Customers can now test-drive and purchase eReaders as well as choose from more than 1.5 million titles from the Borders eBook store within the company's newly unveiled Area-e digital shops.

ENGADGET: New Kobo eReader gets wireless connection, faster processor, pretty colors

The tough policy means that online shops and e-commerce websites will be shut down if the visitors they get have arrived because of a junk mail message.

BBC: NEWS | Technology | Net firms set sights on spammers

In addition to making payments at shops that have e-money terminals installed or using your phone as a train pass, you can buy tickets online and swipe your way through into concerts and cinemas, check in for international flights, and so forth.

ENGADGET: DoCoMo launches mobile wallet cellphones

Brokers like Schwab, E-Trade and TD Waterhouse, and the large fund shops like Fidelity, Vanguard and T.

FORBES: Supermarket Sweepstakes

Hunting for an e-bike, I ended up at a string of shops near the Tsinghua campus, where each storefront offered a competing range of prices and styles to a clientele dominated by students and young families.

NEWYORKER: Green Giant

Now the New York City-based company is aiming to turn those clicks into cash with the introduction of R29 Shops, a content-and-image rich e-commerce platform.

FORBES: Inside Refinery29's Effort to Turn Content Into E-Commerce

His phone outlets, called Hit Shops, give away satellite receivers, WebTV boxes, and mobile e-mail routing services to get the revenue stream.

FORBES: The Web Phone Evangelist

Online sales account for only 1% of retailing, and the chains and specialty shops that dominate commerce in the real world are quick to use their leverage to control e-tailing, too.

FORBES: Not.coms

All shops have to do is log deliveries and pick-ups through a website that automatically sends e-mail and text-message alerts to addressees.

ECONOMIST: Package pick-up services are set to prosper