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Cybermeals, a leading online food delivery service announced on Monday that it has changed its name to Food.com, and has received $25 million (US$) in a second round of funding from venture capital and media investors. According to the company, whose site is already used by over 450,000 customers to order food from over 11,000 restaurants nationwide, the funding is part of a new strategy, launched this week, to create the "Internet Dining Network."

Your success has politicians salivating. Politicians sniff out contributors the way French hunting dogs sniff out truffles. Juicy controversies demanding action are the bait for their hook. You, sir or madam, are the fish, the big game in the Great Game, and for the year 2000 the game is already afoot....

the South by Southwest Interactive Festival proved anything, it's that the future of music distribution is rather unclear. A Tuesday panel on the MP3 debate, which featured Michael Robertson, the founder and CEO of MP3.com, and Paula Batson of AT&T, quickly turned into a heated debate with spectators verbally attacking those on both sides of the issue...

Traditionally, when companies announce financial results on a Friday, it is likely that they are hoping to attract as little attention as possible to their results. This Friday, iMall (Nasdaq: IMAL), released its 1998 fourth quarter financials, indicating that the e-commerce mall developer lost more than $13 million (US$) in the fiscal year. Nonetheless, the company's stock held steady as of mid-day trading, indicating a high level of confidence in iMall's future, and a standard of review not often seen in most other industries...

No one likes paying taxes. But no one likes bumpy roads or getting mugged either. The fact is that (for good or ill) much of America's state and local government spending is funded by sales taxes. But most Internet transactions are free of sales tax. Web stores are treated the same way direct mail catalogs are. Local sales taxes aren't imposed unl...

3Com Corporation (Nasdaq: COMS), the second largest networking equipment manufacturer, is projecting that its revenue from online, business-to-business transactions will increase from 30 percent today, to 80 percent by the end of this year. The company also expects to save $100 million (US$) by shifting to an e-business strategy, conducting virtually all aspects of its business online...

CDnow (Nasdaq: CDNW) and N2K (Nasdaq: NTKI) announced on Thursday the completion of the planned merger between the two companies, which they describe as resulting in the "leading global music e-commerce company as measured by customer base, revenue, positioning with key partners and product offerings." The Company will be based in New York and will be known as CDnow, Inc. Beginning March 18, 1999, its stock will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol "CDNWD" for 20 days, then it will trade as CDNW...

In putting $750 million into Go2Net this week, Paul Allen has stuck a fork in one of the hoariest Internet myths, namely that in this market you're either number one or nowhere While market leadership is good, and America Online, Yahoo and Amazon have earned their places in investors' hearts, there is nothing carved in stone about any company's lea...

The goal of many businesses is to create brand loyalty and attract lifetime customers who will eventually spend thousands of dollars over many years. This is what makes web-savvy college students such attractive targets for e-commerce companies Market research firm Student Monitor released a survey last month that reported that 95 percent of colleg...

A spokesman for Rep. Billy Tauzin told the E-Commerce Times that the Louisiana Republican was serious last week when he warned Web merchants that states and localities will win the right to impose sales taxes on their transactions Tauzin, who heads the House subcommittee on telecommunications, personally advocates eliminating the income tax entirel...

Search leader Yahoo! enhanced its own e-commerce efforts by delivering transaction capabilities to its small merchants and signing CyberShop as a new anchor tenant in its growing mall Agreements with Bank One Payment Services and First Data Merchant Services will give Yahoo! Store merchants a more convenient, cost-effective route toward setting up ...

If you're involved in music, or any technology that must be streamed, the present battle over the MP3 format deserves a close look MP3 is the compression algorithm under which most of the Web's music is compressed. Since it doesn't carry copy protection, the music industry wants it replaced with work IBM is doing under the name of the Secure Digita...

Video Pipeline Inc., of Haddonfield, New Jersey, a long-time provider of in-store video promotions, is now offering the service to Internet based storefronts Company president Jed Horovitz says, "For as little as $100 (US$) your small online video store can offer online Java-based video clips from a 7,500 movie database to help drive sales." ...

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) announced today that it will build an e-commerce portal for small independent bookstores, that will be located at Booksense.com The ABA tapped Atlanta, Georgia based iXL Inc., to handle the basic design, and said it will license the book preview database of Muze Inc., which already provides book, video and...

There's no doubt that streaming media is going to affect how we purchase information and entertainment in the next millennium. However, the problem with this kind of new media right now is that it's often simply a pain for consumers. Downloading can be tedious, and sometimes unbearably slow. Right now, technology seems to be an enabler and a barrier at the same time...

The Coca-Cola Co. announced recently it had bought, and will re-develop, a vast stretch of land opposite my kids' small private school in downtown Atlanta. On the next block an Embassy Suites Hotel is going up, and across from there, Turner Broadcasting is renovating its giant CNN Center. In this environment the school goes unnoticed but I believe it will survive (even thrive) because it's small, flexible, and it teaches kids well...

Catalog company Lands' End (NYSE: LE), which sells apparel and gifts, reported disappointing, though encouraging earnings on Thursday. This is not a contradiction. Overall fourth-quarter earnings fell 38 percent (including charges) to $25.7 million (US$). But the mail-order company's stock climbed more than 10 percent on Thursday, largely because e-commerce sales more than tripled last year, climbing from $18 million to $61 million. Shares of Lands' End rose 3-1/4 to 34...

Ticketmaster Online - CitySearch (Nasdaq: TMCS) announced on Friday a new service called "CitySearch Commerce," that enables small and medium-sized businesses to conduct electronic commerce. The new service augments CitySearch's existing Web site development offerings for small businesses. Similar to services offered by Yahoo!Store and GeoCities, the new CitySearch service offers basic online selling features at a low development cost...

Database and Internet solutions heavyweight Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced on Thursday powerful third-quarter gains and key e-commerce deals. The company reported a whopping 36% increase in profits for the quarter ending February 28, 1999, and major contracts with e-commerce leaders like eBay, eToys, Excite, theglobe.com, Infoseek, NECX, and Techies.com...

Many Internet stocks got a boost on Wednesday, thanks to positive comments from Merrill Lynch. You might remember that Merrill had a short-term rating of "reduce" for Amazon.com in late January. On Wednesday, Merrill rated Amazon.com "accumulate" and set a 12-month price target of $150 So what happened? Well, pretty much what you expected would hap...