Articles by Robert Conlin

Priceline.com(Nasdaq: PCLN) announced Thursday that it is expanding its car buying service to five more states The Stamford, Connecticut-based company will allow consumers to make offers on new cars in Florida, Connecticut, New Jersey, the Philadelphia area and southern California. The car buying service had been previously only been available in t...

For sports fans across the nation who gripe about the state of collegiate and professional sports these days, the new legal sports site launched by FindLaw, Inc. will add more fuel to the fire The Mountain View, California-based law and government portal announced the launch of sports.findlaw.com Thursday, saying that legal issues in sports have be...

New Internet venture capital firm eCompanies announced Wednesday that a soon-to-be-launched online hobby site will be the first of many investments in Internet start-ups. The financial terms were not disclosed Backed by the likes of Disney, Earthlink, Sprint and investment banker Goldman Sachs, the Santa Monica, California-based eCompanies believes...

In a move that is expected to catapult China to the next level of Internet commerce, the People's Bank of China has signed up a Texas-based company, Sun Microsystems' Chinese subsidiary and a Beijing-based software firm to provide secure authentication tools for the bank's e-commerce projects Plano, Texas-based Entrust Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: E...

Self-avowed music rebel MP3.com and established media conglomerate Cox Interactive Media announced Tuesday that they will form a new company to create a network of Internet music portal sites Billed as MP3radio.com, the new network will offer free downloads and feature seven popular music formats, including country, pop and urban adult contemporary...

Ancestry.com, one of the Web's leading genealogy sites, has obtained a cool $33.2 million (US$) in second round funding The Orem, Utah-based company said Tuesday that the oversubscribed second round of financing included industry heavyweights Compaq Computers and America Online, as well as French conglomerate Group Arnault. Ancestry.com has recentl...

BizRate.com, a Los-Angeles, California-based merchant ratings site, announced Monday that venerable consumer resource Consumer Reports will feature its ratings and research in both the print and online editions The agreement is significant for BizRate.com, which is fighting it out with a number of other merchant ratings sites for control of the up-...

Online postage pioneer E-Stamp Corporation unveiled its service on the Microsoft Office Update Web site Thursday, just over two weeks after the U.S. Postal Service gave the go-ahead to sell stamps over the Internet The San Mateo, California-based company became the first of two ventures given approval by the Postal Service to unveil its service nat...

On the verge of an initial public offering, Women.com announced Wednesday that it has licensed its content to a Japanese women's site in its first international venture The San Mateo, California-based company said that the agreement with Mitsui Comtek Corp., the online arm of an international trading company, calls for its content to be phased into...

TradeCast, a Houston, Texas-based online brokerage firm, announced Wednesday that it has received a $40 million (US$) investment from two Texas billionaires. The bankroll is expected to drive the company's attempt to become the Internet's dominant brokerage destination For their $40 million, brothers Sid and Lee Bass received a 40 percent stake. Th...

German media giant Bertelsmann AG announced Tuesday that it has sold nearly $700 million (US$) of its stake in America Online (NYSE: AOL). The move is at the center of a concerted effort to build up its multimedia unit According to reports, the Guetersloh, Germany-based company sold 7.2 million shares last Thursday to an undisclosed buyer. That rep...

One day after trumpeting the launch of a subscription-free Netscape Online service in the United Kingdom, America Online (NYSE: AOL) announced that it has extended an e-commerce and web-hosting agreement with Verio, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRIO) AOL Europe said that its exclusive marketing agreement with Verio will bolster the Englewood, Colorado-based compa...

Claiming to be the first company to offer a real-time Internet vehicle service center, Autoweb.com (Nasdaq: AWEB) has launched a pilot program that will allow users to schedule service appointments with their local repair shops The service allows users to choose from auto service centers, retail service centers or independent shops. The Santa Clara...

IDT Corporation(Nasdaq: IDTC), a Hackensack, New Jersey-based telecommunications and Internet access provider, will join the crowded online food service fray with its new restaurant directory Web site The company announced today that it has launched Net2Dine, a repository of 112,000 restaurants across the United States. According to IDT, the direct...

Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Internet content delivery network that claims to be the only "100 percent guaranteed network in the world," announced Wednesday that it was on the receiving end of investments from Apple Computer and Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) The company said that it had signed an agreement to jointly develop...

Akamai Technologies, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Internet content delivery network that claims to be the only "100 percent guaranteed network in the world," announced Wednesday that it was on the receiving end of investments from Apple Computer and Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) The company said that it had signed an agreement to jointly develop...

High-speed Internet provider Excite@Home announced today that it will pump another $40 million (US $) into Tickets.com Inc. -- raising its stake in the online ticket seller to $55 million Excite@Home's latest investment in the Newport Beach, California-based company is a strong vote of confidence that the Tickets.com's thriving business of selling ...

Web portal and broadband access company Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM) issued a statement Tuesday saying that it had filed an amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Excite@Home asked the court to overturn a Portland, Oregon court decision that mandates all Internet service providers be given access to privately owned cable lines A Federa...

Confirming months of rumors that Nielsen Media Research was on the auction blocks, the Dutch publishing company VNU announced Monday that it would pay $2.5 billion (US$) in cash for the media audience tracking service VNU, publishers of magazines, newspapers, business and marketing resources and educational materials made an announcement to journal...

Today, two travel-related sites have announced the launch of a new Web site, and a content agreement, with a major portal The first, Irvine, California-based Electronic Media Communications, announced the launch Monday of Tourandtravelnews.com, an Internet travel news distribution service.