Articles by Mary Hillebrand

One has to commend the Clinton administration for its earnest efforts to combat cybercrime and investigate the spate of denial-of-service (DoS) hacker attacks that have plagued e-commerce and other Internet sites over the past several weeks However, the much-anticipated report from a White House-appointed interagency working group manages nothing m...

New high speed Internet access services like DSL and cable modems are opening the door to a new vision of computing. Many software companies are looking to develop new e-commerce-based sales channels by putting their programs on a Web site and only charging customers to use them rather than selling them outright Furthermore, instead of charging a h...

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HWP) and voice recognition technology startup Talk2 Technology, Inc. announced a strategic alliance Wednesday to launch a service that allows people to access the Internet and shop by telephone -- whether wired or wireless The new technology would allow people to use voice commands to get information, trade stocks or make...

According to consulting firm Booz Allen & Hamilton, the United Kingdom is verging on the same type of "digital divide" that the U.S. government discovered in America's urban and rural communities last summer This gap in access to the Internet and technology between the "haves" and "have nots" will only get worse, the consulting firm warns, unless t...

In an effort to gain Internet dominance, Internet trust provider and security firm VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) has agreed to acquire domain name registrar Network Solutions, Inc. in a stock-for-stock swap worth an estimated $21 billion (US$) The combined company plans to add staff in order to build its presence in new Internet service areas. Netw...

Releasing the first of what will be a steady stream of quarterly reports on national Web sales, U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley reported Thursday that e-commerce retail sales topped $5.3 billion (US$) for the fourth quarter of 1999 However, the report found that e-commerce revenues accounted for only 0.64 percent of the total $821.2 billio...

Microsoft is making the move from providing a Web site marketing and information resource on its bCentral small business site to allowing direct trading among its members In a deal with retail back-end software provider Radiant Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: RADS), Microsoft Corp. said the two firms will develop and market a Web-based service on bCentral fo...

Three of the United States' largest agriculture companies, Cenex Harvest States Cooperatives, Cargill and DuPont Corp., have announced the formation of a new Internet marketplace for farm retailers, cooperatives and manufacturers The new site, Rooster.com, is slated to launch May 1st, and is expected to provide farmers with online access to a varie...

eBay, Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) announced Wednesday that they have partnered to expand online payment processing company Billpoint, thereby enabling eBay's 10 million users to make payments to one another by credit card. Until now, most buyers at eBay's auction site were forced to mail money orders or checks to sellers when they made a purchase on the popular Internet auction site...

In a move that could potentially have a significant impact on Internet Service Provider (ISP) competition in the U.S., America Online, Inc. (Nasdaq: AOL) and Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE: TWX) announced a "memorandum of understanding" Tuesday stating that AOL will not be the exclusive ISP on Time Warner's cable systems When AOL announced its merger with...

As the world's most populous country awaits entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Chinese government's Internet arm unveiled the first government-sanctioned trading portal, ChinaTradeWorld.com, to make the country's factory and farm products available to outside buyers The Chinese Ministry of Trade and Economic Cooperation's China Inte...

Giant e-tailer Amazon.com and wireless service provider Sprint PCS made separate moves Monday in the rapidly evolving world of mobile e-commerce Amazon.com announced a new URL that allows Internet-ready wireless devices to access its shopping services, and also announced an agreement with wireless phone provider Motorola, Inc. to put a bookmark to ...

The Internet tax debate was injected with a measure of reality this week as Forrester Research, Inc. claimed that local and state governments in the United States passed up $525 million (US$) in 1999 tax revenues from Internet sales The market research firm estimated that nearly $13 billion in taxable retail goods were sold over the Internet in 199...

U.S. Steel Group, one of the United States' oldest industrial companies and easily its largest steel manufacturer, is joining the online business-to-business (B2B) revolution by committing to sell its prime and non-prime steel products on the e-Steel Exchange U.S. Steel has also made an undisclosed investment in the Exchange's owner, the privately-...

German software giant SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) has teamed with Deutsche Bank AG to offer financial and technical services to firms that are engaged in online trading on SAP's new business-to-business (B2B) network The move comes on the heels of a similar deal between one of SAP's major competitors, Commerce One, Inc. and financial services giant Citigrou...

The United States has unveiled a pact with Argentina to help bring the South American country's e-commerce capability up to speed with Asian and European competitors Through the bilateral trade agreement, the two governments will aim to expand customer choice, increase competition and create new jobs by promoting greater market opportunities for me...

DuPont Corp. (NYSE: DD), the 198 year-old science-based solutions company, announced Friday that it will work with Internet Capital Group (Nasdaq: ICGE) to create an online business-to-business (B2B) market for industrial goods and services In late January, DuPont and Chemdex Corporation formed a new company, Industria Solutions, to create a vertic...

At a brief meeting with supporters from the computing community this week, President Bill Clinton laid out a plan for the U.S. government to respond to the national security threat that has been highlighted over the past two weeks by hacker attacks on popular Internet sites The strategy consists largely of Clinton's previously announced plan to com...

New research data shows that women who regularly shop online are much more concerned than men about the safety of e-commerce after the recent spate of hacker attacks on such well known sites as eBay, Yahoo!, and CNN The poll data, from the eBrain division of the Consumer Electronics Association, shows that among the respondents, awareness of the at...

According to research firm Nielsen//NetRatings, this year's online Valentine's Day shoppers clearly preferred niche sites to online superstores The company compared traffic in the two weeks before Valentine's Day to traffic during normal shopping periods, and found that despite prominently-displayed promotions, online superstores such as Amazon, Bu...