Beth Cox

Name-your-own-price service Priceline.com launched an enhanced hotel reservation service, including its first-ever Best-Price Guarantee. And not to be outdone, rival Expedia.com announced beefed up features for its Expedia Special Rate properties, such as area-specific maps and virtual property tours, to go along with its existing low price guarantee. >{? Norwalk, Conn.-based Priceline said its hotel […]

E-business software and services company FreeMarkets, continuing to make rival Ariba work hard for its money, launched a new spend management solution that combines analysis with data collection, cleansing and enhancement services. The Pittsburgh, Pa.-based company said the new ASP product is called the FreeMarkets Spend Visibility Solution. It was engineered to provide client companies […]

A national group of lawyers pushing for uniform state laws has approved amendments to a set of proposed rules for e-commerce, including new provisions limiting the ability of tech companies to remotely disable their software on a consumer’s computer. But the measures face a lot of opposition and would have to be adopted on a […]

The U.S. Postal Service has signed an agreement with a subsidiary of Schenectady, N.Y.-based AuthentiDate Holding Corp. to provide the USPS Electronic Postmark (EPM) service. The service, using sophisticated encryption technology, provides evidence that the content of an electronic document or file existed at a specific date and time, and “ensures that it cannot be […]

Movie ticket sales company Fandango said that former Seagram CEO and Vivendi exec Edgar Bronfman Jr. has agreed to an appointment on its board of directors. Santa Monica, Calif.-based Fandango, which sells advance movie tickets online and by phone and is testing print-at-home ticketing, said that Bronfman’s experience in the entertainment and consumer products sectors […]

Movie ticketing company Fandango, which sells theater tickets online and by phone, says it has thwarted an end-run by AOL Moviefone allegedly aimed at snagging one of its movie theater partners. Santa Monica, Calif.-based Fandango, which sells advance movie tickets and is testing print-at-home ticketing, counted the bankrupt Loews-Cineplex Entertainment theater chain among its partners. […]

There’s a strange paradox at work in the ecommerce sector: It’s a great time to be in the online travel business, which continues its run as an e-commerce darling. But these days, the following statement is equally true: It’s a terrible time to be in the online travel business, what with increasing competition and all […]

Online travel site Orbitz sent an open letter to President Bush, defending itself after execs from rivals Expedia.com and Travelocity.com spent a day in Washington trying to persuade the Administration to curb the venture. Jeffrey Katz, chairman and CEO of the airline-backed Orbitz, said that despite claims from rival airline ticketing operations, “there is no […]

Nineteen civil and criminal law enforcement actions were announced Tuesday by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies against scamsters in the Midwest and West who allegedly bilked Internet users out of amounts running into the millions of dollars. Agencies involved include the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, […]

Online payments company PayPal, persuaded that ubiquitousness is a key to online success, has struck a deal to integrate its service into the Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Web site creation and management tool set. The move means that simple credit card processing and subscription billing services can be integrated from the get-go into the creations of […]

eBay is quietly following through on several of its recent promises and deals, making the fixed-price format available to all of its sellers and easing out Equifax in favor of VeriSign for user ID authentication. The San Jose, Calif.-based auction giant said last month at the eBay user gathering that the fixed-price format was coming. […]

The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on healthcare fraud being perpetrated online, settling charges with one company in California and sending warning advisories to 280 other Web site operations. The agency said San Ysidro, Calif.-based BioPulse, which had been touting “alternative” treatments for cancer — including one called “Acoustic Lightwave Therapy” — agreed to […]