Archive

Is this the dawning of the age of branding or just another black hole? The term "Le Branding" started out in the Dark Ages, where marks were burned onto cattle. On ever-so-slowly-evolving minds of the Homo sapiens, this word also made a solid impression and provides a daily dose of comfort. Belongin...

Microsoft will not produce a fifth service pack for Windows 2000, opting instead to provide a less extensive "rollup" of patches as the software giant phases out support for the aging operating system. Microsoft had previously announced it would end free technical support for Windows 2000 in June of...

Microsoft has filed its first eight lawsuits against defendants who allegedly distributed counterfeit Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels in an attempt to authenticate software that was unlicensed. Yesterday's filings are the first fruits of the software giant's effort to identify and target co...

Will consumers have a safe and secure holiday shopping season? Or will identity thieves walk away with the lion's share of the profits? According to VeriSign's latest Internet Security Intelligence Briefing, which covers the period from July through September, the number of security attacks has decl...

Research firms are predicting gangbuster sales for antivirus software vendors over the next few years. IDC forecasts the antivirus software market will increase to reach US$4.4 billion by 2007, with significant market share from corporate customers, and customers in North America and Western Europe....

The holiday shopping season has officially begun, and the sales results are in for the first weekend of the 2004 race for fourth quarter profits. Online and offline retailers alike have a lot to smile about. Indeed, while both brick and mortar and e-commerce outfits are reporting boom times, it prom...

A closely watched trial that could have lasting implications for the person-to-person (P2P) industry has gotten underway in Australia, where the entertainment industry hopes to prove that P2P network operators are responsible for the illegal swapping they enable. Major music labels made similar atte...

Are you searching for holiday profits? Join the e-club. Countless thousands of online retailers are competing in what analysts call a "zero sum game" where only one vendor can win the sale. However, take heart. There are plenty of sales to go around. EMarketer predicts online retail sales will reach...

Have you ever dreamed about taking your company public -- the relative ease of raising capital, the ability to use your company's stock to buy other businesses, and the liquidity of your own shares so that you can "cash out" when you are ready? This all sounds good, and it is. But not every business...

Black Friday is taking on a new meaning this year as Yahoo today sets out to shake up the holiday shopping season with the world's largest interactive snow globe smack dab in the middle of Times Square. "We wanted to get the word out about our Comparison Shopping and award-winning Product Search and...

Spyware and its intimate partner, adware, are among the fastest growing threats to computer users. Many Internet security experts now view spyware and adware as variations of the same thing -- intrusion. Industry analysts say spyware and adware together infect at least 90 percent of all Internet-con...

American businesses are usually very price sensitive. Compared to firms elsewhere in the world, American companies tend to pay close attention to performance numbers. Valuing this kind of metric often comes as a surprise to offshore service providers, particularly in cultures where personal connecti...

One hundred independent software vendors (ISVs) have pledged to use software under the umbrella of IBM's Workplace, a direct competitor to Microsoft .NET. Both are attempts to move PC-centric productivity software onto a network. The company did not say exactly how much of the software that falls un...

Corporations rarely come across a major naming project -- only once or twice in their lifetime. As a result, there is no exiting blueprint, guidelines or a tested naming policy on hand for this unique challenge -- a situation that could explode into a marketing and public relations disaster. You can...

Working through the weekend on a hotly contested topic with ramifications for the Internet and technology industries, the U.S. Senate approved a modified version of a controversial copyright protection bill being backed by the entertainment industry. The Senate on Saturday passed what it's calling t...