Evan Schuman

As the CIO for a $4.1 billion health care products distribution company, Jim Harding knows only too well the changing face of medical technology today. He sees senior physicians hand-writing prescriptions, penciling notes in patient folders and resisting electronics while the younger physicians embrace PDAs and digital transcription units. But Harding sees the identical trend […]

Those spacious compartments underneath grocery carts may be convenient for shoppers, but retailers say they are also attractive to shoplifters as they usually can’t be seen by a cashier nor by typical security cameras.A robotics firm has sold several major retailers on a new approach to the problem, using a small video camera, pattern recognition […]

In analyzing more than 6,500 data points from each of 22 top e-commerce sites, a new Keynote Systems report found that many sites were too slow, failed too often and often glitched during the crucial checkout period. The sites evaluated were Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Buy.com, Circuit City, Costco, Dell, Crate and Barrel, […]

Jim Harding, CIO for the $4.1 billion health care company Henry Schein Inc., doesn’t like taking risks with other people’s money. Especially not the money of the people who control his salary. It’s certainly fair to say that Harding is risk-averse, but that doesn’t prevent him from considering unproven, cutting-edge technologies such as voice over […]

Trying to strengthen its retail technology position, Oracle Corp. Tuesday purchased ProfitLogic Inc., a small but well-positioned retail software company. The acquisition comes only a few months after Oracle’s takeover of Retek Inc. Both Retek and ProfitLogic counted some high-profile retail companies among their customers. ProfitLogic’s 30 customers included Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, JC Penney, Nordstrom, Toys […]

Corporate Web sites are becoming bloated bandwidth hogs, which should surprise absolutely no one in high tech. But a recent survey is proving that the reckless use of multimedia, animation, JavaScript and other impressive but non-informational offerings is starting to have a negative impact on site traffic. The site visitor’s pain from overdesigned or overprogrammed […]

When Cingular announced it was buying AT&T Wireless last year, top executives promised a seamless integration for users. Easy for them to say. The top execs of the $32 billion combined wireless phone company who were making those announcements didn’t have to wrestle with 2.5 petabytes of data, more than 600 overlapping applications, and tons […]

Trying to make eBay as attractive and comprehensive as possible for small businesses that represent a huge portion of eBay’s revenue, the auction company is offering to help customers create their own Web sites to complement their eBay presence. The move comes at a crucial time for eBay. The company this month is celebrating its […]

A major pharmacy chain’s program designed to let customers view a history of their purchases in e-mail had weak enough security to make it vulnerable to identity thieves, forcing the chain to temporarily shut down its Web site while it reconsidered security. The chain was CVS Corp., which has more than 5,400 stores in the […]

As the retail industry starts to embrace contactless payment in a big way—led by $41 billion retailer 7-Eleven and Chase, the nation’s largest issuer of credit cards—arguments are renewing about just how safe and fraud-proof these cards will be. One key argument is how easily the card’s data could be read by a thief, who […]

The conventional wisdom in large-scale networking is that sitting a virtual private network atop the Internet is the most cost-effective way to build a wide area network. But the CIO of $558 million children’s shoe chain Stride Rite isn’t so sure. Stride Rite is in the final stages of contracting for an $8 million upgrade […]

Sometimes, pushing the technology envelope is simply not worth it. The thought leaders tend to get criticized for the flaws of the new approach and, if it does take hold, they rarely get the credit years later for having taken the chance. In the retail space, there are clearly a handful of technology pioneer chance-takers […]