Matthew Hicks

What happens when two WLANs end up in the same location? If two 802.11b WLANs are set up in close proximity to each other, clients can see the access points of both WLANs. Access, however, is dependent upon user authorization and, if set up correctly, MAC address authorization. So users of one system should not […]

Venture capitalists and corporate executives. In many ways, they seem worlds apart. Venture capitalists are typically entrepreneurs who embrace new ideas and business models with as much gusto as corporate executives usually embrace prudence. Corporations investing in IT startups are increasingly breaking down that divide—but not always on their own. Many of their venture arms […]

Doug Watt cant help it: he still catches himself feeling a bit jealous when fellow programmers tweak his code. But that doesnt stop Watt—a senior engineer in the product engineering group at Woodward Industrial Controls, a unit of Woodward Governor Co., in Fort Collins, Colo.—from being a fan of the new, increasingly popular collaborative approach […]

If anyone is entitled to harbor a sour-grapes attitude about ASPs dying on the vine, its Michael Osborn. After all, the founder of online retailer eVineyard Inc. has twice been left high and dry after application service providers kicked the bucket, leaving him scrambling for alternatives. The bad news started in September, when Pandesic LLC, […]

Reading rumors of dot-com doom can pay off with easy pickings for competitors of ailing companies, as Mark Goldin learned in October. One of Goldins co-workers at application service provider Elite.com Inc., in Los Angeles, spread the news of competitor Red Gorillas falling fortunes. Both offered a Web-based time and expense application. Goldin, Elite.coms president, […]

Jobless and fearful, a former marketing director at a Denver dot-com was facing an increasingly common decision last month: whether to sign away some of her rights in exchange for severance pay. The woman had decided to leave the startup at the end of March because of disagreements with the way executives there were managing […]

If you listen to Thomas Siebel, the worst has yet to come for business-to-business software vendors. “On the B2B exchange side, I dont think anyone will survive. They are all gone,” the chairman and CEO of customer relationship management software vendor Siebel Systems Inc. said at Forrester Research Inc.s B2B Technology Leadership Forum in Scottsdale, […]

Preparing the launch of a product can cause even the best marketers heartburn, what with the steady stream of stress from deadlines and from trying to coordinate advertising agencies. Before even beginning to feel that pain at Johnson & Johnson-Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co., though, marketers sought prevention. As they were gearing up for the January […]

What do Michael Jordan and apparel industry e-marketplace company Fasturn Inc. have in common? Both were indirectly caught up in the controversy that arose a couple of years ago when large apparel companies such as Nike Inc. were accused of using offshore contractors that relied on underpaid child labor. Jordan, then the all-universe star of […]

Its not just e-marketplaces and startup service providers that are taking business-to-business e-commerce trust seriously. Century-old insurers, banks and business services companies also have stepped to the fore to help e-businesses mitigate the risks of buying and selling on the Web. Their names are familiar: Insurer American International Group Inc., financial services company Bank of […]