Stories by Jennifer DiSabatino

Enterprise IM lags behind expectations

Instant messaging (IM) has shed its image as a toy for teenagers and gained credence as a bona fide business tool. But IM hasn't become as important to companies as some people predicted it would more than a year ago.

DOT revisits Orbitz investigation

Almost a year after the government gave it the green light to launch, Orbitz LLC is again under federal scrutiny following pressure from competitors that say the online site has unfair direct access to airline bargains.

Take out the mystery, urges United's CIO

One the biggest challenges for IT managers today is demystifying the systems they run and the people who run them to their user population, Eric Dean, CIO at United Air Lines said today.

Galileo moves fare pricing onto Unix-based system

Galileo International , one of the four major worldwide reservation systems that handle travel industry bookings, is implementing a Unix-based fare-pricing system that will enable it to change and publish fares more cheaply and quickly to meet the demands of travel Web sites.

Online hotel venture raises anticompetitiveness fears

The formation of Hotel Distribution System LLC (HDS) by five of the world's largest hotel chains has raised fears of anticompetitiveness among some travel agents. However, one industry analyst said those fears are largely unfounded.

LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) was developed as a PC-based front end to access X.500-compliant directories. It uses less code than X.500, so it's more viable for client-side applications. LDAP works over TCP/IP and organizes people, devices and applications in a hierarchical tree structure that reflects geographical, political and organizational boundaries.

Lotus CEO Zollar: New Notes, Domino to be out by Sept.

A conservative Nixon-era economist turned Hollywood celebrity might be an unusual spokesman for a famously liberal software company located in the famously liberal city of Cambridge, Mass. But Ben Stein proved an appropriate messenger to deliver this year's theme of proven return on investment from the Lotus Software Group's collaboration products.

Enron bankruptcy case highlights e-mail's lasting trail

E-mails are messy entities, leaving little bits of themselves all over the network. That's why the attempts of employees in the Houston office of Arthur Andersen LLC to delete e-mails related to failed commodities exchange Enron were futile,"It is impossible that [congressional investigators] cannot find data on those hard drives. There are too many computers involved," said Michael Sanders, a computer forensics expert who specializes in e-mail recovery at New Technologies Inc. in Gresham, Ore. "[They] will find enough information to make a story."

Travelocity warns of weaker revenue

Citing lower holidays sales and the continuing impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Travelocity.com Inc. warned last week that its revenue won't meet expectations for the fourth quarter, which ended Dec. 31.

Delta to switch fare pricing engines in 2002

Delta Air Lines Inc. plans to switch off its legacy operating system early next year and finally move its internal fare-searching and ticket-pricing functions to the same software system used by travel site Orbitz LLC.

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