A ruling by the nation’s highest court could potentially cost the Mashpee Wampanoag billions in casino revenues, but also millions from investors that it has already spent. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Tuesday that tribes recognized after 1934 cannot have land taken into trust for them by the Department of the Interior, a ruling that cripples the Mashpee tribe’s plans, [...]

A report by SIS International Research sponsored by Siemens Enterprise Communications found communications barriers and latencies: Cost small and medium businesses (SMBs) up to 40 percent of their productive time. On average, 70 percent of employee respondents with up to 400 employees said they spend 17.5 hours each week addressing the pain points caused by communications barriers and latencies. The [...]

Experian Marketing Services’ recent white paper, Marketing success in 2009: eight smart customer engagement strategies, offers marketers ideas on how to better engage consumers and empower them to become loyal customers and brand champions. By following these strategies, marketers can best position themselves to turn 2009′s economic challenges into tangible successes. Several of the strategies covered include: Utilizing customer lifetime [...]

At 5 p.m. on Friday, the town manager had 42 applications sitting on his desk for the job of police chief. Town Manager Charles J. Cristello thought it was an average number of applicants, saying he got about 49 applications for fire chief. Russell is retiring this year, and his last day on the job will be in May, before [...]

Selectmen have voted unanimously to maintain trash fees at $216 a year, even though figures released this week show a surplus of about $100,000 was collected in each of the last two years. Town Manager Charles J. Cristello presented selectmen with a financial analysis Monday night of fiscal year 2008 trash fees that showed annual expenses at $999,851 and revenue [...]

The Salvation Army office that serves Middleboro and Lakeville is closing today as its funds dry up at the same time requests for help are soaring. The closing of the office at 23 Wareham St., which serves both towns, means that the agency will no longer provide needy people with assistance in paying their utility bills. The unit has been providing [...]

eWayDirect, a full-service emarketing provider, today announced the availability of a free white paper based on the company’s success with building private branded social networks, known as customer-centric communities. The white paper, titled “Leveraging Customer-Centric Communities for Customer Loyalty,” demonstrates the possibility of leveraging the popularity of social networking as a customer acquisition and retention tool. The white paper is [...]

IBM, Microsoft, SAP and other companies might be pouring massive amounts of cash into marketing via social technologies, but according to a new study by Forrester, Web 2.0 techniques aren’t what compel a business buyer to purchase a particular solution. According to the study, some 77 percent of surveyed business decision makers use social media and messaging and collaboration applications [...]

As the ad recession deepens, it’s a handful of Silicon Alley Web companies that are getting one thing right that many Bay Area companies abandoned years ago: the e-mail newsletter. That’s right. The East Coast is leading the way in showing how to make money from those electronic digests of a site’s content, delivered regularly to your already cluttered in-box. [...]

Selectmen voted unanimously Monday night to oppose a proposed power plant in Brockton and will formally notify the regional task force at its meeting Thursday night in the West Bridgewater Middle-Senior High School auditorium. Swiss company Advanced Power is proposing a 350-megawatt gas- and diesel-fired power plant on 13 acres off Oak Hill Way in Brockton. In January, the state [...]