While the FTC continues to hold hearings on the ability of carriers to manipulate web traffic, a wider struggle for an open Internet continues to be played out in corporate offices. Search Engine Journal rep orts that Apple is the latest tech giant to jump into the ongoing ethical debate over Wikileaks, pulling iPhone apps designed for the controversial whistle-blower’s site off the digital shelves of its Apps Store.

The popularity of the Internet is starting to hit brick and mortar businesses right where it hurts, their sales volume. As consumers enjoy browsing online stores in the convenience of their own homes and having their goods delivered to their door, offline businesses are beginning to realize they must create an online presence or get left behind. The advantages of e-commerce are many and varied, not the least of which is reduced costs. Venturing into the world of e-commerce is not something any business should rush headlong into. Before your business ploughs ahead with a virtual store, consider the following points to help you get set-up right the first time.

What’s the next strategy if you are Silicon Valley’s most infamous, yet most persistent, ‘also-ran’?  Just having moved its paid ads over to Bing, and with early reports that it will layoff roughly 5 percent of its workforce (Merry Christmas!) as early as December 14, it seems that Yahoo! is all set to undergo yet another restructuring.

Reuters reports that, Yahoo “plans to lay off more than 600 employees as early as Tuesday,” December 14. Most of these cuts will reportedly be in Yahoo’s product group. Reuters notes that, “(t)he layoffs come two years into Chief Executive Carol Bartz's tenure, as Yahoo works to grow its revenue amid tough competition from Google Inc and Facebook.”

It is easy to see in today's innovative market, why CRM has made such an impact on customer service satisfaction. CRM is the latest, technological system that is unprecedented in the management of customer data and it has made it easier than ever before to manage the volume of today’s market, with even greater success. No previous system has the power of CRM and no system can compare with the abilities of a CRM solution, affording more information with greater accuracy.

Concerted hacking efforts by so-called “cyberanarchists” (according to the New York Times) were launched against several big business web sites that provide the basic infrastructure for online marketing and sales. Co-ordinated “cyberattacks” were made on Mastercard, PayPal and Amazon.com, who cut off services to Wikileaks following the widespread dissemination of hither-to top secret U.S. military and diplomatic communications through Wikileaks, and the recent arrest in Britain of its founder, Julian Assange, to face extradition for “questioning” on sex charges in Sweden.

Obtaining an MBA degree has become a popular option for business professionals who have several years of work experience and are looking to take the initiative in moving their careers ahead. Online MBA programs offer students with a host of different types of MBA degrees ranging from a general MBA degree to specializations in any pertinent business sector such as accounting, finances or management. Identifying the best type of MBA degree for you is all about considering each choice relative to your career goals and desired job concentration.

And, so, the online media wars continue.  .  .  . Just as “Video Killed the Radio Star” in the ‘80s, so “the Internet Killed Print Media” in the 00’s. Or, so it seems. Yet media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, has unveiled his vision of an apps-only news source which he thinks will challenge this trend and cause readers to turn to their ‘readers’ for their daily dose of news, rather than to online news aggregators like Google News and Yahoo! News.

Managing a team of staff who work in a variety of locations can seem a daunting task but with the right management, remote teams can be as productive or even more so than teams working alongside each other.

The greatest challenge is believing in your staff and trusting them to deliver. It is essential to have a very open two way channeled approach to communication. This is easily achieved via conference calls. These can be between the manager and a particular team member or even involving the entire team at the same time. This has a multitude of benefits as discussed later on.

The service industry is a tricky landscape, due to the fact that, often times, no tangible property is transferred back and forth.  Sure, you may purchase a software program that comes on a disk, but in reality, you are merely purchasing the right to use that program, not the rights to the program itself.  The service industry is a world dominated by intellectual property, and protecting yours should be your utmost goal.

AOL Purchases TechCrunch

AOL is trying to regain some of its influence online with the purchase of a number of assets this week including Techcrunch.com. TechCrunch is one of the more popular blogs online covering technology news and company announcements. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, was purchased for $40 million and will continue to operate as a separate entity. The announcement was made at TechCrunch’s conference TechCrunch Disrupt.