Business

Will consumers have a safe and secure holiday shopping season? Or will identity thieves walk away with the lion's share of the profits? According to VeriSign's latest Internet Security Intelligence Briefing, which covers the period from July through September, the number of security attacks has decl...

Research firms are predicting gangbuster sales for antivirus software vendors over the next few years. IDC forecasts the antivirus software market will increase to reach US$4.4 billion by 2007, with significant market share from corporate customers, and customers in North America and Western Europe....

The holiday shopping season has officially begun, and the sales results are in for the first weekend of the 2004 race for fourth quarter profits. Online and offline retailers alike have a lot to smile about. Indeed, while both brick and mortar and e-commerce outfits are reporting boom times, it prom...

A closely watched trial that could have lasting implications for the person-to-person (P2P) industry has gotten underway in Australia, where the entertainment industry hopes to prove that P2P network operators are responsible for the illegal swapping they enable. Major music labels made similar atte...

Are you searching for holiday profits? Join the e-club. Countless thousands of online retailers are competing in what analysts call a "zero sum game" where only one vendor can win the sale. However, take heart. There are plenty of sales to go around. EMarketer predicts online retail sales will reach...

American businesses are usually very price sensitive. Compared to firms elsewhere in the world, American companies tend to pay close attention to performance numbers. Valuing this kind of metric often comes as a surprise to offshore service providers, particularly in cultures where personal connecti...

One hundred independent software vendors (ISVs) have pledged to use software under the umbrella of IBM's Workplace, a direct competitor to Microsoft .NET. Both are attempts to move PC-centric productivity software onto a network. The company did not say exactly how much of the software that falls un...

Working through the weekend on a hotly contested topic with ramifications for the Internet and technology industries, the U.S. Senate approved a modified version of a controversial copyright protection bill being backed by the entertainment industry. The Senate on Saturday passed what it's calling t...

An adult Web site publisher is suing Google, saying the search engine company made it easier for users to see the site's copyrighted nude photographs without paying or gaining access through the proper channels. Perfect 10 sued Google for copyright infringement in U.S. District Court for the Central...

Instant messaging provider ICQ plans to officially launch a premium Web-based e-mail service later this week. The America Online property's latest offering gives users 2 GB of e-mail storage, and a suite of other features, for US$19.99 a year. That suite of other features includes an online calendar...

Instant messaging, a staple of teenage life, is growing up and entering the workplace. Yet companies whose employees arbitrarily install commercial IM solutions are opening themselves up to a potential Pandora's Box of viruses, worms and network degradation. Today, 50 percent of people polled use IM...

Showing no sign of letting up in its legal war against music swappers, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed another 761 copyright-infringement lawsuits against individuals. As in the most recent batch of suits filed last month, the RIAA once again set its sights squarely on...

This is the time of year when the small-business owner has to start thinking of year-end strategies for his/her company. Because tax strategies have a large, yet controllable, influence on your business, they should be your main focus as a business owner. The business owner's tax decisions depend on...

Overstock.com announced today it will sell 1.2 million shares of common stock at an expected price of US$57.53 per share. That would give the online closeout retailer approximately $65.3 million in proceeds. The company said underwriters have an option to purchase up to an additional 180,000 shares ...

Search engine leader and stock market darling Google has warned investors that its skyrocketing growth rate is slowing, a development analysts knew was inevitable but one that might be coming sooner than many had expected. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google said that the...