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Joining Microsoft and IBM who have made similar moves, America Online is betting that speech-recognition will soon become a key component of e-commerce transactions ...

For sale: Customer list of failed retail dot-com. Includes thousands of one-time customers from Christmas of 1999. Value to a rival dot-com striving for all-important market share: Considerable. Real cost in terms of lost faith among consumers in the privacy and security of e-commerce: Immeasurable. Price: Negotiable ...

The purchase of RocketCash by free ISP NetZero last week is the latest evidence that e-commerce players are keen on capturing today's teenage Internet users and locking them up as tomorrow's customers ...

This year alone, U.S. firms will pay $20 billion (US$) to consultants for design and construction of e-commerce Web sites, even though -- according to Forrester Research -- none of the big-name e-commerce integrators can actually deliver the type of across-the-board expertise needed to get an e-tailer up and running ...

Not long ago, U.S. Vice President Al Gore took some serious ribbing for suggesting he played a major role in developing the World Wide Web. Now some of the same type of ridicule should be aimed at British Telecom for its pursuit of hyperlink patent royalties ...

Recently, when the U.S. Congress passed a bill giving digital signatures the same legal weight as old-fashioned pen-and-ink signatures, the concept of a paperless world once again reared its intriguing head ...

Small business seems to have a split personality when it comes to the Internet. Although nearly three quarters of U.S. small businesses have found it prudent to set up Web sites, most of them are strangely noncommittal. It is as though they neither want to miss the party nor have too much fun and end up hugging the porcelain ...

By definition, couch potatoes dislike getting active, and they may be even less inclined to get interactive ...

Goldman Sachs' Anthony Noto is highly respected as one of the most knowledgeable analysts in the dot-com world. But his recent listing of several online companies -- separating firms that are in the pink from those gasping for air -- should have everyone casting a more skeptical eye toward all "industry analyst predictions." The three-tiered list is top-heavy with Goldman Sachs underwriting clients...

Having set the Microsoft bonfire blazing, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson just cannot seem to resist piling on the logs ...

It was either American humorist Mark Twain or British politician Benjamin Disraeli who said there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics. Considering that both gentlemen lived a century ago, it is amazing how applicable those words are today to the way industry analysts measure the success of e-commerce Web sites ...

A year or so ago, an oft-aired television commercial showed a businessman driving along a dusty, empty road and then pulling over to the shoulder where a colleague waited -- a solitary figure in a barren landscape. This very spot, the businessman was told, was where the company should build its headquarters ...

Before the end came, the people who founded Boo.com spent a few weeks scrambling from investor to investor, trying to find a way to keep the trendy fashion company from collapsing. The search was unsuccessful, though, and Boo was forced to call in a team of liquidators to put the firm's assets on the block ...

Viewed from any angle, immigration is a divisive issue. Unfortunately, politicians on both sides of the fence now have the power to sap considerable energy from the United States' high-tech fueled economy -- making immigration policies everyone's problem ...

Spurred on by the acquisition of Lycos by Terra Networks SA, Yahoo! will take an "aggressive and opportunistic" approach to moving into the European market this year, according to co-founder Jerry Yang ...

A recent report from the Pew Research Center rattled cages in the offices of TV news programs with the headline-making revelation that a third of Americans get news from the Internet every week. But the survey should serve as a wake-up call for e-commerce companies as well ...

America Online is once again leading the charge, this time on Internet security. But the leadership comes not through breakthrough technology or a stringent self-policing standard -- it comes through advertising ...

Top executives at Staples, Inc. thought they had done everything right. Recognizing the need to take decisive action on the e-commerce front, they calmly consulted experts from the Harvard Business School to devise an effective strategy ...

No one can accuse Webvan of lacking the killer instinct. In the past year, the company has pledged to spend $1 billion (US$) on infrastructure and has steered itself into competition with the likes of Amazon.com ...

ToyTime.com, a latecomer to the competitive online toy retailing world, has pulled the plug on operations just nine months after its heavily advertised entry into a crowded market ...