Articles by

Is the United States government doing enough to secure the country against cyber-attacks? Not according to the Cyber-Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) The security trade organization issued a report yesterday calling on the federal government to assert greater leadership in the protection of the country's information infrastructure in 2006....

Eyeing the sweet spot of the digital music market now all but cornered by Apple's iTunes Music Store, Microsoft said it would partner with Viacom's MTV Networks to release a new online music service known as Urge Urge is slated to launch early in 2006 and will be integrated into upcoming versions of Microsoft's Media Player. The service is aimed at...

Chief Executive Mark Hurd yesterday revealed HP's three-part strategy for the future The company plans to focus on high-growth markets, including enterprise virtualization, data center consolidation, data storage, and high-end printing and mobility....

The search war continues to heat up as Amazon.com subsidiary Alexa Inc. has begun to offer third parties the ability to use its data to create specialized, or vertical search engines and results Alexa said it would offer tools to enable developers to seek specific information when doing Web crawls, such as images or music files or information about...

'Tis the season to read about e-tailers' dreams of record-breaking profits during the holiday shopping frenzy Meanwhile, amid anxious promotions and analyst promises, there are plenty of credit card companies with their own holiday hopes. Remember, merchants pay tiny transaction fees that add up to big bucks for MasterCard, Visa and other credit ca...

Bob Graham doesn't wait for a threat to become a pandemic. Several years ago, when one of his employees decided to start using a Treo handheld for phone and e-mail, he purchased and installed Symantec anti-virus software on the device -- even though there had never been a documented case of a virus hitting the Treo. Graham's motto: Be proactive. As Senior VP of Information Systems at Farmers and Merchants Bank of Long Beach, he maintains a constant vigil over security...

The HD-DVD next-generation video disc format may be losing one of its biggest advantages over the competing Blu-ray format. Toshiba admitted this week that the Japanese launch of its HD-DVD player has been postponed in the latest of a continuing string of delays. With this news, the technology has lost what could have been at least a six-month head start over Blu-ray...

HP this week announced a partnership with DreamWorks Animation to introduce a collaboration studio for simulating face-to-face business meetings across long distances The HP Halo Collaboration Studio enables people in different locations to communicate in a face-to-face environment in real time. HP said PepsiCo and Advanced Micro Devices are alread...

Microsoft and long-distance company MCI will test a co-branded Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling service meant to help the two companies have a hand in the massive shift of voice-based calls from traditional land lines to the Internet MCI Web Calling for Windows Live Call will be integrated into Windows Live Messenger -- the soon-to-launc...

IBM last night announced it is launching a new licensing program with the venture capital community to help startup companies accelerate the development of innovative solutions in the marketplace The new IBM Ventures in Collaboration program is designed to give VC firms in IBM's partner network and their portfolio companies the opportunity to acces...

Online holiday sales are on a pace to crack US$26 billion this year -- an 18 percent leap over last year, according to JupiterResearch in New York City "Reports we've seen from Mastercard and Visa indicate that online transactions are up sharply during this period relative to last year," Jupiter Senior Vice President, Research David Schatsky told t...

Who are customer relations managers and how do they perform their roles? For answers, we look to IT and call center outsourcing. The roles of customer relations managers have been made more complex by both globalization and the virtualization of organizations, as described in Part 1 of this series Clients initially encounter customer relations ...

State-run venture capital funds are increasingly financing early stage technology companies, picking up some of the slack left by private venture capitalists in the wake of the stock market bubble's burst, experts tell the E-Commerce Times Thirty-six states have venture funds, and the largest is Maryland's, started in 1994. Overseas governments al...

Leading up to this holiday gift-buying season, the home has become a high-tech focal point. Individuals can now collect content on digital cameras, televisions, and stereos and then send it to various computers via wireless LANs. "Wireless enabled devices are on many shoppers' wish list this holiday season, and such items will be big sellers in the consumer market," noted Kurt Scherf, an industry analyst with Park Associates...

Hoping to bridge the gap between traditional cable television and the Internet, three heavyweights from the two fields said they had forged a partnership to develop ways to make the two data-transport channels more open to each other Comcast said it would work with Cisco Systems and Nortel as the first vendors to join the Open Transport Initiative ...

It's the sixth week of the all-important online holiday shopping season and the latest stats are in from Nielsen//NetRatings The Internet media and market researcher declared today that online holiday shopping has grown 33 percent year-over-year, according to its Holiday eShopping Index....

Mobile phone giant Sprint Nextel is reportedly set to offer movies for its cell phone subscribers through a subscription service, a strategy analysts said will likely struggle against limited demand for small-screen content. The company's mobile devices will accommodate downloads of full-length feature films The move is viewed as yet another experi...

If another sequel to "Mission Impossible" makes its way to the big screen, Tom Cruise may receive his assignment via a text message. That's because a new text messaging service promises the digital communication will self-destruct in 40 seconds Staellium UK is playing off the 1960s television hit -- and the current blockbuster movie series -- to pe...

Further boosting its portfolio of social-networking properties while underscoring a push to refine search results by using Web site descriptions, Yahoo has acquired Del.icio.us, a site that enables users to store and share Web site bookmarks The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Privately held Del.icio.us is based in New York City and was found...

Seeking to take advantage of the many exciting online bargains this holiday shopping season? Be cautious about those e-mail promotions. Some of them contain more than deep discounts and free shipping offers -- they may contain malware Security vendors and messaging companies alike report heightened spam activity during the holiday season. Some of i...