Scarlet Pruitt

Dumb, boring, dusty

Dumb, boring, dusty

In an "I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine" deal, AOL Time Warner Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. announced Thursday that they plan to extend their relationship, with the networking heavyweight lending a hand on the technology end, allowing AOL to increase its POPs (points of presence), while Cisco continues to flash its face across the media empire's vast holdings.

Which comes first

Even if the gloomy economy keeps consumers locked indoors, they won't be deterred from shopping online, where increasingly savvy retailers expect to see sales soar 45 per cent this year, a study released Wednesday by Shop.org and The Boston Consulting Group Inc. (BCG) said. Shop.org is an association of electronic retailers.

Got a late meeting with your amigos downtown to watch the World Cup soccer game? Need to check how your Telmex stock is doing, now? Mexicans on the go may be happy to hear that AOL Mexico rolled out its AOL Mobile service Monday, offering the company's content and features, including e-mail access, to Mexican consumers with Internet-enabled cell phones.

Peek over your cube wall. That mild-mannered person sitting next you might actually be your e-mail nemesis: an insidious spammer who sends out mocking happy faces in response to office correspondence and who always selects "reply to all."

Free-falling dot-com share values have driven some online companies to re-issue now-worthless employee stock options in an effort to keep morale up amid the market downturn.