Back To School Shopping

Back-to-school shopping is a great opportunity for parents to teach their children about responsible shopping habits. Here are some tips to help keep shopping stress-free:

• Before hitting the mall, help your child go through all the clothing currently in his or her wardrobe, and clean out the outgrown and seldom-worn clothes. Either put clothing away for a younger brother or sister or donate it to charity. Then discuss what is needed to pull the back-to-school wardrobe together.
• Once you've seen what's left, ask your child identify his favorite items. "If they do wear something a lot, find out why," says Andre. "And if they didn't wear something, find out why" so that you don't make the same mistake again.

• Talk about the styles the kids will be wearing this fall. Discuss the difference between fads, classics and trends. "It's important to recognize that clothing is an expression of their youth and peer group," says Andre, but it's also important to make appropriate choices. "Kids rely on parents to be parents, not friends. And you need to let them know that showing their belly button at school is not respectful."

• Browse through a few back-to-school catalogs with your child and talk to them about the issue of "what one wants" and "what one can afford." A calm financial conversation at home is one way to avoid an emotional blow-out at the store.

• Wear comfortable walking shoes and clothes that are easy to take off and put on for fewer hassles in the dressing room.

• Take children shopping for a few hours, not the entire day. "What I've advised parents, especially those with young girls, is to let them go to the mall - then go back and help them with the purchasing," says Andre. "Let them do the window shopping, then limit the shopping time with parents to two hours." Long, shop- till-you-drop sprees usually lead to impulse buying, arguments and exhaustion.

• Avoid buying everything before school starts. Andre advises doing some shopping for the first couple of school months, when the weather is typically warmer, then shop for warmer winter clothing. Another reason to hold off on buying all at once is that once your children see what everyone else is wearing, they might have different ideas about what they like and dislike.

Order Movies On Your TIVO Through Amazon

Users of TiVo Inc.'s digital video recorders will be able to order movies from Amazon.com Inc. directly from their TVs starting Tuesday.

The two companies partnered in March to deliver Amazon's Unbox download service to TiVo machines, but the feature required customers to place their orders on a computer through Amazon's Web site.

Now, PC intervention won't be needed. The new "Buy on TV" feature allows TiVo users to search Amazon's video catalog and rent or purchase titles using their TiVo's remote control.

The feature works for owners of TiVo Series2 and Series3 broadband-connected DVRs. In conjunction with the new feature, TiVo developed a safeguard so users would have to punch in a five-digit password to complete the transaction, said Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing.

"We wanted to avoid the baby sitter scenario where you come home to find a bunch of movies on your TiVo that you didn't order," he said.

EBay Inc. has launched a free classified advertising site in the United States, an experiment the online auction company says could lead to new sources of revenue. Since February 2005, San Jose, Calif.-based eBay has been operating an international classified forum. The site allows users in more than two dozen countries to buy and sell goods and services that are difficult or impossible to ship or sell on eBay, such as baby-sitting services in Montreal or a leather recliner in Beijing.

EBay's U.S. classified site, which launched last Friday, covers 220 cities in 50 states. Topics include "apartments for rent," "lost and found," "pet adoption" and "garage sales." It also includes personals sites such as "missing you," "just friends" and "activity partners."

In the U.S., the free online classified market is dominated by San Francisco-based Craigslist.org, which lists ads in more than 450 cities worldwide and gets more than 7 billion page views per month.

Ebay's new site could present another threat to newspaper publishers, who are already worried about the rapid growth of Craigslist since it threatens their highly profitable classified advertising business.

In August 2004, eBay purchased a 25 percent stake in Craigslist so it could learn about the online classified business, which e-commerce rivals Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. have invested heavily.

EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said the company didn't launch the site with much fanfare and has no plans for mass marketing or advertising. Instead, eBay - one of the biggest online advertisers - will try to drive traffic to the site through keyword searches on Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other huge sites.