Archive

Microsoft today released MSN Spaces and Messenger version 7.0 to the public, and with new initiatives designed to connect advertisers with target customers through the services, users may get more than they bargained for. The software company plans to integrate ads into users' personal Spaces -- fre...

An tech industry organization advocating interoperability has asked a European court to allow it to join the European Commission (EC) in defense of its antitrust decision against Microsoft. The five-member group, made up of IBM, Nokia, Oracle, RealNetworks and Red Hat, goes by the name European Comm...

A new breed of news aggregators could provide Web users with personal control over their content feeds and force portals and other e-commerce companies that rely on content to reach their audience to rethink their approaches. While the jury is still out on the eventual impact of Web logs, or blogs, ...

Google has rolled out a round of price cuts on its enterprise search family of products, even as it boosts the search capacity of its two main product lines in a bid to appeal to more smaller and mid-sized businesses. The Google Mini, a search box first made available in January, will be cut in pric...

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is beginning to break out into a more rapid period of growth, fueled by the rollout of the service by trusted telecommunications providers, according to a new report on the emerging trend. IDC said VoIP has "clearly come into its own in the U.S." as major incumben...

Striking off in new directions as it seeks ways to stay ahead of the growing pack in the search industry, Google has unveiled a feature that gives users the ability to see satellite imagery when they view maps and also said it would collect personal video clips for a new service it's testing. The sa...

Business process outsourcing (BPO) facilities, which handle non-voice work, are easier to manage than offshore call centers. This is because of the nature of the work itself as well as the human resource issues associated with call centers in emerging economies. Common types of BPO work are: E-mail ...

Placing a bet that the book-making industry will move away from traditional publishing methods to embrace the efficiencies of the Web, Amazon.com said it has purchased a privately held print-on-demand publisher. Amazon paid an undisclosed sum to acquire BookSurge, a Charleston, S.C.-based firm that ...

Vertical search, seen by many analysts as the next massive market opportunity in the search space, is quickly becoming one of the most crowded, with a host of new launches in recent days. In the past two weeks alone, LookSmart launched a group of five vertical search tools and promised more, Yahoo u...

Since NTT DoCoMo successfully launched its i-mode service in 1998, there have been varying degrees of hype about the future of mobile content and the revenue potential of applications run on wireless data networks. Early versions of wireless application protocol (WAP) in Europe and North America did...

A report recommending that VeriSign is well positioned to remain in charge of the ".net" domain name registries is coming under repeated criticism, as the Internet's international governing body finds itself in the eye of yet another controversy. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbe...

Search engine Google marked the one-year anniversary of the debut of its much-hyped Web-based e-mail program by boosting the free storage it gives users to a massive 2 gigabytes and promising to continue to move the bar higher as users' needs expand. The move doubles the original 1 GB storage that c...

A short while ago, I wrote a column for the E-Commerce Times entitled "VoIP Here to Stay." In it, I talked about WiFi technology and its impact on VoIP. This article goes further in that it explores the widespread adoption of WiFi technology and what it bodes for the future of technology. WiFi means...

In sharp contrast to the harmless pranks that will be played on this April Fools' Day, deceptive phishing schemes are no laughing matter. To strike a blow against criminals who prey on Internet users, Microsoft yesterday filed 117 lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washi...

Even as IBM distances itself from the personal computer industry -- citing foreign competition as a reason -- and others might be prepared to follow suit, private U.S. investors have stepped forward to bankroll the Chinese company taking over Big Blue's PC wing. A group of private investors announce...