Clint Boulton

B2B software maker and auction FreeMarkets Inc. late Tuesday evening decided it is better to be safe than sorry when it killed its merger agreement with e-business solution provider Adexa Inc., citing slouching market conditions and Securities and Exchange Commission delays. As the agreement was amicable and mutual, Pittsburgh’s FreeMarkets will not pay a dime […]

Real Media Tuesday vowed to lend its online advertising prowess to one of the top online brands for men, Playboy.com. Financial details of the deal were not made public. On U.S. soil, Real Media will supplement Playboy.com’s internal sales force within certain markets and advertising categories, and will be the exclusive international representative for the […]

MusicNet’s and Duet’s wheelings and dealings have all the makings of a nuclear arms race. According to hints dropped from sources close to the busy online music industry, Napster Inc. is in talks with the three major media giants who back MusicNet to offer users a pay version of its popular service. The New York […]

Investment firm Warburg Pincus Monday took the Cobalt Group Inc., an e-business products provider that specializes in helping automotive dealers manage their practices online, private. Already Cobalt’s largest shareholder with a 46 percent stake, Warburg Pincus will tuck Seattle-based Cobalt in for a price of $3.50 per share. The purchase price represents approximately a 79 […]

Universal Music International, part of Vivendi’s group that will lend its considerable weight to the pending Duet subscription service, will announce Monday that it has tabbed Hyperwave Information Management’s software to power its large corporate portal. Financial terms of the deal were not made public. Universal will use Hyperwave’s software to treat thousands of employees […]

As contentious issues blow through the halls of America Online Inc. and Microsoft Corp., the latter tech giant Monday said it will offer beta testers a peek at its much-ballyhooed Windows XP operating system. The prime area of emphasis for Microsoft is on its Windows Messenger, which is clearly the answer to AOL’s own wildly […]

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), a group that assembled in 1999 to develop the Apache HTTP server and fuel open-source interests, made public Thursday that its server had been compromised by crackers. And with the revelation, the outfit professed why having an open-source model is advantageous in such serious situations. The attack came from an […]

Yes, you too, can sue Napster. At least if you feel your old-time radio show content is being passed around the Web like a beach ball in a ball park, with everyone getting a clean shot in. Apparently that’s a scenario MediaBay Inc. took exception to this week when it filed a lawsuit versus Napster […]

While slowdowns in hardware spending have left some companies clinging to the cautious side, others see new market opportunities they hope will leave them in more comfortable positions when the economy reheats. Storage is one such arena where this is occurring. While some companies have taken an either-or approach to picking network-attached storage (NAS) or […]

Next week thousands of communications technology fans will descend upon Atlanta for the annual SuperComm conference (June 4-7) — an event whose past is rich with new product announcements from the companies who develop infrastructure for the complete range of service providers in the New Economy. In previewing the event, some analysts from Goldman Sachs […]

To meet the demands of thousands of traveling employees who rely on touching base with their corporate networks via handheld devices, Firepad Tuesday launched its Mobile Application Platform 2.0. Comparable to what many of its ilk have been doing lately, the company tailored it to work nicely with Palm’s leading operating system. Firepad’s platform is […]

Troubled online music broadcaster LAUNCH Media Inc. Tuesday said it had scored a $2 million loan from a “major media” company, but mum was the word on who that is. LAUNCH spokesperson Charlene English adamantly refused to reveal the source to InternetNews.com and would not comment on why this financing “replaces the secured convertible note […]