Archive

The wireless spectrum auction is over and the big boys have won the day -- America's two biggest carriers, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, shelled out a total of more than $16 billion for tons of spectrum. AT&T, America's largest wireless carrier, has to dig deep to pay the $6.64 billion it owes,...

Smartphone maker Palm lost money in the third quarter, even though the company was reporting the strongest product launch in its history. Palm posted a third-quarter loss of $31.5 million, or 30 cents per share, compared with a profit of $11.8 million, or 11 cents per share, in the third quarter of ...

OPINION

How Boards Get Into Trouble

In an article I wrote for the E-Commerce Times titled "WorldCom's Failure: Why Did it Happen?" I talked about one of the largest accounting frauds in U.S. history. The upshot of this fraud was that former CEO, Bernie Ebbers, 63, was convicted of orchestrating this $11 billion accounting fraud and w...

STARTUP TO WATCH

Zlio: Everyone's a Retailer

The Internet has become the ultimate democracy in many ways, leveling the publishing playing field for writers with blogging software, allowing musical acts to distribute music without a record label and giving video producers outlets such as YouTube. With e-commerce outlets like eBay, anyone can se...

The U.S. government is tapping into the private sector to head up a new bureaucracy to help fend off cyber-attacks. The Bush administration is bringing in Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom to head up the National Cyber Security Center, according to news reports. The new center was created in...

The Software and Information Industry Association filed eight more lawsuits against eBay sellers the group says are hawking pirated versions of software from Adobe, bringing to 17 the number of suits filed so far this year. The SIIA said it filed suits against sellers based in Arizona, California, C...

In Europe, broadband Internet access is seen as a ticket to economic freedom and prosperity. That's one of the key ideas behind the European Commission's announcement Wednesday of its intention to increase broadband penetration from the current 20 percent to 30 percent across the bloc by 2010. The E...

Verizon Wireless detailed its plans to open part of its network to third-party devices Wednesday, saying the carrier could begin certifying devices within weeks and that the open portion of its network could be in operation by the second half of this year. At its first-ever Open Development Device C...

TECH BLOG

Social Security, Social Anxiety

Having your private information leaked is bad enough, but having it put on BitTorrent is really the final insult. It happened before with MySpace photos. By most accounts, the private images made available earlier this year via peer-to-peer networks consisted mostly of poorly snapped photos of peopl...

EXPERT ADVICE

Training Your Sights on Online Fraud

Fraud is big business. Well-funded, well-orchestrated, sophisticated fraud rings aggressively change tactics and invent new technologies to cash in on the unprotected assets awaiting plunder. Every organization that provides individual service to its customers, employees, members or community is fac...

After years spent battling obstruction of justice charges in an investigation of Credit Suisse First Boston, former investment banker Frank Quattrone is back with an investment firm of his own. Qatalyst Group, launched Monday by Quattrone and some former colleagues, is a technology-focused merchant ...

The Federal Communications Commission raised a record $19.5 billion with its wireless spectrum auction, which officially closed on Wednesday. The auction, which started Jan. 24, consisted of 261 rounds of bidding for five blocks of the 700 MHz spectrum. The revenues will be transferred to the U.S. T...

EXPERT ADVICE

Fraud, Chargebacks and Your Bottom Line

Think combating fraud is not of paramount concern to online merchants? The topic was front and center at the Merchant Risk Council's annual conference held in early March. Online merchants gathered there were eager to get a deeper level of understanding of how better to combat fraud -- fraudulent c...

A Dow Jones VentureSource report released Tuesday indicates that Web 2.0 investment may be peaking in the United States despite an 88 percent increase in money investment in 2007 over 2006. Even though venture capitalists threw a record $1.34 billion into 178 Web 2.0-related deals in 2007, the Dow J...

Feeling nostalgic about the early Clinton years? The dawn of the dot-com heyday? The Seattle grunge music scene? If so, you're in luck. The U.S. Supreme Court is giving the go-ahead for two tech companies to finish a battle that began more than 10 years ago but became bogged down in the legal syste...


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