After several false and semi-false starts, 2005 seems to be the year  holiday e-commerce shopping materialized in a major way as sales in the U.S. jumped 30% from last year to $30.1-billion, according to Harris Interactive, Goldman Sachs and Nielsen/NetRatings. The most popular categories were clothing ($5.3-billion, up 42%), while computer hardware and peripherals ranked second ($4.8 billion, up 128%), while consumer electronics were third ($4.7-billion, up 109%). eMarketer.com's summary, including some interesting tables, can be found here. I haven't seen Canadian numbers yet but one would assume they will not be as good given Canadians haven't adopted e-commerce as enthusiastically as U.S. counterparts. A theory that is gaining favour is Canadian don't shop because there's a lack of domestic online retailers, and there is a lack of domestic online retailers because Canadians don't shop. That said, Canadians do use the Web in a big way as a research tool. Canadian Tire is a good example of how consumers browse online and then shop in-store. Is this a successful e-commerce operation? One could argue it's very successful because at the end of the day it's all about the sale - not where it actually happens.

Amid the focus on wireless at CES, it provides me with a chance to talk about Nokia N90 smartphone that I've been testing for the past month. Let's start with its strengths: it takes very nice photos with a two mega-pixel Carl Zeiss lens, and the phone is, well, a phone. Now the shortcomings: it's not cheap and, frankly, tries to offer too many features rather than doing a few things really well. Nokia has some nice elements here but it needs to go back to the drawing board.
Now, let's look at Google Pack. For geeks and quasi-geeks, Google Pack is underwhelming because we're already using most, if not all, of the software such as Firefox, Norton anti-virus, Adobe Acrobat, etc. For the mainstream market, however, Google Pack could be hit because it's easy to install and feature-rich. The most intriguing thing about Google Pack has to be the Google Updater program that's automatically installed. Not only will this keep the current applications up-to-date but it gives Google an easy way to offer new software such as Star Office. Forrest analyst Charlene Li has a good stratetgic overview of Google Pack, while A Consuming Experience offers a comprehensive view on what Google Pack's about and how to use it.
Finally, I've been meaning to highlight what I consider to be the most valuable "Web 2.0" software out there: Roboform. Given the proliferation of new services/applications, it's an impossible task to remember all the usernames and passwords required. Fortunately, Roboform does a great job of handling this chore for you. It's well worth the $29.95 price.