Grant Du Bois

Against the backdrop of last weeks court verdict that virtually dooms music-swapping service Napster Inc., dozens of companies gathered at the OReilly Peer-to-Peer Conference here to demonstrate P2P applications that they said have viable business models. P2P networking pools PC resources by file sharing—text, audio and video files are sent via PCs instead of servers—and […]

In the first few years, the biggest challenge for any small business is simply to survive. The same can be said about the rapidly proliferating number of online portals that are competing to serve small businesses. Theres little doubt that the potential market is huge. International Data Corp., of Framingham, Mass., estimates the number of […]

January was not kind to online news sites and portals, beginning and ending with layoffs and closures. The latest casualty was The Walt Disney Co.s long-struggling Internet portal, Go.com. Last week, the parent company shut down the operation and eliminated 400 employees, most of them located in Sunnyvale, Calif. Disney will align its Web sites […]

Corporate IT buyers are getting a new venue from which to procure equipment and other goods that has a familiar ring to it. Yahoo Inc. has launched Yahoo Industry Marketplaces, which, like the Santa Clara, Calif., companys consumer portal, will provide news and product information. Whats new for IT professionals is the capability to turn […]

Mongoose Technology Inc. and Verity Inc. are both readying products to ease the creation and management of information portals. PortalStudio Enterprise Edition, which Mongoose will unveil this week, enables companies to design, assemble, deploy and manage enterprise portals within a single environment, which reduces their portal life cycles and maintenance costs and brings faster returns […]

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. last week announced that it will acquire a majority stake in South Koreas largest auction Web site for about $120 million in cash. The acquisition of Internet Auction Co. Ltd. will open eBays global marketplace to Internet Auctions community of 2.8 million registered users, according to officials at eBay, in San […]

Portal vendors are working overtime to make deals with content and infrastructure suppliers to help shore up their offerings. Northern Light Technology Inc. and Oracle Corp. will announce early this year an alliance in which Oracle will incorporate Northern Lights content integration, classification/taxonomy and text search capabilities into Oracles FastForward Enterprise Portal RPM product. Serving […]

A handful of developers are rolling out software to help insurance companies and health care providers meet new privacy and security standards being imposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. iPrivacy LLC, OpenNetwork Technologies, Biodata Information Technology AG and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. will enable companies to protect the privacy of […]

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services late last month released new rules to protect the privacy of individuals medical records and other private health information managed by health care providers, insurers and clearinghouses. Called for under the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), the privacy standards limit the nonconsensual use of medical […]

Search engine companies Moreover Inc., Inktomi Corp., AltaVista Co. and Logika Corp. are turning more of their attention to the enterprise. As a result, enterprise users have more options to narrow their searches for key news and information on the Web. San Francisco-based Moreover last week introduced its Business Intelligence Solution. The centerpiece of the […]

Google Inc. has rolled out a free browser plug-in that allows Internet users to quickly search for information on 1.3 billion Web pages from any Web site with Googles search technology. The Google Toolbar, announced last week, produces a new tool bar on Microsoft Corp.s Internet Explorer 5.0 browser when downloaded to a PC. It […]

While questions abound as to whether Lotus Development Corp.s forthcoming Raven knowledge management offering will fly in the enterprise, technology buyers need look no further than Lotus parent company, IBM, for answers. IBM Global Services last week announced that it is entering the KM game with a Corporate Portal Offering of its own that will […]