Articles by Teri Robinson

AOL Time Warner has inked a deal that calls for AT&T and Comcast to relinquish their minority interest in Time Warner Entertainment (TWE) division for as much as US$9 billion, according to published reports. The agreement paves the way for a possible IPO of AOL's cable arm in 2003, and ends speculation about the unit's immediate future Beset by fin...

AOL Time Warner has inked a deal that calls for AT&T and Comcast to relinquish their minority interest in Time Warner Entertainment (TWE) division for as much as US$9 billion, according to published reports. The agreement paves the way for a possible IPO of AOL's cable arm in 2003, and ends speculation about the unit's immediate future Beset by fin...

AOL Time Warner has inked a deal that calls for AT&T and Comcast to relinquish their minority interest in Time Warner Entertainment (TWE) division for as much as US$9 billion, according to published reports. The agreement paves the way for a possible IPO of AOL's cable arm in 2003, and ends speculation about the unit's immediate future Beset by fin...

Just as MTV changed the face of music, technology has resculpted the public relations landscape, improving some aspects of the field and creating a number of challenges as well Calling technology both "a blessing and a curse," Jon Lavietes, an account executive at public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, told the E-Commerce Times that "innovations ...

As competition heated up during the summer, both the travel and computer hardware sectors saw an uptick in online sales, according to comScore Networks, which has purchased Web traffic measurement firm Media Metrix Overall, online consumer sales increased to US$6 billion, a 26 percent increase from July 2001. Travel services performed even better, ...

Sounding the death knell for its hopes of providing round-the-clock trading for investors, Nasdaq has halted plans to move forward with Nasdaq Japan, saying it will withdraw completely from the troubled effort by October 15th But the exchange will not disappear completely. The Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE) plans to continue to run it under the te...

AOL Time Warner has admitted that three deals involving payment to its AOL unit from third parties, amounting to US$49 million, might have been erroneously declared as advertising revenue Calling the $49 million paid into the AOL unit over six quarters "an insignificant portion of the company's revenues," AOL Time Warner nevertheless said the payme...

The high-profile financial crimes at companies like WorldCom and Enron might lead some to wonder whether high-tech companies are magnets for fraud But Andrew Bartels, a Giga Information Group analyst, told the E-Commerce Times that the industry does not have a genetic defect that makes it more prone to fraud. "It is not fair to single out tech or t...

While layoff announcements at IBM have been sporadic, the company reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it has pink-slipped more than 15,000 employees, fully 5 percent of its workforce In a separate filing, company president and CEO Sam Palmisano and chief financial officer John R. Joyce also confirmed the veracity of I...

America Online has snubbed rival Microsoft by using Netscape browser technology in the newest iteration of its software for Mac OS X, a move that could indicate the company might eventually oust Microsoft from its PC offerings as well "They are certainly thinking about it," Rob Lancaster, an analyst at the Yankee Group, told the E-Commerce Times....

As though bankruptcy and $3.8 billion in "overstated earnings" were not bad enough, WorldCom has found that another $3.3 billion was improperly reported between 1999 and the first quarter of 2002 The discovery of the additional missing $3.3 billion comes on the heels of a rough period for WorldCom. The company has been under pressure from both the ...

As if the immediate future did not look dim enough for AOL Time Warner, a group of the company's shareholders has filed what they hope will become a class-action suit against the company for allegedly misrepresenting revenue reaped from online advertising The company has recently been besieged by numerous actions, including a U.S. Securities and Ex...

Online retailers have learned that buyers are much more serious about e-commerce these days and are less likely to be induced to purchase anything advertised online with gimmicks, trumped-up promises or wild graphics "People are looking more at what's the deal," Yankee Group analyst Rob Perry told the E-Commerce Times. The emphasis is "more on pric...

Qwest Communications has agreed to sell its ASP (application service provider) assets to Corio, Inc. for US$15 million in a deal that should be completed in late September. Under terms of the agreement with Qwest, Corio picks up the ASP operations of thetelecommunications company's Qwest CyberSolutions subsidiary The acquisition is expected to boos...

In an attempt to beef up its online music service, Pressplay has unveiled version 2.0, which, according to the company, will give users greater freedom in listening to, downloading and storing music The newly modified service now will let listeners stream audio, and gives them the opportunity to copy a larger number of songs. The company said that ...

As e-commerce server providers go head-to-head, touting their wares as the latest and greatest, meaningful hardware comparisons sometimes get lost in the shuffle But what makes the ultimate e-commerce server? The answer to that question must be based on the particular e-commerce venture and its online strategy. At the low end, single-processor syst...

In a deal that might ultimately shift the balance of power among computer vendors, IBM will pay US$3.5 billion in cash and stock for PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting. Pascal Matzke, a senior analyst at Giga Information Group, told the E-Commerce Times that the acquisition is "actually a good match" that will give IBM a strong position in high-en...

The U.S. Congress is considering a bill that would let music companies and other media entities legally enter file-swapping services to block users from trading copyrighted files Claiming to be "a big fan of [peer-to-peer] networks and the technology behind them," Representative Howard Berman (D-California), along with Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Howard...

AOL Time Warner's positive earnings report this week was tempered by news that the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission is looking into the way the company's online division has handled its accounting In what is becoming an all-too-familiar occurrence, the SEC has opened an inquiry into "how AOL booked some of its earnings," Yankee Group analyst M...

AOL has told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that it will pull back from plans to offer server-to-server interoperability between AOL Instant Messenger and other messaging services Citing technical difficulties and market dynamics, the company indicated in a letter to the FCC that it was forced to change course. AOL also pledged to prov...