriving: 8% Growth Expected This Holiday Season
• Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: E-commerce

But, whether we like it or not, we can't Grinch out; so we'd better start thinking about the gift-giving season now and get it over with. And since your friends at ReadWriteWeb are huge geeks, we thought we'd amuse you with a few Internet-enabled oddities that might actually make your obligatory retail purgatory a little more bearable.

If there's anything worse than shopping for a loved one's gift, it's shopping for a loved one whose preferences, tastes and needs are a complete mystery. Don't worry: it doesn't mean you're insensitive. You've just got your mind on other things.

The solution: For quick, decisive, and possible all-online gift-buying, coerce every potential gift recipient into signing up at Wishzilla. The creators of this site have kept the clear-cut, actionable sensibility of the gift registry while maintaining the element of surprise. Here's how it works: users log in with Facebook (or create an account) and then start bookmarking their gift wishlist all over the Web. Once the list is done, it's locked. Signed, sealed and sent to Santa. What items have been purchased and by whom remain a secret until the wrapping paper gets torn away.

Everyone wins, and no one is left feeling awkward about that good-intentioned but ill-advised sweater.

2 & 3) Customized Clothing for Him, Her, Hym, Etc.

We've recently been exposed to the wonderful world of e-spoke apparel. We actually just made up the term e-spoke as a portmanteau of electronic and bespoke; basically, there are a few sites out there that allow for high-quality and entirely customizable wearable goods; in fact, some of them are very forward-thinking, technologically.

For the dress shirt-wearer in your life, we have ShirtsMyWay, a site that lets the user completely customize their ideal of collared and cuffed perfection. Our Twitter research has shown that some folks find the site a little spendy; but seriously, a beautiful dress shirt designed to your exact specifications and measurements is worth the extra cost - which, we might add, is significantly less than most other customized apparel experiences.

And for your feminine side, we have Shoes of Prey. The URL alone takes no prisoners, and neither will your fierce creations. Heels on these completely customizable beasts only elevate the wearer a modest 3.5 inches at their highest, but the ability to branch beyond the dyed-satin-bridesmaid-shoe paradigm of shoe customization is more than enough incentive to check out this site.

4) Storenvy

If Craiglist, eBay and Etsy had some kind of inter-website relations and made a Web baby, it would be Storenvy. In a prettily designed community setting, users can set up buyer and seller accounts. The site is a series of independent online retailers and shoppers who browser across all of those stores at once, interacting with each other by watching what notes and ratings they leave on products and stores throughout the site. Check out the social features in action here, or just set up an account and start having fun.

Better yet, get your friends to set up accounts and thus remove some of the guesswork from gifting.

5) Regretsy, the Gag Gift You Can't Resist & Will Never Live Down

Rubber chickens, whoopie cushions, every sadistic and horrifyingly cheap Secret Santa atrocity - none of it can match the horrors found on Regretsy. We actually feel pity for the people who buy or receive the Etsy-fueled inventory from this site. If you ever wondered what kinds of jewelry can be made from animal feces or exactly who makes embroidered toilet paper, you have found your Web-enabled holy grail. If not, well, you're in for a good laugh and at least a few ideas for passive-aggressive office gift exchanges. Forced, semi-professional merriment will never be the same.

So there you have it, folks! You never have to leave your three-monitor array of addictive Internet connectivity to satisfy the whims of the potential gift recipients in your life. Just use these tools and a little personal judgment, and all your holiday shopping-related worries can be laid to rest.

We just hope we have a similarly good list when it comes to last-minute shopping; god knows we plan to procrastinate as long as possible, helpful tools notwithstanding.

Amazon already has a similar speedy checkout system known as "1-Click." When activated, customers can associate payment methods with a frequently used shipping address, such as a home address, to quickly complete purchases without having to fill out their name, address, and credit card details.

Although not designed to replace 1-Click, the new PayPhrase system is even easier to use and more flexible. Using this system, shoppers don't have to be signed in to the site with an Amazon account as is necessary with 1-Click. That saves an extra step and could lead to more impulse buys as there's no "cooling down" time, however brief, between seeing something you want to purchase and then finalizing the transaction.

The PayPhrase system also allows for the creation of multiple PayPhrases and PINs so you can associate different addresses and methods of payment with each other. For example, you could additionally have a corporate credit card tied to your office address or a pre-paid credit card your children use tied to your home address. 1-Click checkout, on the other hand, only allows for the combination of one address and one method of payment.

The PayPhrase technology will go live across all of Amazon.com as well as on several third-party sites that use "Checkout by Amazon," a service that lets other retailers checkout customers by using their personal and payment information saved on Amazon's servers. At this time, DKNY, Jockey, Patagonia, Buy.com, J&R, and Car-Toys have announced they will add the PayPhrase system on their sites, too.

Is PayPhrase the Future of Mobile Transactions?

Clearly, the new PayPhrase technology has been designed to make online checkout easier, but could there be more to it than that? Earlier this month, the company launched a mobile payments service which allows mobile application developers to integrate Amazon's checkout system into their mobile software and mobile websites. The mobile payments system also allows for the integration of the 1-Click checkout process, so there's no reason to doubt that the PayPhrase technology will now also be added to the payments platform as well.

With PayPhrase, the process of making an online purchase takes far less steps than any other checkout system today. Even PayPal forces you to sign in, choose payment methods, and complete your transaction before being redirected back to the retailer's website. While a few extra steps aren't a big deal on the web, when you're on a mobile phone, every delay makes it that much harder thanks to slower internet connection speeds, tiny keyboards, and, more often than not, a lack of time to get involved in any long process. If you can't checkout in a minute or so, it's generally not even worth bothering until you're back at home on your broadband-connected PC. But with PayPhrase, you can checkout incredibly fast - only two steps are required: one to enter your special phrase and another to enter your PIN. Although Amazon hasn't made any formal announcements about integrating PayPhrase into their mobile platform just yet, they must have had it in mind when they designed this technology.

Not too long ago, mothers were still considered to be a hard group to reach through mobile applications because they tend to be late adopters. The iPhone's mainstream success has changed this, however, and iPhone moms have now become a desirable target demographic for marketers.

Greystripe is a brand-focused advertising network and obviously has an interest in making this group attractive for advertisers, but the statistics in this report seem pretty solid. Greystripe found the 1,294 respondents who filled out this survey through house ads on its own network.

The iPhone Mom

According to Greystripe, 96% of mothers with iPhones are involved in their family's purchasing decisions and 40% are the sole decision makers. Eighty percent have attended at least some college and are slightly more likely to have received a Graduate degree than the rest of the iPhone user base. The age of the children in these families skews slightly older, with 29% of the moms having children between 0 and 4, while 43% have children between 15 and 17.

How iPhone Moms Use Their Phones: Shopping and Keeping the Kids Entertained

What is more interesting, though, is how these moms use their iPhones. Fifty-nine percent of all iPhone moms let their children use their phones and 41% download games specifically for their children. Twenty percent also download educational content for their kids.

With regards to shopping, 79% of all iPhone moms use their phones for 'shopping related activities.' The majority of these activities consist of locating stores (60%). Thirty-nine percent also use the phone to compare prices. Nineteen percent of iPhone moms download coupons, 23% look for items on sale and 37% use their phones to learn about products.

When it comes to using the phone in stores, 42% of the mothers who responded to the Greystripe survey said that they regularly use their phones at the grocery store. Grocery list applications - or just the Notes app on the iPhone and iPod touch - are the most popular uses for the iPhone and 19% of all moms use these. Thirteen percent of moms also use the phone to look up prices in the store itself - which explains the popularity of apps like Red Laser.

As Greystripe's founder and CEO Michael Chang told us last week, this data shows how the iPhone has become a tool for everyday life for this demographic. This group tends to have a large influence over everyday purchase decisions in their families and these iPhone moms often use their phones to make a good number of these decisions, which make them an attractive target for marketers.

This study also shows that there is a large market for apps that are specifically geared towards this demographic, including mobile price comparison apps or apps that can deliver mobile coupons - and a lot of iPhone dads will probably be interested in these apps as well.

Says Ask President Scott Garrell, "Searches for coupons on Ask.com have shot up almost 50% in 2009. With the holidays approaching, we know this service will help us make an impact with our users."

In early August, ReadWriteWeb covered Yahoo's recent Deals launch. Similar to Yahoo Deals, Ask Deals aggregates coupons and sales in a separate and easy-to-use shopping channel. However, when it comes to search, Yahoo redirects users to the Yahoo Deals page while Ask blends deals directly into standard results. In an effort to save consumers time, Ask also attempts to link directly to coupons and savings that are listed up front. For example, when you search for clothing, deals are listed from best to worst in terms of percentage of discount. From here users can share deals via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Delicious and Digg.

Sale news is available to members via the website, email and the Ask Deals Twittter account. Users can also install the Ask Deals homepage skin to see the featured "Deals of the Day". To install the skin visit Ask.com/skins.

The process works not only with traditional coupons but with customer loyalty cards, too, which are typically used for in-store discounts, points, and other special offers provided by the retailer to regular customers. Since most stores already run their own in-house programs for this, MoLo Rewards is introducing a way to link the existing programs to their mobile platform. The incentive on the retailers' part, says the company, is that a mobile system such as this would dramatically cut down on fraud while also cutting costs associated with mailings and printings. They can also use RFID tags on store shelves to distribute coupons to customers walking the aisles.

In addition to the coupon processing, the MoLo Rewards system tracks your purchases on the backend in order to provide you with targeted coupons and other offers based on both your spending habits and your physical location. As you use the mobile coupons, you earn MoLo points, which can then be redeemed for "rewards" which include things like laptops, game consoles, bikes, gift cards, and so on.

NFC vs RFID

One drawback to this program - at least here in the U.S. - is its use of NFC technology. NFC is much more popular in European and Asian markets where it's already used for everything from micropayments to file sharing. With this in mind, MoLo Rewards also offers RFID as an alternative. This allows the application to work with any phone as all the consumer needs to do is attach the company's RFID tag to their phone in order to participate. Also available are "show and go" coupons, which are basically a low-tech feature of their application that lets you show the coupon on your phone's screen to the cashier so they can then enter it manually into their system.

MoLo Rewards is currently in beta as they work to add more retailers to their system. In the meantime, those interested in registering can do so here.

The daily deals section is by far the most interesting feature as users can check for deals in the verticals of their choice and be redirected to daily sale sites like Smart Bargains and Woot via Sellout.Woot. In this case, Yahoo finally gets a chance to really showcase their 2007 Woot partnership in a shopping experience that isn't a maze of click-thrus. For those readers who are already following Woot on Twitter, you may want to also follow Yahoo Deals and increase your chances of scoring cheap computer equipment or stereo gear.

As for the coupons section, if Yahoo Deals gains real momentum, coupon clippers might be found abusing office supplies (namely toner cartridges and paper) across the country. One great way to combat the waste of old school coupon clipping would be for Yahoo to offer a mobile version complete with scannable bar codes. This way a deal finder could simply load up their mobile phone with the correct bar codes and cashiers could scan the jpegs.

According to the blog post, there are only a few steps necessary to get up-and-running with Google Checkout on your site, a process they claim will only take "a matter of minutes." (That may depend on how much inventory you sell, however.)

After signing up for your Google Checkout Seller Account the next step is to list the products you want to sell in a Google Docs spreadsheet. The process couldn't be easier. Google provides you with a copy of their template spreadsheet. When you click the link, you're prompted to click on another link reading: "Yes, make a copy." Doing so copies the template file over to your own Google Docs account where you'll see a basic spreadsheet that features columns for title, content, price, quantity, shipping, image_link, option, and option_name. So you'll know what those fields are used for, the spreadsheet also includes some example inventory entries. When you're finished listing your inventory, you simply publish the spreadsheet as a web page.

The final step is to pick the embed location, a list which allows you to choose between a normal HTML web site or one of the following Google-owned properties: Google Sites, Blogger, or iGoogle. Then you choose the size of your gadget and make a couple of changes to the code, one of which is pasting in the URL to your own Google Docs spreadsheet.

The Checkout Gadget is still a Google Labs project, meaning (in theory) that it's still in the experimental phase. Of course, with Google, the same company that left Gmail in beta until just this year, it's hard to know exactly how "experimental" the gadget really is at this point.

Google Checkout Gadget is "Good Enough"

At the end of the day, PayPal may offer more options for configuring web site buttons as they allow you to configure shipping by weight, various tax calculations, and a customized button appearance among other things. Still, Google Checkout is doing what Google knows best how to do: provide a simple, easy-to-use service to attract the set of users looking for "good enough" (but not the best). As with many of their other services - like Google Docs and Google Sites, for example - Google's offerings may not be the absolute best in their field, but they're good enough for most users. For example, with Google Docs: to date, Microsoft Office still has more features than Docs and Zoho is by far a more robust online suite, but Docs is straightforward and simple. The same can be said for the new Checkout gadget. It may not be the best, but for small business sellers who don't need complicated setups, the gadget will likely be a good fit.