E-Commerce

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 failin...

Online auction site eBay has finally managed to divest itself of Skype, the VoIP company it bought back in 2005 for $2.6 billion. A group of venture capitalists led by Silver Lake Partners has purchased 65 percent of Skype for $2.1 billion in cash and a note, eBay announced on Tuesday. The transacti...

Wal-Mart has changed its logo. It's sprucing up many of its stores with new looks. Now, the world's largest retailer is expanding its online sales channel, adding a trio of carefully selected third-party vendors to its Web site in a bid to increase sales. WalMart Marketplace debuted Monday, offering...

Korean electronics giant Samsung on Monday announced that it will launch a mobile application store in Europe on Sept. 14. This follows the release of its mobile widget software development kit around mid-August and its unveiling in July of the Samsung Application Seller Site, a portal geared toward...

Blockbuster and Samsung recently announced that Blockbuster OnDemand will be available on select connected HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and home theater systems starting in the fall of 2009. Samsung will offer connected Blu-ray players and home theater systems with both the Netflix and Blockbuster online...

What's hot, and what's not? And how does an e-commerce concern turn it into cash? Knowing Internet trend patterns is not enough. Small e-commerce companies have to be able to act on the information they obtain in order to capitalize on it. When they do not move quickly enough, they may find themsel...

Do you have a video that has the potential to really go viral, like the wedding entrance dance or David after the dentist? Post it on YouTube -- not only for the notoriety, but also for the cold hard cash. Google is expanding its revenue-sharing YouTube Partnership program to include individual popu...

Over the past decade, online gambling has expanded to become a multi-billion dollar business. There are over 2,000 gambling sites worldwide; however, none of these sites are based in the United States, as the U.S. possesses stringent gambling laws. Most notably, in 2006, the U.S. Congress passed t...

Personalized Internet radio stations got a boost Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that Yahoo's LAUNCHcast music service was not interactive enough to be forced to pay hundreds of millions of US dollars in licensing fees. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said LAUNCHcast did...

A coalition of firms that oppose a settlement reached last year between Google and some representatives of the publishing industry over its Google Books project is growing. New members now reportedly include a troika of Web giants: Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. The coalition, called the "Open Book Al...

The growing demand for digital content products and value-added services is turning communications companies into super-enablers of all things digitally delivered. The many promising new revenue opportunities available are creating a mediacosm -- or a new market of converged communications, media a...

If LinkedIn is for professionals and Facebook is for friends, then MySpace is still the social network destination for teens/young adults to sing the praises of the rock bands that they love. To that end, MySpace announced Wednesday that it would build on that relationship by acquiring Seattle-based...

It is surprising -- albeit perhaps inevitable -- that the Obama Administration, which so ably navigated the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies during its presidential campaign, has stumbled using those same tools now that it is in office. The White House has received a large number of complaints from...

Though it's only mid-summer, retailers are knee-deep in finalizing their holiday plans. This season, they are under extraordinary pressure to generate as much revenue as possible from their online stores, which -- for many -- is their best performing channel. With only a few short months before reta...

If Toshiba's announcement 18 months ago that it was dropping the HD-DVD format was the anticlimatic thud that ended the DVD format wars, Tuesday's announcement by the Japanese technology company that it would join the Blu-ray Disc Association was little more than a dull echo. However, it did settle ...