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They have been making their lists and checking them twice. As a result, consumers will soon learn which retailers have been naughty or nice in planning for their most important part of their year: the holiday rush. "So much of retailers' business rides on the holiday season that they want to be sure...

While many companies are focused on their business online, they tend to put up sites that turn off rather than turn on potential customers. Because there are so many potential options, a business needs to be careful about how it designs its e-commerce site. For instance, a visitor can't purchase wha...

These days, just about every business -- from the corner store to Wal-Mart -- has a Web presence. While the Internet's vast expanse provides companies with the ability to reach more potential customers, it also pits them against more competitors than ever before. As a result, it has become increasin...

Lately, corporate interest in Web services has been rising -- and justifiably so. The advent of this new way of building applications promises to almost magically allow organizations to exchange information within their own systems with partners and customers. While the potential benefits are notewo...

The Internet has emerged as a great place to shop for someone looking for a good deal. Price comparison sites ensure that consumers pay as little as possible, so they often end up with tremendous bargains. However, the adage "If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is" applies to some of t...

Google shook up the e-payment market last summer with a ballyhooed entry into this space with its Google Checkout service. While many positioned the move as a salvo against eBay and its PayPal subsidiary, traditional banks may have more to lose if Google is successful as the Internet increasingly re...

Uncle Sam is often portrayed as a technological laggard, representing a market segment bringing up the rear as new innovations take hold. Well, surprise, surprise -- the government is ahead of the private sector by a better than a three-to-one margin in one emerging area: telework. "To be successful...

Television once represented the Holy Grail for advertisers. As millions of consumers tuned in to watch their favorite dramas and sitcoms, it presented advertisers with unprecedented opportunities to reach millions of target customers quickly and easily. As technology has advanced, television's grip ...

Advertisers face multiple new challenges today. Consumers' viewing and purchasing habits are changing dramatically, the number of ways to reach potential customers is increasing and new techniques to measure advertising effectiveness are emerging. The confluence of these changes is leading advertise...

Although 2006 was filled with surprises in the telecom space, as described in Part 1 of this two-part series, there were equally dramatic changes in terms of the pure processing ability of computers and how that power translated to consumers in the form of lower-cost, higher-end products. "Good news...

After several disappointing years, the telecom market experienced renewed growth in 2006, and a number of surprising developments occurred. The highlights include the integration of cellular and WiFi features, a rush to deliver mobile music services, movement toward bundled services, a focus on high...

After dominating the business handheld e-mail market, Research In Motion unveiled its follow-up act: high-end consumer smartphones. In September, the company announced the BlackBerry Pearl, its first device equipped with a digital camera and an MP3 player. The shift appears to be a natural progressi...

Companies are seeing e-mail usage grow at exponential rates. While the rise in e-mail use can improve employee productivity, it also presents challenges to IT staff, many of whom are struggling to keep pace with the rapid increases as related management, security and storage tasks increase. Some are...

The Internet has made it simple for consumers to shop and in some cases to find the best deal when making a purchase. Comparison shopping engines collect information, such as product pricing, feature set and shipment costs, from various vendors, and then present that data to users. While consumers t...

Before the advent of the Internet, telecommuting was considered an abnormality, something done in rare circumstances by select individuals. However, when broadband connectivity became widely available, telecommuting opportunities became more common. Surprisingly, after a few years of healthy growth,...

The Internet has delivered dramatic productivity improvements. Executives now have a simple way to exchange electronic mail messages, large and small companies are able to market their products worldwide and corporations have replaced manual procedures with automated ones. Along with these advances ...

Consumers looking for wheat bread with no preservatives or meat not beefed up with animal growth hormones will no longer have to drive to the nearest health food store. Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI) plans to compliment its chain of 88 health stores in the U.S. with an online electronic commerce ...