eWEEK EDITORS

Competitors laughed and investors scoffed last week, when SBC Communications Chairman Edward Whitacre blamed his companys third-quarter losses on government regulations that blocked SBC from deploying DSL. But at least one analyst said Whitacre was “dead on” when he commented that federal and state regulations were responsible for the economic abyss. SBC – which holds […]

The economic downturn is causing major corporations to rethink – or even cancel – programs to provide their employees and families with home PCs and Internet access. Ford Motor confirmed a week ago that it has formally scrapped a program intended to provide 350,000 employees in its global work force with free PCs and subsidized […]

Yantra on Target Discount retailer Target has selected supply chain and inventory management software firm Yantra to run its direct-to-customer order management system. Yantras software will serve as the fulfillment engine for Targets direct-to-consumer operations, including its Web storefront operation. The first to go live will be the furniture, special order and gift registry business […]

Despite the parade of bad news stories and bleak earnings reports, this could turn out to be a good holiday season for online sales. According to a survey by Nielsen//NetRatings, more than 106 million people will spend $9.9 billion shopping online in December. That compares with the 85 million people who spent $6.9 billion last […]

Could the worst of times be the best of times for online retailers? With the nation in an economic and psychological funk, the companies that sell their wares over the Internet think they may finally have their act together — enough, at least to notch their first profits. The bellwether for all e-tailers, Amazon.com, is […]

AT&T has cut the cord, letting go cherished dreams and schemes, in hopes of salvaging shareholder value. With its cable unit up for grabs, AT&T bids farewell to Dan Somers, CEO of the Broadband unit, who guided AT&T in its plan to reinvent itself as a high-speed network operator. Replacing him is William Schleyer, a […]

When it comes to obtaining financial services on the Web, consumers have embraced brokerages and banks, but not insurers. Despite its relatively poor showing — less than 1 percent of all consumer insurance is sold on the Web — the insurance industry hasnt given up. In fact, insurers are rolling out a spate of offerings […]

With prospects for a blue Christmas more apparent by the day, some multichannel merchants see a chance to salvage the season with incentives designed to pad the fourth-quarter fall and provide payoffs in more prosperous times. The trick is to steer in-store customers to Web sites, where a long-term relationship can take root. Using incentives […]

The wireless industry should quickly address the issue of spam, or irresponsible companies such as Acacia National Mortgage are going to annoy wireless data users enough to make them turn off their cell phones entirely. Acacia made headlines earlier this year for sending unwanted text messages to wireless data customers. The messages were meant to […]

Well-publicized security breaches in the wireless local area networking standard have plagued the market, but leading vendors insist the problems are surmountable. Concern about wireless LAN security swelled when researchers at the University of California at Berkeley published a report detailing weaknesses of the wired equivalent privacy (WEP) algorithm built into the wireless LAN standard. […]