Best of ECT News

The familiar adage that the consumer is always right has taken on a new meaning in the Internet age. Rather than talk with a store manager, consumers are now making their feelings about different products known on message boards and blogs. "Many companies tried to ignore the online forums, but most ...

There are many reasons why a company might opt to conduct virtual meetings rather than face-to-face ones. Cost is one, particularly with fuel costs soaring; having a widely dispersed base of employees, clients or partners is another common one. An increasing number of companies are also meeting up i...

Cruising the Web on a smartphone is about like cruising for a date on a tricycle -- the basic concept is there, but the delivery is laughable. If you are using an iPhone, then it's more like cruising in a Volkswagen Beetle -- better, but still short of the Lamborghini speeds we're used to on the ope...

We live in a Web 2.0 world, but when it comes to fighting Internet-borne security threats, many enterprises are armed with only Web 1.0 weapons, according to a study released this week by San Jose, Calif.-based Secure Computing. Web 2.0 usage is prevalent in enterprises, the study found, and as a re...

Doomsayers may be fond of predicting the imminent collapse of the Internet under the weight of video and other bandwidth-intensive applications, but at least one infrastructure provider is on track to increase its capacity tenfold by 2010. VeriSign, which manages the critical infrastructure that han...

Not too long ago, advice to keep a CRM implementation simple would have focused around due diligence for the application. It would have focused on negotiating the best deal with a systems integrator. Most of all, it would have focused on a clear needs assessment driving the application. That was the...

One might argue that China and the Internet are both like high-speed trains. Both are growing at an extremely rapid pace, and both are apparently unstoppable global economic forces that are reshaping the economic landscape. Unfortunately, one might also argue that they are on a collision course. "Wh...

When billionaire Charles Simonyi blasted off into space for a visit to the International Space Station last month, he not only made history as the fifth private citizen to fly into orbit. He also fulfilled what for many is a lifelong dream: To explore the final frontier. The prospect of traveling in...

In an effort to gain a competitive edge in the market, companies are implementing customer self-service solutions to address two distinctly separate business challenges -- improving the customer experience and cost reduction. While the cost-related benefits of self-service are widely understood, and...

In the not-so-distant future, the mundane will become borderline miraculous. The home washing machine will order its own repairs and the sprinkler system will call you on your cell phone to say the lawn service has broken one of its water spouts and it is now wasting water. The car will tell you to ...