Articles by Lisa Gill

Web service1.A Web service is a software system identified by a URI [RFC 2396], whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition, using XML based messages conveyed by Internet protocols...

What do Viagra, stock tips, personal ads and activities with farm animals have in common? They are all the subject lines of unwanted, unsolicited e-mail messages, not-so-affectionately known as spam. The sheer volume of electronic junk mail has overwhelmed users' inboxes and IT managers in the past few years, consuming valuable bandwidth and storage space while embarrassing and annoying its recipients...

IBM has achieved a major win in the automotive industry, inking a services contract with Ford Motor Company, along with a French software firm While specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, IBM and Dassault Systems said they will supply Ford with IBM Product Lifecycle Management software, including CATIA V5 and ENOVIA VPM (virtual product man...

The tale is familiar: Enterprises are generating massive amounts of data -- e-mail, Word documents, video, audio and databases -- and IT managers are scrambling to identify and purchase the most cost-effective, easy-to-manage storage solutions available. There are many choices, ranging from traditional direct-attached storage (DAS), which still co...

After reporting that it ended its fiscal year an unprecedented US$99 billion in the red, AOL Time Warner said Wednesday that Ted Turner also will step down from his post as vice chairman in May. The company's fourth-quarter earnings statement revealed a $45.5 billion charge as a result of depreciation in its America Online division. Its net loss o...

In yet another effort by the recording industry to capture the elusive hearts of the music-swapping public, six brick-and-mortar record store chains have formed a consortium to provide consumers with online and in-store access to digital downloads. Best Buy, Tower Records, Virgin Entertainment Group, Wherehouse Music, Hastings Entertainment and Tr...

U.S. consumers' confidence in Internet products and services remains high, and they plan to spend US$4.8 billion online during the first quarter of 2003, up from $4.6 billion in the year-ago period, according to a survey released Friday. In addition, the number of consumers who said they plan to shop online in the first three months of this year increased 9 percent compared with last year, to 56 percent...

Steve Case has announced he will resign as AOL's chairman, following a lengthy battle to meld old and new media after the company's 2001 acquisition of Time Warner In a statement, Case said the difficult decision to step down was influenced by growing shareholder concern over the company's post-merger performance. He noted that the focus of that co...

In a holiday shopping season that was strong across the board for e-commerce but relatively weak for offline retailers, video gaming got a turbo-powered boost. Leading console maker Sony sold 8.5 million PlayStation2 units worldwide, up 24 percent compared with the 2001 holiday period. In North America, the surge was even more pronounced: Sony sold 4 million consoles in this region alone, 42 percent more than in 2001...

On paper, Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) appears to be one of the hottest tech companies around. Propelled in part by users' need to defend against a rash of destructive and well-publicized computer worms like Code Red, Nimda and SirCam, its stock price has jumped 70 percent in the past year. Nonetheless, leading industry experts seem to be far from enamored with the company. Some stock analysts have even responded by placing sell or hold ratings on Symantec, while others question the company's ability to compete successfully in some of its most important markets. Another leading analyst stated that Symantec may have recently squandered nearly a billion dollars on the acquisition of a related company whose technology is a "non-factor" in today's market. In Part I of this investigative report series, the E-Commerce Times goes beyond the headlines to find out what industry insiders really think of Symantec, and why so many are concerned about its future...

In a move to simplify its user interface, search engine Ask Jeeves has announced it will discontinue use of banner ads on all of its Web sites, instead focusing on sponsored searches, paid for by advertisers, to generate revenue This move follows Ask Jeeves' recent elimination of interstitials, also known as pop-up ads, from its Web site....

Driven by convenience and efficiency, e-commerce spending most likely topped US$74 billion in 2002, a 39 percent jump from 2001, according to Web traffic measurement firm comScore Media Metrix The research firm's preliminary findings, which exclude spending at auction sites, are based on survey data collected in the fall, but actual data collected ...

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a trade group that counts Intel and AMD among its members, has announced that global sales of semiconductors increased just 1.9 percent to US$12.51 billion in November compared with October levels. The slow growth rate, which bucks the usual holiday spending trend, signals that the semiconductor industry is still struggling to overcome its worst-ever slump in 2001...

Hoping to avoid long lines at the register and searching for bargains, holiday e-shoppers turned to books, music, videos and DVDs as their top choices. Together, these items represented 17.8 percent of all holiday spending, accounting for nearly US$1.9 billion this season, according to a report issued by Goldman Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen//NetRatings.

The number two software supplier Oracle said Wednesday it had beaten its ownconservative quarterly estimates and indicated the company's financialdownturn may be coming to an end Oracle's quarterly revenue of US$2.31 billion fell from last year's $2.38billion. But the figure still beat out Wall Street earnings expectations of 8cents a share on $2.2

In a first for the PC industry, Gateway has announced it will entice holiday shoppers with a "buy one, get one free" PC deal Specifically, Gateway customers who purchase the company's high-end machines -- the 700XL desktop and 600XL laptop, which retail for US$3,499 and $2,399, respectively -- will receive a free 300s desktop, without a monitor. Sh...

When nearly 1,000 IT organizations descended on the Homeland Security TechExpo in Washington, D.C., this fall, all had the same goal: to garner a piece of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pie, worth a total US$38 billion Made official last month by President Bush, the DHS consolidates 22 agencies employing a total of 170,000 federal employ...

Technology giant Hewlett-Packard and Japanese telecommunications firm NEC have announced they will provide joint outsourcing services for organizations in China, Japan and the United States. The offering eventually may extend to other areas, including Southeast Asia and Europe The companies said the services will be tailored to customers' needs and...

The world's most-trafficked Web site said Monday that it willbegin offering Web hosting packages aimed at small businesses For between US$11.95 and $39.95 per month, small businesses will receive10 to 35 e-mail accounts, 50 to 350 megabytes of storage and 20 to 35 gigabytes of data transfer. The two top packages also will offer a round-the-clock, t...

Since IT budgets have been slashed in the economic downturn, many businesses are seeking ways to reduce the burden on overworked staff. One way to do thisis to use a SAN, or storage area network, which reduces data management costs, increases hardware efficiency and improves data recovery capabilities. With networked storage, any user armed with the proper level of access can search for any piece of data stored within an enterprise...