SMB

Cloud computing may still be in its infancy, but Google, Amazon and IBM -- as well as other large vendors -- have rolled out cloud services at almost breathtaking speed. Indeed, it might appear these tier one vendors already have the multibillion dollar industry sewn up. That is not true, of course....

For those who like to feel like they've gotten a bargain whenever they make a purchase, 4Sale4Now.com could be a dream come true. The site lets retailers discount their products and services regularly, and it lets buyers to monitor these discounts and buy when they're deep enough to suit their fancy...

A heavily financed Internet startup has launched a new question-and-answer search engine with a twist -- users pay one another to get answers to questions. Santa Monica, Calif.-based Mahalo launched Mahalo Answers earlier this week. The search service is reminiscent of Yahoo Answers and search engin...

Online shoppers looking to save a few bucks have plenty of options this holiday season. Those looking to save on shipping costs in particular might find themselves at FreeShipping.org, a new Web site that lists free shipping deals for hundreds of retailers. "We noticed how many retailers were offeri...

Credit card fraudsters beware: Victrio might be tracking you. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company recently released a new system aimed at identifying, analyzing and storing the voiceprints of identity thieves. "We're building a nationwide database of bad guys' voiceprints," Victrio's founder and...

A new business advocacy group has launched in New Orleans -- a city that three years out from Hurricane Katrina is still trying to entice all of its former residents to move back home. Called "504ward," a play on the New Orleans' area code of 504, the group's main goal is to help the city attract an...

Ask most people what they like about working with small marketing firms and you'll hear answers such as "their personal approach" or "I'm not just a customer number to them" or "I get to work with the heavy hitters instead of some trainee just out of school." Yes, those are the things they say when ...

As more and more consumers download smartphone applications, it's become increasingly vital for developers, phone makers and wireless carriers to have a deeper understanding of how customers interact with them. That's where a company like Flurry comes in. The San Francisco-based startup has develope...

"Claiming itself to be a next-generation publisher, WEbook has successfully roped in venture capitalists to invest in their business," Deepak Thakur, senior research analyst in ICT Practice at Frost & Sullivan, told the E-Commerce Times. If the dot-com burst and the more recent Wall Street fiasc...

Woopra, a new Web-tracking and analysis service designed by iFusion Labs, began quietly enough. iFusion Labs CEO John Pozadzides, along with his partners, Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, launched the site at Word Camp, a convention for bloggers, in March 2008, offering memberships to 200 attendees. The ...

"Monetize." This dry semantic substitute for figuring out ways to make money stood out as the Word of the Day for the companies displaying their social media Web sites and Software as a Service offerings at the VentureNet 2008 Conference, produced by the Torrance-based Technology Council of Southern...

BillShrink, a Silicon Valley Internet startup, has launched a new free service that helps consumers to make sense of the ever-changing offers, rules and rewards programs in the credit card market. Consumers can go to BillShrink.com and fill out an online survey that asks questions about their credit...

Finding a quality television stand on the Internet should be pretty easy in this day and age of Google and Amazon.com, but back in late 2003, it wasn't. Especially if one lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, like e-commerce entrepreneur Arash Fasihi did. That's because even as late as 2003 -- years...

Kate Moloney-Egnatios' intuition led her to Intuit. She followed the signs in her career pointing to Verisign and paid her dues at PayPal. But she says her latest tech startup is even more of a winning business idea than tax preparation software and online payment/authentication systems, and the aud...

Things are changing at eBay. eBay says it is evolving to adapt to changes in the larger market, but it's not clear how the auction giant will fare against an emerging army of specialized competitors, and it's far from clear whether sellers will warm to its new internal price structure. Changing the ...