Articles by Rob Conlin

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held their inaugural elections this week, voting in three of the first 18 members of a board that will assume responsibility on important Internet policies such as domain name registration and trademark disputes In the first round of elections, the United States' two candidates for the...

Asian Internet service provider and portal China.com (Nasdaq: CHINA) is eyeing the possibility of selling its Hong Kong unit in an effort to raise $1 billion (US$), according to reports published yesterday The flagship Chinese Internet firm -- which is owned by state-run Xinhua News Agency and boasts America Online, Sun Microsystems and others as e...

Online postage provider Stamps.com(Nasdaq: STMP) and America Online (NYSE: AOL) announced a three-year, $56 million (US$) alliance today that will make the Santa Monica, California-based Stamps.com the exclusive provider of Internet postage across AOL's brands. The deal also calls for AOL to make a multi-million dollar investment in Stamps.com. The exact figure was not disclosed.

Home Access Health, an Illinois-based drug company, announced at the Internet Commerce Expo in San Francisco, California that it is using the technology of FaceTime Communications to provide online counseling for HIV patients FaceTime technology was originally designed to enable e-commerce sites to provide live, real-time customer service functions...

Newly created Internet incubator ThinkTank.com announced today that it has received $200 million (US$) in capital from Softbank, the internationally-recognized Japanese Internet investor The Dana Point, California-based ThinkTank.com -- which was created by Buy.com founder Scott Blum -- will be a Southern California affiliate of Softbank's new HotB...

Online community Lycos, Inc. (Nasdaq: LCOS) added to its already-formidable international presence today by announcing the launch of 12 sites in Latin America and two Spanish-speaking sites in the U.S The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company launched localized content sites in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Venezuela. It also launched l...

America Online (NYSE: AOL) announced today that its AOL Germany service has surpassed one million members, making it the first AOL service outside of the United States to break the mark The company said that its German service broke the mark in roughly half the time its U.S. service did -- five years compared to nine. AOL membership in America reac...

Poised for a major re-launch later this month by new parent company CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI), global Web directory AltaVista announced today that it has launched a Swedish site The Palo Alto, California-based company said that the Swedish language AltaVista Sverige will provide search capabilities and access to the most current index of Swedish Web site...

Calling itself one of the world's first online business to business marketplaces for small and medium-sized companies, mondus.com announced the launch of their U.S.-based site yesterday The Oxford, England-based company's new U.S. site follows on the heels of launches in the U.K. and Germany. Mondus.com claims to streamline the purchasing process f...

The innovative but still commercially unknown e-book industry received a boost from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) today when the software giant announced that it will sponsor an e-book literary award with a $100,000 (US$) first prize Microsoft's announcement at the influential Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany comes just after the nascent indust...

Phone.com (Nasdaq: PHCM), a leading maker of Internet-browsing software for wireless phones, announced yesterday at the Telecom '99 show in Geneva, Switzerland that it has signed an agreement to acquire Apion Ltd. of Belfast, Northern Ireland for $239 million (US$) in stock The Redwood, California-based company said the deal will give it a leading ...

Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM) and IBM(NYSE: IBM) announced a global alliance today that places the Excite portal at the fingertips of users of IBM's Aptiva line of personal computers Under the terms of the deal, Excite@Home will be featured as the start page on IBM's keyboard for the Aptiva line, making the portal easily accessible to an unlimited num...

Homestore.com (Nasdaq: HOMS) added another member to its family of real estate-related sites today by announcing an agreement to buy Homefair.com from Central Newspapers (NYSE: ECP) for $85 million (US$) The Thousand Oaks, California-based Homestore.com said the acquisition -- which is expected to close in 30 to 60 days -- will give it three of the...

Online mortgage lender mortgage.com (Nasdaq: XDCM) announced today that it has agreed to acquire three subsidiaries of a North Carolina holding company, significantly expanding its network of purchase-money mortgage lending in the business-to-business sector The Plantation, Florida-based company said it will acquire Capital Savings Co., Inc., a tec...

Internet Gold (Nasdaq: IGLD), a leading Israeli ISP, announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement with Microsoft to establish a portal that will feature a Hebrew language search service The site will be called MSN Israel and will be running by the end of the year. The Rosh Haain, Israel-based Internet Gold -- which is called Internet Zahav i...

Online lender E-Loan (Nasdaq: EELN) announced today that it has received $26 million (US$) to help finance its push to gain a share of the online financial services market in Europe The Dublin, California-based company said that international joint-venture Atviso took a 37 percent stake in its European subsidiary in exchange for the investment.

Oklahoma City-based CD Warehouse, Inc.(Nasdaq: CDWI) and Canadian music retailer CD Plus.com Ltd. announced today that they have signed a letter of intent to merge and create the fourth-largest music retailer in North America CD Warehouse will bring 340 CD Warehouse, Disc Go Round, CD Exchange and Music Reader stores in 40 states, Canada, England, ...

A newly-created investment fund backed by Lycos (Nasdaq: LCOS) and a group of venture capital firms announced today that it has invested $8 million (US$) in three companies, two of which have recently filed for initial public offerings Lycos Ventures said it has invested in LifeMinders.com, a provider of personal e-mail reminders, Conducent, a prov...