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Living up to a promise it made investors, Dell announced Tuesday it will return to buying back its stock now that an internal accounting investigation is concluded. The stock repurchases will begin this week with the buying back of $10 billion worth of shares, the Round Rock, Texas, computer giant s...

Bidz.com is successful now, but it had very humble beginnings. I started Bidz in 1998 with no computer experience. I had no preconceived notions of how e-commerce should look and feel to customers. I didn't know how an e-commerce company should be run. I had owned many different types of businesses ...

Who would have thought that it would be so easy to get PC and network users to install viruses, worms, application-downloading Trojan horses and other forms of malware on their PCs? Through a simple form of social engineering -- sending out enticing, unsolicited e-mail spam -- Internet users are doi...

Two years after a merger that helped herald the coming blogging revolution, Six Apart has agreed to sell its LiveJournal counterpart to a Russian media company. LiveJournal had already been operating a Russian-language version through a partnership with the buyer, a firm called "SUP." Terms of the d...

Users of AOL's fledgling video download service may be in for a surprise the next time they visit the site. The one-time Internet leader has shuttered its 1-year-old video service and is now funneling users to Amazon.com's Unbox video download site. The shutdown follows AOL's decision to reinvent it...

In a three-year deal worth US$4.5 billion, Dell is consolidating its far-flung advertising efforts into an integrated "new marketing model" that involves partnering with one agency: London-based WPP Group. Dell officials said they've been calling the new arrangement "Project DaVinci," a name intende...

French media giant Vivendi will buy a sizable stake in video game publisher Activision and merge the company with its own successful gaming unit, creating a game-development powerhouse. The deal will produce a new company, known as "Activision Blizzard," that will have $3.8 billion in combined reven...

The adage "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" is particularly appropriate in the market for consumer video formats and players. Consistently, manufacturers have been unwilling or unable to develop formats compatible over a broad range of CE devices, and consumers have suffe...

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...

The price tag on the largest database breach on record moved higher Friday with TJX agreeing to pay nearly $41 million to settle with credit card companies and banks that were forced to issue new cards to customers of the retailer to prevent or recover fraudulent charges. TJX said it would pay $40.9

Wall Street gave Dell the smackdown early Friday, a day after the company issued a third-quarter report that showed solid revenue and earnings but acknowledged clouds on the horizon. The company's shares took a nosedive largely because, despite reporting Q3 revenues that were up 9 percent year-over-...

Motorola CEO Ed Zander will step down from his post at the end of the year, a victim of a long and deep post-Razr market share slump at the top U.S.-based maker of mobile handsets. The Schaumburg, Ill., company -- which last week fell from second to third in terms of worldwide market share behind No...

Google is readying its application to participate in the Federal Communications Commission's January auction of 700 MHz wireless spectrum, the company announced Friday, but it is acting alone, without any partners. The company will file its application on Monday, after which FCC rules prevent it fro...

The Software as a Service concept is rapidly spreading to touch almost every functional area in the IT stack. The latest example is security vendor Webroot's acquisition of Email Systems, a SaaS security provider. Primarily focused on consumer and SMB markets prior to this merger, Webroot's newly ac...

You probably realize that startups experience an inordinate amount of failures. Of course, starting any new business is fraught with risks. However, these risks can be minimized with the proper planning. Based upon my experience in owning and advising businesses, I have come up with seven tips for t...