Archive

Citing First Amendment protections, a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has ruled in favor of Amazon.com in its battle with North Carolina over potentially sensitive customer data the state claims it needs to calculate taxes. Judge Marsha J. Pechman ruled Monday that Amazon is not obligated to pr...

The personnel shakeup taking place at Digg offers an example of how difficult it can be for a social media site to make the transition from a popular online destination to a profitable business enterprise. In addition to losing its top sales and finance executives, Digg is reducing its total workfor...

Out there on the branding battlefields, it's simply do or die, as a brand image is either hypervisible or mortally lost in oblivion. Commanding success for any idea on the global scene demands universal e-commerce access that is only deliverable by a cybername identity, as it's the only key to o...

Despite advances in technology, online fraud and payment security continue to be significant issues and cost drivers for e-commerce merchants. Web applications are the leading source of data breaches and account for the majority of compromised data records. The majority of these records contain pa...

Adding the iPhone to its product mix helped Radio Shack lift its net income 23 percent in the third quarter, the company announced Monday. But falling margins and continued uncertainty about the venerable brand's future left the market unimpressed. Radio Shack reported diluted earnings per share of ...

On October 14, 2010, the Federal Court of Canada handed down its much-anticipated decision regarding Amazon's patent application for an invention entitled "Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communication Network," or what has more colloquially been referred to as the "Amazon 1-Cli...

In the holiday selling season, the most frantic and exciting time of the year, it's a good time to put aside your marketing plan and your email strategy and just blast out mailings to everyone you've ever had on any list you've ever put together. Right? Wrong. What we just described is a mistake tha...

Google is actively negotiating with the big-three television networks and Hulu to unblock access to their programming to users of its new Google TV service. News Corp.'s Fox has not blocked programming but is considering the move. There have been reports that CBS content can be viewed, noted ITIC pr...

Venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has launched a $250 million fund aimed specifically at startups that are developing social applications and services. Other investors in the "sFund," as it's called, include Facebook, Amazon, Zynga, Comcast and Liberty Media. In addition t...

It's been more than a decade since the publication of the The Clue Train Manifesto -- a business classic, well ahead of its time. Rich with both insight and foresight, it still amazes me that it was written before Twitter, Facebook and YouTube -- and, as business leaders, as marketers and as technol...

IBM is continuing its steady march to build out its cloud computing bona fides, this time with the rollout of new security offerings and an expansion of its cloud-based development tools with an emphasis on Windows. The larger point, said Harold Moss, IBM's emerging technology and cloud computing Ar...

I recently gave a speech to a group of AT&T executives in a university MBA program, and during the Q&A afterward I got a very interesting question about the future of the AT&T brand. It grew into an interesting and important discussion that I'd like to share here. The questions after sp...

I recently gave a speech to a group of AT&T executives in a university MBA program, and during the Q&A afterward I got a very interesting question about the future of the AT&T brand. It grew into an interesting and important discussion that I'd like to share here. The questions after sp...

I recently gave a speech to a group of AT&T executives in a university MBA program, and during the Q&A afterward I got a very interesting question about the future of the AT&T brand. It grew into an interesting and important discussion that I'd like to share here. The questions after sp...

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has weighed in publicly in the dispute between the Fox broadcasting empire and cable provider Cablevision over payments for broadcasting Fox programming. The scuffle could wind up giving the agency greater power to regulate such standoffs. Genachowski's agency release...