E-Commerce

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has given preliminary approval to two new Internet domain names, ".travel" and ".post." The two suffixes have been under evaluation by ICANN, a public-private partnership that oversees the Internet's addressing system, and the approval ...

Yahoo has launched a mobile version of its Web, image and local search offerings, a move that opens up a new and wireless battlefield in the search engine wars. At least initially, Yahoo's mobile search will be stripped of content-relevant ads from its Overture paid listings business, a sign that an...

Hoping to revive its approach to using sender identification to curb e-mail spam, Microsoft announced it has tweaked its Sender ID specification and that leading Internet service provider America Online has agreed to back it. Less than a month after a lack of consensus about the prudence of making S...

After making two acquisitions of its own over the past few months, Classmates Online is selling its assets to United Online for US$100 million in a move that will boost United's subscriber base. United, which also operates NetZero and Juno services, will add the subscription-based Web site that allo...

What does performance mean to your e-business? If you are like most e-business executives, you immediately think about high-level performance metrics such as revenue, costs and customer satisfaction, with varying degrees of emphasis depending on whether your e-business Web site is focused on serving...

In a move that seems to promise a brutal battle with Google and Microsoft over development of the best Web-based e-mail offering, Yahoo said today it had acquired a startup that offered a searchable e-mail system. Yahoo did not disclose what it paid for privately held Stata Labs of San Mateo, Califo...

U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell is calling for a hands-off approach to Voice over IP (VoIP) and has vowed to attempt to take regulatory control back from the states after the presidential election. "It is very likely that treatment of VoIP will have some of the f...

In its first major innovation since its August IPO, Google has launched a desktop search engine tool that allows users to search personal computer files at the same speed they "google" the Web. The new application throws the gauntlet directly in Microsoft's front court. "Google Desktop Search brings...

A leading wireless networking industry group is warning vendors not to push ahead too fast on the next generation of WiFi technology, a faster version that will enable a host of new features. The WiFi Alliance said it would not certify features based on the 802.11n standards being developed by the I...

Google took its first bite out of the European commercial market in Great Britain yesterday, launching a beta version of Froogle, an Internet price-comparison service for British shoppers which closely resembles Google's home page. Online shopping is already popular in the country; the BBC estimates...

In an effort to avoid consumer confusion and information overload, and at the same time to mirror the success of companies like Amazon and Dell, Microsoft has unveiled a new shopping site for Windows hardware and software. The software behemoth said the main reason for the Windows Marketplace site w...

Security companies have identified a new worm spreading through Microsoft's instant messaging platform. The worm, known as the Funner worm, originated in Asia but is quickly spreading to the U.S., according to instant messaging security firm IMLogic. The worm has only been spotted to date on the Mic...

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 today at a gala media event at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium with high hopes of bringing his market-dominant operating system out of the office and into the living room. "Today, the dream of digital entertainment becomes ...

EBay's PayPal online payment service has been hit by a week-long series of technical glitches that have left some small merchants unable to receive payments. The problems have left some PayPal users unable to access the service or their accounts. PayPal is the most popular online payment service and...

Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates tomorrow will officially launch the latest version of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system, complete with extensions that play or record video, music and other media. The update to Windows XP Professional will offer users ...