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Click here to e-mail Mick Brady ...

Click here to e-mail Mick Brady ...

The dot-com shakeout is not the big e-commerce news of 2000. It should surprise no one that a raft of new companies that pinned all their hopes on a flawed business model were doomed to fail. The headline of the year is this: "The People Bought E-Commerce." ...

There's something slightly disappointing about Shawn Fanning's decision to go legit with Napster, but it's not exactly the same as David making nice with Goliath or Luke Skywalker going over to the Dark Side ...

While ChurchPlaza started offline and moved to the Web, the WorldWide JudaicaStore began as a pure-play and looks toward a brick-and-click future. ...

Religion may rival sex and politics as a taboo subject for dinner table conversations, but mentioning money and religion in the same breath can cause even more squirming. ...

If e-commerce fails to capture whopping holiday sales this year, it is going to be for lack of imagination. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have always known that people want much more out of the holiday season than the opportunity to get a bargain, and they have made the creation of aesthetically pleasing, entertaining, emotionally fulfilling shopping environments an art form. But holiday magic seems woefully lacking on the Web...

One of the fundamental rules of e-commerce is that for every dire prediction, there is an equal and opposite upbeat outlook, and vice versa. So it was a high mark of distinction -- for a while -- that not since consumers began flocking to the Web had a phenomenon been reported with as much consistency as the business-to-business (B2B) boom ...

Concern over health complications due to radiation emissions from cell phone handsets has also dampened enthusiasm for expanding their use. Last June, the World Health Organization called for further testing to assess the potential risk ...

"Consumers don't think they want the wireless Web yet, but they will." So said Forrester analyst Patrick Callinan, explaining his firm's recent conclusion that there is "latent demand" for Internet-enabled mobile phones in the United States ...

A free Internet. It has taken the United States over 200 years and counting to interpret the rights of its citizens, but we're supposed to accept the Web's one inalienable principle at face value. Anyone who betrays it should be condemned for committing technological treason. But my guess is that frontier law lacked romantic appeal for those who actually lived by the six-gun, and few of us really want to go back there...

Everyone must be stupid. That's the only conclusion possible in light of the recent report released by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on the lamentable state of U.S. government Web site security ...

The shakeout shark may not be finished gobbling up little dot-coms just yet, but for reasonably cautious investors, the news is good: It's safe to go back into the water ...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos seems to be gambling that when it comes to Internet privacy, honesty and ignorance may be a winning combination. Ever since George Washington felled the cherry tree, Americans have embraced the peculiar notion that being up front about one's evildoing diminishes the wrong. If only Clinton had been honest about Monica, the logic seems to go, his behavior would have been far less reprehensible...

In the 1980s, Irish citizens were leaving the country in droves. The economy was in miserable shape and the country's spirit was sagging. Isolationism and intransigence over bitterly divisive internal issues contributed to a national malaise ...

The Information Age is killing critical thinking. The steady barrage of more facts and figures than any human mind can digest results in absurdly swift processing with little or no reflection, much less complex deliberation. The ever increasing pressure to rush to judgment can lead to strangely counterproductive conclusions -- as in the case of what to do with notorious ex-hackers who are ready to go back to work...

The difference between "virtual" and "actual" is nowhere more important than in the world of online fashion. Buying clothing, footwear, jewelry and accessories involves far more subjectivity than shopping for products like books, CDs or electronics, and most people want to get up close and personal before committing to a new wardrobe item or an expensive gift...

The National Rifle Association (NRA) and other opponents of gun control can relax and save their breath. Regardless of the degree to which firearm sales may be regulated in the brick-and-mortar world, anything goes on the Internet. No one has reliable statistics, or even an educated guess as to the total amount of dollars (US$) involved, but there is general agreement that both legal and illegal online gun trafficking is on the rise...

The debate over freedom of the Internet is escalating, as government and policymaking bodies attempt to establish some enforceable parameters for its use. The implications are social, political and economic. Conservative societies are at odds with the Net-dominating United States over such issues as pornography and the sale of merchandise considered hate-based or racist...

In July of 1999, online pharmacy Drugstore.com (Nasdaq: DSCM) went public with an IPO price of $18 (US$). The stock rose to 67 1/2 before beginning a long decline that would take it to a low of 4 11/16. Shares are now hovering around 6, and Drugstore.com is among the high profile e-commerce firms languishing on the second tier of Goldman Sachs' notorious June "death watch" list...