Business 2.0

A few years ago, online shoppers could buy hit CDs for $9.99 or less with free shipping, best-selling books for 30 to 50 percent off the cover price, and all manner of apparel, electronics, toys, and pet food for substantial discounts over their real-world prices (and did we mention the free shippin

“Less is more,” cried the Minimalists of the 1960s art scene, stripping their canvases down to the barest essentials of color, shape, and line. Japanese auto manufacturers brought a similar sensibility to the auto world in the 1970s, building reliable and economical compact cars that quickly outsold

The Internet disappeared at midnight on Dec. 1 for 850,000 subscribers to AT&T Broadband’s cable modem service. That’s when AT&T’s insolvent broadband partner, ExciteAtHome, officially pulled the plug, cutting off Internet access for AT&T customers as a cost-cutting measure. In the following days, A

Wireless technology has developed ahead of most companies’ ability to keep their networks safe. In principle, wireless networks sound like a great idea: no cabling to pull through the walls and ceilings, no nasty wires tangling themselves up behind your desk, no need for laptop or handheld users to

Switching to a voice-over-IP phone system can cut your interoffice long-distance bills to zero and reduce administrative headaches. So what are you waiting for? For years now, the promised convergence of voice networks and the Internet has failed to materialize. It’s a bit like watching Bullwinkle M

So-called Web-services applications will soon talk to each other without human intervention. But first everyone needs to agree on how they’ll communicate. In my last column, I wrote about Web services, which are business applications that share data with other programs over the Internet. Instead of

By: Dylan Tweney Issue: November 2001 Adding foreign language versions of your website can easily pay for itself in fresh leads and revenues. Most websites take a Model T approach to overseas marketing: You can access them in any language you want, as long as it’s English. Eighty-five percent of the

New real-time computing technologies can link manufacturing plants with other divisions of the company — and help stave off supply-chain disasters. During the past decade, corporations have put immense amounts of cash and effort into IT projects with alphabet-soup acronyms, like enterprise resource

The events of the past month have made many companies nervous about their Internet security. It’s about time. If you believe that your computer systems are vulnerable these days, you’re not alone. In the month since the terrorist bombings, many businesses (and individuals) have adopted a heightened

For as long as people have been keeping records, they’ve struggled to find efficient ways to file their work. Ancient Assyrians, who scratched records on clay tablets, stored documents in pigeonholes in the walls of libraries, writing a list of each room’s contents on the wall — a kind of primitive

In the hours and days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, millions of phone lines went silent, but e-mail and the Web continued to work. For years we’ve been hearing about how the Internet was designed to withstand nuclear attacks. Well, at least we know it can resist terrorist bombardment, as was

To do business on the Web, you need an application server. Too bad you’re probably paying too much for it. In e-business, an application server is the functional equivalent of the guy who stands on a shipping dock loading and unloading boxes all day long. It’s not a glamorous job, but it is totally