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Washington-based watchdog organization the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has launched a hard-line campaign against an alleged effort by online advertising service DoubleClick, Inc. (Nasdaq:DCLK) to track individual identities and actions online and tie them to offline behavior The group kicked off the campaign Tuesday by launching a "We...

Discover Financial Services announced today that it is now offering its cardholders the option to have images of their existing Discover cards placed on their computer desktops for online shopping and one-click access to account and purchasing information While rival Mastercard announced an identical technology last November, it is only now releasi...

Earlier this week, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates told a gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that European e-commerce continues to be hamstrung by high per-minute telephone tolls "A country's communications will determine how quickly the Internet takes off in that country," Gates said.

Despite a sharp difference of opinion among its members, the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce (ACEC) appears headed toward a long-term extension of the current moratorium on Internet taxation Six companies with members on the commission are promoting a multi-year extension of the moratorium as the main component of a compromise, which wou...

E-tail giant Amazon.com has announced its third major promotional deal in roughly a week, bringing its tally to a tidy $332.5 million (US$) The latest deal, with home products and services retailer Living.com, is worth $145 million. Living.com will make payments over five years for the right to become the exclusive supplier of furniture, bedding, h...

As New York City geared up for this week's LinuxWorld Expo, TurboLinux announced the release of a new server package that has been optimized for e-commerce In an attempt to woo online business professionals who work with the open-source operating system, TurboLinux Server 6.0 -- based on the latest Linux kernel 2.2.13 -- includes versions of the Op...

Internet search engine and born-again portal AltaVista is paying a new network of affiliated Web sites for every surfer they send its way Officially launched this week, the AltaVista Affiliate Network allows any individual or company with a Web site to quickly add attractive search boxes to their pages that will link users to AltaVista's Internet-s...

In an effort to challenge Costco Online's stranglehold on the Internet wholesale club market share, New York-based HouseHold Direct.com has launched an online store with an aggressive discount pricing plan HouseHold Direct's new wholesale buying site includes products and services from nearly 1,000 manufacturers and distributors, and helps customer...

Chicago, Illinois-based Arthur Andersen has become the first of the "Big Five" accounting firms to take direct aim at Internet startup companies by launching a $500 million (US$) venture capital fund The announcement comes one month after sister company Andersen Consulting unveiled its own $1 billion worldwide initiative to fund Internet startups.

Software titan Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and online auction hosting company FairMarket announced the launch today of a business-to-business (B2B) auction site for Microsoft's new small business portal The companies said that the auction site for Microsoft's bCentral portal will offer small business owners the opportunity to buy and sell goods ...

Amazon.com caught Wall Street by surprise last Friday when it nonchalantly announced layoffs for the first time in its five-year history Even though the 150 lost jobs represent only about two percent of Amazon's 7,500 workers, the mere fact that the online merchant decided to cut back at all seemed to startle many investors. After all, Amazon's rev...

U.S. House of Representatives Policy Chairman Christopher Cox (R-California) announced Monday that he and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) will mount a fresh challenge to Internet taxation this legislative session by introducing a new "Internet Non-Discrimination Act." The bill is the latest version of Cox and Wyden's Internet Tax Freedom Act III, whic...

X.com, a Palo Alto, California-based online bank, recently allowed customers who were setting up new accounts to specify the account number from which funds were being transferred. Unfortunately, X.com did not verify whether the person who was setting up the account had the right to transfer those funds This sort of security breach brings into seri...

According to a new report by Forrester Research, Inc., brick-and-mortar insurance giant Allstate "will spark an all-out Internet war" in personal lines insurance by offering sales and service via the Internet "Allstate must aggressively hire from the outside to become a leader in electronic marketing and customer service," the report states. "But u...

In a move that has sent shock waves through its extensive dealer network, consumer electronics giant Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) launched a Web site today that will sell mass-customized VAIO personal computers and peripherals directly to consumers in Japan The Tokyo-based conglomerate formed a new company, Sony Style, in joint capitalization with its do...

RSA Security Inc. (Nasdaq: RSAS) announced a licensing agreement on Monday with mobile security solutions provider Certicom to incorporate desktop-to-server e-commerce security development tools into its products Under the terms of the agreement -- which builds upon an earlier product-driven alliance -- RSA will use the Certicom SSL Plus toolkit in...

Moving to create a total desktop solution for Linux, Corel Corp. (Nasdaq: CORL) announced Friday that the first beta version of its WordPerfect Office 2000 suite for Linux is available through online beta testing sites "WordPerfect 8 has been the most popular Linux application with over 900,000 downloads to date on CNET alone, commented Dr. Michael...

Web retailer Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN) said today it is acquiring a five percent stake in spoken-audio company Audible (Nasdaq:ADBL). In exchange, Wayne, New Jersey-based Audible will pay $30 (US$) million over the course of a three-year deal to see products such as its digital versions of talking books featured prominently on the popular Amazon.com site...

In an effort to improve the upscale jewelry industry's relatively minimal use of the mass-merchandising nature of the Internet, 16 upscale brick-and-mortar jewelry manufacturers and retailers are joining together to sell their branded fine jewelry online The new site will be "sensitive to the specific concerns of the jewelry industry," according to...

Network hardware developer 3Com Corp. (Nasdaq: COMS) has announced plans to donate a total of $1 million (US$) in networking equipment and consulting services to 10 U.S. cities that are ready to implement programs to help minorities and low-income families access the Internet The cities to receive assistance from 3Com are Baltimore, Maryland; Charl...