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Just as Robert Langdon gets ready to take his fans on another thrill ride in the forthcoming new Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol, another tantalizing mystery has popped up: Is Asus getting ready to unveil a low-cost, dual-color-screen e-book reader just in time for the holidays? The Sunday Times of London quotes a UK Asus executive as saying the c...

Google has proposed modifying its proposed digital books deal with publishers and authors in an effort to tamp down growing opposition to the project. The changes would limit the number of out-of-print books it places online. Industry groups were given a venue to complain about the proposed agreement at a hearing sponsored by the European Commiss...

A rose by any other name can raise quite the stink, making the act of localizing Web sites to fit foreign cultures all the more thorny. Even if the product is as sweet as ice cream, it's possible to leave a bitter taste in consumer's mouths. "Ben and Jerry launched their 'black and tan' flavor of ice cream without realizing that this phrase referr...

Aretha Franklin didn't intend it, but she offered a powerful business lesson when she sang "R.E.S.P.E.C.T -- find out what it means to me." Customer relationship management (CRM) has evolved into customer experience management, and respect is the biggest part of providing an excellent customer experience. So, what does respect mean to your custome...

Like Alice's Restaurant in the Arlo Guthrie song, the Internet lets you get anything you want -- from views on politics or science and technology or religion to recipes and gossip. Oh, and of course, news However, few people do more than skim the surface -- and as they do with newspapers, most people tend to read only what interests them. Add to th...

This story was originally published on May 19, 2009, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Zappos, online shoe emporium extraordinaire, has been expanding itsline of merchandise in recent years -- offering clothes, watches and otherjewelry, and even housewares. For the consumer, the shift has appearedeffortless -- jus...

I'm atIFA as I write this, and in Europe, green clearly does matter. Here, they even have a viableGreen Party, but in the U.S., I sometimes wonder whether we care. This was showcased in a presentation in which Sony ranked geographical areas in terms of the importance of green, and the U.S. came in last. This week I thought I'd list the green effor...

On Facebook, most people make friends the old-fashioned way -- by sending a request to be added to someone's posse of pals. Now, an Australian marketing company hopes to save you time and energy by simply buying you a few thousand buddies The service from uSocial is mostly meant for businesses, celebrities and other individuals looking to expand on...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has temporarily stayed an injunction against the sale of Microsoft Word that had been set to go into effect next month. Microsoft will be able to continue selling copies of its ubiquitous word processing software -- at least until the appeal of the original judgment is heard.

Toshiba unveiled its first Blu-ray disc player on Thursday at the IFA consumer electronics trade fair in Berlin The announcement comes less than one month after Toshiba applied for membership in the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and announced it will introduce products supporting the Blu-ray format.

Several telephone companies have suggested to the FCC that it change its definition of broadband Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are asking the government to define broadband transmissions as anything over 768 Kbps (kilobits per second) downstream and 200 Kbps upstream....

Android is finally getting a little more wardrobe variety. It's also moving out into new U.S. carriers. Sprint is the latest wireless company to jump in with the Android crowd; it'll start selling the HTC Hero this October. The Hero looks to be a pretty capable handset. It's loaded with Google apps, of course, plus a pretty big camera, a touchscre...

Travel Web sites were among the first category of e-commerce ventures to actually make a buck a decade or so ago. It is astounding, therefore, that recent industry reports show a deep dissatisfaction among many users of these portals. In particular, Forrester Research recently reported on the failings of several of these sites, both in terms of tools and customer service.

The concept of "the funnel" is a sacred cow in marketing. The basic concept of leads progressing through a series of steps of escalating interaction until they finally make a purchase is intuitive. At the macro level, it is fairly easy to model the funnel and assign labels to each step -- awareness, interest, consideration, evaluation, commitment,...

The current economic recession may be pummeling companies around the globe, but amid all the dire reports and grim statistics littering what can only be compared to a bloody battlefield, one oft-cited exception appears to be still standing tall: free and open source software That's what the common discourse seems to suggest, at least, and there's s...

The last time I saw Rebecca Aguilar in person, it was early October of 2007. We were both at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' Noche de Triunfos awards banquet in Washington, D.C. I was presenting an award and she was receiving one -- NAHJ Broadcast Journalist of the Year for her work at the Fox affiliate in Dallas, Texas Two weeks ...

Can a Hero fly to Sprint's rescue in the battle for smartphone supremacy? The Hero will sell for US$179 after a $50 instant savings, and a $100 mail-in rebate....

The European Commission on Thursday expanded its investigation into Oracle's plans to purchase Sun Microsystems The EC wants to study the potential antitrust issues arising from proprietary database vendor Oracle's takeover of Sun's open source MySQL database application....

If you ask anyone today to define "cloud computing," there is slim chance you will get agreement on an exact definition. It is one of those emerging technologies that everyone knows they want to get into, but no one seems to know why or what the real benefit is. There is a lot of promise, but very few companies have realized tangible benefits from such services. The fact of the matter is that it is one of those areas that seems to be in a continuous state of flux.

Imagine this all-too-common scenario: A customer needs to add a new line to his cellphone plan. He's had a number of reception and phone issues, and he will stay with his current company only if offered a very good deal. However, the agent -- unaware of the prolonged dissatisfaction and insensitive to the customer's tone -- suggests an expensive upgrade plan and rushes the customer to some type of decision. The customer, just trying to get his issue resolved, realizes his voice is not being heard and responds with a termination request...