E-Commerce

The cost of making movies has risen significantly over the years, with the average Hollywood film now costing $60 million, double the average in 1996. One main reason for this increase is the rise of special effects, which has ballooned from a small specialty industry into a vital cog in the product...

Cisco Systems has announced plans to acquire Riverhead Networks, a privately held provider of technology that could help prevent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on corporate networks, for $39 million in cash. Riverhead's technology will enhance Cisco's suite of integrated security produ...

Sun Microsystems has revealed it is working on a server designed to enable faster and more expansive online game play. The company's goal is to create a dedicated server that can allow far more online gamers to play the same game at the same time. Meanwhile, a continent away, Sun is flooding the CTI...

Google recently announced the integration of local search results into Google.com. Currently in beta, Google Local allows users to find relevant local information with neighborhood business listings, maps, directions and Web links. Combining sources from its catalog in excess of 4.3 billion Web page...

There are a few cardinal rules of e-business sites that have become the goal of every Webmaster: Keep design simple, make navigation easy, and stress the need for speed. With Web architecture becoming more refined and vendors pushing out products that streamline operations, becoming faster has never...

Last-ditch efforts by high-ranking Microsoft executives to negotiate a settlement with European Union antitrust regulators apparently have fallen short, and the clock is now ticking toward a March 24th decision by regulators about what penalties to slap on the software giant. Microsoft had been in n...

In what is being billed as the largest one-time investment of private equity in a technology firm, a leveraged buyout group led by two Silicon Valley venture capital firms has agreed to buy EDS' product design software business for $2.05 billion in cash. The business, UGS PLM Solutions, has about 42...

Oracle has reported third-quarter sales rose 9 percent year over year to US$2.5 billion while profits climbed 11 percent to $635 million. The company also issued a positive outlook for the rest of 2004, a prediction that could help the stock market end a week-long slide. Oracle said new software lic...

Yahoo has announced an offering that will marry its instant messaging offering with British Telecommunications' BT Communicator service, creating a call management package that integrates PC-to-phone calling, Internet call waiting and directory lookup with Yahoo's Messenger service. Voice over Inter...

The 1990s saw Latin American countries -- like their "developing country" counterparts in Asia -- benefit from large inflows of direct foreign investment as well as mergers-and-acquisitions activity. This tremendous influx of funds was in large part driven by the speculative Internet and telecommuni...

An alliance of leading Internet companies -- including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and EarthLink -- has filed a wave of lawsuits against "hard-core" spammers under the new CAN-SPAM law that took effect at the beginning of 2004. Specifically, the companies said they have filed six lawsuits that name hundre...

In the latest example of a small software firm with cutting-edge technology being scooped up by a big-name tech player, privately held Trigo Technologies has agreed to be acquired by IBM, where its technology will become part of Big Blue's burgeoning middleware portfolio. IBM said it will integrate ...

Many signs point toward a bright future for e-business: Online shopping activity is up, holiday seasons are becoming positively merry, and customer service is improving. On the other hand, some customers still fear identity theft, site usability is a continuing issue, and establishing an online bran...

Home improvement guru and media mogul Martha Stewart was found guilty Friday of charges that she obstructed the investigation into her 2001 sale of nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone, a close friend's company, just before the stock plummeted in value. All told, the charges against Stewart carry a maximu...

Signaling its intention to remain a player amid the giants in the search engine battle, Ask Jeeves said it will acquire the parent company of the Excite Network of search engines for about $343 million in cash and stock. Ask Jeeves said the acquisition of privately held Interactive Search Holdings w...