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A few years ago, micropayments seemed like yet another brilliant idea in the midst of the Internet revolution. Then the bottom fell out of the market. Although many e-businesses in other industries have come back from the dot-com brink with stronger models and clearer goals, micropayment specialists...

In the six years since Musicmatch opened its virtual doors, the online music business has seen some significant changes. Musicmatch CEO Dennis Mudd spoke with the E-Commerce Times about what lies ahead. "Things now are like we expected them to be in '97," he said. "When we put the original business ...

Optimism about the tech sector abounded at this year's CES event in Las Vegas, as more than 110,000 attendees gathered to gape at computers embedded in refrigerators, hear about new offerings from Microsoft and watch rhinestone-studded singers belt out selections from the musical "Chicago" at the Sa...

Hewlett-Packard has shaken up the high-tech industry, saying it will work with Apple Computer to build its own version of the Apple iPod and will include Apple's digital jukebox software on its new PCs. The partnership provided the biggest surprise so far during a hectic week of one-upmanship at the...

Reviving one of the pioneering brands of the Internet boom in an effort to stop cost-conscious customers from jumping to discount ISPs, America Online has unveiled a cut-rate Internet access option bearing the Netscape brand. AOL said its Netscape access service will feature unlimited dial-up access...

Judging by its strategy, firewall vendor NetScreen is committed to a holistic view of enterprise security, leading the charge to integrate and deepen the firewall beyond its original parameters. The company's recently released Deep Inspection Firewall, for example, is designed to prevent application...

Underscoring the potential it sees in positioning computers as entertainment devices, Intel has announced it will establish a venture capital fund to back startups that develop home entertainment hardware and software. The chipmaker's venture wing, Intel Capital, will oversee the Digital Home Fund, ...

In his latest Macworld keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced a music-creation program called GarageBand, which Jobs described as a pro music tool for everyone, and a 4-GB mini iPod that sports sherbet colors. Perhaps most impressive is the Mini iPod's size: It is approximately as big as a busi...

Yahoo is poised to end its long-time relationship with search-results provider Google, setting the stage for the two leaders in paid and traditional search to begin competing more fiercely for market dominance. The breakup has been expected for a while, as Google has become more of an all-around thr...

As Microsoft's long-planned strategy to transform the PC from a work device into an entertainment hub takes shape, the company intends to use this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to ratchet up its efforts to capture more of the billions of dollars spent on home entertainment. According...

Last week, the U.S. Congress passed the sweeping "CAN-SPAM" bill, creating the first federal law regulating spam. Advocates of the bill say it is a major step in the fight against the deluge of e-mail ads for pornography, cheap prescription medicine and scads of other something-for-nothing schemes.

As the opening day of Apple's annual Macworld conference approaches, a growing number of iBook notebook computer users are threatening protests and mulling class-action lawsuits. They say the company has not done enough to address, or even acknowledge, serious flaws in the iBook that have caused som...

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by America Online against a group of Florida computer technicians, whom AOL had accused of maintaining computer networks that were used to batter its e-mail servers with spam targeting its millions of users. AOL had claimed the defendants violated Virg...

Early reports suggest holiday e-commerce sales grew well over 30 percent from 2002 levels, helping the e-tail industry record its best-ever season, even without the type of must-have gift items that have driven sales in past years. Total holiday season spending online -- measured from November 1st t...

Amid budgetary constraints, enterprise application snafus, and vendors that are slick with their PowerPoint presentations but AWOL with their implementations, the put-upon CIO has become as common a high-tech archetype as the teenage hacker or the jeans-clad, headstrong, bullying CEO "evangelist." W...