Spotlight Features

The growth of e-commerce and the continuing expansion of outsourcing and the remote workforce are fueling a new approach to paying for services. Internet-focused companies are replacing traditional online payment transactions with prepaid debit cards. Payoneer is a startup firm that is pushing this ...

Peer-to-peer consumer lending sites are shaking up the world of Internet finance. Be it the Internet or broadband wide-area networks, growing capabilities and increasing standardization are changing the way finance organizations do business, as Part 1 of this series discusses. The Net is also a key ...

More than a decade after they first rushed to search for exit-strategy gold in the e-commerce niche, venture investors are still finding plenty of early and mid-stage companies to back in the space. Often, however, the deals are more modest in size than they were when the dot-com bubble was building...

Internet banking and stock trading was all the rage during the late 1990s. Now, two emerging areas of e-finance -- peer-to-peer lending and microfinance -- are disrupting the status quo even further and moving their markets into a new stage of development. Facilitators of peer-to-peer borrowing and ...

Considering the speed at which technology evolves, predicting even a year in advance can be a dicey proposition. Still, given key tech sector developments during 2007 and the outlook for 2008, some trends are unmistakable. It's a safe bet that social networking and Web 2.0 overall will remain a clos...

The European broadband market is growing rapidly. At the end of Q2 2007, there were close to 100 million broadband subscribers in Europe. DSL remains the dominant access technology, with over 80 percent of the market share. Nordic countries remain the leaders in broadband penetration, with penetrati...

At first glance, tech stocks may appear to have missed out on the great stock market rally of 2007. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a new all-time high on Oct. 2, the Nasdaq would have had to gain more than 100 percent to match its best level ever. Still, for a lot of reasons, 2007 was a s...

Though opinions are mixed, industry experts and economists expect a reasonably good holiday retail sales season this year despite an economy struggling with higher oil and import prices, decreasing home values and the after-effects of mortgage market problems. Online holiday sales, in particular, s...

Consumers are enamored with HD entertainment devices. What consumers abhor, however, is the quagmire of cabling that tethers their HDTVs, high-def DVD players, gaming consoles and surround sound systems together. Hudson, Mass.-based Radiospire Networks is banking on consumers clamoring to its breakt...

The holiday shopping season is upon us. Import prices are up as the U.S. dollar continues its descent, oil prices are hitting record highs, and the American economy is still struggling to absorb shocks from mortgage market problems, falling home values and tighter credit conditions. Given a backdrop...

As the Internet and digital technologies continue to play an ever-increasing role on the business side of the music industry, big-name recording artists have begun to turn their backs on their labels and opt instead to strike out on their own. Part 1 of this two-part series described what longstandi...

Considering putting an e-mail disclaimer at the end of the e-mail that says, in effect, "Hey, don't read this!" is every bit as effective as a park flasher telling you not to look -- how much protection does that overly verbose threat actually carry? "The e-mail disclaimer is more of a back-up plan ...

They have been making their lists and checking them twice. As a result, consumers will soon learn which retailers have been naughty or nice in planning for their most important part of their year: the holiday rush. "So much of retailers' business rides on the holiday season that they want to be sure...

The music industry switched gears last week in its legal campaign to squash piracy of its intellectual property and filed a lawsuit against Usenet.com which it calls "a haven for those seeking pirated content." In recent months, the industry, through its trade organization, the Recording Industry As...

There are many reasons why a company might opt to conduct virtual meetings rather than face-to-face ones. Cost is one, particularly with fuel costs soaring; having a widely dispersed base of employees, clients or partners is another common one. An increasing number of companies are also meeting up i...