Articles by

Fraud prevention, in its many layers and forms, is one of the most important services that can be provided to e-merchants. With each passing year, fraudsters become more experienced and new forms of fraud are developed. What is different in recent years is that we have been dealing with an economic recession. As a result, there has been an incr...

There's no longer any debate about whether social media's going to have a huge impact on CRM. The questions now hew to two distinct tracks: How huge will the impact be? ...

Promising faster performance and a bevy of new features, Mozilla on Friday released the first beta version of its Firefox 3.6 browser Built on the Gecko 1.9.2 Web rendering engine, the new version contains numerous improvements for developers and users, Mozilla said, including support for what it calls "personas," improved responsiveness and faster...

In the field of computer technology, some topics are so frequently and fiercely disputed that they almost resemble religious feuds -- Mac vs. PC, for instance, or open source vs. proprietary software Other topics, though, don't see nearly the same level of high-profile debate. Take the invulnerability of AES (the Advanced Encryption Standard) encry...

Boutique gaming PC maker MainGear on Monday announced a new line of what it describes as "personal supercomputers." The Shift, a large desktop built to user specifications, runs at up to 4 GHz and features its a liquid cooling system. Prices begin at US$2,199. ...

Though it's officially less than two weeks out of the gate, Microsoft's Windows 7 already owns a 3 percent share of the market for personal computer operating systems, according to Net Applications. When Windows 7 was generally released on Oct. 22, it already had a 1.99 percent share of the market, the firm reported. That figure rose to 3.67 percent by the end of last week.

Sometime between now and the year 2019, Comcast will start going after botnets and will stop sending malicious Web traffic to its customers. Google will send up more alarms if your search results include possibly infectious links. Microsoft and Apple will get better at plugging holes in their software. The U.S. Congress will assign liability for bad network security, and economic incentives will be taken away from hackers looking to make a quick buck...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed technology that could help fight blindness. It's aimed at the millions of people impacted by two of the major causes of blindness: age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa. The MIT project is one of several that use a physical prosthesis -- a chip implanted direct...

Forecasts for the magnitude of online micro-payments can whet the appetite of any profit-minded businessperson. However, cracking that code is more complicated than one thinks. There is little question as to whether sub-US$5 products can be sold in mass volume, but the lynchpin to opening the floodgates of micro-payments may very well be payment method...

In both the best and worst of economic times, worker productivity is a major management goal. Making sure that employees efficiently carry out their tasks is critical to the success of both government and business enterprises. First, of course, the workers have to show up. "Buddy punching" -- the practice of having one worker punch the time card o...

Last month was fascinating for me. Not only was Windows 7 launched, but it appeared last week that because so many Mac users were installing Windows 7, some huge enterprise servers crashed. In addition, I got a chance to see Yahoo's new CEO Carol Bartz in action, and was both impressed with her and a little disappointed in the event. Finally, I got a chance to talk to the new managing director of the FCC and got a good sense for how the FCC is using social networking to actually create a more responsive government and move the needle on Net neutrality. ...

Social networking site Facebook has been awarded US$711 million in damages from prolific spammer and social network scammer Sanford Wallace for bombarding its users with spam, Facebook attorney Sam O'Rourke reported in a blog post. Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court in Northern California also banned Wallace from accessing Facebook Faceb...

It's enough of a challenge to launch a new subscription movie channel in an industry segment dominated by the likes of HBO and Showtime. However, Epix, which begins life Friday, starts its adventure with a double feature of sorts: It will also offer a Web streaming version of its channel That means Epix's Chief Digital Officer Emil Rensing will hav...

ICANN's decision on Friday to allow domain names in non-Latin characters may have been a move to forestall fragmentation of the Internet. "Not introducing international domains would mean that alternate root servers will be set up around the world because the demand is so high," Tina Dam, senior director for IDNs (international domain names) at IC...

The Android mobile operating system is graduating soon to 2.0 status, and Google gave it a pretty nice present to celebrate: a free turn-by-turn navigation app called "Google Maps Navigation." It'll run on Android 2.0 phones with GPS, and it'll use the phone's cellular Internet connection to get live map information There's a wide range of quality ...

My tour of travel-planning Web sites for the E-Commerce Times has included stops at some of the aggregator sites, some discount companies and some alternative services. I'm now entering new territory with explorations of the Web sites of the operators themselves. First stop: JetBlue, a discount airline that has carefully cultivated a customer-frie...

Small businesses frequently rely on a haphazard assortment of tools to manage their CRM processes, such as email, contact managers and spreadsheets. However, such methods are usually not sustainable or scalable. "Their customer data ends up fragmented across 10 different applications and physical locations," Dmitri Eroshenko, CEO of Relenta, told...

When the Verizon Droid from Motorola arrives next month, it will include a new version of the Android Operating system. Android 2.0, also known as "Eclair," will no doubt show up in lots of other new smartphones over the coming months Android 2.0 ushers in a host of new features. Perhaps the one that sparks the most interest is its native support f...

A tweet and a status update tell Facebook's story after a week of very unsociable social media slip-ups for Mark Zuckerberg's company The tweet: "Dear Facebook: Stop sucking, you're making Twitter look reliable."

Talk of a flu pandemic has evolved into a bit of flu panic. Rumors fly as some people die and others deny. Much of this fevered buzz is on and around the Internet. The fear that the Internet itself will crash is growing. The alarm is based on the presumption that as the flu spreads, so does the base of home telecommuters, placing such a burden on ...