Electronic Commerce

Looking for some hot goods? PropertyRoom.com, a Web site launched this week in San Clemente, auctions goods that were seized or recovered by law enforcement agencies in Southern California. The parent company, Property Bureau, has agreements with a dozen Southern California police departments, including Fullerton and Garden Grove. By law, departments are required to sell the goods that accumulate in their warehouses. The money usually goes to the city or county. Enter Property Bureau.

State lawmakers hunting for revenue are eyeing one source that could prove costly to millions of California consumers: Amazon .com. The online retail giant has enjoyed an edge over many competitors in the state because it is not required to collect sales tax from residents who buy books, top-of-the-line plasma televisions, cases of diapers and thousands of other products from its website. The Seattle corporation has no store, warehouse, office building or other physical presence in California, and the state cannot tax such businesses under a 1992 Supreme Court decision.

Real estate website Zillow.com became an instant hit by telling homeowners -- and their nosy neighbors -- how much their houses might be worth. Now, the Seattle-based company will help owners get the word out about how much they want in a sale. Starting today, Zillow Inc. joins a growing list of websites that allows homeowners and real estate agents to post virtual "For Sale" signs for free. The feature also plugs a hole on the site, which touts a database of more than 60 million U.S.

On this glorious day before Christmas, I have a message for all you sales tax scofflaws out there: Pay up. This means you. You, who bought your big-screen TV online from Amazon.com instead of at Best Buy and your fleece-lined parka from L.L. Bean instead of Eddie Bauer because Amazon and Bean don't charge you sales tax and the others do. Guess what. You owe it anyway. Skipping out on the sales tax due on online purchases is the single biggest category of "noncompliance" with California sales tax law, according to the state Board of Equalization, accounting for nearly 30% of all unpaid tax. The board estimated lost revenue at $1.1 billion annually.

State lawmakers hunting for revenue are eyeing one source that could prove costly to millions of California consumers: Amazon .com. The online retail giant has enjoyed an edge over many competitors in the state because it is not required to collect sales tax from residents who buy books, top-of-the-line plasma televisions, cases of diapers and thousands of other products from its website. The Seattle corporation has no store, warehouse, office building or other physical presence in California, and the state cannot tax such businesses under a 1992 Supreme Court decision.

Even as online grocer Webvan Group Inc. plans to invade the Southland with its purchase of HomeGrocer.com Inc., Orange County's own home-grown delivery service, WhyRunOut.com, is plotting its own expansion, tied to a partnership with Stater Bros. Markets. WhyRunOut.com said Wednesday it will extend its service to parts of northern San Diego County early next month, shuttling groceries from Stater Bros. stores in Encinitas and Poway to residents in the surrounding communities.

Nibbling tentatively at the online grocery business, Stater Bros. Markets announced a partnership with a home-delivery service that will allow residents in south Orange County to order items from its supermarkets over the Internet. Colton-based Stater Bros. plans to begin the service next month with partner Whyrunout.com, an Aliso Viejo company that also delivers dry-cleaning, processed film and other goods. Stater Bros. will pay Whyrunout.com an undisclosed fee to make the deliveries.

If your business spends $20 a month or more on stamps, you may be a candidate for electronic postage. Two companies, Stamps.com and E-Stamp, let you purchase postage via the Internet and print it directly on envelopes or labels from any laser or ink-jet printer. Both services are surprisingly easy to use. Neither is currently available for Mac users, however. You can get started at no cost with a Stamps.com promotion for $20 worth of free postage.

Yahoo Inc., whose popular Web site helps computer users navigate the sprawling Internet, announced a global electronic commerce alliance with the Visa International credit card organization. In a related move, Santa Clara-based Yahoo restated its second-quarter earnings to reflect a $21.2-million one-time charge stemming from the deal, which included the issuing of more than 466,000 shares in Yahoo to Visa International.

IBM and consumer-credit agency Equifax Inc., pledging to make the Internet a trustworthy place to do business, will announce today a plan to ensure that online customers are who they claim to be, executives said. The executives said Equifax will act as an independent verifier of computer users' identities for companies using IBM's Internet commerce system.

Twitter was just the beginning. After dreaming up the innovative social-networking medium, Jack Dorsey is looking to revolutionize another core aspect of society: money. Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, has announced that his new start-up, Square, has developed a way for anyone with a cellphone or iPod to become a merchant and accept credit card payments. Square is a small plastic device that plugs into a gadget's headphone jack. Buyers swipe their credit cards through the device, which then transmits the payment data to an application running on a connected iPhone or iPod Touch.

Monday brought a bit of early holiday cheer for online retailers as shoppers spent less time but more money with Web merchants than last year. Total online sales were up 13.7% on so-called Cyber Monday from the same day last year, with clothing and jewelry retailers leading the way, according to Coremetrics, which tracks sales for 500 member retailers. The average shopper spent $180.03 this year, up 38% from $130.04 a year earlier, said the San Mateo, Calif., online research firm.

As long as there has been online shopping, there has been Cyber Monday. But is that now more virtual than real? Online retailers for the last decade have counted on the Monday after Thanksgiving to deliver for them what Black Friday does for bricks-and-mortar stores: a turbo boost into the holiday shopping season. Online sales surged on that Monday as many people hopped on to their employers' fast Internet connections to do some holiday shopping when they returned to work after Thanksgiving.

Google Inc. started out 13 years ago as a simple search engine, but it has grown into a behemoth that has shaken up dozens of industries, including computers and cellphones. On Wednesday, it jumped into the music industry. The Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant unveiled a music search feature that lets users play millions of songs for free with an option to buy or rent them from several online music stores. Although not a direct threat to Apple Inc.'s hugely popular iTunes store, the new feature is expected to bolster the music services that compete with iTunes.

Do you miss the monkey? Once the Internet vines were full of monkeys in banner ads that, if you "punched" them with your cursor, would bring you a free Xbox or iPod or maybe $25,000 in cash -- which would be excellent simian-pummeling wages, to be sure. But the monkey -- indeed, a whole class of flashy, shaky, maddening advertising collectively known as "punch the monkey" ads -- is going away, or at least slinking off to some forgotten cavern of the Internet where few will ever see it. Like MySpace.

Chas Rampenthal expects to get more business in the wake of Michael Jackson's death, but he doesn't peddle CDs, posters or celebrity memorabilia. Rampenthal sells online wills. And as general counsel of LegalZoom.com, he noticed a sharp uptick in demand when model Anna Nicole Smith died in 2007, triggering a messy battle over her estate. "All that publicity reminded people they should have an up-to-date will," he said. The same could happen as Jackson's estate gets sorted out.

Today Cutting Edge introduces a biweekly column, Investor's Edge, by Times staff writer Edward Silver. It will spotlight trends and strategies in the technology stock market. * Investors who aren't eager to chase the high-priced, high-profile electronic-commerce stocks don't have to give up on this promising new industry. They can just take their cue from the bargain hunters who rummage the real-world malls and shop around. Yes, there is an e-commerce business beyond Amazon.

Congress will vote this year on repealing the 102-year-old telephone tax, extending a moratorium on new Internet taxes beyond 2001 and permanently banning taxes on charges for Internet access, House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert says. In a draft speech to be delivered Monday in Chicago, the Illinois Republican said the votes will underscore Republicans as prime supporters of tax relief and electronic commerce. House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.

More times than he can count, Gregory Day has been asked where guests of Shutters on the Beach can buy the rolling shutter doors that inspire his Santa Monica hotel's name. "I must get 10 requests a week for all kinds of things," says Day, general manager of the $500-a-night hotel. "They want to know where they can get our light fixtures, the hotel's rental bicycles, the uniforms the staff wears."

Two snapshots of the music business were on display on the U.S. pop chart, with Prince's distribution strategy proving to be a bigger winner this week than the one used by rapper Flo Rida. While Prince landed at No. 2, selling 168,000 copies of his three-disc "LotusFlow3r," released exclusively through Target, Flo Rida struggled to turn success selling digital tracks into album sales. Flo Rida is a king of digital downloads.