Articles by Keith Regan

Few countries around the world have passed laws targeting online criminal activity, posing a threat to e-commerce and technological growth, according to a report released Wednesday. McConnell International, a security consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., found that 9 of 52 countries it studied have extended existing laws to cover most crimes...

I know several savvy shoppers who use Amazon.com just for the customer reviews of products, which turns out to be a good news/bad news proposition for the King of all E-tailers. What's good? Well, the company is providing a killer service by compiling those reviews. However, the bad news is that many of those same people often buy elsewhere after ...

The main shopping site of Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) suffered a 40-minute outage on Tuesday, the third and longest shutdown for the site since Thanksgiving. While Amazon has downplayed past outages, saying they would have "no measurable impact" on business, Morningstar.com analyst Patrick Dorsey told the E-Commerce Times that the outages do matter....

Amid efforts to rebuild its stock value, CyberCash (Nasdaq: CYCH) on Tuesday unveiled a new version of its online payment system aimed at the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace. CyberCash said several e-business companies, including YourAccounts.com, Oracle, IBM and Intershop, have agreed to integrate the company's payment options into their e...

To hear the folks at Amazon.com explain it, the two recent outages that took their main shopping site down for 15 to 30 minutes each, right smack in the middle of the day, are nothing to be alarmed about. In attempting to explain the first spate of downtime, which came on the day after Thanksgiving no less, Amazon spokespeople relied on euphemisms...

Online auction giant eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) is denying that it is in talks to buy business-to-consumer auction house uBid, according to a report published Sunday. The business news weekly Barron's reported that the two auction firms have held talks in recent months. While eBay refused to comment directly on the report, Reuters quoted an unnamed sourc...

The European Union (EU)passed a controversial law Thursday designed to boost consumer confidence ine-commerce by establishing rules about where lawsuits against Internet merchants can be filed The Brussels I regulation, which was reportedly hammered out as a compromisemeasure, allows consumers to use the local courts and consumer protection laws in...

A union at Amazon.com? Or for that matter, at eTown.com? The suggestion itself seems strangely anachronistic, a throwback to the days when unions served a valuable purpose, when the workers they represented were truly being taken advantage of, forced to work endless hours without overtime or placed in danger by the nature of their work. It seems s...

Small businesses in the United States are now more likely to use the Internet for advertising and promotion than for selling their products and services online, a survey released Wednesday found The report from SuperPages.com and Gallup disclosed that the number of small businesses using the Web for marketing purposes more than doubled since 1999,...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) added wireless phones and services to its expanding roster of products Tuesday evening The Seattle, Washington-based e-tail giant said it will offer plans from severalleading U.S. wireless companies, including AT&T, Sprint PCS and VoiceStream,and such phone makers as Nokia and Samsung....

It was a sweet bit of news from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Despite some lackluster months for e-commerce, the agency said, online spending jumped 15 percent from the second quarter to the third. In all, Americans spent US$6.3 billion online from July through September. Finally, there was something to balance the grim reports of dot-coms on l...

A word to the CEOs, venture backers or board members of any dot-com companies teetering on the brink of collapse: Please, do everything that you can -- as long as it's not at the expense of your customers -- to keep your company up and running through the holidays. No one wants to find bankruptcy under their Christmas tree.

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) was unavailable to shoppers briefly Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year in the United States The Seattle, Washington-based e-tailer downplayed the effects of the outage, saying that it lasted only about 30 minutes and that it was not caused by an overload of visitors. The company traced the problem to an i...

Someday, when the entire online world is wired with high-speed connections, perhaps the home page at Amazon.com will make us really feel the holiday shopping spirit online. Maybe the site will play Christmas carols -- customized for each visitor of course, based on past purchases and online behavior. In the meantime, Amazon is doing what it can to...

Looking to pave the way for future growth in a largely untapped region, AOL Latin America (Nasdaq: AOLA) formally launched a portal Wednesday with content aimed at Internet users in countries including Venezuela, Chile and Colombia The regional portal, which will feature content in Spanish and Portuguese, is designed to complement the growth of AOL...

In a move designed to focus its dwindling cash resources on the United States, Buy.com (Nasdaq: BUYX) said Monday it has ceased operations in Australia. Buy.com, which ranks as the second-largest e-tailer behind Amazon.com in the U.S., said it will fulfill all orders made before the site is shut down.

In some ways, the Internet got a lot more elbow room last week when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) carved out seven new domain suffixes to go with dot-com (.com). Is bigger better? For some, especially the corporations that want more virtual real estate. Apparently the hunger for space is as strong online as off.

The headlines are daunting. Every day seems to bring at least one dot-com failure to the fore. But for all the wisdom of trying to see the big picture, we need to zoom in and consider what this shakeout means for the individuals. I'm not talking about employees. There's good evidence they're getting hired as fast as they're getting laid off.

Further fortifying its holiday e-tail offerings, America Online (NYSE: AOL) unveiled a luxury shopping section of Shop@AOL Wednesday AOL said the upscale shopping area will be anchored by Instyle.com, the online wing of fashion magazine InStyle, which will provide editorial content, offer links to individual shops, and recommend purchases in severa...

As e-tailers grapple with trying to make their Web sites easier and easier for online visitors to use, a disconcerting question is coming to the fore: How dull do you have to be to shop online? Yes, simplicity is important. All things being equal, customers will certainly choose an easier-to-use Web site over a harder one.