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In the midst of the U.S. economic crisis, cautious spending and downsizing have left the retail industry in dire straits. The Commerce department recently reported that retail sales continued to fall in March -- down 1.1 percent from February's sales figures. March 2009 saw a 9 percent decline compa...

IBM had added a new service-and-hardware offering to its cloud computing repertoire. The bundle targets users seeking a single jumping-off point for deployment of a cloud environment focused on a discrete task, such as a test bed for application development. IBM CloudBurst is a set of preintegrated ...

The economy is still broken, and businesses are scampering to save money and entice back lost customers. Don't remind Brett Caine, though. As president of Citrix Online, he's too busy growing the company's customer base into a $100 million business that a few years ago didn't exist. As a young start...

Europe's nearly 18-month battle against the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has entered a new stage. The EC has rejected Microsoft's offer to strip Internet Explorer from some copies of Windows 7 destined to ship to the EU when the new operating system is released in the fall. Instead, th...

Many local governments have initiated class action lawsuits in an effort to compel the collection of sales taxes on hotel room markups. Online travel companies have responded to these cases along three main lines of defense, marshaling both procedural and substantive arguments. Among their defenses ...

I'm increasingly convinced that today's technology is making it possible to make cloud computing and SaaS solutions location-independent. The idea of private clouds, as well as deploying "hybrid" SaaS solutions behind the firewall, has become controversial among many cloud computing and SaaS zealots...

It's no accident that the new Palm Pre smartphone is compatible with Apple's iTunes. The man who helped Steve Jobs turn the iPod and its online music store into a digital revolution is the same man who has helped design the Pre and its well-reviewed webOS operating system. Now that man, Jon Rubinste...

It's a fact that might not bring a lot of comfort to consumers and businesses, but it's true: The methods for protecting e-commerce transactions haven't changed a great deal since online shopping became a viable option in the early '90s. SSL and TSL encryption are the protocols that slap on that lit...

It's a fact that might not bring a lot of comfort to consumers and businesses, but it's true: The methods for protecting e-commerce transactions haven't changed a great deal since online shopping became a viable option in the early '90s. SSL and TSL encryption are the protocols that slap on that lit...

It's a fact that might not bring a lot of comfort to consumers and businesses, but it's true: The methods for protecting e-commerce transactions haven't changed a great deal since online shopping became a viable option in the early '90s. SSL and TSL encryption are the protocols that slap on that lit...

It looks as though the Southern District of New York has opened a new front in the war on Internet gambling. Federal prosecutors have asked Citibank, Wells Fargo and two smaller banks to freeze funds in accounts belonging to two companies that process payouts on behalf of four offshore poker sites, ...

The traditional model of providing software and services to customers through locally managed servers and storage is fast becoming obsolete. It is not only expensive -- the cost of buying and maintaining an ever-growing cadre of servers alone is prohibitive -- but also counterproductive. It prevent...

The Federal Communications Commission has closed the first round of comment on its national broadband plan initiative, a requirement of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. The FCC must deliver a completed plan to Congress by February 2010 showing the way to more widespread broadband ...

Social marketing offers a new way to interact with consumers, but aside from being another channel, it requires a different mindset to achieve results. This is Web 2.0, where the consumer is in charge of the message and will angrily resist big brand pressure and broadcast marketing. Content needs to...

It applies to sports and smartphones: If you're an underdog, you will always be compared to the reigning champs until you knock them off their pedestal. The mission, then, for Palm during Saturday's retail launch of its Pre smartphone was relatively simple: Get as close as possible to an iPhone-styl...