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"Mobile" is so early 2010. The end of the year has already brought two investments — and possibly a third — by major tech companies in the latest hot e-commerce topic: local shopping.

Website monitoring startup WatchMouse is now watching the top 100 retail websites for availability around the holiday shopping season. The startup tested retail sites including Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, Borders, Overstock, Wal-Mart and Zappos for availability and performance during the month leading up to and including Thanksgiving Day, November 25 and Black Friday, November 26.

ChannelAdvisor announced that its customers achieved record-breaking sales for Thanksgiving, Black Friday and throughout the holiday weekend, led by Amazon.

Price Check by Amazon lets users simply speak the name of any product when they are shopping to receive instant prices for that item on Amazon.com. Customers can also use the app to scan a barcode, snap a picture or type a product name to return product matches and pricing from Amazon.com and its other online merchants.

By number of shoppers and sales, packaged-goods e-commerce remains decidedly tiny. But Amazon's acquisition of Diapers.com, Soap.com and the newer BeautyBar.com for a reported $545 million in cash and debt has given the space some big-money validation.

Recent trends around social media as a platform for gift card sales suggest that Facebook will likely become a huge trafficker of gift cards in the coming years.

In a deal that underscores the growing competition to capture a consumer shift toward buying bulk items online, Amazon.com Inc. is poised to acquire Quidsi Inc., the parent company of Diapers.com and Soap.com, according to a person familiar with the matter. The parties could announce the deal as early as Monday.

We're excited to offer you Retail Online Integration's 50 best tips of 2010. Our editorial staff reviewed every word published in our print publication, e-newsletter (The ROI Report) and website over the past year. From there, we've extracted the best money-making and cost-saving pointers. Enjoy.

The year’s most popular discount shopping event, referring to the Friday after Thanksgiving, is arriving ahead of Halloween this year, with some promotions beginning this week and others throughout November.