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Talk of the day

By TIMES WIRES
Published March 13, 2007

Amazon spins classical music into own site

Amazon.com Inc., the world's biggest online retailer, will start a separate Web site dedicated to classical music to boost sales from novice fans and capitalize on closures of traditional record stores. Amazon's Classical Music Blowout Store will have more than 2,000 titles, largely consisting of popular composers such as Mozart, above, and Beethoven, said Sean Sundwall, a spokesman for Seattle-based Amazon. The company will sell discs for as low as $2.98, he said. "Retailers are cutting back on their selection of classical music," Sundwall said. The new Web site is "a place for the most recognizable titles at super-deep discounts." Classical music was the second-fastest-growing music category at Amazon.com in 2006, the company said.

Kmart: No bubbles in new drinks

Kmart will roll out 32 new products in a line of private-label beverages, the discount retailer said, but it's giving carbonated soft drinks a pass. The additions to the American Fare line include green iced tea, vitamin water, energy drinks, fruit-flavored water and Vitamin C-laden juice pouches. Already under the American Fare beverage line are a number of flavored sparkling waters, along with spring waters. The drinks are expected to be available at all Kmart stores in April.

Time-change fixes go like clockwork

The weekend's early switch to daylight saving time was billed as a little re-enactment of the Y2K computer bug feared at the turn of the millennium. And as it happened, the daylight bug appeared to have equally minor results. Among the problems reported: Some customer-service call centers struggled to open on time. Calendar software inconsistently displayed meeting times. But for the most part, the software patches and tweaks applied by technology administrators worked as planned. "It was not very serious, but a lot of work had been happening in the last weeks or two months to prepare for all this," said Julien Courbe, managing director of the financial services practice at technology consultant BearingPoint Inc. Like humans, computers had to adapt to being told that daylight-saving time no longer begins the first weekend in April. The switch (along with a one-week extension of daylight time this fall) stemmed from a 2005 federal law that sought to save energy by shifting more natural light to the evening hours.

[Last modified March 13, 2007, 02:06:02]