Spotlight Features

Given the pace of business today, instant messaging seems like a natural fit for the global enterprise, enabling far-flung employees and contract workers to communicate in real-time throughout the workday. However, many businesses are balking for a simple reason: IM and other peer-to-peer applicatio...

A new report by Technology Futures of Austin, Texas, states that in 2003, the proportion of American households using broadband of some kind -- DSL, cable or wireless -- will surpass 20 percent. At this crucial juncture in the evolution of the Internet, it might be worth reminding lawmakers who are ...

Although Ruben Studdard has officially won the American Idol title, edging out Clay Aiken by a razor-thin margin, the search for America's e-business idol is still under way -- and industry observers seem as split over the contenders as the voting public was over the contestants on the top-rated TV ...

When the mainstream first discovered the newly spun Web, a new breed of spider emerged: the cybersquatter, an individual or company that registered many domain names and resold them at high prices. Although cybersquatters' numbers have diminished -- along with their profits -- these domain-name vult...

For a time, small businesses probably felt like little kids getting bumped out of line for the ice cream truck. They would jump up and down, money in hand, trying to catch the attention of software vendors, only to see those vendors choose to do business with larger, stronger, deeper-pocketed enterp...

In some industries, it is easy to tell who is at the top of the heap. The office software realm has Microsoft, the beer world has Budweiser, and for much of the cola-loving planet, Coke is it. Among online brokerages, however, crowning a king is not so simple. Potential candidates have strengths and...

While the Microsoft vs. Linux debate rages in boardroom meetings and around IT water coolers, IBM has chosen sides already. Although Big Blue maintains a friendly relationship with Microsoft, its efforts in touting Linux worldwide have shown that the company is strolling down the aisle hand-in-hand ...

At the peak of the business-to-business boom, which coincided with the dot-com glory days, there were more than 2,000 B2B exchanges, according to eMarketer senior analyst Steve Butler. However, most of those fledgling enterprises did not survive the subsequent bust. In fact, insiders are predicting ...

By all indications, Windows Server 2003 is engineered to be more secure than its predecessors. Microsoft has adopted a two-pronged approach to achieving this goal: The company has added several new features intended to boost security, and it has altered the operating system's out-of-the-box settings...

When HP merged with Compaq just over a year ago, the combined company surpassed Dell in PC sales -- but with continued yearly growth rates of more than 20 percent, Dell had regained the top spot by the first quarter of 2003. Just last week, Dell reported its worldwide shipments had increased by near...

Call it the CTO's top 10 list. Every week, Keynote Systems releases a list of the top-performing Web sites in terms of load times, separating the lightning-quick from the sadly sluggish. It is little wonder that IT departments are focused on speeding up page load times -- a quick response can make t...

When e-commerce first became popular, it was not long before affiliate marketing sprung up as a way for small-site Davids to drive traffic toward e-tail Goliaths -- and make some change in the process. However, many affiliate programs were structured so that the house always won, and minor players w...

After a short run as a buzz phrase during the dot-com surge, business-to-business (B2B) exchanges have fallen below most people's radar screens. However, the truth is that B2B is quietly trucking along. The only difference between the vision of yesteryear and the reality of today is that instead of ...

It is a scene that retailers have seen since the world's first bazaar opened: the slow sales period, complete with idle clerks, empty aisles and languishing goods. E-tailers have come to know these stretches -- the low-revenue valleys that lie between peak shopping times -- well. Despite the now-pre...

In recent months, a few large e-tailers, including Target.com and Walmart.com, started charging sales tax on purchases made through their sites. If more e-businesses hop on the bandwagon in coming months, the trickle may become a trend. The timing certainly seems right: With many state governments f...