• by October 31, 2005

Forrester Research today reports that U.S. online retail sales this holiday season will hit $18 billion, a 25 percent increase over last year. The researcher estimates that 2.5 million new households will shop online in 2005, enticed by offers of free shipping and other bonuses. This, despite the fact that consumers are concerned about the increasing cost of gasoline and heating their homes.

Forrester says that offline retailers are expected to use their Web sites more to drive in-store traffic. The researcher cites Circuit City's 24/24 promotion, which guarantees in-store pickup of an online order within 24 minutes, with the promise of a $24 gift card if the order isn't met.

Hot online categories this holiday? Consumer electronics, toys, and apparel.

***Now, are you "scary smart" this Halloween? If so, Google invites you to apply for dozens of sales management and marketing jobs. We learned from Rafat Ali today that page 5 of Sunday's New York Times featured a full-page ad calling for the "brightest minds in sales management." Although we didn't actually see the ad, we trust that it was there. Now, where are the "brightest minds in sales management"? We want to know, too.

Google's North American advertising sales organization is looking for staffers in New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Irvine and Mountain View Calif., Toronto, and Seattle. And before you apply, the Google gang prefers candidates with MBAs. Whether MBAs are actually "scary smart" is debatable.

***Now, in case you want to have a little fun today (yeah, fun!), AOL informs us that the top five Halloween costume searches on AOL Search are:

1. Star Wars Costumes
2. Pirate Costumes (Yeah, pirates! We know a few media-savvy, yet wonderfully cynical and twisted pirates).
3. Tinkerbell Costumes
4. Fairy Costumes (for both sexes?)
5. Wonder Woman Costumes (We used to love when Wonder Woman whipped out her amulet/necklace thing and transformed into "mighty Isis"!).

On this Halloween, this here Minute is well, looking for the Reese's peanut butter cups. Will someone feed us, please? Happy, happy...