Friday 31st
July 1998
GOVT TO IMPROVE DISABLED ACCESS
TO NET
The Australian Federal Government
announced grants of $1.5 million today aimed at delivering improved online
services to people with disabilities. The grants have been allocated as part
of the Government's @ccessability program, and a further $3 million in funding
has been allocated to carry the projects through until the year 2000. Minister
for the Information Economy, Senator Richard Alston, said today that
the funded projects would help ensure that disabled persons receive the same
access to Internet services as the rest of the community. 'There's no doubt
that people faced with the twin constraints of geographic isolation and
disability have particular difficulties accessing the benefits of the Internet
and online services,' he said said. The funding will go to 18 different projects
which cover the spectrum from assisting people with motor impairments through
to helping people with Muscular Dystrophy and providing Internet access for
the blind.
Thursday 30th
July 1998
PRIVACY ADVOCATES SLAM TENANCY
WEB SITE
The Queensland Council for Civil
Liberties, the Tenants Union of Queensland and the Real Estate Institute
of Queensland have all called for a new Australian web site called
Tenant Check - which
allows real estate agents to check up on tenants with unfavorable rental
histories - to be shut down. The three groups, in separate submissions to
a senate committee investigating privacy issues this week, said they felt
the web site was an invasion of privacy and should be banned even though
it did not contravene any existing laws. The new site allows anyone to see
if a person is listed on the Tenant Check database, though only licensed
real estate agents are allowed to inspect a tenant's rental history. REIQ
agency practice adviser Les Elborne said the REIQ felt the site should
only be accessible to licensed real estate agents if it were to exist at
all. "Many people would assume that someone on the database was there for
the wrong reasons," he said. And TUQ co-ordinator Tim Seeling said
he felt it was "outrageous" that misleading information could be collected
and circulated in this fashion without any redress. But Jason Tait,
managing director of the Console Group which owns the Tenant Check site,
has defended the concept, saying that tenants had to give their permission
to be on the Tenant Check database in the first place; that most tenants
currently listed on the site were good; and that it would be wrong to assume
otherwise. Similar sites already exist on the Internet in the USA and provide
a valuable service to landlords and their agents.
Wednesday 29th
July 1998
MOTORCARE 4WD DEBUTS FREE
CLASSIFIEDS
Motorcare
4WD, one of Australian Cybermalls' foundation tenants, have debuted
a free 4WD classifieds service on their site. The new service allows
visitors to post For Sale and Wanted To Buy advertisements for 4WD parts
and accessories, or to browse the ads posted by other enthusiasts. Interested
buyers or sellers can then make contact directly with the advertisers to
conclude the transaction. Motorcare 4WD opened their site with Australian
Cybermalls almost two years ago and were the first 4WD accessories store
on the Australian Internet at that time (and one of the very first in the
world). Over the last 6 months owners Richard and Julie Oliver
have sold close to $100,000 worth of products to Australian customers
through their web site, as well as shipping orders as far afield as South
Africa, Japan, the Middle East, the USA, Canada and Iceland. Their site features
an extensive catalogue of 4WD accessories (largely Australian in origin),
a free 4WD advisory service, 4WD tips, a free new 4WD products email newsletter,
an extensive array of links and a free screensaver, and is updated
on a monthly basis.
Tuesday 28th
July 1998
MAGAZINER TIPS "NET GOVERNANCE"
CONSORTIUM
In a belated recognition that
the Net is now a truly global network rather than a US-centric one, the US
has agreed to consult Australia, the European Union and
Japan over any future plans to introduce regulation on the Internet
or make any other significant alterations to Internet governance rules. Speaking
at Internet 98 in Geneva last week, President Clinton's senior adviser on
Internet issues Mr Ira Magaziner said that the US would consult with
the Australian, EEC and Japanese governments before announcing any future
internet policy directions. The announcement has been interpreted as meaning
that the US administration has recognised that the Net is now an international
medium and that the US Government can no longer set Internet policies in
isolation from the global community. Earlier this year the USA's unilateral
decision to sideline the introduction of seven new top-level name spaces
and prohibit the spread of domain name registries outside American borders
for two years drew howls of protest from industry associations and Governments
world-wide. The announcement also signifies that if any move is made away
from the currently preferred policy of free trade and self-regulation, those
policy changes are likely to be enforced uniformly by all major "wired"
nations.
Monday 27th
July 1998
BRISBANE TO STAGE MULTIMEDIA
FESTIVAL
Brisbane will stage the first
international multimedia festival in the Asia-Pacific region in September
this year. The event - MAAP98
(Multimedia Art Asia Pacific) - is the first festival of its kind in
Australia to encompass a range of public events, forums and exhibitions using
on-line technology, digital animation, video and national television, and
has attracted a wide range of sponsorship from the Queensland State Government
through to private sector and multi-national organisations. MAAP98 will
incorporate film screenings, exhibitions, SIGGRAPH 98 (an international
compilation of computer animation art and digital effects direct from the
world renowned conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques),
public lectures and training, as well as exhibits from the Australian Olympic
Arts Festival and the National Digital Arts Awards. The event, which is scheduled
to run from 18-26th September, will also present a wide range of artworks
showcasing artists who are working with new technologies and screen based
media from as far afield as Singapore and Hong Kong.
Friday 24th
July 1998
ATO TO BEGIN NET TAX TRIALS IN
OCTOBER
The
Australian Tax Office (ATO) will
begin trialing a new Internet-based tax preparation and lodgement service
in October this year, and is calling for 5,000 volunteers to help work any
final bugs out of the system. The new service, which will be called
e-tax'98, is a tax preparation and lodgement software service based
on the paper TaxPack. When complete and fully tested, the service will allow
Australians to begin lodging tax returns over the Net from the 1998/99 fiscal
year onwards, and will herald the start of a full range of Internet-based
tax services the ATO hope to make available by 2000. If successful, the system
may also be extended to other arms of the Australian Federal Government to
allow Australian citizens to begin fully interactive e-commerce trading with
a wide spread of Departments and government agencies. The ATO will begin
taking registrations from volunteers on its site from August 10th
this year (registrations will be taken under the individuals/e-Tax'98 section
of the site).
Thursday 23rd
July 1998
INTERNET "VIRGINS" EXPOSED AS
HOAX
A sordid web site called "My
First Time" which invited the world to watch two alleged 18 year olds lose
their virginity on the Net was exposed as a cheap money-making scam in Los
Angeles yesterday. The site, which had attracted world-wide publicity over
the last two weeks, was masterminded by Ken Tipton and featured two
aspiring 23-year-old actors who claimed that they had hoped their participation
would lead to a "big break" in Hollywood. The scheme began to fall apart
last weekend when the site's host - the Internet Entertainment Group
- tipped off the press that Tipton had planned to charge site visitors $US5
a head to gain admittance to the "event" which - contrary to the expectations
created with a cunning series of media releases - would see the actors allegedly
"go cold" on the idea at the last minute and decide the abstain until they
were married. At a press conference yesterday, both the actors and Tipton
told incredulous reporters that they had intended to create "the biggest
public service announcement ever" with the stunt to promote a positive message
about safe sex and "old-fashioned values".
Wednesday 22nd
July 1998
FLAKY SOFTWARE REFUND RIGHTS VALID
- ACA
The notoriously poor quality
of PC software has come under attack from the Australian Consumers Association
(ACA). The ACA has announced yesterday that it believes that although
most software manufacturers have traditionally been able to claim immunity
from consumer actions because they use package warranties which - in effect
- do not even warrant that their software will work, let alone work correctly,
recent changes in Australian law may make them at least liable to provide
refunds to consumers who are dissatisfied with their purchases. The ACA said
they believe that users who've bought software and then struck problems could
have at least two potential grounds for complaint. If a salesperson advised
them that the software would work on their hardware and it didn't, they could
successfully argue under the Trade Practices Act that they had been sold
goods that were not fit for the purpose. And if it could be shown that the
software did not work as advertised because of conflicts with a consumer's
PC, then providing the PC met or exceeded the minimum hardware requirements
stated on the box they would also be entitled to a refund - a right established
by a ruling in the Federal Court earlier this year which was still valid
even if the software had been opened.
Tuesday 21st
July 1998
POLICE CATCH NT HACKER
Victorian police have caught
a 30-year-old hacker who is allegedly responsible for a wild two-week hacking
spree against business and government computers in all Australian capital
cities. The hacker, who went under the alias of Number Crunch, exploited
security holes in Windows NT and Windows95 workstations and
servers to delete operating systems software and wipe information from LANs.
In some cases the attacks resulted in complete system crashes, requiring
a total rebuild. The Computer Crime Squad said that the man has been arrested
and charged with one count of criminal damage and is currently out on bail
- but they believe that the damage he caused was much more widespread and
have appealed for help from the public in unearthing more evidence. "Some
companies may have attributed loss of data or systems interference during
the last few weeks to a virus," a spokesman said. Anyone with information
on the case can contact the squad by phone on (03) 9865-2042.
Monday 20th
July 1998
ARTUFRAME OPENS ON OUR
MALL
Artuframe - the world's
largest online art and framing
gallery - opened an affiliate site at Australian Cybermalls today. The new
site offers a vast selection of discounted framed and unframed art as well
as other art-related products.Artuframe's site has been designed to help
customers find and create a custom-framed picture from the tens of thousands
of posters, limited edition prints and original artwork available. These
customized works can then be assembled and delivered much faster than they
would be through traditional framers or galleries - and at affordable prices.
Many of the prints available through Artuframe cannot be obtained through
retail outlets and (for our Australian visitors) are simply not available
in the country at all at the present time. Artuframe joins our other
international affiliates CD Universe, Barnes & Noble, Digital River and
Cybershop, all of whom have come to Australian Cybermalls because they share
our common belief in the exciting future of e-commerce and the increasing
internationalisation of business. They help expand the total range of products
available to our visitors to an astonishing 1.5 million items.
Friday 17th
July 1998
NEW MOBILE PHONE HEALTH
SCARE
British military scientists
have discovered disturbing new evidence that mobile phones can disrupt parts
of the brain associated with with learning and memory and can cause short-term
memory loss in heavy users. The new tests were carried out by the Defence
Ministry and the UK Department of Health, both of whom had claimed
that mobile phones were safe until recently, and follow hot on the heels
of of two separate studies also released in Great Britain last month which
suggest that mobiles can cause a rise in blood pressure and may prove harmful
to pregnant women. Earlier this week the Australian Federal Government announced
that it would inject more than $200,000 into research projects to study the
health risks that mobile phones may pose to Australian users after independent
studies carried out in 1997 by researchers in South Australia and Western
Australia suggested that there may be links between the phones and brain
tumors. Other studies have also
suggested that mobiles may be linked to headaches, tiredness and cancer.
Australia has one of the highest per-capita rates of mobile phone usage in
the world.
Thursday 16th
July 1998
AUSTRALIAN NET TO QUADRUPLE BY
2002
Australia's Internet access
market will almost quadruple over the next 4 years according to a report
released this week by International Data
Corporation (IDC), becoming a billion-dollar arena by 2002. According
to IDC there were 567,000 permanent Internet subscribers in Australia in
1997 who spent approximately $252 million on Net access services. However,
IDC predict that this will swell to 2.8 million online businesses and households
and $906 million in fees by early next century, though they note that some
of this money will be channeled in different ways as time passes. IDC analyst
Tim Sheedy said that the company had already noticed a shift away from the
pure dial-up services offered by the majority of Australian ISPs towards
more value added clustering, where web developers and multimedia design shops
were offering their clients hosting and site management as well as dial-up
services - a trend the company expects will continue to accelerate. As a
result, IDC also predict that the percentage of ISPs' revenue derived from
dial-in access would drop from 50 per cent in 1997 to 32 per cent by 2002,
though the total dollar value of those services would continue to grow because
of the natural expansion of the market. Instead, by 2002, another 20% of
ISP revenues would come from Internet telephony, fax services, leased line
and dedicated access, with the balance from content hosting.
Wednesday 15th
July 1998
FEDLINK PROJECT SCRAPPED
The Australian Federal Government
has scrapped plans for a dedicated intranet to link all Federal departments
and agencies after a detailed analysis disclosed that the ambitious Fedlink
project would fail to deliver sufficient value to justify its cost. Finance
Minister John Fahey, announcing that the idea had been dropped, said
that there wasn't a "sufficiently strong business case" to warrant the idea
proceeding beyond a feasibility study. Instead, the Government will continue
to use existing infrastructure for inter-agency communications, and will
look at purchasing additional infrastructure to allow secure data exchange
and provide all Federal personnel with access to videoconferencing, online
multimedia, live video broadcasts and secure email. The announcement came
as a blow to proponents of intranets, who've found that there has been increasing
resistance to the idea since ever since the concept of using web technology
for internal networks first debuted a few years ago. While the idea of using
relatively inexpensive software and browsers to distribute information exerted
significant initial appeal, in practice the labour-intensive nature of web
technology has proven to be a significant cost drawback in many organisations
that have implemented intranets to date. The Federal Government will, however,
continue to invest heavily in agency web sites and the Net for public interfaces.
Tuesday 14th
July 1998
FTC URGES RENEWED SPAMMER
CRACKDOWN
The US Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) received a report today which has urged that US regulators
be given the power to prosecute spammers who use fake return addresses which
make it impossible to return unwanted junk emails to their senders and make
it difficult to identify the people behind fraudulent or deceptive spams.
The FTC had requested the report last year when it was conducting hearings
into the issues of online privacy and spam, and the paper tendered today
came from a broad coalition of anti-spam activists including the Center for
Democracy and Technology, AOL, the Direct Marketing Association and several
leading anti-spam groups. The report calls for a mandate to outlaw the practice
of using forged headers - a move which, if successful, would deal a lethal
blow to spammers, since they could be traced and deluged with the same material
they send out to thousands of others. It would also allow ISPs and users
to accurately identify and filter out spams from the flow of regular email,
preventing many spams from ever seeing the light of day in a user's email
box. In May this year the US Senate unanimously passed a provision that would
see junk emailers fined up to $US15,000 if they hid their identities with
forged header. That provision is yet to be turned into law. Any proposal
to ban spam outright, however, is unlikely to succeed because of US laws
surrounding the issue of freedom of speech.
Monday 13th
July 1998
ENGLISH TO BECOME "MINORITY" NET
LANGUAGE
According to a report by
Forrester Research, more than
40% of the US population will be online within 5 years, outnumbering Europeans
by 3 to 1. Nonetheless, English is expected to lose its dominance on the
Internet by the end of this year as the total number of users from non- English
speaking countries finally outstrip the combined weight of English-speaking
users from the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK. Forrester said that the
large-scale growth of web usage in the US has been achieved largely due to
more affordable access costs. US telcos have taken on the majority of costs
in terms of laying out the infrastructure for a "wired country" and this
has reduced costs for consumers considerably as a result. Forrester found
that in the USA it's possible to get Internet access with a relatively low
income - as little as $US20 per month on average - but that costs are as
much as 10 times higher in Europe and this is restricting the uptake of the
Net there to a considerable degree. However, this is expected to change over
the next 5 years as applications like WebTV and Webdesk2000 become more globally
available. According to Forrester, the fastest-growing non-English languages
on the Net are Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Chinese and the
Scandinavian languages.
Friday 10th
July 1998
CD UNIVERSE GETS TOP
RATING
Australian Cybermalls affiliate
CD
Universe has been named the best online music retailer by
Briefing.com, a leading provider
of live market commentary on the Internet. In a comparative study of 5 well-known
online music retailers, CD Universe scored top billing against Music Boulevard,
CD Now, Amazon.com - a recent entry into the crowded online music field -
and CD World. According to the report, CD Universe was "the hands-down winner
for ease of use, navigation and product range" - and is the only one of the
5 retailers currently making a profit. The report rated all five sites on
price, search engine capability, site content and ease of use. "CD Universe
was particularly good at the music clips and information, as well as being
the easiest to purchase multiple CDs from and review your running total,"
the report said. "To top it off, it has the best prices. Overall, it simply
made buying CDs easier than the others." CD Universe was launched in April
1996 and has been an Australian Cybermalls affiliate since November 1997.
It currently stocks more than 200,000 titles available for world-wide delivery,
including imports, cassette tapes, videos, DVDs and laser discs. Customers
can browse by genre; search by artists, title, song, soundtrack or label;
read album reviews, check track listings, view cover art and listen to sound
clips before they buy. Other features include a free customizable music
newsletter and tributes to music artists, events and awards.
Thursday 9th
July 1998
PORN SPAMMERS EXPLOIT IE SECURITY
FLAW
A new security flaw seems to
have been discovered in
Microsoft's troubled Internet
Explorer browser by adult web site operators. The flaw, which appears
to be caused by a deliberate "hole" Microsoft have built into Explorer which
allows it to covertly poll a user's hard drive to determine what Microsoft
software they're using and then advise them that updates to their software
are available from the company's web site if newer versions have been posted,
appears to be being exploited by the operators of Adulthost.com. In
recent days, several Australian ISPs have been called by troubled users who've
booted up their Explorer browser, launched a new browser window and been
confronted by an explicit ad for an Adulthost site - an ad which they are
unable to remove. Early investigations seem to indicate that the spammers
deposit four .INI files on a user's hard drive which launch the ads whenever
a new browser window is requested. The ads cannot be removed until the four
files are erased and the browser is shut down and rebooted. When Microsoft
originally entered the browser arena, one of the company's plans was to build
a "hard drive survey" feature into the earliest versions of Explorer which
would secretly record a snapshot of the contents of a user's hard drive and
transmit them to Redmond. The plan was supposedly shelved after news of it
was made public and provoked an immediate storm of controversy from privacy
groups. At present, it's not known whether the hole being exploited by spammers
is a relic of early Explorer code still retained in IE 4.x, or marks a return
by Microsoft to its early attempts to spy on its customers. But - so far
- Netscape users do not appear to be affected by the problem.
Wednesday 8th
July 1998
TELSTRA TO IMPROVE RURAL
ACCESS
Federal Cabinet, concerned about
a growing rural backlash against its plans to sell off the remaining two-thirds
of Telstra still held in
public ownership, yesterday considered a proposal to force the carrier to
provide Internet-quality phone lines to all rural and regional areas
of Australia. Under its present universal service charter, Telstra is only
obliged to provide a basic 2400 bps service outside urban areas. This has
meant that many farmers and residents in remote communities are presently
unable to participate in the Internet revolution. However, Liberal and National
Party MPs are known to have been pressing the Government to make a commitment
for a significant improvement in the carrier's non-urban services before
they give their support to full privatisation. Although full details of the
plan are not expected to be released before the Telstra sell-off is debated
in the Senate over the next few days, Cabinet is understood to have made
a broad decision to impel the former monopolist to significantly upgrade
Telstra's service levels. The move would win wide approval in the bush, but
would also impose a vast (and unwelcome) expense on the company and its
shareholders.
Tuesday 7th
July 1998
FEDS LAUNCH BUSINESS ENTRY
POINT
The Australian Federal Government
today launched the first phase of its ambitious
Business Entry Point (BEP),
an Internet information and support service for the small business community
designed to provide streamlined access between businesses and more than 850
support and information services from Federal, State and Territory governments.
BEP is a joint initiative of the Department of Workplace Relations and Small
Business, the Department of Industry, Science and Tourism, the Australian
Taxation Office and a number of other agencies and has been designed - in
part - to begin reducing the red tape and frustration Australian small businesses
often experience in having to deal with multiple government departments and
interstate legislation. The first phase of the site, developed at a cost
of $8.5 million, covers topics ranging from starting a business through to
taxation, superannuation, customs, occupational health and safety and workplace
relations, all searchable by industry category and location. Visitors to
the site can also make use of services for company name registration, application
for tax file numbers, group employer and sales tax registration. The second
phase of the site, which will be developed if the Coalition wins a second
term in office, would be likely to incorporate "facilities for online payments,
change of address procedures, initial applications and renewal of licences
or registrations" according to a spokesman.
Monday 6th July
1998
PRONET LIQUIDATED
In a surprise move that has
left subscribers, hosting clients and creditors out of pocket for as much
as $600,000, former Australian national ISP ProNet was permanently
closed down by administrators Hall Chadwick late on Friday night and
all staff were summarily dismissed. The company, which less than twelve months
ago was being hailed as the flagship for Optus' alternate Australian Internet
backbone, had claimed as many as 9,000 subscribers at its peak and had points
of presence in most eastern capitals and major regional centres. However,
administrators were called in earlier this year when it was disclosed that
the company had incurred extensive bandwidth bills with Optus which it was
unable to pay. Although the administrators assured all parties at the time
that the company would be able to trade out of difficulties and were still
accepting subscribers on high-priced annual accounts as late as last week,
most customers only discovered the worst when they turned up for work this
morning and found that their web sites were off air and that the phones in
the company's Milton offices were not being answered. An official statement
on the closure is expected to be released in the near future.
Friday 3rd July
1998
EU PROPOSES VAT TAX ON "ELECTRONIC
GOODS"
The
European
Union has released a policy statement for discussion which, if
adopted, would see sales made across the Net from its member countries
taxed in the same way that services currently are, pushing up the price of
anything purchased from European Internet sites. Under the majority of existing
online taxation systems, the type of digital transaction that is taking place
is the critical factor when deciding what kind of taxation is applicable.
In the USA and Australia, for instance, goods are usually taxed in the country
of origin while services are taxed where they are carried out. But under
the EU policy, which is now up for debate amongst its 15 member countries,
it's proposed that VAT will differentiate between the supply of goods and
the provision of services - and goods sold across the Net will be considered
in the same tax bracket as services. However, the new EU tax proposal is
in sharp contrast to an earlier document released by the OECD on the challenges
facing taxpayers and authorities with regard to ecommerce. The OECD report
instead proposed that that the means of sale should not affect the
classification of the product or service. And in the USA, the IRS have outlined
a similar policy in their recommendations for US international taxation and
software - namely, that the manner of delivery of a software product should
remain irrelevant to the method of taxation.
Thursday 2nd
July 1998
MICROSOFT BUYS EXPLORER NAME FOR
$US5 MILLION
In an embarrassing out-of-court
settlement, Microsoft agreed
to pay out $US5 million today to purchase the rights to the name "Internet
Explorer" from a software developer who took the software behemoth to court
in 1995 in a trademark dispute. The programmer, Dhiren Rana, alleged
that he had applied to the name to a competing web browser he'd designed
for bankrupt Illinois ISP SyNet in early 1994. Microsoft had tried to argue
that the name Internet Explorer was as generic as words like "database" or
"aspirin" and was therefore ineligible for trademark status. They had asked
Chicago US District Court Judge Charles Norgle Sr to dismiss the case
and had petitioned the US Patent and Trademark Office to block Rana's trademark
application. However, when Judge Norgle proved unsympathetic to their argument
and the US Patent Office published Rana's application yesterday - the first
step in the trademark approval process - the company quickly decided that
licensing the name was preferable to litigation and caved in. Under the terms
of the settlement, Microsoft will pay Rana $5 million in exchange for his
agreement to dismiss the case and transfer the federal application to Microsoft,
as well as a separate registration for the name already granted by the state
of Illinois.
Wednesday 1st
July 1998
AUSTRALIAN NET DIVES 14.8% IN
JUNE
The Australian Internet took
a downward swing of approximately 14.8% last month according to the search
engines we monitor to construct our monthly Australian Internet Growth
Index (AIGI). The dramatic swing continues the roller-coaster ride that
has been in evidence for much of 1998 year as Australian businesses high
on enthusiasm but low on both persistence and imagination continue to erect
sites, quickly abandon them and ultimately have them erased by their hosts
when annual contract renewals fall due. The AIGI, which is constructed from
a composite of several international engines, has been measuring the approximate
number of Australian sites on the Internet since January 1996. The July 1st
figures (with June 1st figures in brackets) are as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index June 1998
(Figures Show Estimated Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 2,505 (2,798)
-
Sydney - 8,602 (10,068)
-
Melbourne - 6,224 (7,305)
-
Adelaide - 2,420 (2,848)
|
-
Perth - 2,418 (2,869)
-
Hobart - 952 (1,207)
-
Canberra - 1,900 (2,384)
-
Darwin - 2,404 (2,700)
|
|
During June Australian Cybermalls
hosted 40,156 visitors, well down on the 46,713 visitors who dropped
by to see us in May 1998. At least part of this fall was due to congestion
on the Australian Internet backbone, which has made access to overseas sites
slow and tedious for at least half the month as Telstra continue to grapple
with the phenomenal growth of the country's user base (Australian Cybermalls
is hosted in Boston).
|
