Larry Dignan

About

Larry formerly served as the East Coast news editor and Finance Editor at CNET News.com. Prior to that, he was editor of Ziff Davis Inter@ctive Investor, which was, according to Barron's, a Top-10 financial site in the late 1990s. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine.

Ready? Secure? Disclose

Are you ready to declare your company secure against attacks from cyberterrorists? If youre not, get moving. The odds are increasing that in the not-so-distant future, legislators will make corporate America adhere to yet-to-be-defined best practices in cybersecurity. Just as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is designed to assure investors that corporate financial records are […]

Is Regulation Inevitable for Enterprise Security?

Are you ready to declare your company secure against attacks from cyberterrorists? If youre not, get moving. The odds are increasing that in the not-so-distant future, legislators will make corporate America adhere to yet-to-be-defined best practices in cybersecurity. Just as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is designed to assure investors that financial records of a […]

A Deal to Watch

Autumn Bayles, chief information officer for Tasty Baking Co., expects the May 11 Web services alliance between SAP and Microsoft to make it easier for the $250-million-a-year Philadelphia snack cake company to become more efficient. “Its definitely good for the future,” says Bayles, whose widely dispersed users operate SAP software, using Windows computers on their […]

Green Bay Packers: Reel Time

Green Bay Packers fullback William Henderson isnt known for his gaudy statistics. He doesnt pass for 210 yards a game like quarterback Brett Favre and doesnt average eight tackles like linebacker Nick Barnett. His metric: “dominating blocks.” And Henderson wants two a game. You wont see dominating blocks on a fantasy football site or in […]

Riding Radio Waves

As project leaders ponder pilots of radio frequency identification systems this summer, in the rush to meet the mandates from Wal-Mart, Target, the Department of Defense and others, the real action may be at the theme parks where theyll take their kids. A series of pilots are set to begin at regional and national theme […]

Offshore Opt-Out

When online lender E-Loan Inc. said it would use processing agents in both India and the United States, it may have signaled a need to disclose how its work is managed. Pleasanton, Calif.-based E-Loan last month launched a pilot program for its home-equity-line customers, allowing them to choose whether they want to send work to […]

Can Sales and Marketing Run IT?

What did Jeff Cohen do when he learned his company was planning to have its technology department report to sales and marketing? He left. Cohen, the former chief information officer for JetBlue Airways Corp., left the airline last July, after learning that the technology department would shortly begin reporting to Tim Claydon, the companys senior […]

FreshDirect: Ready To Deliver

ItS 5:30 a.m. at FreshDirects warehouse and headquarters in Long Island City, N.Y. Its 40 degrees outside and 38 degrees inside. Butchers are slicing, dicing and packaging fresh meats in what is essentially a 300,000-square-foot refrigerator, getting orders ready for the online grocers 73,000 active customers in New York City. Other workers are packing boxes […]

RFID: Hit or Myth?

Procter & Gamble markets some of the biggest brands in store aisles across the country, from Crest toothpaste to Pantene shampoo to Charmin toilet paper. To date, the company hasnt begun to figure out the physics—or the business case—of radio waves and how they can help move its products more efficiently to retail outlets. But […]

Restoration Project

Restoration Hardwares supply-chain and technology infrastructure is a real fixer-upper opportunity. “The problem with these guys is that they dont know how to make money,” says Russell Hoss, an analyst with Roth Capital Partners. In January, Restoration reported that its same-store sales during the 2003 holiday season fell 3.5 percent over the year-ago period. The […]