Retail sales will probably be flat this holiday season, but online sales are expected to reach $44.7 billion, an 8 percent jump over last year, according to the latest data from Forrester Research.

Among 4,000 online consumers surveyed, 94 percent have made a purchase online in the past three months and plan to do the same for the holidays. As for retailers, 72 percent of those questioned for the third-quarter Forrester report “The State of Retailing Online,” said they expect holiday sales to increase over last year.

But to cope with the down economy, online stores will try to weigh customer demand against the need to boost profits, says the Forrester report “US Online Holiday Retail Forecast, 2009,” released Monday.

“Despite the lingering effects of the recession, the online space remains the retail industry’s growth engine,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst, in a statement. “What’s different this holiday from past years is that online retailers will manage to the bottom line, which will change some of the tactics they have employed in the past.”

Retailers on the Web will offer sales and discounts as always, but of a more limited time and quantity. Automatic free shipping may be jettisoned in favor of free shipping only above certain price levels, says Forrester.

To drive business, online sellers may also take advantage of new trends. More detailed product information will be available, as will social networking tools that let customers share purchasing advice with friends and family.

“Tighter offline inventories may benefit the online channel as consumers go to the Web looking for products–and prices–they can’t find in stores this holiday,” said Mulpuru. “Online retailers will be ready for them with a special focus this year on engagement and service.”

The sector’s failure to capitalize on what, on paper at least, appears to be a perfect match for Internet start-ups hoping to exploit a vast international market with a single product, came under scrutiny this week at a major global Web conference in Paris.

In what is hoped to become a regular session at the annual LeWeb event, leading Internet entrepreneurs involved in the Arabic-speaking world shone new light on what is, outside of the region, a little understood, yet enormous slice of the World Wide Web.

The panel, including Rabea Ataya, of job site Bayt.com, Habib Haddad of Arabic search engine Yamli, and Joi Ito, Dubai-based CEO of copyright licence company Creative Commons, said ignorance and misconceptions appear to be holding back many would-be investors.

But, although they say the region represents a massively overlooked opportunity, even with Dubai reeling from debt crisis caused by recent overspending, they warned that failure to fully understand it at grassroots level could still leave companies out of pocket.

“It is a completely different universe,” admitted Japanese-born Ito, who confessed he was ill-prepared when making his first ventures into the region. “I realized it is not that easy, I couldn’t just email people and expect things to happen in the same way.”

“It was something I realized I would never understand unless I lived there. Having moved there I realized how interesting it is.”

Haddad, whose company created tools for writing Arabic on an English keyboard and for searching Arabic sites phonetically to bypass regional language variations, said his company was taken by surprise by the success of its products, until it realized the profile of its users.

have 400 million speakers and it’s the fifth largest spoken language out there, so its a huge market — all united by the Arab language,” he said, contrasting it with the language and culture-divided European market.

“It’s a huge opportunity. I think we’re at a tipping point, 60 million online users, 200 million mobile users — the numbers are amazing.”

Ataya added: “We have one of the fastest-growing youngest populations in the world — in addition to that we have the highest proportion of migrant labor in the world, and that exists in an area which has historically had limitations on movement of people.”

Although some international investors appear to be waking up to the opportunities — particularly following the wake-up call that was Yahoo’s acquisition of Arab portal Maktoob in August 2009 — the entrepreneurs pointed to almost comical misunderstandings that appear to holding some back.

“A strategic investor once visited us and we were talking about the United Arab Emirates,” said Ataya. “His perception of the U.A.E. was like the United States of America — he actually believed that the U.A.E stretched from Morocco to to Kuwait.”

here’s an interesting article looking at the use of kindles in schools from another perspective: how are blind children supposed to use it?it can read a book out loud,but you have to select that option from a fil, then menu. so blind children can’t use one by themselves. whats the braille equivalent of the kindle?

(CNN) — Debra Guenterberg doesn’t have to go to a horror movie to get spooked. She says she’s been living a nightmare for the past 13 years.

The Wisconsin woman says she’s been stalked by two phantoms. Two men stole her name and her husband’s Social Security number. They used the information to obtain credit cards, buy cars and three homes.

Like many horror movie villains, the bad guys keep coming back. Thirteen years after the men stole their names, the Guenterbergs are still being turned down for credit because of the damage done by the men, she says.

“It’s a nightmare,” Guenterberg says. “We both feel physically and mentally exhausted. We feel hopeless because we can’t fix this.”

Most people know about the financial hit identity theft victims take. But less attention is paid to the emotional costs they also pay. Victims often experience paranoia, depression, rage — some even endure family breakups, security experts say.

There are many ways someone’s identity can be stolen. Much of it now occurs online. A person’s identity can be stolen from a social media site, through online banking or after they have clicked on a deceptive e-mail.

But no matter how it happens, the victim is going to pay — financially and emotionally, cybersecurity officials say.

The Guenterbergs say they’ve battled the IRS, elected officials and local sheriffs to reclaim their name. They’ve also undergone counseling.

“We’re angry,” Debra Guenterberg says. “We can’t sleep at night. … We want to move on.”

The hidden toll of ID theft

Moving on, though, often requires justice. And that can be elusive for victims of identity theft, security experts say.

The identities of an estimated 9.1 million Americans have been stolen by thieves lifting personal information off the Internet or through other means, according to a 2008 survey conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research, a financial services research firm.

But it often takes the average identity theft victim months, if not years, to resolve their case, security experts say. Some say that no matter what they do, they still encounter problems getting credit.

Robert Guenterberg tried to open a checking account earlier this year, but says the bank turned him down because it confused him with the men who had stolen his Social Security number.

“It never ends,” Robert Guenterberg says.

The Guenterbergs say their ordeal began 13 years ago when Robert Guenterberg tried to buy a Ford truck but was rejected because of poor credit. He got the same answer when he tried to get a home loan and a credit card.

When the collection agencies started calling, the Guenterbergs say they finally discovered the source of their problem. They say two men had stolen the couple’s name and Robert’ Guenterberg’s Social Security number.

The Guenterberg’s situation was especially thorny because it involved the loss of his Social Security number.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit group that educates consumers about privacy protection, tells people that even if an imposter is using their Social Security number, the Social Security Administration will only issue a new number in extreme cases.

Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, says getting a new Social Security number is tough and can complicate an identity theft victim’s life even more.

“They can [get a new Social Security number] but the hassle may not be worth it,” Kaiser says.

What the scammers say after they’ve been caught

Even if victims of identity theft are able to clean up their financial records, some must learn how to overcome their bitterness. Linda Foley had to learn that lesson.

Foley had just started working as a restaurant reviewer for a San Diego magazine when her employer asked her to fill out tax forms to get paid.

Foley says her employer then used her Social Security number to obtain three credit cards and a cell phone. She says she uncovered the deception when one of her credit card companies called during a routine credit check to verify her change of address.

That’s when Foley learned that her boss was living it up on credit cards with her name.

“She was getting gourmet meals home delivered,” Foley says. “She was getting vitamins; she was going on shopping sprees at department stores.”

Foley says she’s not the same person she was before her identity was stolen.

“It changes your life,” she says. “I don’t trust the way I used to. I don’t share things with people as much as I used to.”

Foley says she never talked to the woman who stole her identity, but she always wanted to.

The woman was eventually caught and apologized to a judge in court for stealing Foley’s identity. Foley was so angry that she wanted to personally confront the woman. But Foley says her lawyer restrained her.

“I came to understand that what she did was because of what she is,” Foley says. “How could she explain that to anybody? They [scammers] live a different life; they live in a different world.”

Foley says she and her husband, Jay, formed Identity Theft Resource Center, which educates individuals and businesses about identity theft. In her new role, Foley says she talked to identity theft scammers.

None of them saw themselves as criminals, she says.

“The reason they gave is, ‘No one is going to get hurt,’ ” Foley says. “They don’t see this as a crime of victimization.”

Some identity thieves are so cold-blooded that they even prey on their closest relatives, Foley says.

“I’ve worked with people whose parents have stolen their information for 25 years,” Foley says. “They’ve had their parents jailed.”

Tips for preventing identity theft are now well known. Only give out a Social Security number if you must; install a firewall on your home computer; don’t use biographical information in your passwords.

Linda Foley’s husband, Jay, co-founder of Identity Theft Resource Center, says one of the best precautions a person can take is something simple: Pay attention to what they click on the Internet.

“You get yourself into a big rush and something pops up in front of you, you deal with it and move and then you say, ‘What did I just do?’ ” says Jay Foley.

Perhaps one of the best precautions is to remember the struggles of people like the Guenterbergs.

Losing money to a thief is not the same as losing one’s identity, Debra Guenterberg says.

“If somebody steals your wallet and you notice what they’ve done on your credit report, you still have protection from that, though it’s still a nightmare, ” Debra Guenterberg says.

“But when someone overtakes your life and becomes you — that’s insane.”

On Monday, Google announced the ability to perform an Internet search by submitting a photograph.

The experimental search-by-sight feature, called Google Goggles, has a database of billions of images that informs its analysis of what’s been uploaded, said Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering. It can recognize books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, places, logos, and more.

“It is our goal to be able to identify any image,” he said. “It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the query.”

However, the feature is still in Google Labs to deal with the “nascent nature of computer vision” and with the service’s present shortcomings. “Google Goggles works well on certain types of objects in certain categories,” he said.

Google Goggles was one of the big announcements at an event at the Computer History Museum here to tout the future of Google search. The company also showed off real-time search results and translation of a spoken phrase from English to Spanish using a mobile phone.

“It could be we are really at the cusp of an entirely new computing era,” Gundotra said, with “devices that can understand our own speech, help us understand others, and augment our own sight by helping us see further.”

Offering one real-world example of the service in action, Gundotra said that when a guest came by for dinner, he snapped a photo of a wine bottle she gave him to assess its merits. The result–”hints of apricot and hibiscus blossom”–went far beyond his expertise, but that didn’t stop him from sharing the opinion over dinner.

He also demonstrated Google Goggles to take a photo of the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan, a landmark tourists may recognize even if they can’t read Japanese. The uploaded photo returned a description of the shrine on his mobile phone.

Although the service can recognize faces, since faces are among the billions of images in the database, it doesn’t right now, Gundotra said.

“For this product, we made the decision not to do facial recognition,” Gundotra said.

“We still want to work on the issues of user opt-in and control. We have the technology to do the underlying face recognition, but we decided to delay that until safeguards are in place.”

Details of “Square” — a card reader which plugs into the headphone socket of most mobile devices — have been circulating on the Internet since it was announced earlier this month, but little has been known about how it works or who it was aimed at.

However, Dorsey — whose microblogging Web site has proved hugely popular but not hugely profitable since launching in March 2006 — gave no explanation on how he would make money from his new creation, beyond revealing there would be a per-transaction charity donation.

Square, a tiny cube about an inch in length, contains a magnetic strip reader that allows users to swipe and read credit cards, then deduct payment on or offline through a downloaded application that communicates with card issuers in the same way as retailer devices.

Customers then use their finger on the phone’s touch-recognition screen to sign their name to the transaction.

Dorsey, Twitter‘s co-founder and chairman, says the device, scheduled for launch on iPhones and iPods in March 2010, was inspired partly by the “immediacy, approachability and transparency” of Twitter and by the global economic crisis which has exposed a need for a radical rethink of the financial sector.

“The financial world is amazing right now because there’s a clean slate. A lot of these industries are looking for something very small and innovative,” he said during the gremlin-hit demonstration of his device at LeWeb, a major Internet forum in Paris.

“My co-founder is a glass artist. He sells things that people don’t need — $2,000 glass faucets. They’re beautiful. If he could not take credit cards, he wouldn’t make the sale because no one carries around $2,000 in the cash.

“So we looked at it. Ninety percent of the U.S. has moved to credit cards, but it’s still very difficult to accept them.”

Dorsey said he considered a number of options in developing Square, including using cell phone cameras and character recognition software to read images of the credit card.

“The other thing we looked at is the audio jack — and it’s on Macbooks, desktop PCs, BlackBerries and Androids. We built this hardware. It’s a self-powered swiper. Powered by the magnetic power of the swipe itself, converts it to an audio signal, which the software interprets.”

Dorsey, who joked he had pocketed $650 by allowing potential business partners to road test the device with their own credit cards, said Square was currently being beta tested in a handful of major U.S. cities by a cross-section of small business users.

“We’re trying with a bunch of different profiles of folks in New York, San Francisco, LA and St. Louis, Missouri. There are piano teachers, flight instructors, and coffee shops. It can be used in a retail store like Apple, all the way down to Craigslist or paying me back for that dinner you owe me.”

Dorsey said his developers were still working to ensure the device was fraud proof.

Amit Singhal, Google fellow, introduced the real-time section during an event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. “We are here today to announce Google real-time search,” Singhal said, calling it “Google relevance technology meets the real-time Web.”

Twitter search will show the latest matches for a particular search term, but Google wants to do more than sort results by time.

“Relevance is the foundation of this product,” Singhal said. “It’s relevance, relevance, relevance.”

Google will build a section called “latest results” into the regular Google search results page that automatically refreshes Internet content from sources like Twitter.

Singhal showed off how a search for “Obama” would bring up tweets, Web pages, and other Internet content related to the president as it was generated. At the Web 2.0 conference in October, Google struck a deal with Twitter to get access to the service’s “firehose” of tweets.

Google plans to roll this out over the next several days, and not all users may see the new section immediately, Singhal said. The company also announced partnerships with social-networking companies Facebook and MySpace to display updates from those services.

Real-time search at Google involves more than just social-networking and microblogging services. While Google will get information pushed to it through deals with those companies, it also has improved its crawlers as to index and display virtually any Web page as it is generated.

Facebook updates posted to public Facebook Pages will be indexed, while any Myspace update designated as public will appear in search results.

Google also demonstrated a Google Labs project called “Google Goggles,” which allows a smartphone user to take a picture of a given object and send it to Google in hopes of finding out more information that object.

Up until the real-time announcement, mobile search was ruling the day, as Google’s Vic Gundotra demonstrated Google Goggles, a new Android application that can show locations of interest surrounding a GPS position, and the ability for Japanese speakers to now use Google’s voice search features.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (CNN) — Cement-block walls are being built around the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro. Authorities say it’s to save rainforests. The city’s poorest residents say it’s an attempt to shut them out.

When Francisco de Moraes looks at the wall, it angers him. He has one of the best views of Rio, overlooking the city, its shimmering beaches and Sugarloaf Mountain jutting from the sea.

“We don’t have the right to have our opinion heard,” he said.

He speaks during a break from a soccer game on a makeshift cement field that’s wedged in by the wall. The “eco-wall,” as officials call it, runs up next to his house and around most of the Santa Marta shantytown where he and about 7,000 others live.

“The state government walled us in, so more houses wouldn’t be built in the forest,” de Moraes said. “But people felt imprisoned, like they were setting borders and limiting when we could come and go.”

The state of Rio de Janeiro began building the wall around Santa Marta in March, and it plans to spend $17 million on similar walls around the shantytowns.

There are nearly 1,000 such favelas — cramped poor communities built around the city. The squalid homes tilt from their shaky foundations, some built on top of others. Many are carved into the humid rainforest that cling to the hillsides.

It’s estimated about 20 percent of Rio’s 6 million people live in the shantytowns.

Icaro Moreno, director of Rio state’s public works, says the walls are necessary because the favelas have continued to expand by 7 percent over the last decade, making them one of the biggest causes of deforestation in the state.

“The limits used to be virtual and now they’re physical,” he told reporters at a news conference. “The government is saying, ‘If you cross them or break them, you will be violating public property.’ “

Some residents feel officials are keen to rein in the expansion of Rio’s chaotic slums ahead of the 2016 Olympics. The naked cement and brick homes of the shantytowns can be spotted from beaches. Locals feel the city’s elite are trying to wall off an eyesore.

Blog: Postcard from Rio’s ‘pacified’ slum

“They treat the people here like children who need to be corralled in,” said Eliane Lopes, who runs her own party-organizing business in Santa Marta. “We can respect limits as well as the rich people. We don’t need a wall.”

Founded by squatters looking for work in the big city, shantytowns like Santa Marta are not even on most maps. Critics see the wall as a barrier between crime-ridden slums and beachside condos rather than an effort to protect the forest.

But not everyone in Santa Marta opposes the wall. Jiuzel has lived here for 34 years and he’s seen the population explode in size, more than double what it was in the 1970s.

He says an increased police presence and investments in projects like the wall and a funicular (cable car on rails) linking the steep slum to the rest of the city shows that officials are trying to improve their standard of living.

“People are pleased because it’s going to protect the Atlantic Forest. Protecting the environment is important,” he said from his balcony overlooking the forest.

The Atlantic Forest blanketed much of Brazil’s coast when Portuguese adventurers landed here 500 years ago. According to experts, the humid rainforest was home to more plant and animal species than the Amazon. Only 7 percent of the original forest is left.

In Rio, the plan is to build about 9 miles (14 km) of walls around 13 favelas in danger of eroding the jungle further.

Critics have drawn parallels to the Berlin Wall or the barriers that separate Israel from Palestinian territory.

Fernando Gabeira, a senator from Brazil’s Green Party, disagrees.

“This wall is not a wall like the Berlin wall,” he says. “Everyone may pass. There is no control trying to avoid people visiting the community or leaving the community.”

But, he says, he recommended introducing a satellite tracking system to prevent the expansion of favelas, instead of building a physical barrier.

“It’s the difference between soft power and hard power.”

Washington (CNN) — The White House on Wednesday praised a deal reached by liberal and moderate Democrats on the public option portion of the Senate health care bill.

“Senators are making great progress and we’re pleased that they’re working together to find common ground toward options that increase choice and competition,” said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that the Democrats had reached a “broad agreement” on the public option portion of the bill, but at least one liberal senator who took part in the negotiations wasn’t so sure.

“It goes without saying it’s been kind of a long journey,” Reid said. “Tonight we’ve overcome a real problem that we had. I think it’s fair to say the debate at this stage has been portrayed as a very divisive one.”

Without revealing any details, Reid said the negotiating senators had reached “a broad agreement” that “moves this bill way down the road.”

Two Democratic sources said the deal includes a proposal to replace the public option by creating a not-for-profit private insurance option overseen by the federal Office of Personnel Management, much like the current health plan for federal workers, and another allowing people 55 or older to buy into Medicare coverage that currently is available to those 65 or older.

But liberal Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, one of 10 Democratic senators working on the deal, said in a statement released after Reid’s announcement that he would not “support proposals that would replace the public option in the bill with a purely private approach.”

“We need to have some competition for the insurance industry to keep rates down and save taxpayer dollars,” Feingold said. “I will base my vote on the bill on the entirety of what is in the bill, and whether I think the bill is good for Wisconsin.”

Two senators who oppose a public option, moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, said they were open to the non-profit private alternative to a public option.

“It can be an innovative approach,” said Snowe, considered perhaps the lone GOP senator who might support the health care bill. “I just would need to understand more about how it would work.”

Lieberman, a member of the Democratic caucus who said he would join a Republican filibuster if the health care bill contained a public option, called the alternative “an idea worth considering, so long as it remains private insurance companies that would be essentially regulated by OPM.”

However, Lieberman and Snowe expressed concern over the idea of allowing Americans 55 or older to buy into Medicare.

“I want to make sure we’re not adding a big additional burden to the Medicare program, which we need to figure out how to save, because it’s going bankrupt,” Lieberman said.

//

The idea appeals to liberal Democrats seeking to expand health coverage to more Americans and could offset their opposition to a bill that lacks a full public option as originally proposed.

Also Tuesday, the Senate rejected an amendment to tighten restrictions on federal funding for abortion now in the sweeping health care bill.

On a 54-45 vote, the chamber agreed to table the amendment, which effectively killed it from further consideration. Rejection of the amendment means the Senate health bill, if approved with the current abortion language, would differ from more restrictive language in the House version of the bill passed last month.

The amendment filed Monday by moderate Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah mirrored language in the House bill that prevents any health plan receiving federal subsidies from offering coverage for abortion.

Nelson has said he won’t support a final bill without the tougher language in his amendment, but he also has signaled his stance could change.

Other ideas in the health care reform package under discussion include expanding the Medicaid program more than currently called for in the bill and expanding a proposal in the bill that would give states money to cover low-income people through existing programs instead of Medicaid.

Snowe flatly rejected a possible expansion of Medicaid.

“It’s a huge burden on the states,” Snowe said. “It is without question and without a doubt a very expensive proposition.”

Senators taking part in the talks include Charles Schumer of New York and liberals Feingold, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Sherrod Brown of Ohio; along with moderates Thomas Carper of Delaware, Nelson, Pryor, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

CNN’s Dana Bash, Ted Barrett and Ed Henry contributed to this report.

(Credit: Barnes & Noble)

While information on Barnes & Noble’s new e-book reader, the Nook, has been trickling out for several days, the company unveiled the new $259 device on its Web site Tuesday a few hours before the official launch event in New York.

As previously reported, the Nook, billed as the first Android-powered e-book reader, features not only a 6-inch E-ink screen but a color touch screen that allows you to navigate content and also can turn into a virtual keyboard for searches. At launch, no separate Android apps will run on the device, but Barnes & Noble says that one of the reasons it chose Android to power the Nook is because it’s an open platform with a large developer community and that future apps are a possibility.

Like the Kindle, the Nook has a built-in 3G wireless connection (AT&T is the carrier) and a dictionary. However, the Nook also packs in Wi-Fi connectivity and a memory expansion slot–you get 2GB of internal memory, but can add up to a 16GB micro SD card.

It’s worth noting that initially Barnes & Noble said the WiFi connection would only work in its stores, where Nook owners would have have access to exclusive offers and free browsing of complete e-books. But later a PR person emailed us to say that, “The Wi-Fi connectivity will also work on other Wi-Fi networks to give you access to browse and download from the company’s digital store at fast broadband speeds.”

he Nook does weigh an ounce more than the Kindle (11.2 ounces vs. 10.2 ounces) and can’t match the Kindle’s battery life (10 days vs. 14 days). And while it does play back MP3 audio and has a built-in speaker, it doesn’t have the Kindle’s text-to-speech feature or a Web browser.

That said, Barnes & Noble is touting one very important new feature: the ability to lend out e-books you’ve purchased to friends for free for 14 days. The company says that you’ll be able to send e-books to a friend’s Nook, iPhone, or iPod Touch, select BlackBerry and Motorola smartphones, as well as Windows or Mac PCs that have the Barnes & Noble eReader software installed on them. However, not all e-books will be available for lending.

At the launch event, Barnes & Noble reps weren’t letting anybody touch the small number of working prototypes they had on hand, so we didn’t get a chance to actually play around with one ourselves, though we did see demos of various aspects of the device. The color touch screen uses capacitive technology and seemed quite responsive (as for it being as responsive as the iPhone’s screen, that was hard to tell). All in all, the device measured up quite well against the Kindle from a design standpoint, but what really sets the Nook apart is that color touch screen–it immediately catches your eye and represents a clear competitive advantage.

The Nook is due out toward the end of November, with Barnes & Noble prominently featuring the device and its accessories (mostly protective covers) in its brick-and-mortar stores. The company is also taking pre-orders on its website and the first 10,000 buyers will receive a free e-book copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point(Gladwell made a brief appearance at the launch event).

We don’t expect a review sample to materialize until shortly before the unit ships to the public, but as soon as we get our hands on one we’ll give you the full rundown.