Archive

Since few people bother to read Privacy Policies, Terms of Service or Click Wrap Agreements, is it any wonder that social media sites, search engines, and providers of cell services ask for and receive carte blanche rights to our whereabouts, along with other personal information? We all know that i...

Consumer watchdog group Freepress is accusing Verizon of breaching the terms of its agreement to lease airwaves for its 4G LTE network. Freepress filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission Monday about this issue. The complaint alleges Verizon Wireless breached its lease terms by a...

Thousands of federal employees will be using cloud-based email systems as government agencies take their first steps in meeting a mandate to inaugurate cloud services within their information technology systems. The White House has directed 25 large agencies to launch at least one cloud-migration pr...

Once upon a time there was an online group called "The Point." It was a nebulous organization with the vague goal of using the power of social media to to do such things as crowdsource a design for the Chicago Stadium or launch a petition. One day, one of its members got the bright idea to use its n...

Pop star Lady Gaga is reportedly joining with Google's Eric Schmidt to produce a new social media site called "Backplane." Tony Carter, Gaga's manager, is at the helm of the operation and is attracting capital from important backers. So far, the company has raised more than $1 million from a group o...

Popular online coupon marketer Groupon filed for an initial public offering with the SEC on Thursday, meaning the public will soon have the chance to buy into one the world's fastest-growing companies. Groupon hopes to raise $750 million in the deal, which will be underwritten by a group of investor...

LinkedIn has been a public company for roughly two weeks, but its brief history on Wall Street should give the people running other social media companies a lot to think about. The biggest question to ponder is whether they should go public now -- or as soon as they can convince an investment bank t...

HP is trolling for partners as the computer giant attempts to build an ecosystem for webOS, the operating system it acquired last summer when it bought Palm for $1.2 billion. CEO Leo Apotheker said that he sees webOS as a licensing opportunity. At All Things Digital's D9 conference on Wednesday, Apo...

In a recent article for the E-Commerce Times titled "Is the World Headed Toward a Single Global Currency?" I asked Morrison Bonpasse, the president of the Single Global Currency Association, about his thoughts on currency consolidation. Since then, I've given some thought to how the world's multi-cu...

The latest news on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger comes from California. State regulators said last Thursday they would launch an investigation into the proposed merger. This is yet another worrisome problem for AT&T to deal with in what is turning out to be a very squeaky deal. This merger propos...

The latest news on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger comes from California. State regulators said last Thursday they would launch an investigation into the proposed merger. This is yet another worrisome problem for AT&T to deal with in what is turning out to be a very squeaky deal. This merger propos...

It seems Microsoft doesn't want to take any chances with rollouts of future Windows tablets. The company is reportedly asking a special favor of each chip maker with which it will be working on tablets. It wants the chip suppliers to each partner with one -- or possibly two, according to some accoun...

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and VP of commerce Stephanie Tilenius have announced the launch of Google Offers' beta program, which will kick off in Portland, Ore., starting on Wednesday. The very first Google Offer will be for a Portland local favorite, Floyd's Coffee. Those with coupons will pay $3...

The development and adoption of e-commerce strategies for established businesses has become a given over the past few years. It seems appropriate to say that we have crossed a line where the question of, "Should a business have an e-commerce strategy?" has been replaced with, "When will a business h...

An end to Sony's PlayStation woes is presumably in sight: The company has announced it will restore full functionality to the PlayStation Store by the end of this week. That includes in-game commerce, the ability for players to redeem vouchers and codes, and full functionality of Music Unlimited as...