Todd R. Weiss

Canadian business intelligence software vendor Cognos Inc. announced Wednesday it plans to lay off about 300 people amid lower-than-expected earnings in its fiscal first quarter, which ends today.

Layoffs from dot-coms are down slightly in May from April's record of more than 17,000 layoffs, but the total job cuts in just the first five months of this year add up to almost 60 percent more than in all of last year.

As expected, VeriSign Inc. will continue to operate the .com Internet top-level domain registry through 2007, while giving up control of the .org registry next year and putting the operations of the .net registry up for open bids in 2005.

A group of Internet top-level domain (TLD) holders have formed a nonprofit association to prevent what they fear will become a splintered Internet domain naming system.

Joining together to fight international consumer fraud over the Internet, 12 nations are working on an online pilot project to gather and share cross-border e-commerce complaints.

Faced with falling ad revenue, online telephone directory service 555-1212.com Inc. is now charging monthly fees, starting at US$9.95 for heavy users.

The world of business-to-business software vendors took a heavy punch earlier this month as Ariba Inc., BroadVision Inc. and i2 Technologies Inc. all disclosed that the softening U.S. economy has transformed their previously optimistic business outlooks into the harsh new reality of revenue shortfalls and layoffs.

Faced with the outlook of a slowing global economy, wireless giants L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. and Nokia Corp. late last month announced cutbacks, layoffs and changes in their business strategies.