Articles by Keith Regan

Hoping to squelch Oracle's hostile takeover attempt and alter the face of the software industry, PeopleSoft has released what it says is evidence that Oracle's proposed purchase is intended primarily to harm the smaller company's business. Although PeopleSoft expanded its lawsuit against Oracle's US$7 billion bid earlier this month to include clai...

Leaving little doubt about its commitment to solidify its position in the Asian marketplace, Intel has said it will start work early next year on a new testing and assembly plant in mainland China The plant, to be located in Chengdu, will employ 675 people at first, Intel said, and could be operational by the end of 2005. Initial construction costs...

Vegas oddsmakers are missing a golden opportunity. They should start taking bets on who will be the first high-tech executive to whisper the now-dreaded R-word. No, not recession. They toss that one around like a football. We're talking recovery If there's a tech exec willing to call the recovery under way, on the horizon or even in the near future...

The battle over ownership of open-source Linux source code took a nasty turn as the SCO Group, which claims to own a key part of the code and has aggressively pursued compensation for it, found itself the target of a hacker attack. The distributed denial-of-service exploit apparently took down the Lindon, Utah-based company's Web site for most of the weekend and lingered into the work week. The company's site was out of service sporadically Monday and Tuesday.

Leading chipmaker and technology bellwether Intel has announced business is improving ahead of schedule, putting it on track to post strong quarterly results that could surpass earlier expectations "Intel's business overall is performing better than expected," CFO Andy Bryant said in a conference call. The company's computer architecture business i...

E-commerce posted strong double-digit growth in the second quarter, bringing in US$12.477 billion total in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The bureau, which tracks e-commerce for the U.S. Department of Commerce, said sales rose 27.8 percent from the second quarter of 2002. By comparison, overall retail sales grew less than 5 percent.

Putting the efficiency of its direct-sales model to the test and seeking to capitalize on the recent woes of its main rival Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer has announced it will cut prices on many of its products. Specifically, the company said it plans to slash price tags by up to 22 percent on enterprise, small-and-medium business and consumer products...

Had enough yet? Did the Blaster worm send you over the edge? Maybe one of its variants is emptying out your hard drive right now. Or perhaps your bottom line is still suffering from a shutdown caused by the SQL Slammer worm back in January. Is any of that enough to convince you to stop using Microsoft products? There are plenty of people rooting f...

Hewlett-Packard fell short of expectations with its third-quarter results, but executives at the company vowed to post improvements in the current quarter and said they will undertake cost-cutting measures, including 1,300 more layoffs, to achieve their goal. The company posted revenue of US$17.35 billion for the quarter ended in July, up nearly 5...

Microsoft foiled a well-publicized denial-of-service attack on its Windows Update site over the weekend, but the company still faces questions about its handling of the flaw that allowed the Blaster worm to infect thousands of computers worldwide. The software giant said it thwarted the attack, planned for Saturday, by disabling the Web address th...

No longer a startup with a bright future, Google has become the search engine to beat -- a technologically superior company that has everyone in the industry looking over their shoulders, protecting their flanks and girding for battle Google's Goliath image is quite a change from its earlier role as the rising star of the Internet world, one it enj...

Seeking to capitalize on the public beating Microsoft's Windows platform is taking as the Blaster worm frustrates thousands of computer users, Sun Microsystems has opened registration for its Project Mad Hatter open source desktop system. Making no bones about the fact that the move is a response to "yet another massive security vulnerability" in ...

There was a bit of the old flash and dazzle in this year's eTail 2003 East conference in Boston and a healthy dose of optimism all around. After three long years of subdued events and lower turnouts, the robust, upbeat crowd seemed to sense things were heading in the right direction again. From the dais, speakers tossed around the word "profitabil...

PeopleSoft has amended its spate of lawsuits against would-be buyer Oracle to include new charges that Oracle deliberately interfered with its customer relationships. The move comes amid increasing doubt that Oracle can overcome two significant obstacles to its proposed takeover of PeopleSoft: regulatory squeamishness about the bid and apparent sh...

E-mail marketing remains one of the most cost-effective ways to deliverlong-term profitability for the online channel, but its existence could beat risk if the flood of spam is not brought under control. Executives at the eTail2003 conference in Boston, say permission marketing via e-mail almost always provides easy-to-measure results, positive RO...

The e-commerce landscape may have changed dramatically in recentyears, but both pure-play e-tailers and multichannel retailers arestill focused on finding ways to convert more surfers to buyers, accordingto keynote addresses and interviews at the eTail2003 conference in Boston, where E-Commerce Times reporter Keith Regan is on the scene Still, alth...

Saying it wants to simplify consumer electronics and expand their use, Hewlett-Packard has embarked on an ambitious product rollout, introducing some 100 offerings in the at-home video, digital photography and entertainment spheres. In addition to those products, many of which are focused on HP's traditional strengths in imaging and printing, HP's...

Marking the end of an overseas battle between Internet heavyweights, Yahoo has announced plans to shutter its Australian auction site and direct users to rival eBay. Specifically, the company said it will close the site, known as Sold.com, later this month "We recommend that in the future, our customers try out the great service offered by eBay, ou...

In a bid to speed development of the next generation of computer chips while also easing the financial burden of related research, IBM has announced it will ally with Chartered Semiconductor and Infineon Technologies to develop 65-nanometer (nm) chip-making capabilities. The multiyear deal, financial terms of which were not disclosed, calls for ea...

It's only a matter of time. After all, with Yahoo scooping up Overture, and every smaller search engine on the face of the earth already consumed by a larger player, it appears that the immovable object and the irresistible force will have to come together at some point. Sure, Yahoo and Google could continue to wage their own battles, with Google ...