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Just a few years ago, getting an e-business off the ground was as easy as drawing up a business plan and finding the venture capital to fund it. Those days, to put it mildly, are over. But this does not mean businesses that rely on the Web are no longer sprouting. While most e-biz startups are not d...

The Federal Trade Commission plans to review whether Microsoft violated a consent agreement with the agency over the privacy of its Passport online password system, following the revelation of a flaw that could have compromised millions of consumers' private data. Microsoft said it has fixed the pro...

Back in early 2000, mobile commerce seemed to have sky-high potential. A global survey found that 61 percent of respondents imagined they soon would be using wireless devices as universal payment tools, and the analysts who compiled the survey predicted that overall revenue generated by m-commerce w...

Nearly 31 million U.S. Internet users aged 18 and older have downloaded music in the past month -- but nearly three-quarters of those people also have purchased music either online or in music stores in the past three months, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. That finding supports a long-held argume...

It's time to end the mystery. That blur in the sky over Silicon Valley last week wasn't a bird or a plane. It wasn't a UFO either. It was the president of the United States. He stopped in the valley, fresh from declaring victory over Iraq on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, to hawk his tax cut. B...

Thanks to millions of dollars in investments on the merchant end and widespread upgrades to broadband connections by consumers, e-commerce has begun to move at a faster pace. Still, transactions can bog down, especially over dial-up connections, and security remains one of the biggest impediments to...

Representative Phil Barnhart of the Oregon state legislature in March introduced a bill that would compel the state to pledge to strongly consider Linux and other open source programs in all future purchase decisions. Regardless of what you think of Microsoft's newly released Windows 2003 server, Li...

Cisco Systems sounded a familiar refrain in reporting its quarterly results, saying profits were up but sales declined as demand for its networking gear remained soft, forcing the company to scale back its efforts to develop next-generation products. Net income was $987 million, a penny per share be...

The browser wars of a few years ago now seem like a footnote in Internet history. With 90 percent market share, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is king of the hill, Yankee Group senior analyst Rob Lancaster told the E-Commerce Times. However, even though Redmond seems to have won, some interesting bro...

Palm's latest trick is a combination organizer/camera/MP3 player/movie player called the Zire 71 -- the second version of the company's consumer-model PDA. The bad news is, the Zire 71 has a slow camera that takes fuzzy pictures and an MP3 player that's never quite loud enough. The good news is, for...

Hewlett-Packard has announced a slew of new products, services and strategies in an effort to capture a greater share of computing business at the world's largest enterprises. The "Adaptive Enterprise Strategy" rollout coincides with the one-year anniversary of the still-controversial $19 billion HP...

In this tight economy, data managers no longer have a blank check when it comes to managing their company's enterprise storage, yet data needs continue to expand. How can enterprises do more with less? More to the point, how can companies walk that fine line between spending too much or too little?...

A spike in Sun Microsystems shares has fueled long-simmering speculation that the once-mighty tech firm may be the target of an acquisition by a larger rival. On Friday, however, the company's shares gained 12 percent to close at $3.75. But some analysts said that although a buyout is possible as lo...

Thanks to dutiful sons and daughters, the approach of Mother's Day has become highly visible online, with a profusion of flowers, candy and other tokens of esteem displayed. It is harder to predict, however, which e-tailer will come out ahead in the race to win the affection of online shoppers. Will...

Apple's new iTunes Music Store features flat 99-cent per-song fees and few restrictions on usage once a song is downloaded. By putting itself at the forefront of digital music distribution, Apple could well become a powerhouse in this still-nascent e-commerce space. Will iTunes catapult Apple toward...