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The U.S. Department of Commerce will be doling out $12.5 million (US$) in grants to local governments and non-profit organizations as a small step in closing the so-called digital divide between Americans who access the Internet for business, education and home use, and those who cannot afford to The grants are available under the department's cont...

Internet content and applications delivery company Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq: AKAM) said today that it has doubled its customer base to 200 Web properties in the past six weeks, and has added a number of household names in the process The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said that its FreeFlow delivery service has attracted, among others, d...

Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) is ditching the Microsoft operating system in a new line of Internet appliances under development at a target price of about $200 (US$) If all goes according to plan, Americans soon will be using these new devices for shopping, e-mailing and conducting business from their kitchen counters and dens.

Yesterday, when e-tail giant Amazon.com announced that it will lose money despite record fourth quarter sales of $650 million (US$), its stock price plummeted as much as 16 percent Still, Amazon.com tried to explain away the latest loss -- which analysts estimate will be as much as 55 cents a share -- by blaming it on larger-than-expected inventory...

According to a new report by Forrester Research, European e-commerce will grow at triple-digit rates over the next five years to a total of more than $1 trillion (US$) While this increased demand will quickly jump-start Northern Europe into e-commerce hyper-growth, the study found that Southern Europe will still lag behind, thereby preventing the r...

The B2B market was given a boost this week by the launch of two sites that will specialize in B2B banking and advertising, respectively Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based USABancShares.com (Nasdaq: USAB) unveiled ambitious plans to offer full-service banking exclusively to companies that specialize in B2B electronic commerce.

A new Web-based service from PrivacyBot is offering e-commerce businesses the ability to create and display a customized privacy policy to its customers. It also allows the site to display the Trustmark seal of approval for a price of $30 per year The Trustmark seal is a graphic that Web sites can post to give consumers one-click verification of a ...

Customer service portal Feedback Direct joined the ratings game this week by launching the Feedback 50 online companies with the best customer service operations Perhaps supporting the theory that customer satisfaction is not the sole driving force behind an online site's success, only two of the companies on the Feedback 50 list also ranked among ...

Last November, when priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) began selling groceries online, it was anybody's guess whether the public would take the bait. Now, two months later, priceline.com has more than 75,000 members in its "name-your-own-price" WebHouse Club grocery service, and the company is looking to penetrate a number of markets in the Northeastern quadrant of the United States...

Now that the holiday dust has settled, many online businesses are struggling to figure out how to combat the notion that e-commerce is marred by poor customer service This holiday season yielded stinging but consistent complaints: complicated sites that were difficult to navigate; merchandise that arrived late or never; too many steps required to c...

On January 1st at 12:00:01, Italian motorcycle manufacturer Ducati Motor SpA (NYSE: DMH), put its latest model -- a limited edition of 1,000 bikes -- up for sale on its Web site Within hours, the company's MH900evoluzione, dubbed the MH900e, sold out for the entire 2000 production year, giving it the distinction of being both the largest Italian e-...

London-based online travel agent ebookers.com (Nasdaq: EBKR) has acquired Norwegian discount travel agency Geotours AS in a deal valued at approximately $1 million (US$) Ebookers, which raised $61 million in an IPO in November, says that it plans to become Europe's largest online travel agency, and will spend some $40 million on marketing and techn...

VA Linux Systems (Nasdaq: LNUX) announced today that it has been selected by Web-based applications provider NetLedger to supply rackmount Linux servers and integration management services for the NetLedger infrastructure Under the terms of the agreement between the companies, NetLedger will incorporate several hundred VA Linux FullOn 2x2 rackmount...

A new report by investment banker Schroders shows that increased e-commerce competition and efficient Internet business models will push UK consumer prices down by 0.2 percent a year for the next three years The report adds that while the "Internet effect" will be felt unevenly across the different sectors that comprise Britain's retail price index...

High-speed Internet provider US West (NYSE: USW) announced an agreement today with digital music retailer MCY Music World to deliver encrypted, streamed or digitally downloadable music and live concert broadcasts over the Internet MCY.com controls an exclusive catalog with more than 30,000 songs available as digital downloads. Artists include Bob M...

City information and ticket vendor Ticketmaster Online-City Search (Nasdaq: TXCS) announced today that it has expanded its access to cultural offerings in about 1,500 cities across the United States by signing a marketing and distribution agreement with CultureFinder.com The agreement will make the New York-based cultural events listing and ticketi...

When it was reported yesterday that online shoppers have been forsaking pure-play e-tailers in favor of brick-and-click sites, it surely sent a shudder across the dot-com landscape In the report, Media Metrix showed that nearly half of the 50 most visited Web sites during the holiday shopping season had a strong brick-and-mortar presence, while few...

The battle lines have been drawn for one of the great e-commerce clashes of 2000. Proponents of online privacy and innovators of site-specific personalization are set to struggle with the big question: At what point does personalization become an invasion of an online shopper's privacy? It is a dispute not likely to be settled soon, as technology i...

Even if 1999 was the year of glitz, glamour and unprecedented consumer online spending, the tremendous movement in the business-to-business (B2B) sector may turn out to be 1999's most important story Although it moves far more quietly than the much flashier online shopping market, industry analysts, as well as investors, are fixated on the mammoth ...

The 1999 holiday shopping season may have boosted many online companies' hopes for continuing growth, but the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business says that such hopes may be unfounded In its 1999 Wharton Virtual Test Market, the school found that online personal spending is not increasing at the same rate it had been a year ago,...