E-commerce - Infoworld

SOPA on hold, PIPA may be weakened as Congress revisits the bills

Galen Gruman — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:21:56 +0000

As major technology websites such as Reddit and Wikipedia prepare to go dark this Wednesday in protest over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and the similar Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) act in the Senate, there are signs that the protests from the technology industry are causing Congress to rethink the two bills.

Microsoft declares demise of IE6 in U.S.

admin — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:07:31 +0000

Microsoft today said its campaign to drive Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) into extinction had done its job in the United States, where fewer than 1 percent of users ran the decade-old browser last month.

To celebrate, Microsoft posted a photograph of a cake frosted with the phrase, "Goodbye IE6!"

How Waste Management's CIO turned trash into treasure

admin — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:48:54 +0000

Trash doesn't seem like much of an online business, but Waste Management says otherwise.

Puneet Bhasin, CIO of the $13.5 billion company, launched an e-commerce site late last year where residential and business customers can rent dumpsters and get price quotes for trash and recycling services. The company plans to add new products for sale every two months during 2012, Bhasin says, and IT staffers will also get sales quotas to fill.

Forget mobile payments. The future is the mobile wallet

Galen M. Gruman — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:00:00 +0000

In some circles, the notion of a smartphone acting like a credit or debit card is fascinating, and you see story upon story about mobile payment-enabled smartphones and the potential rise of PayPal, the telcos, and such as the new payment processors. Who cares? Even if Visa and MasterCard were somehow to let go of that billion-dollar processing business, you're merely replacing one financial processor with another.

IBM buys e-commerce analytics vendor Demandtec for $440 million

admin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:23:14 +0000

IBM is buying analytics vendor DemandTec for $440 million in a bid to build out its line of e-commerce software, the companies announced Thursday. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.

DemandTec's cloud-based applications are used by retailers to fine-tune pricing strategies and product offerings on an ongoing basis in order to improve business.

FAQ: What the SOPA soap opera is all about

admin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:04:28 +0000

The recently introduced Stop Online Piracy Act has ignited a firestorm of protest from numerous quarters. Many of those opposed to the bill see in it a cynical attempt by the entertainment industry to impose a sort of Internet censorship regime. Supporters downplay that criticism and say the bill is needed to counter the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of U.S. IP annually. Here's what the big fight is all about.

Update: Google to merge Checkout with Wallet

admin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:38:30 +0000

Google is merging its Checkout and Wallet electronic payment services to consolidate them into a single product that works both on Web browsers and mobile devices.

The company is also in the process of making Wallet the payment tool on Android Market, YouTube, Google+ Games, and other Google sites where e-commerce transactions occur.

W3C releases draft online privacy standards

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:21:57 +0000

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released the first draft of two standards intended to protect the privacy of Web users and allow them to opt out of Web tracking systems.

The two draft standards, released Monday, are intended to "prevent surprises, to foster trust on the Web" and to find a balance between the privacy of Web users and the information collection requirements of websites, the W3C said.

Google starts rollout of Google+ for businesses

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:29:25 +0000

Google is getting ready for businesses to start jumping onboard its Google+ social network.

Developers wary of App Store sandboxing coming in March

admin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:45:12 +0000

Change is coming to the Mac App Store. On Wednesday Apple announced that as of March 1, 2012, all apps submitted to the Mac App Store will have to implement a security system called sandboxing in order to gain approval. The result will be safer apps, but some developers fear that sandboxing may force them to strip out certain features.

Wednesday's announcement to developers is actually a reprieve: When Apple first unveiled the sandboxing requirement at June's Worldwide Developer Conference, it was supposed to go into effect this month.

Holiday shopping with personal devices at work could pose security risk

admin — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:42:52 +0000

Workers are planning to do more online holiday shopping this year while on the job, with many using their own personal smartphones and tablets, a new survey shows.

As a result, many IT managers are worried about corporate network security since personal devices may face a greater risk of being hacked during shopping forays, according to ISACA, a non-profit IT advisory group with 95,000 members. Most are IT workers and managers.

A Microsoft-Yahoo-Alibaba hookup just makes sense

InfoWorld Tech Watch — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:33:41 +0000

Yahoo, the aging dowager of the Web portal genre and 40 percent owner of China's trading behemoth Alibaba Group, is up for sale. Again.

Congress wants answers on Amazon Silk privacy

admin — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:53:30 +0000

A Massachusetts congressman has asked Amazon.com to spell out whether and how its upcoming Silk browser will collect information from users when the retail giant launches its Kindle tablet next month.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the co-chairman of a congressional caucus focused on consumer privacy, last week asked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to answer four questions about Silk and data collection.

eBay unveils integrated app dev platform

admin — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:36:47 +0000

eBay has launched an application development platform called X.commerce that pulls in tools and functionality from a variety of its sites and products, including the eBay marketplace and PayPal, as well as from partners.

With X.commerce, eBay intends to give merchants and application developers access to a complete stack of e-commerce technologies, including shopping carts, payment services, and inventory management, the company said Wednesday.

Google to push mobile storefronts for retailers

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:10:25 +0000

After a recent survey revealed that almost 80 percent of its largest customers lack a mobile-optimized website, Google has decided to launch a program to address that issue specifically among retailers.

Google unveiled on Wednesday its Commerce Search Partner Program, designed to market and implement mobile e-commerce sites.

Despite rumors, the iPhone 4S has no NFC chip

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:21:36 +0000

Speculation for months suggested Apple would put a near-field communication chip in its next iPhone. But when the iPhone 4S was unveiled this week, the mobile payment technology was missing from the device.

It wasn't that Apple doesn't like NFC technology, but they apparently decided to wait until mobile payment systems are more widely adopted, analysts said.

Google Wallet now live, at least in one San Francisco coffee shop

admin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:08:01 +0000

Google Wallet appears to be live in the field today, based on a photograph of a payment terminal in a coffee shop in San Francisco.

MasterCard gives sneak peek at future of mobile payments

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:37:32 +0000

MasterCard on Thursday gave a sneak peek into the near future of mobile payment systems and said that the Google Wallet application is within weeks of being rolled out commercially.

Google Wallet, announced in May, lets mobile phone users pay for purchases in stores by tapping their phones against point-of-sale terminals. At the tail end of a media and analyst day in New York, MasterCard demonstrated the application as well as other, future mobile payments systems.

SAP adds security, management for app stores

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:10:03 +0000

SAP customers looking to open iTunes-like enterprise app stores through Apple's Volume Purchase Program (VPP) will soon have the ability to manage and deploy the software securely thanks to new VPP support in the Sybase Afaria platform, SAP said Tuesday at the Tech Ed conference in Las Vegas.

Afaria delivers mobile applications to devices and allows IT staff to apply authorization levels, making sure only the right employees get to use the software. The platform also manages mobile devices and tracks application usage and licenses.

Blow-by-blow: Another Microsoft cloud outage

InfoWorld Tech Watch — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:39:02 +0000

The Microsoft cloud went south for a couple of hours Thursday night. The silver lining is that Microsoft appears to be doing better at informing its users what's going on -- although a new third-party cloud tracking service beat Redmond to the punch.