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In this age when an Internet eon is roughly the equivalent of a calendar year and any given company titan can flicker out of existence in a flash, few companies, especially those solely Internet-based, are seen as enduring and solid and fated for perpetuity. Among these rarities, the world's largest online auction company, eBay, certainly holds it own. Even so, eBay too can be gobbled up by the times (or, as novelist Stephen King would describe it, the Langoliers) if it stands still even for a minute.

During the best of times, raising capital is no walk in the park. Today, however, the task can be daunting. After the Bear Stearns debacle and the problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is more difficult to raise capital than at any other time in recent history Given today's environment, a company seeking to raise capital has to be as focused a...

On July 11, when Apple had barely started to sell its much-anticipated iPhone 3G, Salesforce.com became the first customer relationship management vendor to announce the availability of its mobile applications for the iPhone in Apple's App Store. Now, two weeks after the phone's release, a few other CRM vendors can claim some sort of iPhone 3G com...

When it comes to the Internet, Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently said that he's "an illiterate who has to rely on his wife for any assistance he can get." In an era where the Internet is playing an ever greater role, does such an admission matter, and does it say anything important about the age gap between McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama?...

Juniper Networks, a provider of networking systems, has tapped 16-year Microsoft veteran Kevin Johnson to be its CEO. Johnson led Microsoft's platforms and services division, which oversees product development, marketing and strategy for the Windows and online services businesses. As it announced Johnson's departure, Microsoft said it will reorganize this division -- splitting it into Windows/Windows Live and online services -- with both groups reporting to CEO Steve Ballmer. ...

Facebook on Wednesday announced several changes in the way applications and user information are handled. The social networking site's new measures include Facebook Connect, the Great Apps program and the Facebook Verification program, officials said at Facebook's F8 developer's conference. The company also announced a new developer's site More tha...

British parents who don't know what their kids are downloading on the family computer may want to start paying more attention, thanks to a new antipiracy agreement among the six largest Internet service providers in the United Kingdom The U.S. music industry will no doubt track developments in the UK. That's because the effort, announced by BT, Vir...

While the beta testing seems never to end at Google -- Gmail is still in beta well past age 4 -- the world's largest search engine and advertising machine has released to the public a new knowledge base called "Knol." A "knol," according to Google, is a unit of knowledge. More specifically, Google says Knols are authoritative articles about specif...

As though in defiance of current economic trends, Amazon delivered second-quarter earnings that gave investors little to complain about Net income increased 102 percent to US$158 million, or 37 cents a share, compared with net income of $78 million, or 19 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Net sales, or revenue, jumped 41 percent to $4.06 bi...

NetSuite has added new features to its NetSuite CRM+ flagship product, focusing on building new and tweaking existing marketing automation and knowledge management workflows for customer support and service NetSuite also announced support for Firefox 3, the latest version of the Web browser from the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox supports multiple ope...

Proponents of the beleaguered Child Online Protection Act suffered yet another blow Tuesday when a federal appeals court deemed the law unconstitutional once again The 1998 law, known as "COPA," aims to keep children from viewing pornographic materials on the Internet by making it a crime for commercial Web site operators to let children access "ha...

Intel announced on Thursday new processors built around its plans for a new category of highly integrated, purpose-built and Web-savvy system-on-chip (SoC) designs The company also unveiled its first eight products under its Intel EP80579 Integrated Processor family for security, storage, communications and industrial robotics....

The world of online business communication has introduced two industry-changing elements for small business: more customers and more competitors. Circa 1999, you were ahead of the competition by simply having a Web site to preview your service or products. By 2004, Web transactions were the norm, and convenience was the king. Now both those prev...

Never before has the voice of the customer been so loud. And never before have companies been so keen to not only pay close attention to the wants, likes, experiences, preferences, opinions, suggestions and complaints of customers, but to carefully analyze and act upon the information in a systematic fashion. In June, Aberdeen published a benchmar...

MindTouch announced on Wednesday the latest version of its open source collaboration and collective intelligence platform, MindTouch Deki (formerly Deki Wiki). Dubbed "Kilen Woods," it features new workflow capabilities, enterprise adapters and usability improvements. The release targets information workers, IT professionals, and developers looking to collaborate and connect enterprise systems and data sources.

We're facing a Web security gap. The Web has become the primary source of infections in enterprises, surpassing e-mail. Although most enterprises do some form of URL filtering on their Web traffic, it's proven to not be an adequate security solution alone. Only 15 percent of organizations are performing the deeper inspection and blocking on Web ...

Hitachi, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp and Sony have joined forces with Amimon, a developer of wireless home digital interface (WHDI) technology. The companies have pledged support for the creation of a new interoperable industry standard for audio, video and control that could connect multiple high-definition devices around a home without the use of wires...

Microsoft announced several changes to its Games for Windows Live and Xbox Live services Tuesday. Chief Technology Officer Chris Satchell outlined the changes at the company's Gamefest 2008 Conference held in Seattle The software maker has removed its fees for Games for Windows Live, so now multiplayer game play functionality is available at no ext...

Yahoo disappointed shareholders with its second quarter earnings report, posting declining profits that missed Wall Street's expectations. Its quarterly net income fell to US$131 million, or 9 cents per share, from $161 million, or 11 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding certain charges, Yahoo realized earnings of $139 million, or 10 cents per share, falling one cent short of analyst expectations.

Usually, it's a mayor who hands out the key to his or her city to residents deserving special recognition. In San Francisco's case, it was Mayor Gavin Newsom who took back the key to his city's computer network from the man who held it hostage for more than a week The only positive recognition system administrator Terry Childs is likely to get from...