Articles by Mary Hillebrand

U.S. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), who has spent years battling cable operators over rising rates and anti-competitive programming contracts, has teamed with former Massachusetts Governor William Weld and the openNET Coalition of Internet service providers to support a state ballot initiative that would force cable companies to let ISPs use their lines...

William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative moderator of the long-running Firing Line television series, engaged his colleagues in a lively two-hour debate over the Internet taxation issue Friday night before turning his set dark for the last time The debate, titled "The Federal Government Should Not Impose a Tax on Electronic Commerce," appeared on ...

Online book and music retailer barnesandnoble.com (Nasdaq: BNBN) announced today that it has cemented its alliance with magazine subscription company Enews.com by acquiring a 32 percent stake in the company. Additionally, the four-year joint service agreement calls for the New York-based online unit of Barnes & Noble, Inc. to receive warrants that could push its equity stake up to 40 percent.

Information Markets Corp. launched a beta test version of its infomarco.com site this week, allowing information seekers to bid for expert answers with play money. The real deal, with real money, is slated to launch early next year Infomarco.com operates on the assumption that people will pay top dollar for quality answers to tough questions. "Huma...

A new study from BizRate.com shows that nearly 60 percent of online shoppers would make fewer purchases if sales taxes were implemented on the Internet BizRate.com's "Flash Survey" includes comments from nearly 17,000 online buyers, surveyed at the online point-of-sale through a partnership between BizRate.com and the Association for Interactive Me...

According to a report from the UN-supervised International Y2K Cooperation Center, the massive effort made by governments and companies around the world will prevent widespread computer problems from marring the arrival of the Year 2000 "The combination of a great deal of dedicated effort, the limited use of digital controls in most infrastructures...

In response to the U.S. government's suggestion that online investment firms take responsibility for educating consumers about the benefits and pitfalls of trading stocks on the Internet, Charles Schwab announced today that it will conduct more than 20,000 educational seminars at various Schwab offices throughout the United States The WebShops seri...

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a new set of guidelines Thursday that are designed to promote economic growth, trade, and development by improving international consumer confidence in online transactions The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was among the government bodies from 29 countries around the wo...

U.S. President Bill Clinton announced Thursday that he will tour 12 U.S. cities that are falling behind in getting their residents connected to the Internet and e-commerce The so-called digital divide between those who have Internet access and those who cannot afford it has been a topic of discussion in the Clinton administration since July, when t...

Online customer feedback company Answers.com unveiled a new service Wednesday that claims to take customer interaction to a new level by learning as it goes The new AnswerBase service uses a pre-programmed set of questions and answers to give a company's customers specific answers that are based on company information.

$ECURE-IT-e, a new service that promises to secure credit card transactions made over the Internet, added a new wrinkle to the e-holiday shopping season by launching its Web site earlier this week The Canadian company offers service for a base price of $4.99 (CA$) and pledges to handle all disputes with online merchants, banks and, if necessary, le...

According to a new study by Forrester Research B.V., the Internet's reach in Western Europe will nearly double over the next three years as digital technology becomes more commonplace The projected jump in Internet penetration from 19 to 33 percent is not expected to translate into instant profits for companies investing in the European market, how...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced this week that it is accepting volunteers for its Membership Implementation Task Force, which will help establish a membership base from which nine of ICANN's 19 directors are elected ICANN is accepting 100-word "expressions of interest" in the membership task force positions via e-m...

Buried in the reams of paper that U.S. President Bill Clinton signed this week to complete the federal budget for fiscal year 2000 are e-commerce-friendly tidbits such as a ban on cyber-squatting and an order to examine the issue further The cyber-squatting bill bars the intentional registration of domain names that are identical to or deceptively ...

In an effort to maximize its customers' ability to download products quickly and efficiently, Internet software retailer Beyond.com (Nasdaq: BYND) will market digital subscriber line (DSL) service from NorthPoint Communications (Nasdaq: NPNT) on its Web site Beyond.com will add a link from its site to NorthPoint's DSL service qualification tool, wh...

Telecommunications giant AT&T has signed an agreement with college-oriented Web portal edu.com that will market AT&T's communications services to the site's undergraduate and graduate student users AT&T will offer its wireless, long distance, Internet access and calling card services to edu.com's membership base, and the companies will conduct a jo...

Telecommunications giant AT&T has signed an agreement with college-oriented Web portal edu.com that will market AT&T's communications services to the site's undergraduate and graduate student users AT&T will offer its wireless, long distance, Internet access and calling card services to edu.com's membership base, and the companies will conduct a jo...

Online consumer resource OnlineChoice.com's ElectricityChoice.com subsidiary launched a new e-commerce service in Pennsylvania yesterday that will attempt to use the power of numbers to lower the cost of electrical power to a pool of more than 4,000 registered residential customers Utility.com, an Internet electric service vendor distributed by Onl...

While the U.S. Congress is away from Capitol Hill for the holidays and pending electronic commerce bills wait at bay, the Clinton Administration has launched a federal, state and local government initiative to evaluate which current laws are e-commerce friendly and which need some tweaking The participants will look for laws and other regulations t...

New online mall SingleShop.com will debut the day after Thanksgiving with a feature that allows shoppers to use the same shopping cart to store products from multiple merchants and pay for everything at once The site claims to be the first to offer consumers competitive price comparisons and a single shopping cart for use at various merchant sites....