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New Player Enters Field of Streams
Look out Netflix, a new video service has swaggered into town. Rumored since December, Verizon's partnership with Coinstar, the parent company of Redbox video rental kiosks, became official on Monday. As with Netflix, customers will be able to choose between physical discs and streaming. The physical discs, however, will need to be picked up and returned to a Redbox kiosk.
ecommercetimes.com | 07-Feb-2012 00:09

Facebook May Be Chasing Mobile Ad Pot of Gold
Facebook is reportedly working on a system to put ads in its mobile services. The news comes just days after the social networking giant filed for an initial public offering, hoping to raise $5 billion. In its IPO filing, Facebook stated that the number of active mobile users of its social network is growing.
ecommercetimes.com | 06-Feb-2012 20:53

Google on EC's Privacy Request: How About No?
Google has rejected the request of European regulators that it delay the implementation of its new privacy policies to give authorities time to review the changes and ensure that users' data will remain secure. The European Commission's Article 29 Working Party asked Google to hold off on launching its new policies until after the committee could analyze the changes.
ecommercetimes.com | 06-Feb-2012 19:58

Microsoft Dynamics Update Promises 'CRM Anywhere'
Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its forthcoming service update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which will be released in Q2 2012. The service update will build on Microsoft's rollouts last year in such areas as social CRM and mobile. "We are on the path to deliver a significant new set of capabilities," said Craig Dewar, director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM's product management group.
ecommercetimes.com | 06-Feb-2012 19:34

Building the Data Center on Small Victories
You don't need to go very far in IT nowadays to find people who are diligently working to do more with less, even as they're working to transform and modernize their environments. One way to keep the interest high and those operating and investment budgets in place is to show fast results, and then use that to prime the pump for even more improvement -- and even more funding -- with perhaps even growing budgets.
ecommercetimes.com | 06-Feb-2012 14:00

CRM Players' Accolades and Upgrades
TeleTech has been placed in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant: Customer Management Contact Center BPO, Worldwide, 2011, and Yesmail has announced the release of its "Look Book" in celebration of its recent awards for mobile-scalable email design. Meanwhile, West Interactive and VBrick Systems have released major upgrades.
ecommercetimes.com | 06-Feb-2012 14:00

Jerry Yang and Yahoo's Humble Beginnings
Jerry Yang is no longer "Chief Yahoo." He left Yahoo after 17 years. That's the news most people read or hear. Most people don't know Jerry or his approach. Let me share a personal story. In 1995, I first met Jerry at Yahoo. this was before the company was public and before anyone really cared much at all about "the Internet."
ecommercetimes.com | 04-Feb-2012 14:00

Verisign Fesses Up About 2010 Hack Attacks
Verisign has alarmed the online security industry with its reluctant disclosure of repeated hack attacks on its network in 2010. The infrastructure company supports key servers of the Internet's backbone, serving as Top Level Domain host for .com, .org and .gov. That it was repeatedly penetrated in 2010 was first quietly disclosed in an SEC filing in October 2011.
ecommercetimes.com | 03-Feb-2012 18:09

Desk.com Makes Help Desks More Mobile, Social
Salesforce.com unveiled a new customer service help desk tool this week. Desk.com works with customer requests delivered over a social network. It is the byproduct of Salesforce.com's acquisition of Assistly last year. However, it is no mere product integration, said Alex Bard, former Assistly CEO and now vice president and general manager of Desk.com.
ecommercetimes.com | 03-Feb-2012 14:00

Content Intent, Part 2
It can be a little tricky talking about how and why media outlets allow, and indeed encourage, the diffusion of their content throughout the Web. For starters, people tend to be tightlipped about this strategy. No one from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or Viacom agreed to speak on the record for this article. They are, apparently, much less eager to discuss sharing content than they are to actually share it.
ecommercetimes.com | 03-Feb-2012 14:00

Zuckerberg to Keep Iron Grip on Facebook's Reins
Facebook has finally filed for its IPO. The social networking giant submitted an application to the SEC on Wednesday. It plans to raise up to $5 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who cofounded the company in February 2004, currently holds a 28.4 percent stake. Details in the SEC document illuminated the extent of Zuckerberg's control over Facebook.
ecommercetimes.com | 02-Feb-2012 23:36

Facebook Laid Bare for All to See
Facebook filed it's long-awaited S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, announcing its intent to raise $5 billion and begin public trading. The highly anticipated move caused enough of a stir to clog traffic on the SEC's website and provided some insight into the social network's financial situation.
ecommercetimes.com | 02-Feb-2012 19:52

Samsung Galaxy Tab Design-Around Passes Muster With German Court
Apple has suffered a setback in its multicountry, extremely complex, and seemingly everlasting patent fight with Samsung. In the latest episode, its request to ban Samsung from selling two devices in Germany -- its Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet and its Galaxy Nexus smartphone -- was rejected by the Munich Regional Court.
ecommercetimes.com | 02-Feb-2012 18:18

Solving the Snowballing Wireless Data Problem
Every day we hear about how AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless are running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to grab as much wireless spectrum as they can. We all remember the quality problems AT&T smartphone customers suffered. That same future is in store for every carrier and every customer unless we come up with a solution.
ecommercetimes.com | 02-Feb-2012 14:00

Apple's Enterprise Coup d'Etat
As a long-time Mac and iPhone user, I always enjoy seeing new people I work with embrace the Apple way. At the same time, while out and about at work conferences and trips, I consistently see more and more iPads and iPhones. I'm sure some of this is my ability to recognize an Apple product while my ability to spot two different Android-based phones is a little less refined.
ecommercetimes.com | 02-Feb-2012 14:00

3 Painfully Common Misuses of CRM
Every tool has a purpose. That's never more clear than when you see a neophyte do-it-yourselfer trying to use a tool for a purpose other than what it was designed for. For instance, anyone wielding a hammer while trying to fix a car's engine is probably not going to succeed.
ecommercetimes.com | 02-Feb-2012 14:00

Super Bowl Advertisers Pile On With Multimedia Blitz
Superbowl Sunday, the biggest, flashiest U.S. sports event of the year, is also the country's biggest advertising event of the year, carrying some of the cleverest ads on TV. This year, Superbowl Sunday may also mark a watershed in advertising, with advertisers reaching out beyond TV to go into digital media in a big way.
ecommercetimes.com | 02-Feb-2012 00:12

AOL Dumps a Lighter Load of Bad News
AOL delivered a little bit of something for everyone with its Q4 earnings report -- good news, bad news, and hope that its many different initiatives are on track to pay off for the company. First the bad news: AOL reported a profit of US$22.8 million, or 23 cents a share, that was down from the $66.2 million, or 61 cents a share, it earned in the same period a year earlier.
ecommercetimes.com | 01-Feb-2012 23:52

Sony Installs New Chief in Quest for Identity
Sony announced on Wednesday that Kazui Hirai is being appointed as its president and CEO, effective April 1. Current Chairman, CEO and President Howard Stringer will become the chairman of the board of directors in June. Sony has had a turbulent year, so a switch in leadership might help the company find a smoother road.
ecommercetimes.com | 01-Feb-2012 22:30

Ghost of Christmas Past Haunts Amazon
Amazon's stock took a pummeling Wednesday after the online retailer released quarterly figures that fell short of Wall Street expectations, which had been built up in part by past years' holiday performances. Amazon's net income was $177 million, or 38 cents per share, a 57 percent percent drop from a year ago.
ecommercetimes.com | 01-Feb-2012 19:57

Andreessen Horowitz Waters Silicon Valley's Money Tree
Andreessen Horowitz announced that it has raised US$1.5 billion for a fund aimed at investing in technology startups. The new fund is launching just as one of the firm's well-known bets, Facebook, prepares to go public. Andreessen Horowitz has an unspecified stake in the social network.
ecommercetimes.com | 01-Feb-2012 18:57

Fitness to Go: Anywhere, Anytime Exercise Classes
Fitness instructor and personal trainer Yu Hannah Kim has always believed that fitness should be available to anyone. Now, with the launch of her new site, Yufit, she's making that dream a reality. Yufit offers streaming videos for everything from cardio kickboxing and core burn workouts to yoga and stretching.
ecommercetimes.com | 01-Feb-2012 14:00

Apple's Dynamic Tension
A week after Apple revealed record-breaking sales numbers that drove its value to new heights, the company's fans were shown a bleaker image of Cupertino in a recently published news series. The iEconomy series paints a picture of harsh working conditions in some overseas facilities that manufacture Apple products.
ecommercetimes.com | 01-Feb-2012 14:00

Vendor Videos With a Spark of Personality
I take briefings from all sorts of vendors every day, from established companies with a new release to emerging companies with what they hope will be The Next Great Idea that the market will seize on. I am always happy to give my opinion and advice, and sometimes it's even taken. But I am usually reticent to write about most of them simply because it's not my job to provide free advertising.
ecommercetimes.com | 01-Feb-2012 14:00

RIM on Cartoon Kerfuffle: Just Playing
Already battered, flailing and in the throes of a corporate shakeup, RIM is now being savaged by critics over an infographic it created to depict the result of a Twitter campaign it launched over New Year's Eve. The infographic depicts four masked cartoon superheroes -- two males and two females.
ecommercetimes.com | 31-Jan-2012 23:44

Google Defends 'Simpler' Privacy Policy in 13-Page Letter to Congress
Google has responded to a letter from members of Congress with its own 13-page missive explaining changes to its privacy policy that will take effect on March 1. Among other things, the letter signed by eight legislators stated that "consumers should have the ability to opt out of data collection when they are not comfortable with a company's term of service."
ecommercetimes.com | 31-Jan-2012 23:16

Apple Fans More Likely to Turn a Blind Eye Than Boycott
A sobering account of conditions at Apple's contract factories in China recently appeared in The New York Times . Essentially, the manufacture of those sleek and sexy devices that consumers love so much has been accompanied by 23 deaths and 273 injuries. In a horrific account of one of the deaths, the Times told of Lai Xiadong, who was severely burned and died of his injuries two days later.
ecommercetimes.com | 31-Jan-2012 20:58

Samsung Patent Blitz Attracts Scrutiny of EU Trust Busters
The European Union has begun looking into whether Samsung Electronics has engaged in antitrust behavior. Samsung years ago pledged to license its patents that are essential for the implementation of European mobile telephony standards on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms.
ecommercetimes.com | 31-Jan-2012 20:45

Can Anything Stop EMC?
A bit over a year ago, the conventional wisdom related to enterprise IT vendors was fairly straightforward: Sheer size and depth of expertise gave end-to-end systems vendors unlimited access to the high ground. As markets recovered from the 2008 recession, enterprise customers would naturally stick with or gravitate toward large established players that could fulfill their every need.
ecommercetimes.com | 31-Jan-2012 17:53

Facebook's IPO May Be the Last Straw for Privacy-Minded Users
Zero hour is approaching as the certainty grows that Facebook will be filing for its initial public offering this week. Zero hour for excited investors and Wall Street banks -- and zero hour for privacy advocates. Even as a private company, Facebook had no problem pushing the envelope, said Consumer Watchdog spokesperson Carmen Balber. "Facebook is already treading dangerous waters ... ."
ecommercetimes.com | 31-Jan-2012 14:00

Federal CIO Aims to Goose US Agencies Into Mobile-izing
The sharp growth in the use of smartphones and tablets has spurred the U.S. government to keep pace with the private sector in the use of mobile devices. While federal agencies have been incorporating mobile technology for several years, the rate of adoption could be -- and should be -- far greater, contends Steven VanRoekel, the federal government's chief information officer.
ecommercetimes.com | 31-Jan-2012 14:00

Legit Megaupload Users Could Be Out of Luck
The U.S. Attorney's Office handling the case against Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom and associates has informed the court it's OK to begin deleting the Megaupload data beginning on Feb. 2, according to press reports. The two storage companies that host Megaupload data are free to sweep their servers clean.
ecommercetimes.com | 30-Jan-2012 20:42

Wall Street in the Grip of Facebook Fever
This is it -- the week every social media investor has been waiting for. Facebook is expected to file for its IPO this week, according to widely circulating rumors, in response to huge demand in the market -- to say nothing of its own employees, many of whom stand to become millionaires overnight. Morgan Stanley is said to be the leading investment bank in the offering.
ecommercetimes.com | 30-Jan-2012 18:29

When Data Met Processing
How are new data and analysis approaches significantly improving IT operations monitoring and providing stronger security? AccelOp has developed technology that correlates events with relevant data across IT systems, so that operators can gain much better insights faster, and then learn as they go to better predict future problems before they emerge.
ecommercetimes.com | 30-Jan-2012 14:00

Oracle Adds RightNow to Cloud Wars Arsenal
Oracle has closed on its $1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow, developer of a cloud-based customer self-service application. Oracle announced the deal in October 2011. For Oracle, the deal makes eminent sense: It fills in a missing gap in its cloud-based CRM functionality and gives it a broader base from which to compete against Salesforce.com.
ecommercetimes.com | 30-Jan-2012 14:00

No Rest for the E-tailer
Your online store did record sales this past holiday and you are a happy person at the start of the year. After a few days of rejoicing, it is time to get back to the grind and look at how you can move forward and take your online store to even greater heights. There are a few fallouts of the holiday season that you will need to manage, and then there are some initiatives that you should plan.
ecommercetimes.com | 28-Jan-2012 14:00

Apple's Cook Steamed Over Labor Practices Report
Since the middle of this week, the buzz about Apple hasn't been so much its record earnings as disclosures of the working conditions its overseas workers endure, as detailed in a recent report, which touched on worker deaths, inhumane working conditions, disregard for workers' health, the use of underage workers, and suggestions that Cupertino cares only about cutting costs and maintaining product quality.
ecommercetimes.com | 28-Jan-2012 00:18

Facebook Slaps Likejackers With Lawsuit
Facebook and Washington state filed federal lawsuits on Thursday against Adscend Media for "clickjacking," a form of spamming that fools users into visiting advertising sites and divulging personal information. "Likejacking" is similar. Users believe links to spam sites are being sent to them by friends.
ecommercetimes.com | 28-Jan-2012 00:10

Real Deal Boosts Intel's Entertainment Cred
Intel is buying about 190 patents, 170 patent applications, and next-generation video codec software from RealNetworks. The terms of the sale will allow RealNetworks to retain certain rights to continue using the patents in current and future products. In addition to the sale, RealNetworks and Intel signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on the development of the video codec software and related products.
ecommercetimes.com | 27-Jan-2012 18:16

Content Intent, Part 1
As far as exclusive interviews go, you could do a lot worse than getting Herman Cain, and a lot worse than getting him on Nov. 28. That was, after all, the day that a woman unleashed accusations of a 13-year affair with Cain, the third racy allegation levied against Cain in a matter of weeks. And those charges were but part of the Cain saga. There was also the Nov. 15 Libya gaffe...
ecommercetimes.com | 27-Jan-2012 14:00

New App Boosts Epicor's Tablet Chops in Retail Setting
At the National Retail Federation's annual convention,Retail's BIG Show 2012, Epicor debuted its latest mobile offering: the Epicor Retail Clienteling application. It is an add-on for Epicor's existing CRM app, said Dave Burton, product director of CRM services -- meaning a retailer has to be an Epicor customer to use it. However, the app comes with a few additional features designed for the tablet form factor.
ecommercetimes.com | 27-Jan-2012 14:00

Moving Apple's Moolah Mountain
Apple surprised Wall Street Wednesday when it revealed it was sitting on cash reserves of nearly $100 billion. Now the question is, what will the company do with it? Apple's successful product lines, which include the iPhone and iPad, have been gushing bucks for months. That's allowed it to build a sizable war chest.
ecommercetimes.com | 27-Jan-2012 14:00

Netflix Bounces Back With Not-So-Shabby Q4
Netflix shares rose sharply after the company reported that it added 610,000 customers and that profit margins in the streaming business this quarter could widen to 11 percent. That said, there was plenty in the earnings report to worry investors and analysts -- the company's profit fell 14 percent from the same period last year and its DVD business lost nearly 3 million subscribers.
ecommercetimes.com | 26-Jan-2012 23:52

Latest Patent Volley Against Apple Could Boost Google-Motorola Merger Chances
Motorola Mobility has filed yet another lawsuit accusing Apple of infringing several of its patents for wireless antennae, software, data filtering and messaging technologies. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida this week, follows a similar lawsuit Motorola filed in another Florida court, alleging the same patent violations.
ecommercetimes.com | 26-Jan-2012 21:49

AT&T Tumbles Into a Ditch
The chickens came home to roost on Thursday when AT&T took a $4 billion charge for the failure of its attempt to acquire T-Mobile. While AT&T's $32.5 billion in revenue beat estimates, and while the company reported 7.6 million iPhone activations -- thanks to the iPhone 4S -- it nevertheless suffered a fourth-quarter net loss of $6.68 billion, or $1.12 per share.
ecommercetimes.com | 26-Jan-2012 20:38

Privacy Advocates, Businesses Dig In for EU Lobbying Campaign
Both privacy advocates and representatives of businesses that handle consumer data are flocking to Brussels. Why? The EU has proposed a strict set of new data privacy rules that would restrict companies such as Facebook even more than they currently do. Facebook, et al., have descended on the city in the hope of softening some of the restrictions, while privacy advocates are there to keep the EU on its intended path.
ecommercetimes.com | 26-Jan-2012 19:19