Susan Kuchinskas

Microsoft is taking spam fighting technology seriously. Enterprise players’ reaction? There’s plenty of spam to go around. This week, Brightmail released an upgrade to its enterprise spam filtering software. Brightmail Anti-Spam Version 5.5 contains new URL rules to catch those nasty tricksters who send spam containing deceptive URLs, along with a second-generation Open Proxy List, […]

America Online wants people to know that it’s as American as apple pie — and football. “America Online is a very big brand,” said Len Short, executive vice president of brand marketing at the ISP. “We have a lot of customers, and they do very diverse things. But there are a couple of times of […]

Shopping.com rolled out new technology that changes the way merchants bid for placement on the comparison shopping site, mimicking the systems already in place at Overture and FindWhat.com. The Shopping.com Smart Bidding System lets merchants set the maximum bid they’re willing to pay for a certain ranking; it then automatically ups the bid in one […]

Interactive agency Avenue A announced the launch Monday of ChannelScope, an analysis service that lets multi-channel marketers quantify the offline sales impact of online ad campaigns. The bigger news is, beta tests of ChannelScope showed that Internet ads drove more sales offline than online. In one test with multi-channel retail client of Seattle, Wash.-based Avenue […]

In a high-stakes trademark poker game, Google called what might or might not be a bluff on the part of an online seller of home decorating products. Today, Google asked a U.S. district court to rule on whether some of the keywords it sells to advertisers infringe on the trademarks of American Blind and Wallpaper […]

On November 14, among the editorial offerings MSN visitors was “Start: Technology That Works for You.” Created by the Microsoft portal’s writers and editors, the special section reviewed personal technology in five categories, Playing, Connecting, Saving, Seeing and Driving. The latter category featured the Toyota Prius, the gas/electric hybrid car with high-tech features including an […]

Just 1.4 percent of Internet users visited the Web site of a Democratic candidate in October, according to a new study. But Web publishers hope to prove that this sliver of the body politic contains highly influential voters who may persuade others. These statistics and insights into political behavior online were unveiled at the E-Voter […]

BMW of North America launched the next phase of an aggressive marketing campaign with a 3D game that puts users in the virtual driver’s seat of the BMW X3, a “sport activity” vehicle aimed at the young, affluent and adventurous. The BMW X3 Adventure game, which went live yesterday on the corporate site, features three […]

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — A company’s own employees are sometimes overlooked in marketing and communications efforts, but not at Yahoo! , say executives here. At a meeting of the CMO Council, an organization for top marketing officers, Yahoo! cheerleaders said their branding begins at home. From the corporate intranet to free coffee to group yodels, the […]

Land’s End tops the list of customer-focused e-tail sites, with market giant Amazon.com coming in close behind. That’s the conclusion of a report released Tuesday by Future Now, a Web marketing consultancy that focuses on converting traffic into leads and sales. To conduct the study, dubbed the “2003 Study for Customer Focused Excellence,” Future Now […]

Thanks to constant phishing expeditions in which evil-doers spoof the e-commerce sites of major retailers, consumers have become much more aware about the dangers of offering up personal information online. That’s a good thing for consumers, but it may be bad for online merchants, especially those who haven’t become household words. According to a survey […]

We’re in the midst of the money-making season for merchants of all stripes. Evidently, the purveyors of Viagra and penis enlargements are no exception. E-mail filtering service providers have noticed an increase in the already titanic spate of spam. Unsolicited commercial e-mail volume has increased dramatically this year, according to Vircom, from 45 percent of […]