e-commerce giant

In a move to compete with brick-and-mortar retailers this holiday shopping season, Amazon.com on Thursday announced new shipping options that aim to get goods to consumers much faster with local express delivery in seven major cities. The new option gives customers what many have clamored for since the early days of e-commerce: Same-day delivery.

Amazon will initially offer the service in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The company said it will extend the service to Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix in coming months.

The changing demographics of potential e-book buyers are reason enough for market leaders to begin rethinking their sales strategies, according to a new survey by Forrester Research.

Future sales prospects for e-book readers bear scant resemblance to the high-earning male tech optimists who own these devices today, said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. Instead, the next wave of buyers is likely to feature females who read a lot, but buy fewer books online than early adopters.

Amazon.com is setting the stage to take e-book readers to the next level. Lexcycle on Monday announced that it will be acquired by the e-commerce giant.

Lexcycle is a year-old company that makes the iPhone e-book application Stanza. It's a free application that works with the iPhone and the iPod touch and can be used to download a selection of more than 100,000 books and magazines. Lexcycle positions it as a wireless electronic library that stays open 24/7.

Electronic commerce giant eBay is stepping up overseas expansion efforts, making good on pledges that it would use a growing cash pile to fuel growth. San Jose-based eBay plans to acquire a minority stake in Asian e-commerce giant Gmarket, worth $404 million as of Aug. 12.

Up to now, the online tool for managing and tracking listings on eBay, called eBay Selling Manager, has only offered sellers direct access to applications that the e-commerce giant developed in-house. But that's about to change.

Project Echo, unveiled at this week's eBay Developers Conference in Chicago, takes the company's online platform to the next level by enabling outside developers to embed applications in the eBay site.