Tuesday 30th
September 1997
INTERNET EXPLORER 4.0 LAUNCHED
TOMORROW
Microsoft
will officially launch Internet Explorer 4.0 tomorrow. The
new browser (which has been in public beta testing for the last six months)
will feature push-content broadcasting and - for those who want it - complete
integration with the Windows95 desktop. However, most users who want to avoid
a lengthy 16Mb to 23Mb Internet download are expected to pay $A9.95 to obtain
the browser on CD-ROM direct from Microsoft's Australian offices, or from
other Microsoft regional headquarters world-wide. The desktop integration
feature of Explorer 4.0 attracted particularly heavy criticism from beta
testers and the official release is expected to contain last-minute modifications
which allow users to set this function off. The release comes almost a year
after the troubled Internet Explorer 3.0, which proved unable to run most
common JavaScripts and Java applets. It also arrives more than 5 months behind
the much slimmer, faster and relatively bug-free
Netscape Communicator
4.0.
Monday 29th
September 1997
JAVA DEVELOPERS SLAM
MICROSOFT
The Java Lobby - a new
group of 1600 independent Java developers and programmers - has called on
Microsoft to stop trying to sabotage the language, even though the large
scale success of Java would probably spell the end of Microsoft's dominance
of PC software. In an open letter to CEO Bill Gates, the Java Lobby accused
Microsoft of trying to fragment the Java initiative by delivering
a non-standard, Windows-specific version of the language that would only
run properly on Windows-based machines. The group has called on Microsoft
to make good on its earlier public promises to support Java. The Java Lobby
have also questioned whether the Java compiler to be included in the up-coming
Internet Explorer 4.0 release will truly be able to run Java, or only "Microsoft
brand" Java.
Friday 26th
September 1997
CHARITIES SET UP SHOP ON THE
NET
Australian charities will soon
have a permanent home on the Net when a new site called Web:)Aid opens.
The new site will host the home pages of several major national charities
such as Save The Children Australia and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research
Institute, and will include a directory for smaller or state-based charities.
Web:)Aid - which is jointly sponsored by Ozemail, Spike, Compaq and Microsoft
as a public service - will allow charities to sell merchandise, collect donations
and recruit volunteer assistance online.
Thursday 25th
September 1997
AAA EXPANDS.... AGAIN
The popular
AAA Matilda Australian multi-lingual
search engine is to undergo its third major expansion in the last 18 months.
The site - which is mirrored in Georgia, USA - is one of Australia's most
popular. But continued traffic growth over the last few months has led to
congestion, causing server overloads to become increasingly common at peak
times. According to webmaster James Lilburne, another upgrade is now
underway and AAA expect to be back to full operational capacity within the
near future.
Wednesday 24th
September 1997
DELOITTES PLAN SECURE NET
DOC-EXCHANGE
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
have announced plans to launch a secure Internet-based document exchange
system in Australia by the end of the year. The new commercial service -
NetDox DoxIT - will use 128-key encryption and end-to-end delivery
authentication, and provides a guarantee of up to $US25,000 that each document
processed through NetBox is sent to the correct party in a secure way. The
new service will allow secure digital transmission of contracts, insurance
forms, legal briefs and financial documents over the Internet world-wide.
Deloittes say they have been developing the system for the last two years
and intend to price it below traditional courier costs.
Tuesday 23rd
September 1997
CROSS-STITCH SITE GETS A
FACELIFT
Julie
Oliver's Australian Cross-Stitch Patterns has become the first Australian
Cybermalls site to receive a facelift as part of our gradual site-wide conversion
from HTML 2.0 to HTML 3.2. The new site, unveiled today, makes use of
fault-tolerant JavaScript that is unlikely to cause problems for users of
Internet Explorer 3.x (which has notorious difficulties rendering
JavaScript-enhanced pages, amongst many other well-documented defects). Over
the last 13 months Julie Oliver's site has drawn over 45,000 visitors and
gradually become one of the most popular cross-stitching sites in the world
(and certainly the biggest of its kind in Australia). Australian Cybermalls
will be unveiling significantly enhanced versions of many of the current
sites we host, along with several new sites, over the next few months.
Monday 22nd
September 1997
MODEMS STILL DOMINANT IN 2002 -
GARTNER
According to a study the the
Gartner Group, the analog modems
used by most home users today will continue to be the dominant method of
getting online for both business and consumers over the next 5 years. By
2002, Gartner predict that analog modems will account for approximately
45 percent of the most frequent business remote access connections in
the U.S.A and that no other alternative-higher-speed access method will achieve
dominance as a next-generation technology in public access points within
that time. Even beyond 2002, Gartner believe that analog modems will maintain
a large and stable niche market share due to their importance to traveling
users
Friday 19th
September 1997
GROCERY INDUSTRY TO GO
HIGH-TECH
The Australian grocery industry
- manufacturers and retailers - have announced an ambitious plan to use high
technology to revolutionise the industry's distribution mechanisms, lower
operating costs and free up working capital currently held in large inventories.
The medium-term plan, which has been hammered out at a series of breakthrough
meetings between otherwise fierce competitors over the last two months, calls
for manufacturers, wholesalers and retails to move towards an integrated
"just in time" manufacturing model which would become the most advanced of
its type in the world. Estimated savings from the high-tech realignment are
expected to be at least $1.1 billion per annum.
Thursday 18th
September 1997
AFR/TELSTRA INTERNET AWARDS CLOSE
SOON
Nominations for the second
annual Australian Financial
Review/Telstra Internet Awards will close within two weeks. The awards
- which are designed to encourage the growth of the Australian Internet by
recognising outstanding sites - have already attracted a record number of
new entries in over 23 categories ranging from education through to commercial,
government, entertainment and commercial sites. Nominations for the awards
close on September 30th and preliminary judging to select finalists will
occur in early October, with the ultimate winners announced towards the end
of the year. Nominations are open to all Australian Internet sites, whether
they are physically hosted in Australia or not.
Wednesday 17th
September 1997
FEDS CREATE "INFORMATION ECONOMY"
MINISTRY
The Federal Government today
added "Information Economy" to the portfolio responsibilities already held
by Communications and Arts Minister Senator Richard Alston. In its
first response to two major reports it commissioned into IT industries earlier
this year, the Government also announced that it would create a National
Office for the Information Economy which will be established within Alston's
portfolio to develop and co-ordinate policy relating to the regulatory, legal
and physical infrastructure for online activity and the Government's use
of new technologies. However responsibility for development and investment
in information industries themselves will remain with Alston's fiercest critic,
Industry Minister John Moore, and the Office of Government Information
Technology - which is responsible for coordinating the Government's use of
IT - will continue to be overseen by Finance Minister John
Fahey.
Tuesday 16th
September 1997
EXPLORER 4.0 FACES MAJOR LAST-MINUTE
SURGERY
Stung by widespread negative
feedback to beta versions of its upcoming Internet Explorer 4.0 release,
Microsoft has announced that
the product will undergo radical last-minute surgery over the next two weeks
before its official launch. The company said it believes that the last-minute
modifications, which will bury many of the new features seen in early betas
(such as single-click navigation and the ability to use Web pages as wallpaper)
under menus or other settings that the user has to "turn on", will allay
much of the annoyance that testers have expressed about the product. Explorer
4.0 will debut in minimum, standard and full versions. The standard version
of the product is expected to weigh in at around 16 Mb which will require
ISPs to distribute the product to their customers on CD-ROM.
Monday 15th
September 1997
MICROSOFT CALLS FOR "JAVA
STANDARD"
In what must be one of the
most unusual about-faces of 1997,
Microsoft has challenged Sun
Microsystems to hand oversight of the Java programming language it developed
to an international standards organisation. Microsoft - in conjunction with
long-time allies Intel, Compaq and Digital - argue that
Sun has too much control over Java development. Last week the group issued
an open letter which challenged Sun to relinquish its control over the future
growth and development of the "universal programming language". Yet less
than two months ago Microsoft strenuously
opposed Sun's attempts to have have Java turned into a standard language
with the International Standards Organisation (ISO). The surprise
challenge follows recent market research studies which show that Java is
now increasing its penetration into many areas beyond the Internet - particularly
in the corporate and financial services areas. Microsoft's own proprietary
Active-X technology, which the firm hailed as an alternative to Java when
it was first released last year, has not enjoyed similar success.
Friday 12th
September 1997
ATUG SLAMS TELCOS FOR "POOR
MANAGEMENT"
The Australian
Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) has slammed both Telstra
and Optus for their poor management following record writedowns in
the annual results of both companies. ATUG has calculated that Telstra's
writedowns amount to $112 per customer and its "dividend" to the Government
at $414 per customer. "The losses and writedowns of both companies have had
a devastating impact on the provision of affordable services," ATUG managing
director Allan Horsley said. "This is an industry of excessive prices
with little focus on customers." Meanwhile, British Telecom Australia
has announced that it, too, will be seeking over $650 million dollar damages
settlement from Telstra following a collapsed contract with the NSW State
Government which BT alleges was due to Telstra's interference, and the
Australian Shareholders Association has called on Telstra to justify
its figures prior to its impending public float, questioning just how much
its books have been "cooked" to make the company appear attractive to
investors.
Thursday 11th
September 1997
SMALL BUSINESS SLOW ON NET UPTAKE
- GALLUP
According to a recent US study
by Gallup, small businesses are adopting the Internet much more slowly
than large corporations despite the fact that the costs of adding an online
connection are literally petty cash. According to Gallup's survey, more than
77% of US businesses with fewer than 100 staff now have at least one a computer
but less than 40% of these companies are online. The figure dips even lower
in businesses with less than 25 staff, with only 19% having an Internet email
address. The study also found that the growth of PC penetration into the
small business market also appears to have maxed out with the number of small
businesses having at least one computer rising only 2% between 1994 and 1997
- less than half the growth rate of the previous three-year period. Based
on the figures, Gallup believe that the average penetration of the Internet
in the US small business community is now 25%.
Wednesday 10th
September 1997
OPTUS SUES TELSTRA FOR $900
MILLION
Optus have launched
an action in the Federal Court against rival
Telstra alleging that the
former monopolist has used its enormous market power to cross-subsidise its
pay-TV operations, pushing Optus' own operations deeply into the red and
keeping the company out of the local call market. Telstra has denied the
allegation. The announcement of the legal action comes only weeks before
Telstra's $12 billion partial privatisation. Meanwhile, Federal Finance Minister
John Fahey has issued a "please explain" notice to Daiwa
Securities, the Japanese stockbroking firm who will act as lead manager
of the Telstra float in the Asian region following allegations in Tokyo yesterday
that the firm illegally transferred $A568,000 to compensate a corporate racketeer
for trading losses. If the firm cannot adequately explain its actions the
Government may sever Daiwa's connection with the float.
Tuesday 9th
September 1997
NETSCAPE, SGI PLAN SUPER-FAST
SERVERS
Netscape
and Silicon Graphics have announced a joint project called Everest
to produce "super-servers" which will deliver Web content at least 10 times
faster than current servers are capable of doing. The new servers are expected
to be on the market within 2 years and will lead to significant improvements
in average Internet speeds once the machines come into widespread use, delivering
content from busy sites at close to real-time speeds. The super-fast servers
will use a combination of Netscape's web and directory software along with
SGI's Irix operating system, a variant of Unix. The partnership is the latest
in a line of joint ventures undertaken by both companies since 1994 and the
Everest servers will be primarily targeted at very large sites and ISPs.
If successful, the venture could seriously erode the server software market
shares currently held by Apache and Microsoft.
Monday 8th September
1997
AOL BUYS COMPUSERVE
In a complex "stalking horse"
deal designed to fool both competitors and market analysts,
AOL has emerged as the surprise
buyer of ailing veteran online service
Compuserve, which originally
thought it was being bought out by WorldCom. In a complex deal which
has only been unravelled today, Compuserve was purchased by WorldCom from
its previous owners H&R Block for close to $US1.2 billion in stock.
WorldCom then immediately onsold the company to AOL, disclosing as it did
so that AOL had been the ultimate purchaser all the time and that its own
interest was purely peripheral. AOL - who have close to 9 million subscribers
and are now the largest ISP in the world - have announced plans to integrate
many of Compuserve's features into their own online offerings. The company
have also announced that they are interested in opening a branch of AOL in
Australia "within the near future" and competing head-to-head with domestic
ISPs.
Friday 5th September
1997
WEB TV STILL AT LEAST A YEAR AWAY:
MICROSOFT
WebTV will not appear in Australia
for at least another 12 months, according to Microsoft's Internet strategist
Mike Olsson. Speaking at a ComTech forum in Queensland this week,
Olsson said that there was no exact launch date set, but he didn't see WebTV
happening in Australia for at least a year. Microsoft spent $US400 million
buying out WebTV earlier this year from its inventors, only to see promising
early sales of the technology slowly wither away. WebTV allows home users
to receive the Internet on their TV screens via a special black-box connection.
It is aimed primarily at blue-collar households who don't have a PC at home
but are likely to have a television. However, it doesn't allow downloads
and the level of interaction is limited to email.
Thursday 4th
September 1997
56kbps MODEMS CAUGHT BY
PATENT
After apparently surmounting
technical problems that held average dial-up speeds down to 40kbps or less,
the push to introduce standardised 56kbps modems has run into another snag:
patent infringement. According to a search of foreign patents by the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which was scheduled to
meet next month to begin drafting a global 56kbps standard, the basic patents
on the technology behind 56kbps modems are owned by Townsend Computer
Tools, a small company in Silicon Valley. The immediate fallout of the
discovery is that hopes of arriving at a 56kbps standard by January 1998
now appear to be derailed, and fully interoperable 56kbps modems may now
be delayed by at least another 12 months.
Wednesday 3rd
September 1997
TAX OFFICE CONTEMPLATES NET
TAXES
The
Australian Tax Office has recommended
that Internet taxation schemes should be investigated as part of any future
reform of the tax system. Saying that it didn't see the Net pose any serious
threat to its current tax revenue base over the next 2 years, the ATO nonetheless
said it believes that future growth in Internet commerce may change this
rapidly. If so, the ATO wants to have a mechanism set in place so that it
can begin drawing taxes from Internet businesses as soon as possible. Measures
the ATO would like to institute are taxes on software downloaded off the
Net, compulsory registration of Internet businesses and virtual hosts, and
compulsory display of ACN numbers and similar stamps on all sites.
Tuesday 2nd
September 1997
YAHOO OPENS AUSTRALIAN
MIRROR
Yahoo,
the Internet's oldest and largest hierarchical search engine, has opened
a mirror in Australia. The local site offers the ability to limit searches
to Australian and New Zealand sites only (much the same as the competing
ANZWERS) but is in all
other respects largely the same as its US parent. The new Yahoo site covers
approximately 14,000 Australian and New Zealand sites. The "missing" 16,000
to 20,000 sites will appear over time as the engine is updated. Yahoo are
partnering the site with The Australian (who will provide news feeds),
Village Roadshow (who will provide entertainment news) and computer
publishing group APN, who hold the local rights for Ziff-Davis
content.
Monday 1st September
1997
AUSTRALIAN SITES GROW 1% IN
AUGUST
The number of Australian Internet
sites increased by around 1% during August 1997 according to our monthly
Australian Internet Growth Index, which has been measuring the number
of sites on the Australian Internet for the last 20 months. Most capitals
registered a small gain in August, but Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart all
showed slight falls as the flow of new content failed to eclipse the closure
of old sites. The September 1st figures (with August 1st figures in brackets)
are as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index August 1997
(Figures Show Estimated Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 3,331
(3,344)
-
Sydney - 10,786
(10,547)
-
Melbourne - 8,180
(8,112)
-
Adelaide - 3,180
(3,190)
|
-
Perth - 3,198
(3,136)
-
Hobart - 1,223
(1,234)
-
Canberra - 2,994
(2,988)
-
Darwin - 2,672
(2,622)
|
|
During August Australian Cybermalls
displayed 59,477 storefronts, an increase of 4,000 on our July visitation
figures of 55,441. This required our server to deliver more than 270,000
pages of information and we used close to 7 GBytes of bandwidth to do it.
The August figures equated to an average of 1,918 visitors per day. For
comparison, 12 months ago in August 1996 we displayed 12,721 storefronts
to an average of 410 people a day.
|
