Archive

Two years after it angered privacy advocates by altering its privacy policy, Amazon.com has told a group of state attorneys general that it will change the guidelines again to make them more consumer-friendly. But Junkbusters president Jason Catlett said the changes are mostly cosmetic and that Amaz...

Many online retailers have spent considerable time and money trying to duplicate the success of Amazon.com, but the market conditions that spawned Amazon no longer exist, according to Giga Information Group analyst Andrew Bartels. "It is unlikely that any existing retailer would let you take over a ...

Software development is a much different animal than it was 20 years ago. As program size has increased, so has the number of security flaws. In the latest disclosure by a major vendor, Microsoft announced a flaw in the SmartHTML Interpreter contained in Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions that co...

For e-tailers, the quest for the perfect online customer -- who spends thousands of dollars per year on a wide variety of merchandise and returns repeatedly to order more goods -- is like the search for the Holy Grail. Although the ideal may not be attainable, all merchants look for certain key char...

Three former Homestore.com executives plan to plead guilty to charges stemming from millions of dollars of accounting misstatements and reportedly will cooperate with investigators as a federal probe moves forward. Some published reports suggest the Homestore inquiry is being used to gather informat...

In the post-boom era of e-commerce, the gurus whose ideas and actions set the bar and tone for the industry may seem familiar. Although yesteryear's fast-growth mantra has been replaced by a different chant -- profits, profits! -- first-wave icons like Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Meg Whitman of eBay ar...

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard each will spend $25 million during the next two-and-a-half years in an effort to foster more widespread adoption of the .NET Web services initiative among e-businesses. The campaign calls for the training of 5,000 HP sales professionals on the finer points of .NET and t...

Before Steve Jobs retook the reins at Apple in 1997, many in the industry had begun to sound the death knell for the innovative but beleaguered company. But in a stunning turnaround, Apple pulled itself out of a pool of red ink and began booking positive earnings. One key reason for its success is A...

There is little question that the number of home users accessing the Internet via broadband will continue to grow. By the end of 2002, the Yankee Group has estimated, 16 million broadband subscribers will be online in the United States, in addition to 54 million dial-up users. And widespread adoptio...

The sticker price of high-speed Internet access remains too high for a majority of U.S. residents, although the service is now available in most areas of the country, according to a government report. The report also suggested that lack of content geared toward broadband users -- such as video game ...

Although they attract a large percentage of the online buying audience, e-tail giants like Amazon and eBay are not the biggest competitors of other e-tailers, according to a new report from Nielsen//NetRatings. The report said most shoppers do not click directly from niche sites to Amazon or eBay; r...

The stock market and the dot-com world may be down for now, but that does not mean launching a new e-business is out of the question. New York University business professor Christopher Tucci pointed out that many of today's technology and commerce giants began life at a time when startup capital was...

In its annual 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Cisco reported that its order backlog has fallen 30 percent over the past year, from about $2 billion to about $1.4 billion. Analyst reactions were mixed, with some surprised and others saying they expected the news. One pos...

In a business traditionally built on partnerships and cooperation, Dell Computer seems bent on making more enemies than friends of late. In July, Hewlett-Packard terminated a four-year reseller agreement with Dell after word leaked that Dell intended to make and sell its own line of printers and oth...

Allocating precious budget dollars is always a challenge in a down economy, and with security threats seeming to loom at every turn, CIOs are struggling mightily to gauge risks and decide how to face them. While the temptation may be to throw money at perceived security problems, decision makers ins...