If Yahoo Japan’s most recent attempt at starting a joint venture and taking a position in an online bank succeeds, it could be a testing ground for establishing an online payment service.

Often when consumers buy online, vendors take a snapshot of the customer’s browsing data so they serve up contextual advertising based on user habits. A company called ROOT Markets thinks that information should be available to the customer as well.

The millions of dollars donated by individuals to relief efforts in Southeast Asia have brought criminals and scammers out of the woodwork, US government agencies and private anti-fraud groups warned last week, Internetworld.com reported.

Our “New Google Bomb” discussion in WebProWorld is one of our most popular to date, but the question remains, how does this phenomenon affect search optimization?

Customers of Denmark’s largest bank were left in the dark after of errors with IBM’s database software brought service down in mid March.