Windsor Circle, a fledgling Durham company that raised $350,000 in seed funding earlier this month, today announced the release of its first product for online retailers.

The six-month-old company has launched what it is calling the "Early Access" version of its eCommerce Intelligence Software, which is designed to help online retailers boost revenue from email marketing campaigns.

Unlike a beta version that may not be fully functional, Windsor's "Early Access" version is a finished product but availability is limited to ensure that the start-up can provide sufficient customer support, said Brad McGinity, vice president of sales and marketing. The company's plan is to limit access until Aug. 31.

Windsor Circle's eCommerce product enables online retailers to integrate customer purchase data with their e-mail marketing efforts, so that they can send out e-mails that match customers' interests. The eCommerce software also creates various customer segments, such as recent buyers, big spenders and wealthy customers.

Bob Young is a big John Grisham fan.

Young, the CEO of Lulu.com, notes on his blog that sales for the Raleigh company's self-published authors are up since it added more than 700,000 traditionally published books to its site in April. That includes books by Grisham, left, the wildly popular author of "The Firm" and other legal thrillers.

Young thanks Grisham on his blog, pointing out that new visitors seeking to buy books by mainstream authors also are discovering less-known writers and titles. Since adding the traditional titles, sales by Lulu authors are up 15 percent, and page views are up 25 percent, Young writes.

About half the people buying traditional books are new to Lulu, and 60 percent of those customers also bought a book by a Lulu author, Young writes.

An online vitamin retailer plans to add 228 jobs at its manufacturing and distribution facility in Lexington to handle increasing demand for its products.

Vitacost.com will receive a state grant worth up to $450,000, plus additional local incentives, if it meets hiring goals over the next three years, Gov. Bev Perdue's office announced today.

The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company also must retain the 168 people it already employs at its facility in Davidson County, about 100 miles west of Raleigh. The operations, which opened in 2008, also include a call center.

The new jobs will pay an average of more than $30,000 a year, just above the Davidson County average of $29,640.

Canvas on Demand is showing more love to military Moms.

Since 2006, the Raleigh-based company has allowed deployed soldiers to send their mothers free canvas prints of personal photos for Mother's Day. This year was the busiest yet, with Canvas on Demand giving away about 1,600 canvases, said co-founder and president Joe Schmidt.

This year, FedEx agreed to provide free shipping, but Canvas on Demand still ate most of the cost of the converted prints, with a retail value of about $160,000.

The main goal is to thank military members and their families back home for all their sacrifices, Schmidt said. But the donation also helps build awareness of the company's brand.

The increasing popularity of putting photos on large canvas prints also is increasing competition for companies in the business, including Raleigh-based Canvas on Demand, USA Today reports.

There are now dozens of options for customers who want to upload their images and have them reproduced onto stretched canvas.

The article in the nation's largest newspaper gives a plug to Canvas on Demand, calling it "one of the Web's most popular canvas retailers."

Despite the increased competition, co-founder Joe Schmidt said that his company expanded 20 percent in 2009 and has made more than 350,000 canvas prints to date. "We ship out thousands of day," he said.

Schmidt started in business seven years ago at a time when "There were just two of us out there, just us and a guy out of his garage. Those were good days."

Now other rivals continue to spring up, including Your Photo on Canvas, CanvasPop and more. The standard cost is about $90 for a 16-by-20 canvas.

Read the full USA Today story here.

Amazon.com is fighting an effort by North Carolina tax officials to collect customer data, including personal information and details on everything residents have purchased at the online retailer since 2003.

In a complaint filed Monday in federal court in Seattle, Amazon wrote that the request from the N.C. Department of Revenue would violate the First Amendment rights of its customers. State officials are seeking the additional information as part of an audit of Amazon's compliance with state sales and use tax.

The spat comes as North Carolina is trying to increase tax revenue and bolster its ailing budget. North Carolina has threatened contempt proceedings if Amazon doesn’t turn over the names and addresses of each customer in the state who bought more than 50 million products from Amazon during the past seven years, according to the complaint.