Friday 31st January
1997
WE'RE BACK ONLINE!
After an absence of 10 days, Australian
Cybermalls is now back online and operating from our new host in the USA.
Our previous host unexpectedly terminated our service on Tuesday, January
21st when we confirmed that we intended to move off their server, and the
process of delegating our domain to our new host was unexpectedly delayed
by the annual Australia Day long weekend and some small technical
glitches associated with the delegation process. Our new site is still undergoing
final testing and full services and features will not be available for another
48 hours. Once testing is complete, however, our normal update schedules
will resume. Thankyou for your patience while we get this right.
Monday 20th January
1997
WE BEGIN MOVING TO THE USA
Contrary to our expectations only a
few days ago (see story, Friday 17/1/97), Australian Cybermalls will be
relocating in its entirety from our current server in Sydney, Australia to
a much bigger, more reliable and more fully-featured server in Boston, USA
this coming Friday, 24th January 1997 (rather than in March, as we had originally
expected). The move has been prompted by a combination of the continuing
growth in our traffic, our desire to provide more facilities to our visitors
and the failure of our existing ISDN lines to reliably handle the traffic
bursts our site attracts. Our new lines failed almost completely on Saturday,
18th January when hit with an especially heavy traffic burst. The move may
mean that our site will be unavailable this coming weekend and possibly for
a few days early the following week.
Friday 17th January
1997
OUR BANDWIDTH INCREASED
Australian Cybermalls has suffered
some small service difficulties and outages the last two days. These were
due to the necessity to install a bandwidth upgrade caused by continuing
growth in our site's traffic, and we apologise to any of our visitors who
were inconvenienced by the process. Our previous bandwidth was a 64K ISDN
line, but this has now been upgraded to 128K ISDN which we hope will provide
better site performance over the next few months. Especially busy parts of
our site will be moving to a multi-threaded T1 line later this year. At the
present time, we expect that this move will occur in March.
Thursday 16th January
1997
FINGERPRINT ATMs ON THE WAY
The Big Brother society took another
step forward today with the announcement that several major Australian banks
want to trial a new generation of automatic teller machines (ATMs) in March
this year that can be modified so that they're only accessible by
fingerprints. The new ATMs will be capable of dispensing a range of
services apart from banking. These include theatre and sporting tickets,
fast food and video-conferencing. The new ATMs will also have the ability
to process loan applications online and dispense a much wider range of financial
information than current card-access devices. However, the new ATMs will
also have the capacity to greatly extend the number of organisations allowed
to keep fingerprints beyond the current limited scope (ie Australian police
forces and secure private installations) if the banks elect to use the
fingerprint capabilities. This will, in turn, significantly extend their
ability to monitor the activities of Australian citizens.
Wednesday 15th January
1997
SENIOR EXECUTIVES "PC ILLITERATES" -
STUDY
According to a recent study by personnel
recruitment firm Morgan and Banks, senior-level executives in most
Australian companies are virtually PC illiterate - and this is harming the
prospects of their firms in the dawning information age. Morgan and Banks
surveyed 1000 employees and managers and found that senior executives aged
55 and over were the least IT-literate group, closely followed by middle-level
mangers. The survey found that the overwhelming majority of senior executives
lacked even basic keyboarding and computing skills (though 7% of this group
did report that their IT literacy skills were excellent). And further down
the feeding chain, they found that only 40% of executives in the 25-40
age group felt they had excellent PC skills. In addition, almost 60% of
the sample base felt that the amount of IT training they received was
inadequate.
Tuesday 14th January
1997
AOL TO OPEN IN AUSTRALIA
America
Online, one of the world's largest private online networks, have
announced plans to open in Australia this year. The company, which claims
to have more than 7 million subscribers in the USA, are currently in negotiation
with an Australian venture partner and hope to have the service up and running
before the end of 1997. This will put the online giant directly up
against Australia's two existing online information services:
Compuserve and the Microsoft Network, which are also both
off-shoots of their US parents. AOL offers members access to a wide array
of electronic information services (such as live stockmarket quotes, news
and entertainment services) as well as email and Internet access for a premium
above the basic connection services offered by most Internet service providers.
AOL wrap this in an easy-to-use proprietary browser and primarily market
their service to non-technical or first-time Net users who are looking for
"no-brainer" connections. The Australian operation will be the second off-shore
expansion for the company, which opened a European arm in 1996 in partnership
with the Bertelsmann music and publishing group.
Monday 13th January
1997
STEVE JOBS RETURNS TO APPLE
Computing pioneer Steve Jobs
has returned to Apple, the company
he helped found and which threw him out several years ago in favour of
"professional management" - for $US400 million. This is the price Apple paid
to buy out Jobs' NeXT Software and his NeXTStep operating system in
December. According to details only released yesterday, Apple have now shelved
their ill-fated plan to replace the current System 7 operating system
with the proposed Copland upgrade, and instead have given Jobs approximately
12 months to convert his NeXT operating system to run on Apples. The new
operating system is to be called Rhapsody and Apple hopes to have
it on the market by early 1998. Delays in Copland have caused major losses
and perpetually declining market share at Apple, and in the most recent quarter
the company reported a $US150 million loss.
Friday 10th January
1997
SOFCOM LAUNCH ROBO-MALL
Sofcom Directories in Melbourne
have launched a new concept on the Australian Internet - a
robo-mall that allows
users to construct an online site by answering a series of questions, selecting
from a generic mix of styles and graphics and supplying some text for content.
When all selections are made and the text has been supplied, the generic
site is then automatically constructed and mounted as a single page site
on Sofcom's server. The idea, which is designed to offer users a
"quick-and-dirty" way to mount a presence on the Internet (and is similar,
though not identical, to facilities already offered by several Australian
and US Internet service providers) will cost participants $US120 per annum
plus 10% of the gross value of any sales they make from their page. Sofcom
claim no responsibility and make no warranties for any traders in their
robo-mall.
Thursday 9th January
1997
ONLINE US HOUSEHOLDS MAY DOUBLE BY
1998
Internet market research firm
Jupiter Communications predict that
the number of online households in the USA will almost double by 1998 - but
they also predict that by the year 2000, more than 16% of all Internet accesses
will occur from a new wave of non-PC appliances (like Internet televisions)
which are starting to appear on the market. Releasing their 1997 Internet
Consumer Report, Jupiter estimate that in 1996 there were 14.7 million
households in the USA accessing using the Internet, but they expect this
to almost double to 27.3 million households by 1998 and to further expand
to 36 million households in the USA by the year 2000.
Wednesday 8th January
1997
PARAMOUNT TURNS ON ITS FANS
In what may be a portent of things
to come, Paramount Pictures Corporation - the owners of the Star
Trek franchise - have begun forcing the closure of many of the major
non-commercial Star Trek fan sites that dot the Internet, and have issued
legal threats against many others. Paramount opened their own official,
subscription-only fan site on the Microsoft Network last month and
although the company has always been notoriously touchy about fan sites,
they now seem determined to persecute the very people who made the franchise
of any worth in the first place. As a result of the company's actions (which
Paramount claims are necessary to protect its legal and intellectual property
rights), Trek fans are now mounting massive protests over the company's actions.
Thousands of protest messages have already been logged on more than 50 newsgroups
devoted to the cult TV and movie series, and some enraged fans have suggested
embargoes against both Paramount and MSN.
Tuesday 7th January
1997
NETCOMM MAKES WINDFALL INTERNET
PROFIT
Australian modem manufacturer
NetComm have made a quiet windfall profit of close to $4 million in
less than 20 months from their investment in Australian Internet Service
Provider Connect.Com following
the recent sale of two-thirds of the business to the National Australia
Bank and AAP Telecommunications, who purchased equal portions.
NetComm bought 100% ownership of Connect in May 1995 for $1.3 million, but
the recent sell-out values the company at between $15 million and $19.5 million,
making NetComm's remaining shares worth between $5 and $6.5 million. It is
now expected that NetComm will seek to cash out its profit by selling its
remaining shares to another investor - possibly from the USA - within the
next 3 months.
Monday 6th January
1997
NETSCAPE RELEASES EARLY 4.0 BETA
Netscape
have begun 1997 by pulling the carpet out from under arch-rival
Microsoft with an early beta release of Communicator, the next version
of the company's acclaimed Navigator browser. The new browser will shift
the playing field in the long-standing war between the the two arch-rivals,
moving the product out into the corporate groupware arena which Microsoft
have formerly regarded as their own province. The new Communicator beta -
which expires on March 15th - features 4 separate components linked through
a floating taskbar. These include the Navigator 4.0 browser, Messenger e-mail
client, Composer document authoring utility and Collabra groupware/news reader.
An additional 4 components will be added to a future Professional release,
which Netscape expect to debut before the end of the month.
Friday 3rd January
1997
FRAMING CORNER OPENS ON OUR MALL
Toowong's
Framing
Corner opened their home page at Australian Cybermalls today. Framing
Corner - a picture framing specialist and photographic restoration service
headquartered in the Toowong Village Shopping Centre in the inner western
suburbs of Brisbane - service the Brisbane, Ipswich, Gold and Sunshine Coast
areas in South-East Queensland, Australia. Framing Corner are the first business
to open a home page in our Mall, taking advantage of our inexpensive home
page design and hosting service to take their first step onto the Internet.
Home pages provide businesses and individuals with an electronic "business
card" for easy 24-hour Internet contact with existing and potential customers
or friends. Australian Cybermalls are very proud to welcome Framing Corner
to our site.
Thursday 2nd January
1997
SITE GROWTH FLATTENS
The number of sites on the Australian
Internet remained relatively static during December 1996, according to our
monthly Australian Internet Growth Index. However, this may be more
a reflection of the search engines that we monitor to construct the AIGI
deciding to take a holiday over the festive season than a true reflection
of the current estimated number of Australian sites. The January 1st figures
(with December 1st figures in brackets) are as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index December 1996
(Figures Show Estimated Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 2361 (2361)
-
Sydney - 7356 (7356)
-
Melbourne - 5727 (5726)
-
Adelaide - 2325 (2326)
|
-
Perth - 2066 (2065)
-
Hobart - 991 (990)
-
Canberra - 1917 (1917)
-
Darwin - 1689 (1688)
|
|
During December 1996 Australian Cybermalls
displayed 20,750 storefronts. This represents a 0.9% decrease over
November 1996 when we displayed 21,351 storefronts and is largely attributable
to the holiday season, when many of our regular entertainment sites took
a break (along with a very large percentage of the planet). The
average number of visitors through our site during December was 669 per day,
slightly down from 712 per day the previous month.
During the 9-month period between between
April 15th, 1996 (when we began monitoring traffic) and December 31st, 1996
Australian Cybermalls hosted 111,193 visitors. During 1997 we expect to host
between 250,000 to 500,000 visitors. Thankyou, everyone!
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