How does Amazon.com finally plan to put its brick and mortar competitors out of business? Using a new mobile feature from the online retailing giant, consumers can take mobile photos of items they want to buy, store them in an online shopping cart, and then complete the purchase --usually at a discount -- whenever they want. The application, designed for Apple's iPhone, lets consumers reference Amazon's entire catalog of items and complete purchases with a single click. Amazon's innovative mobile app is just one reason why the online retailer is expected to emerge from the economic recession relatively unscathed. As …

"How will Twitter make money?" recently became a $500 million question after it was revealed that Facebook was willing to offer that much (mostly in stock options) to buy the microblogging service. Not bad for a company that at the time had no known revenue source. However, according to the Los Angeles Times, all that has finally changed, as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced recently that the company would start charging the likes of JetBlue, Comcast and Dell for their corporate accounts. In exchange, Twitter will help these companies build corporate-exclusive features. Stone and his fellow Twitter founders are …

The market for third-party applications has exploded over the past year, as everyone from Facebook to Apple, Google and MySpace have allowed developers to create applications for their various platforms. However, while the success of application conglomerates like Rock You and Slide is well-documented, Cnet delves into the world of independent third party software writers. How possible is it to sustain oneself by creating applications that run on devices like Apple's iPhone? The report profiles Dennis Hescox, a 54-year-old software programmer who created the game "Maze Wars Revisited" in an attempt to make a living without needing a full time …

Last week, Facebook and Google took the cover off their open registration systems, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. It's really no surprise to find that this week, MySpace is countering with its own offering, MySpaceID. Om Malik says the system has two core components: Open Standards ("The Open Stack including OpenSocial, OAuth, and OpenID) and Google Friend Connect. What this means is anybody's guess, including Malik's: "How all this works - I don't know, and frankly I don't care." Surely, MySpaceID is meant to do what Facebook Connect does; that is, "federate and aggregate Web services" through MySpace. However, …