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Despite overvalued dot-coms, looming telecom woes and antitrust squabbles, the boom economy of a few years ago was also rich in ready cash, stock options and jobs, jobs, jobs. In comparison, today's economy is not pretty. Instead of endless flexibility and nonstop prosperity, workers are facing lowe...

For years, Google has been the company to beat in the online search sector. Use of the company's search engine is so widespread that in a recent TV movie, the main character joked that she attended "Google University" to research her health problems. However, Google is not content to rest on its ...

For large and small e-tailers alike, the traditional method of doing business online has been fairly standard. They present a bevy of products, build a secure purchase interface and advertise so that customers will come clicking to their virtual doorstep. In the past couple of years, however, some e...

For several weeks running, Eddie Bauer has occupied the top slot in Keynote Systems' E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index, handily beating out much larger players like Amazon and Wal-Mart. Troy Brown, divisional vice president of e-commerce at Eddie Bauer, told the E-Commerce Times that there is...

In part 1 of this story, "Inside the Hidden World of Motherboard Manufacturers," we examined the inner workings of the motherboard industry. Overall, the sector is healthy, but there are several challenges facing it as well. Jeremy Smith, a spokesperson for motherboard maker ABIT, told the E-Commerc...

As chips are inserted into all manner of everyday appliances, from refrigerators to phones, the semiconductor industry is not the only one that will heat up. The market for motherboards, which link all the components of a computing device, including processors, chipsets, memory and peripheral cards,...

When the Web was young and hotshot designers were eager to prove their talents, chaos ruled. Pages often featured unwieldy graphics that brought visitors' browsers to a halt, and nonstandard layouts forced users to hunt for information. Since then, certain design conventions have been adopted, makin...

When Brocade was founded in 1995, it had lofty goals and a simple premise. The company believed storage should be networked, and it envisioned allowing CIOs to cut storage costs and increase efficiency. Brocade also was was the first to develop fibre-channel switches, which are specifically designe...

Unanticipated Web site traffic can be tough for any IT administrator to handle, and sometimes a major surge can highlight a company's online weak points in sharp relief. Fortunately, many spikes can be predicted and, even more importantly, faced with a sound strategy. However, in doing so, businesse...

At first glance, the consumer PC market can seem quite polarized. At one end of the spectrum are big players like Dell and HP, and at the other are small companies that assemble standard components into generic "white boxes." However, it is the middle ground that may be most worth watching. The com...

In the past few months, it seemed as if new mergers were being announced every week. High-profile players like PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards, as well as EMC and Legato Systems, found they had enough in common to join forces. Meanwhile, Oracle attempted to convince PeopleSoft shareholders that it would...

There was a time, not so long ago, when the IT department was like an island unto itself. The CIO may have had to venture into the boardroom and chat with "the suits," but many IT staff were high-tech gurus who did not need to care about the bottom line, refined communication skills or managing empl...

As spammers dream up new strategies for slithering into e-mail inboxes, their counterparts, anti-spam software developers, are on the lookout for new ways to stop them cold. The latest tactic, called challenge-response, requires an e-mailer to verify his or her identity before being added to a "whit...

Although the United States is still largely a dial-up country, it seems inevitable that dial-up will give way to faster DSL and cable technologies as time passes. Implications of this shift are significant for independent ISPs, which built their business around providing dial-up service. Because the...

To say that Motorola has had a turbulent recent history is something of an understatement. A few years ago, when the semiconductor sector was hemorrhaging money and the handset sector was slumping, the company began to reorganize, with mixed success. There still seems to be a long road ahead, yet wi...

Following a disastrous quarter in which financial results fell far short of analysts' expectations, Sun is trying to rebound from its slump by pinning its hopes on several new products. "If you'd told Scott McNealy three years ago that he'd be selling an x86 family, he would have told you that you ...

The Microsoft-versus-Linux skirmish has heated up discussions about how much a company should pay for servers, software and operating systems. In addition, the harsh economic climate has forced many companies to cut costs, so they are taking a long, hard look at licensing agreements. How much impact...

Broadband adoption is increasing steadily in the United States, but significant hurdles are keeping growth rates lower than they could be. Most rural areas and some suburban areas cannot get broadband, making the service predominantly a city-based one. In fact, the United States is outpaced by sever...

The college graduates of 2003 had the opportunity to witness one of the biggest booms and worst busts in history from the relative safety of their dorm rooms. Of course, their relief at being sheltered from the storm was lessened by the knowledge that they would have to brave the elements post-gradu...

The ability to change prices in the blink of an eye, instantly responding to market fluctuations, seems as if it would be an attractive tactic to online retailers. However, so-called dynamic pricing has not caught on yet in the e-commerce world. As Forrester analyst Noha Tohamy told the E-Commerce T...