Spotlight Features

Online securities trading was a big fad a few years ago, but some of the major players disappeared from the scene after the dot-com fallout. However, many do-it-from-home traders cannot resist the Internet's speed and convenience, and there are still plenty of firms to accommodate them. Although som...

The Internet has completely reshaped customer relationships. The transformation began with the dot-com boom, which spawned a new type of company whose entire business model was predicated on Web acceptance and usage. These companies -- Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Google -- took advantage of the Web in a...

The power of music to bridge national boundaries and cultural divides has long been recognized, but perhaps has never been as starkly clear as it is today. One need only look at the phenomenal growth of MTV channels in countries around the world during the past decade. The commercialization and spre...

Remember the tech bubble? If you do, I'm sure that you'll remember the bursting of that bubble in mid 2000. Now, it seems as though the tech run-up is happening again. To give us a little perspective, I want to quote something that CNNMoney ran on Feb. 4, 2000: "Emerge Interactive, an online marketp...

Investments in alternative energy continue to grow at their highest rates since the OPEC crisis of the 1970s. Around the world, the persistence of much higher fossil fuel prices, heightened power demands -- particularly in the fast-developing economies of China and India -- national employment trend...

The business-to-business market was the darling of e-commerce pundits way back in the early '90s when companies began to get serious about using the Web to do business. B2B e-commerce was expected to lead the way into a brave new online world of business communications, management and international ...

The press has been replete with complaints from companies that have to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. Some of the criticisms were based upon the outsized cost of compliance. Other criticisms revolved around the difficulty and intricacy of compliance, especially to Section 404, Management Assessment of ...

Today it seems like every owner of a decent size database now calls itself a "specialized vertical search engine." I suppose there is some clever marketing logic in positioning oneself as such given the wholesale adoption of search as a business tool, and of good search results as a very cost-effect...

Security-conscious online shoppers have long feared that thieves will snatch their credit card number and other personal information right out from under their fingertips as they nervously click the "buy now" icon on retailers' Web sites. The proof is in the numbers: 80 million consumers who use the...

Internet start-ups seeking venture capital support may be in luck, as a second coming of sorts seems to be in full swing for Web-based technology firms, which enjoyed a seemingly endless supply of cash during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. In September alone, General Catalyst Partners invested...

Recognizing the mutual benefit that accrues to helping their online merchants succeed, e-commerce hosting companies, along with e-tailers themselves, are driving demand for software applications that can help them better manage and grow their businesses. This final installment in our five-part serie...

The rise of digital marketing has opened up a world of opportunity to win customers that goes well beyond search engine optimization, banner ads and link exchanges. This is due in part to the evolution of the Internet, which is sparking creative ideas that leverage new online platforms for guerilla ...

Every e-mail, ad and search engine marketing placement entices a click by making a promise. Most of the time that promise is immediately broken and the brand behind it is tarnished. Marketers work very hard at enticing that first response. We treat the click as the objective and consider the battle ...

Many hedge funds charge extraordinarily high fees to the investor. Not only do they charge a base fee that can be augmented by churning the securities in the fund, but they also can charge a profit-participation fee based upon a healthy percentage of the fund's gains. To add insult to injury, the ac...

Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun are hardly strangers to the realm of comparison shopping sites. The dynamic duo founded mySimon.com, which became the largest price comparison shopping site on the Internet, with over 10 million users in 2000. After raising US$30 million in investment capital, mySimon wa...