Friday
24th December 1999
WE GO ON A XMAS
HOLIDAY
Australian Cybermalls is taking
a brief Christmas break between December 24th and January 4th, 2000. During
the last year our site hosted 850,000+ visitors (94% of them from outside
Australia) and our merchants wrote over $1 million in business. We'd like
to thank everyone for their support of what we're doing, and we look forward
to returning with an even bigger, better site next year.
Thursday
23rd December 1999
YAHOO HIT WITH $4B PRIVACY
SUIT
Yahoo
has been served with a $4 billion lawsuit by
Universal Image (UI),
who claim that Yahoo has been using UI videos on their Broadcast.Com site
but have refused to share the data with UI (as per an agreement that existed
between UI and Broadcast.Com's previous owners). UI claim that before Yahoo
acquired Broadcast.Com, UI had made use of user registration deals to obtain
information on more than 750,000 site visitors at Broadcast.Com, which it
used for direct marketing and to on-sell to other advertisers. Yahoo claim
that UI's demands would be in breach of the company's current privacy policy,
and will defend the claim. UI is seeking $1 billion in direct damages and
up to $3 billion in punitive damages.
Wednesday
22nd December 1999
AUSTRALIA SETS DIGITAL
TV STANDARDS
The Australian Federal Government
announced the new format for digital television today. From 1st January 2001,
Australian TV broadcasters will be required to follow a unique "triple-shot"
format which will see them broadcasting content in analogue, standard and
high-definition digital formats until analogue is phased out completely on
1st January 2008. Although the Government had been inclined towards the High
Definition Television (HDTV) format from the outset, the cost of HDTV boxes
(around $A10,000 to $A15,0000 at present) impelled them allow broadcasters
to offer the lower-grade European Standard Digital Television format (SDTV)
as well. Brand new SDTV boxes are expected to retail for around $A3,000,
while analogue-to-SDTV conversion boxes are expected to retail for less than
$A500. The digital TV changes, announced today by Communications Minister
Sen. Richard Alston, will also limit datacasting, preventing datacast
operators from offering TV programs other than small news, weather or sports
updates.
Tuesday
21st December 1999
LOOKSMART SCORES DEAL WITH
TIME
LookSmart
- the Australian search engine developed for Readers Digest in 1996 - has
inked a deal with Time-Warner to provide search facilities and content
on the media group's high-profile sites, including all its CNN properties
and the Pathfinder site. The move comes as part of a full revamp of the
Time-Warner sites, which have been slipping in the ratings over the last
twelve months. Under the terms of the deal, LookSmart will sell advertising
on the Time-Warner sites and the revenues will be split between both companies.
The latest deal follows a recent announcement that LookSmart have been engaged
by British Telecom to roll out LookSmart services on its European and Asian
properties.
Monday
20th December 1999
AUSTRALIAN NET STILL GROWING
- ABS
The Australian online population
has continued to grow over the last year, according to a new report released
today by the Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS). The ABS estimate that at August 1999, 23% of
Australia's 1.6 million households had Net access, up from 18% the year before.
In addition, an estimated 5.6 million adults accessed the Net at some time
over the last year, which represented 41% of the total adult population.
Again, this was up from 32% of the total adult population 12 months previously.
The ABS report also noted that 1.2 million of Australia's 1,6 million connections
are located in capital cities and that 44% of adults in capital cities had
accessed the Net last year, compared with 35% from rural or non-capital
locations. However, user growth in rural Net access was stronger over the
last year than growth in urban centres.
Friday
17th December 1999
QANTAS SUES NZ DOMAIN
SQUATTER
Australian airline
QANTAS announced today that
it had successfully sued a New Zealand cybersquatter, setting a new legal
precedent in that country. According to a statement issued to the Australian
Stock Exchange today, a firm called the Domain Name Company had registered
the domain qantas.co.nz in 1996, then offered to sell it to the airline in
1998. QANTAS had initially entered into negotiations to purchase the domain,
but later decided to take the matter to court instead. Last week, the New
Zealand High Court decided in favour of QANTAS, setting an important precedent
for domain name registrations in that country. The move follows
recent
laws enacted in the USA which also open the way for companies to
sue domain squatters who register domains to which they have no entitlement,
such as company and brand names.
Thursday
16th December 1999
UK USERS FEAR CREDIT
CARDS
According to a study of 50,000
British Internet users conducted by
Fletcher Research (FR) in October,
consumer fears about online security are the main impediments holding back
UK ecommerce. According to FR, only 18% of British people currently trust
online vendors with their credit card details. And half of those interviewed
for the survey were unhappy at the prospect of using their credit card to
shop online. FR found that a typical UK Internet user has a 40% chance of
holding a university degree and an 80% chance of being in the ABC1 demographic.
Furthermore, the average household income of typical UK net users appears
to be 80 percent higher than the national average income. In addition, more
women are now using the Net in the UK - up from 33% of the audience a year
ago to 40% today. Even so, women are still less likely to buy online, FR
found. 36% of male users have purchased at least one item over the Net, but
less than 20% of female users have done the same.
Wednesday
15th December 1999
US SITES MOST POPULAR WITH
AUSTRALIANS
According to a study by
IMR Worldwide, Australians
still prefer US sites over domestic ones. IMR surveyed 3,000 Australian home
and business users last month to discover their preferences and found that
a significant percentage of their sample base prefers to visit US-based sites
ahead of Australian ones. According to IMR, 13 of Australia's current Top
20 web sites are US-based, and the most-visited US sites are HotMail (1.05
million unique Australian visits in November 1999) and Microsoft.Com (977,000
Australian visits in November 1999). The site that held Australian visitors
for the longest time span was Shockwave.com, the multimedia portal from
Macromedia. Each visitor spent an average of three minutes and 47 seconds
on the site, IMR found. But the major sites least likely to hold an Australian
surfer's attention were Amazon.com and the free email site from Yahoo! IMR
noted that each of these held a visitor's attention for an average of 46
seconds per visit.
Tuesday
14th December 1999
SENATE TO LOOK AT MOBILE
HEALTH RISKS
Despite continued protestations
about the safety of mobile phones from the telecommunications industry, the
Australian Senate has announced that it will launch a parliamentary inquiry
into mobile phone safety issues in March next year. The inquiry will examine
the allocation of research funding, existing research into the subject of
mobile phone safety, the current Australian emission standard and an analysis
of efforts to set standards. The move comes in the face of continued public
unease about the devices in the light of
adverse
discoveries in Australian, US and UK experiments in recent years.
Australians are currently one of the highest per-capita users of mobile phones
in the world, with close to 7 million mobile units for a 19-million
population. The inquiry will report its findings in October 2000
Monday
13th December 1999
NET FUELS OFFLINE AD
EXPLOSION
The Internet is fuelling an
explosion in offline advertising in the USA, according Competitive Media
Reporting (CMR) - a trend starting to be seen in Australia as well. CMR
report that advertising spending by dotcoms reached an estimated $US755 million
in the first half of 1999. This was close to 300% higher than an equivalent
period the year before. In Silicon Valley, CMR found, online retailers were
responsible for 17% of all spending on radio advertising and 11% of outdoor
advertising in the first half of the year. Similar trends are being widely
reflected across other parts of the USA as well. In Australia, many recent
Internet floats have invested large amounts of their capital on print and
outdoor advertising campaigns. An increasing number of terrestrial advertising
campaigns are also being tied to or centred around site launches.
Friday
10th December 1999
TAX OFFICE PLANS TO BE
"BIG BROTHER"
The
Australian Tax Office (ATO) released
a report today detailing its latest ideas for monitoring online traders.
The document - Tax and the Internet: Second Report - suggests that
the ATO should use the new Australian Business Numbers to identify online
traders; that it should add extra questions to tax return forms asking for
email addresses and URLs; and that it should either implement a real-time
monitoring system (which would involve keeping records of the IP numbers
of web businesses) or examine the data logs of Australian ISPs which host
transactions between customers and web retailers. The ATO is also considering
a new set of record keeping standards for onshore ISP which it would then
use to covertly check transactions . The ATO's recommendations will ultimately
be put to the OECD, which is attempting to formulate a set of uniform policies
for member countries to cover Internet-related taxation issues. The final
OECD report is not expected until 2002.
Thursday
9th December 1999
OECD SETS RULES FOR
ESHOPPING
The 29 member nations of the
Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) adopted
guidelines today that they hope will provide broader protection for online
consumers. The guidelines are not legally binding and will not be implemented
until 2000-2001, but they will be pushed forward by participating countries
(including Australia, the USA, and European Union) over the next year
through partnerships with industry self-regulation groups or through legislation.
They cover such issues as protection of consumer privacy, dispute resolution
procedures in the event of product returns or non-delivery of goods, and
accurate disclosures about products and shipping policies. Earlier this year,
the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) issued its
own
guidelines
on what sort of information it considered effective online businesses should
offer to consumers, and the policies it felt they should adopt.
Wednesday
8th December 1999
COMPLAINTS AGAINST ONLINE
ETAILERS INCREASING
Complaints against online merchants
are increasing in step with the growth of ecommerce, according to the
National Consumer League (NCL), a private, nonprofit US organization
headquartered in Washington. In 1998 the NCL logged 7,700 complaints on its
Fraud.org site. This year, the NCL
fielded 6000 complaints between January 1st and June 30th - a rise of close
to 64%. According to the NCL, most complaints seem to involve online auctions
in which a bidder either never received the item purchased, or received something
entirely different than expected. In the USA, the NCL field consumer complaints
and send them to the appropriate law enforcement agency - either the US Federal
Trade Commission, the FBI or the US Postal Inspector's Office. Susan Grant,
director of the NCL's Internet Fraud Watch, said that many old mail order
and telemarketing scams have appeared on the Net as digital variants and
that common-sense still held true: "If it sounds too good to be true, it
probably is."
Tuesday
7th December 1999
MICROSOFT MONOPOLY TRIAL
MOVES AHEAD
The US Department of Justice
(DOJ) and the 19 US states involved in the anti-monopoly case against Microsoft
filed "conclusions of law" legal briefs against the company today, further
ramping up pressure on the software giant to seek an out-of-court settlement
with its prosecutors. In the legal briefs, which Microsoft must respond to
by January 17th, the DOJ allege that Microsoft engaged in illegal,
anti-competitive conduct in five ways: (1) tying browser sales to sales of
its Windows operating system (2) using its market power to illegally maintain
a monopoly (3) attempting to monopolize the browser market (4) imposing exclusive
dealing arrangements with ISPs and/or developers; and (5) imposing boot-up
and screen restrictions on computer manufacturers and/or assemblers. Each
one of these charges represents a violation of the USA's strict Sherman
anti-trust laws and - if proven - may result in the break-up of the software
giant. Microsoft began negotiations with its prosecutors in Chicago last
week.
Monday
6th December 1999
US ETAILERS EXPECT BOOM
XMAS
US internet-based retail sales
could account for as much as $US12 billion of the expected $US180 billion
that American consumers will spend on holiday season shopping this month,
according to a new study by Deloittes. While web-based consumer sales
will still only account for 7% of total seasonal sales this year, Deloittes
point out that this is a 7% slice of the market that didn't exist as little
as 3 years ago. Their study also found that up to 63% of consumers who use
the Net expect to be conducting at least part of their gift shopping online
this year. And since 75% of US consumers with incomes of $US70,000 or more
already use the Net, Deloittes suggest this could indicate that traditional
brick-and-mortar retailers may be finding their most affluent customers drifting
away from them as online buying gathers momentum.
Friday
3rd December 1999
COMMUNICATOR 5.0 BETA IN
FEBRUARY?
Netscape
Communicator 5.0 is expected to release a beta in February, with a full release
possibly scheduled for August 2000. The popular browser, now owned by AOL,
has been in open source development for two years. The new Communicator 5.0
is expected to feature full compliance with Web standards and include a user
interface technology called Extensible User Interface Language (XUL) to provide
a fully-featured environment for both users and web developers. Communicator
5.0 will also merge mail and instant messaging functions, taking advantage
of AOL's spectacularly successful Instant Messenger technology. According
to AOL, delays in releasing the new version of the browser have been caused
by the need to completely rewrite large portions of the source code. The
end result is expected to be a very high quality product, a spokesman said,
but the need to rework large parts of the code base - coupled with AOL's
buyout of Netscape a year earlier and the loss of some of Netscape's original
staff - had induced delays.
Thursday
2nd December 1999
MICROSOFT TO RELEASE IE
5.5
Microsoft
plan to release an updated 5.5 version of Internet Explorer early next year
in conjunction with their impending Windows2000 operating system. As with
all prior releases of Explorer, the browser is expected to be integrated
with the new operating system. However, following the company's recent exposure
as a monopolist in its trial with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), it
is unlikely that the browser will be as tightly locked into Windows2000 as
was the case with both Windows95 and Windows98 - a factor which proved to
be a particularly sore point with the DOJ prosecutors. Improvements slated
for the new release include better support for open Web standards such as
cascading style sheets and SMIL, as well as more Microsoft proprietary technology
(such as DHTML behaviours) which render most sites which adopt them completely
or partially inaccessible to Netscape users. The 5.5 release will also address
significant omissions in the current 5.0 version (such as print previewing)
and attempt to remedy long standing defects in the browser's printing
reliability, printing speed, and security.
Wednesday
1st December 1999
AUSTRALIAN NET CONTINUES
TO GROW
The number of Australian web
sites expanded once again last month according to our monthly Australian
Internet Growth Index, which has been attempting to estimate the number
of Australian web sites on the Net (as opposed to the number of registered
domains) since 1996. This marks the 5th consecutive month of growth our index
has recorded. During November, this growth appeared to be equally spread
across almost all capitals, though Sydney - and, to a degree, Canberra -
lead the national output on a per-capita basis. The December 1st figures
(with November 1st figures in brackets) are as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index November 1999
(Figures Show Estimated Live Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 2,895
(2,716)
-
Sydney - 9,316
(8,522)
-
Melbourne - 6,657
(6,118)
-
Adelaide - 2,984
(2,721)
|
-
Perth - 3,023
(2,851)
-
Hobart - 1,096
(1,035)
-
Canberra - 2,531
(2,216)
-
Darwin* - 2,236
(2,006)
|
NB: The Darwin figure includes
rural Australian sites |
|
During November 1999 Australian
Cybermalls hosted 74,999 visitors, a rise on October's 73,412. This
was equivalent to 255,344 page displays and consumed 7.47Gb of bandwidth.
Our November 1999 traffic summary
can be viewed
here.
|
