Online retailers have been working overtime to improve their Web sites in time for the holiday shopping season. While most of the upgrades should make shopping go more smoothly, some could encourage overspending, overly hasty purchases or simply overlooking things that should be red flags.

As the ongoing writers’ strike starts sending many television shows into repeats, entertainment-starved people should walk over to their computers and take a look at BitTorrent. Yes, the name sounds technical. Frankly, BitTorrent was pretty technical when it debuted a few years back. However, BitTorrent enthusiasts have since created a very simple system for file-sharing.

You may never hear a word from a conversation analyst, but there’s a very good chance one is paying close attention to what you’re saying on blogs, in Web forums or in product reviews on sites that sell books or blenders. Somewhere, someone is reading and analyzing your words. “I pay attention to what people say online,” said Leah Jones, one of these so-called conversation analysts.

Given a backdrop of rising inflation and a slowing economy, what are e-commerce experts expecting from this holiday season? The outlook seems to be fair — even better than you might expect, particularly when it comes to online sales of high-end consumer electronics.

The price tag on the largest database breach on record moved higher Friday with TJX agreeing to pay nearly $41 million to settle with credit card companies and banks that were forced to issue new cards to customers of the retailer to prevent or recover fraudulent charges.

A New Zealand cybercrime police force nabbed an 18-year-old this week who goes by the cyber ID “AKILL,” officials said. While the New Zealand officials haven’t arrested the man, he is being interviewed in conjunction with a wider botnet crackdown involving the FBI and Dutch authorities. The FBI said AKILL is believed to be the ringleader of an elite international botnet coding group.

Sprint Nextel’s board reportedly turned down a proposal that would have installed former chairman Tim Donahue as chief executive and brought $5 billion from a South Korean telecom company. Donahue, who retired at the end of 2006, made the offer as part of a consortium that included SK Telecom and Providence Equity Partners, according to reports on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site late Thursday.

Wall Street gave Dell the smackdown early Friday, a day after the company issued a third-quarter report that showed solid revenue and earnings but acknowledged clouds on the horizon. The company’s shares took a nosedive largely because, despite reporting Q3 revenues that were up 9 percent year-over-year and operating income that was up 13 percent, Dell narrowly missed analysts’ earnings-per-share prediction.

Motorola CEO Ed Zander will step down from his post at the end of the year, a victim of a long and deep post-Razr market share slump at the top U.S.-based maker of mobile handsets. Zander would remain in his position of chairman of the board until next May, when the company’s shareholders are next scheduled to meet, the Schaumburg, Ill., company said.

Google is readying its application to participate in the Federal Communications Commission’s January auction of 700 MHz wireless spectrum, the company announced Friday, but it is acting alone, without any partners. The company will file its application on Monday, after which FCC rules prevent it from discussing the matter further until the auction ends, said Google’s Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives.