Australian Cybermalls News

CD Universe, the multi award-winning online CD retailer, opened a franchise outlet at Australian Cybermalls today. The new site offers visitors a comprehensive, easy-to-search online catalogue of rock, pop and classical artists and retails singles as well as full-length recordings. The site also offers an enormous set of on-line charts on-line (eg: Latin, Country, R&B, Pop/Rock, Rap, Jazz, Techno etc), a free email newsletter, information on new releases and - in 1998 - more than 20,000 video titles as well. CD Universe include a special section for imports in their catalogues and provide secure online ordering and rapid world-wide delivery. CD Universe is the second franchise outlet to open at Australian Cybermalls after Digital River opened a 95,000-title online software store with us earlier in the month.

The next generation of HTML, the page-building language of the Web, edged a step closer with the announcement yesterday that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has given the thumbs-up to an official specification for the next generation of the language. The new HTML 4.0 will introduce cascading style sheets, support for international languages and symbols, advanced forms , inline frames, enhanced tables and support for objects and scripts amongst many extensions to the current official version of the language (HTML 3.2). The formal adoption of the HTML 4.0 specification is not expected until at least mid-1998, and it is unlikely to attain widespread browser support until late 1998 or early 1999.

The number of potential new domestic competitors for Telstra swelled again today with the announcement that national gas utility AGL is reviewing its communications operations and future strategies with an eye to entering the telecommunications market at some time in the near future. Although the company has yet to decide whether to enter the market as a partner in a joint telecommunications venture or apply for a carrier licence in its own right, it is now the fourth major Australian power company to enter the arena. The move follows United Power's successful experiments with sending voice and data calls down power lines in Victoria earlier this year - a breakthrough that is expected to see power companies offering all-in-one power, phone and Internet connections to Australian households within a few years.

Irish research company NUA estimate that there are now at least 89 million regular Internet users world-wide. After monitoring growth trends for the last two years, NUA made the announcement at the launch of a new section of the company's site to chronicle estimates of how many people are online on a worldwide and country-by-country basis. NUA believe that there are now 54 million regular Net users in the USA and Canada, 18 million in Europe, 14 million in the Asia/Pacific, and around 1 million each in South America, Africa and the Middle East.

In what may well be the start of a long and bitter price war between carriers and the dawn of cheaper dial-up prices for local end users, Optus have persuaded Australia's largest ISP OzEmail to abandon Telstra by offering wholesale bandwidth billing cuts of up to 30%. The service provision deal, which will last for at least two years, will see OzEmail move more than 150,000 of its subscribers over to the Optus Internet service by June 1998. OzEmail will be joining the Australian Academic Research Network (AARNET) and several other major ISPs who've left Telstra in recent months chasing better prices and services. Optus now provide Internet carrier services for around 600,000 Australians, accounting for approximately 33% of all domestic Internet users, and will be opening an alternative 40Gb trans-Pacific cable in 1999.

Further to yesterday's story (below) about large Australian ISPs spam-proofing their servers, Irish research company NUA reports that many US ISPs are now actively prosecuting anyone caught spamming on their servers. In a Texas court last week, a California spammer was fined $US13,000 and ordered to pay US$5,000 in legal costs when the Texas Internet Service Providers Association and a number of individuals decided to sue for damages. The spammer had used the domain of a private individual to disguise the origin of the junk mail and the case was brought under laws of nuisance, negligence, trespass to personal property, conversion and harmful access by computer. Earthlink, meanwhile, have introduced an immediate $200 fine for any user caught sending unsolicited email, while San Diego ISP SimpleNet are bringing alleged spammers to court claiming that individuals and businesses who spam from their servers damage the company's reputation.

Australia's largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are making their servers spam-proof after a series of "piggy-back" spam raids by US spammers in recent months. According to industry sources, US spammers are finding it increasingly hard to use machines in their own country following a groundswell of anti-spam public sentiment and recent legal amendments, so they have begun turning their attention to offshore servers. In recent months spammers have made use of a number of Australian servers to send out bulk emails, severely reducing server speeds for other users and degrading the ISPs' performance for several hours at a stretch. A large number of big ISPs are now modifying their systems to prevent future attacks.

As part of the accelerating Java battle, Sun Microsystems has asked a US court to bar Microsoft from using the Java-compatible logo on its Internet Explorer 4.0 browser. Sun cited two independent reports showing Explorer failed the Java compatibility tests as reason for the request. Netscape Communications voluntarily removed the Java compatibility logo from its Communicator browser last week because it was only 80 percent compatible with Java. Sun said Microsoft has removed the logo from its Web site, but not from Explorer. "Microsoft must be stopped from using the Java compatible logo to deceive the market," said Michael Morris, Sun's general counsel, in a release, which also quoted a comment made by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to the Wall Street Journal defending some of Microsoft's rules regarding Windows on the grounds of protecting the integrity of Windows. Sun's release said the company shares these concerns for Java.

Microsoft's new version 4.0 release of its Internet Explorer browser appears to be following the same tortured path to safe operability as its predecessor. According to the company, the latest problem to strike the browser is a crash that can be caused by a user attempting to follow a "malicious hyperlink" - a res:// (resource) link containing more than 255 characters. The bug was discovered last week by L0pht Heavy Industries and only affects the Windows95 version of the product. Meanwhile, rival Netscape has also suffered from a slew of minor defects with their Communicator release and are now up to version 4.04 of the product. The latest version corrects earlier problems that existed with memory allocation and the product's in-built Java compiler.

Australia's Internet Industries Association (IIA) has warned that draft regulations to amend Australia's 1997 Telecommunications Act could leave the way open for Telstra to charge businesses timed local calls. The IIA has warned that the Commonwealth Government's regulations - while ruling out timed calls for residential and charity consumers - could allow Telstra to vary the fees it charges Australian ISPs and the business customers of ISPs.The IIA has warned that the introduction of timed calls to businesses could seriously hamper Australia's ability to compete effectively in the global economy. Australia currently has the second-cheapest Internet connection charges amongst all OECD countries, largely due to untimed local calls. Canada, where local calls are generally free, is the cheapest.

According to a memo leaked to InfoWorld today, Sun's JavaSoft division looks set to become the gatekeeper for an international Java standard after having gained the approval of 27 out of 31 International Standards Organisation (ISO) member countries to have the language turned into a standard, including Australia. According to InfoWorld's sources, Ireland and the USA voted against the proposal, Switzerland and Italy abstained and the remainder have voted in favour. Sun only requires a simple majority of ISO member nations to be approved as a public standard submitter, but a formal announcement will not be made until Monday. However, if true, the move will come as a heavy blow to Microsoft who have waged an unremitting campaign to prevent Java standardisation in order to preserve the company's dominance of the PC software market. Microsoft released a "WinTel" version of the language with Internet Explorer 4.0 which provoked Sun to launch a lawsuit against the company last month. The next step is that Sun will submit the Java language, the Java Virtual Machine and some base-level Java APIs for ISO approval.

Intel have confirmed that a newly-discovered bug in its Pentium and Pentium MMX chips can crash computers and possibly corrupt files. Although the company has been working feverishly on the problem since it was first announced last weekend in an anonymous posting to an Internet newsgroup, it does not currently have a solution. The bug occurs when a CPU runs a specific series of commands, which can be easily fed into a computer. The sequence causes the machine to hang up, requiring a hardware reset. If the hang-up occurs in the middle of a disk write operation and the affected system is running Windows NT or Linux, the bug can also cause file corruption, requiring a complete system restoration from a backup. Intel have so far confirmed that the bug is very real, but have added that it does not affect the company's Pentium Pro or new Pentium II lines.

OzEmail announced yesterday that it would be acquiring troubled ISP Access One from its owners, Solution 6 Holdings, for $5 million in cash and $20 million in shares. The move will make the Sydney-based ISP Australia's largest single Internet service provider with strong coverage across the eastern Australian states and thwart Telecom New Zealand's plans to establish a strong foothold in the Australian market. Access One, which is based in Victoria, had been losing large amounts of money for its former owners, reporting a shock $5.6 million loss for the 6 months to June this year. The company had recently launched an unlimited-dialup service called Access 2 in an effort to stem continuing losses, reducing its losses to $200,000 per month.

Australis Media announced today that it would put its Galaxy pay-TV operation into liquidation at the end of the month and lodge a $2.4 billion lawsuit against Telstra. Australis allege that Telstra's decision earlier this year to only extend cable to 2.5 million Australian homes rather than the 4 million originally planned reduced the payments it received for its programmes (which are paid for on a per-subscriber basis) and have partially contributed to the company's demise. Although Telstra have announced that they intend to vigorously defend the claim, the lawsuit has alarmed the Federal Government and forced it to issue an additional prospectus to the sharemarkets today, six days before the company's official float. The additional prospectus warns intending shareholders that if the Australis action succeeds there could be an "adverse effect" on Telstra's financial position. Rival telco Optus already have a $900 million court action against Telstra alleging unfair practices in the pay-TV arena.

According to a study by insolvency experts the PPB Group, Australian telecommunications service providers have failed at more than five times the rate of manufacturers over the last three years - a trend that shows no sign of abating. In their latest bulletin, PPB warn that the dramatic structural changes in the industry are driving up the failure rate and the biggest factor in the equation is the fact that service providers cannot control their main business cost: Telstra's interconnect fees and carrier charges. Further more, prices are being driven even lower (and margins ever tighter) by the entry of new competitors in the market. According to PPB, Telstra now control 74% of the market, Optus control 16%, and the remaining 10% is shared amongst more than 60 other operators. The situation is not expected to improve until non-Telstra carriers begin to build alternative infrastructure.

The BBC intends to launch a new world news service - BBC Online News - as part of its three-part strategy to maximise its Internet presence and capitalise on the company's global reputation for accurate news reporting and the loyal following the BBC has built over the last 50 years. The company's site is scheduled to be overhauled in early December to incorporate the new service whilst its Beeb@the BBC, an entertainment and information service launched a few months ago, is already one of the busiest Internet sites in the UK. Meanwhile, US news service CNN is also planning to upgrade its own very popular site by incorporating pictures and sound.

LookSmart, the Australian-developed selective search engine owned by Readers Digest, have opened an Australian mirror close to a year after being developed by a team of programmers in Melbourne and debuting in the USA. In doing so, LookSmart have become the very latest in a long chain of US-based search engines which have opened local mirrors in the last year - including Alta Vista, Excite, Inktomi and Yahoo. Unlike general search engines, LookSmart only lists sites its editors consider "the best" in particular categories. It has a strict policy of refusing to list adult sites and does not guarantee that any particular submission will be accepted.

According to recent research by advertising agency George Patterson Bates, 19 out of 20 Australian consumers still worry about the security of the Internet, even though the perception that the Internet is insecure is now largely incorrect. Patterson's study found that 17% of Australian consumers (around 2 million people) have expressed an interest in Internet shopping, but only 5% have actually made a purchase so far because of fears that it's riskier to give out credit card details over the Net than by phone or fax. "Secure Internet encryption is now safer than most other ways of passing credit card information, " GPB researchers said. "It's now up to ISPs, retailers, credit card and security technology companies to get that message across."

Digital River, the world's largest online software retailer, opened a franchise outlet at Australian Cybermalls today. The new site - which is a joint venture between the US and Australian companies - will allow our visitors to choose from over 95,000 different software titles, to purchase them online in a completely secure environment, and to obtain certified world-wide delivery of their software (sometimes, immediately via the Internet itself). Digital River is the first of several exciting and innovative franchises which will be opening at Australian Cybermalls over the next few months as part of our Spring 97 site makeover.

The number of Australian Internet sites performed an unusual rebound from September's 5% decline according to our monthly Australian Internet Growth Index. The sources used to derive the AIGA show that the number of Australian sites grew by approximately 2,726 during October 1997 - an 8% rebound over September's unexpected 5% decline. The AIGA, which has been measuring the approximate number of sites on the Australian Internet for the last 22 months, shows that there are now approximately 36,500 Australian public sites on the Net, an increase of close to 50% over comparative figures 12 months ago. The November 1st figures (with October 1st figures in brackets) are as follows:

Australian Internet Growth Index October 1997
(Figures Show Estimated Sites)

Brisbane - 3,494 (3,147)
Sydney - 11,148 (10,299)
Melbourne - 8,351 (7,787)
Adelaide - 3,317 (3,030)

Perth - 3,431 (3,086)
Hobart - 1,232 (1,150)
Canberra - 2,894 (2,803)
Darwin - 2,715 (2,554)

During October Australian Cybermalls displayed 59,192 storefronts, a 4% increase over our September visitation figures of 56,982. The September figures equated to an average of 1,909 visitors per day. For comparison, 12 months ago in October 1996 we displayed 20,364 storefronts to an average of 657 people a day. Wow! Thankyou everyone for your continued support!