Tuesday 30th
June 1998
PRESSURE RAMPS UP OVER
Y2K
With 18 months to go before
the fateful day, the Australian Federal Government will launch a mainstream
radio and TV campaign next month to warn small and medium enterprises (SME)
to prepare for the millennium bug. The Government will also establish a special
hotline for SME owners to call for Y2K information. The Government has already
pledged $9 million to fund the public awareness campaign and organisers hope
to solicit a further $18 million from State governments to bolster the awareness
effort. According to the program's chief executive Graeme Inchley,
it's estimated that if as few as 10% of SME's fall victim to the Y2K problem
up to 360,000 Australians would be forced out of work shortly after January
1, 2001. This would instantly push up the national unemployment rate by 5%.
In a sign of how entrenched the problem is, a recent survey carried out by
the Australian Retailers Association found that fewer than 25% of
SME's had taken any Y2K action to date and a further 50% believe that the
millennium problem doesn't affect them at all. Meanwhile, the
Australian Stock Exchange will
tonight put up to 25% of the nation's largest public companies on a "Y2K
black list" for failing to respond to its recent demand for information on
their Y2K readiness. The black list is meant to serve as a warning to
investors.
Monday 29th
June 1998
ACADEMIC CRACKS SSL SECURITY
STANDARD
Scientists at
Bell Labs announced today
that they had managed to crack the Public Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS)
which underlies most SSL web servers, undermining the security of many Internet
merchants who use SSL servers to retail products online. Bell scientist
Daniel Bleichenbacher discovered the security flaw by hitting a web
server with over 1 million carefully chosen messages, then piecing together
the information in the resultant error messages to crack the encryption key.
He was quick to stress, however, that in the real world any web site would
almost certainly notice such an attack and could take remedial action. Meanwhile,
security software company RSA Data
Security (which controls the PKCS standard) responded immediately
to news of the discovery by saying that the "chosen plaintext attack" used
by Bleichenbacher had never been reported on a real-world site, and the company
was working with other vendors to quickly produce a simple patch which would
prevent hackers from obtaining information about a system's security keys.
Friday 26th
June 1998
NEC TO INTRODUCE ADSL IN
1999
NEC Australia have announced
that they intend to unveil an ADSL broadband access system in Australia next
year which provides speeds of up to 8 Mb/sec over ordinary telephone
lines and which the company believes could kill off Telstra's ISDN market,
the fastest data service currently available over standard telephone lines.
NEC's new system will be manufactured in Melbourne and marketed worldwide
by NEC Australia and its parent corporation in the first half of 1999. NEC
said that the company expects to generate up to $500 million in sales from
the new technology over the next 5 years. The ADSL system promises to deliver
a download channel of 8 Mb/sec and an upload channel of 1 Mb/sec, making
it suitable for video on demand, video-conferencing, music and Internet telephony
and pitching the new service head-to-head with cable modems. ADSL modems
made by NEC Australia will be available at retail outlets in the first half
of next year for an expected price of between $A300 and $A400. The modems
would enable users to gain simultaneous access to broadband services and
the telephone through a single existing twisted pair connection, and NEC
are confident the price and speed differential between the two technologies
will kill Telstra's ISDN market almost immediately. Ironically, Telstra have
already begun testing the new NEC system after rejecting ADSL technology
last year.
Thursday 25th
June 1998
NETSCAPE STILL THE MOST POPULAR
BROWSER
Netscape
lost 3.5% of its leading share of the browser market to Microsoft
last year, according to a study of web browsers released by
International Data Corporation
(IDC). The study covered the period up to the end of 1997, and IDC
analysts noted that Netscape had taken significant steps to improve its market
share this year, including giving away its browser as freeware. The study
estimated that Netscape browsers are used by 50.5% of surfers (down from
54% in 1996). Internet Explorer improved its market share from 16.4% to 22.8%
and AOL's browser also rose 3.0% to 16.1% on the back of the company's continued
expansion. Other browsers were used by the remaining 10.7% (down from 15.9%
in 1996). IDC noted the significance of the report was that in the tussle
between Netscape and Microsoft for market dominance, Netscape was still the
preferred browser for two out of every three participants.IDC analysts also
noted that the market for browsers outside the Netscape/Explorer/AOL trilogy
had declined by 33% during 1997, signalling a very hard time for any new
entrant.
Wednesday 24th
June 1998
AAA TRIES OUT SUBSCRIPTION
MODEL
Australia's popular
AAA Australia Announce Archive
has launched the country's first online site subscription service. Called
Matilda.Net, a modest $36 annual joining fee allows subscribers full access
to the vast AAA site, which now draws an estimated 250,000 visitors per week.
However large portions of AAA (including its popular Matilda Search
Engine) will remain free. More than 1,000 regular visitors have already
joined up with the new service according AAA webmaster James Lilburne. "Matilda
is already the most linked-to search engine outside the USA," he said. "Now
we'd like to extend what we can offer visitors - and naturally the cost of
content development needs to be recouped". AAA announced that it's also in
the process of contacting many of Australia's top sites seeking their support
for the new online service as Matilda.Net partners. "We want to ensure that
the content is easy to find on a topic-specific basis. We have over 100 writers
at present who are constantly compiling subject matter, and that certainly
helps," he said. Matilda.Net has also recently introduced the Boomerang Web
directory. "We called it Boomerang because we hope people would keep coming
back." said Lilburne. "We decided to make listing sites easy as possible
for anyone who wants to. It only takes one second for Australian sites to
be listed on Boomerang after submission. Listings are also dated so that
surfers have a guide to how fresh the URL really is."
Tuesday 23rd
June 1998
ONLINE SHOPPING BOOM COMING -
STUDY
According to a study by
International Data Corporation (IDC) released today, the volume of
online purchases is likely to increase almost 14-fold over the next 4 years.
The IDC study estimated that more than $US4.3 billion worth of goods and
services were traded over the Net during 1997. However, this is expected
to rise to at least $US54 billion by 2002, and the number of people who've
made a purchase online should expand from 36% to 50% over the same period.
The IDC study also found that at commerce, classified or auction sites, males
50 and older compose the largest group of viewers, making up 63 percent of
total traffic. Furthermore, the study found that 23% of the Net viewing audience
maintain household incomes of $75,000 and above, and that teenage girls'
net surfing habits bear a closer resemblance to adult females than to teenage
males. The study also found that the Internet's population continues to be
slightly skewed towards males, who comprise 56 percent of the online audience
even though they are only 48% of the US population.
Monday 22nd
June 1998
WINDOWS98 DEBUTS THIS
WEEK
Microsoft's
Windows98 will debut in the US on Thursday to much less fanfare than
its predecessor, Windows95. So far beta reviews of the product have been
generally favourable, but the software upgrade is being generally seen more
as a consolidation of the hundreds of patches and upgrades Microsoft have
released over the last 3 years to repair of extend Windows95 than the
evolutionary step that Windows95 represented over Windows and DOS systems.
As a result, Microsoft expects to have a tough time persuading business and
domestic consumers to purchase the upgrade - and both the company and
financial markets expect that the uptake of Windows98 will be slow. Nonetheless,
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was named the richest man in the world
by Forbes magazine in their July
6th issue for accumulating $51 billion - up from $18.2 billion just 24 months
ago, According to Forbes, Gates is followed by the Walton family (of Wal-Mart
fame) on $48 billion, with Warren Buffet holding third place on $33 billion.
Paul Allen, an early comrade of Gates, comes in fourth at $21
billion.
Friday 19th
June 1998
NET REGISTRY MAY DISENDORSE
RESELLER
,AU.COM domain registry
Net Registry may disendorse the
Australian & New Zealand Domain Name Registry as a reseller following
news today that the latter are currently under investigation by the Department
of Fair Trading (DFT). The DFT is trying to determine the reseller has a
case to answer over alleged breaches of the Trade Practices act for mounting
a deceptive advertising campaign. In recent months Australian & New Zealand
Domain Name Registry faxed out thousands of messages to businesses stating
that unless they purchase their domain name now 'you will not be able to
use your own company or product name in the future unless you buy it back'.
The company were reselling .AU.COM sub-domains on behalf of Net Registry,
who are marketing the address as an alternative to the original .com.au
namespace. In a statement released by Net Registry's CEO, Larry Bloch, the
company made it clear that the alleged behaviour was not condoned and that
Net Registry will sever relationships with Australian & New Zealand Domain
Name Registry if it is found to be breaking the law.
Thursday 18th
June 1998
NineMSN FOLDS NEWS
DIVISION
In a move that took many people
by surprise, NineMSN sacked
11 staff today - 7 from the news and current affairs departments and the
remaining 4 from various other areas of the company. NineMSN is a $50 million
online publishing venture partnership between Kerry Packer's Publishing
and Broadcasting Ltd and Microsoft. NineMSN will now feature a
news feed from Australian Associated Press instead of original in-house content.
A company spokesman said that the cutbacks were "regrettable" but the news
division hadn't made enough money to support itself. The company didn't believe
that it could make money within the foreseeable future either. However, the
spokesman said that a vestigial news department will be retained to contribute
occasional items, though most of the remaining staff would primarily be allocated
to running the site's chat areas and online polls. Despite a 500% rise in
hits and a growing advertising stream since its launch in March, the company
does not expect to be profitable for 5 years.
Wednesday 17th
June 1998
BARNES & NOBLE
EXPAND
Australian Cybermalls franchisee
Barnes and Noble opened two extensions to their business with us today:
 Barnes and Noble Software and
 Barnes and Noble Magazines. The
new software site retails products not available through our Digital River
online software store, while the new magazine site offers bargain subscriptions
to a wide range of US publications, many of which are not normally available
in Australia. The company (which recently celebrated its first year of operations
on the Internet) is now one of the largest online book-selling chains in
the world, closely rivalling the better-known Amazon.Com. The company believe
that software and magazine subscriptions are natural adjuncts to their
bookselling business. Meanwhile,
CD
Universe announced today that they will be holding a storewide sale
from now until at least the end of the month. Even with the currently poor
Australian-US exchange rate of $A0.58 to the $US1, most CD's at CD Universe
can still be landed in Australia at prices lower than commonly available
at retail outlets.
Tuesday 16th
June 1998
NETSCAPE TO RELEASE COMMUNICATOR
4.6
Although the company will neither
confirm or deny the rumour,
Netscape are widely tipped
to be releasing a new, expanded version of their Communicator browser on
Wednesday (US time). The new Communicator 4.6 will include features
that Netscape has already announced, such as its Smart Browsing technology
that links the Web browser more closely with its Netcenter portal site. Other
browser enhancements include features that will make it easier for users
to "roam," or share computers between home, work, and elsewhere through automatic
personal configurations, and full support for a set of tools to filter out
online sites based on a user's settings. The two Net site screening features
that will be integrated into the new browser are tipped to be the RSACi and
SafeSurf web site ratings systems.Microsoft Internet Explorer already supports
both systems, which block access to sites containing adult language, violence,
nudity and other content based on ratings applied to Web pages by content
providers. Netscape's support would be a big boost for Net ratings systems,
which have been slow to catch on with Web sites and users because of criticism
from free-speech advocates.
Monday 15th
June 1998
AUSTRALIAN DOMAIN REGISTRY
RE-LAUNCHED
Australian .com.au domain registry
MelbourneIT have launched
a new division - Internet Names
Australia - to handle domain registration and delegation requests.
The organisation has also announced plans to expand their services to cover
a broader e-commerce focus, and have launched a number of new registry services
with the name change. These include automatic checks for trademark infringements
at the point of registration and service guarantees promising registration
turnaround times of between 2 hours and 2 days. MelbourneIT Chief Executive
Professor Peter Gerrand said that the organisation was responding
to the needs of the marketplace and that market research had identified fast
turnaround times, secure online payment facilities and warnings of potential
infringements of 3rd-party intellectual property as three major unfilled
needs amongst registry users. The new service debuted online last week but
suffered some teething problems during the first 48 hours of operation. Real-time
online payment facilities will be introduced to the site shortly through
the National Australia Bank's InterPay system.
Friday 12th
June 1998
UK HAS NEGATIVE VIEW OF
NET
The British public view the
Internet as a purveyor of porn, facilitator of fraudsters and general bad
influence according to a recent study by consumer magazine Which?
The magazine's survey reported that 58 percent of respondents believed the
Net undermined public morality. The ease of access to pornography and other
illegal materials was cited as the main reason why 72 percent are in favour
of regulation. And one in three of 2,124 people randomly surveyed saw the
Net as a threat to national security. Furthermore, nearly half said they
thought the risk of fraud was high. And unsociable computer "anoraks" were
cited by 22 percent as a dire consequence of the Net - survey respondents
said they felt such people posed a threat to traditional family life because
they were in danger of losing touch with reality. Among Britain's 7 million
Net users, only one in ten admitted to spending too much time in front of
their screens. Three-quarters went online for less than five hours a week,
with 5 percent spending more than 20 hours surfing the Net. All the same,
the report noted, the Internet is surging ahead in Britain, with half of
all users signing up within the last 12 months.
Thursday 11th
June 1998
ONLINE NEWS MARKET GROWS 300% IN
24 MONTHS
In what may prove a mixed blessing
for publishers and broadcasters, the number of Americans reading news on
the Internet at least once a week has more than tripled in the past two years
according to a survey released yesterday by The Pew Centre. However,
people who go online for news don't appear to cut their consumption of
information from other sources such as newspapers and television. The telephone
survey of 3,002 adults conducted between April 24th and May 11th found that
20 percent of the sample went online for news at least once a week, against
6 percent in 1996 and 4 percent in 1995 - an effective total US audience
of 35 million (against 11 million in 1996). However, the centre noted that
"the survey gives no evidence that going online for news leads to less reading
or viewing of more traditional news sources." Instead, the study found that
despite increasing use of the Net for news broadcasting, between 40% and
57% of Americans would turn to either cable or network news if a major story
broke, reflecting the dominant position TV has held in the traditional media
mix for several decades.
Wednesday 10th
June 1998
1998 TELSTRA/AFR AWARDS
OPEN
The
1998 Telstra/Australian Financial
Review Australian Internet Awards opened for nominations today. The
awards, which attracted more than 1,000 entries in 1997 and are now entering
their third year, attempt to provide external recognition of the best that
the Australian Internet has to offer. They will remain open for nominations
until August 5th and final winners will be announced in early November. This
year - in an effort to stay abreast of the rapidly-changing online environment
- the Awards have been extended with the addition of three new categories:
electronic commerce, email-based sites and a special Youth Internet award.
And a heavily-criticised award for advertising agencies (which was offered
in 1996 and 1997) has been scrapped. Ironically, many of Australia's best
sites are physically housed in the USA because of Telstra's world-leading
bandwidth charges .This means that they are ineligible to nominate under
the competition's rules, which specify that only domestically-hosted sites
may participate. This clause includes several banks, a number of domestic
search engines and Australian Cybermalls itself, which has been hosted from
Boston ever since early 1997.
Tuesday 9th
June 1998
US GOVERNMENT HEADS FOR Y2K
MELTDOWN
The US Government's attempts
to come to grips with Year 2000 problems appear to be headed for disaster
according to a report tabled by House of Representatives member Steve
Horne. Horne's report found that most US government departments have
failed preliminary Y2K readiness inspections and that most have yet to
meaningfully address the Y2K issue in all its dimensions - especially the
area of embedded chips. The report also states that less than 30% of US
Government systems are estimated to be Y2K compliant, and adds that even
the compliance standards used have yet to be given any meaningful evaluation.
While most US banks have already retooled their software and systems to ride
out the new millennium, Horne speculates that unless urgent action is taken
the US Government is likely to stricken with catastrophic systems failures
in little more than 18 months. US President Bill Clinton is expected to make
a major speech on the Y2K issue within the next quarter.
Monday 8th
June 1998
AU.COM SELLS 1,100 GENERIC
SUB-DOMAINS
The new .AU.COM domain recently
launched by Net Registry Australia
(NRA) sold more than 1,100 generic sub-domain names to a Sydney
speculator in May for more than $200,000 it was announced late last week.
Sydney businessman Kerry Henry purchased names such as babysitter.au.com,
realestate.au.com etc from NRA for $200 each. NRA, which began trading in
February this year after it secured the domain name AU.COM, began selling
off sub-domains to create a new "domain space" for Australian businesses
seeking an alternative to MelbourneIT and its stringent rules for .COM.AU
domains. Henry's company Strategic Synergy has already established Click-On
Australia as a vehicle for the au.com business, the company said when
it confirmed the buy, and was "upbeat about the potential of the internet,
especially with product and service awareness, delivery and financial transaction
capability". According to Blue Tongue Technologies - which keeps a count
of the number of sites registered on the internet in each domain - there
are now around 1,700 names registered as au.com. By comparison, there are
around 43,000 com.au names and 3,400 net.au names.
Tuesday-Friday
2nd-5th June 1998
STORIES OF THE WEEK
Australian Cybermalls updates
were delayed last week due to a computer systems fault at our offices. This
fault affected all sites including our daily news column and meant that most
emails sent to us in the last 30 days were also lost. We apologise to all
our regular visitors for this unexpected inconvenience. The stories we found
most interesting and would've covered in more detail had we not been held
up by the fault last week were as follows:
-
ACCC HITS TELSTRA WITH ANTI-COMPETITION
NOTICE
-
The Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission hit Telstra with a competition notice early in the week demanding
that the former monopolist offer Australian ISPs the same peering arrangement
that US carriers offer to American ISPs - that is, that Telstra refund ISPs
for traffic they put onto Telstra's network as well as pay for the traffic
they draw from it. Telstra were originally given until Friday June 5th to
comply with the notice or face a fine of $10 million plus $1 million per
day for every day they ignored it.However, Telstra managed to obtain an
injunction by mid-week which had the affect of deferring further action until
mid-month. Telstra had struck Australia's first peering agreement with OzEmail
only a few days before the ACCC move.
-
US REGULATORS EYE OFF
INTEL
-
The ongoing action between the US
Department of Justice, 20 US State attorneys general and Microsoft over its
marketing practices for Windows95 and Internet Explorer may only be
the start of a slew of anti-competition lawsuits against the industry giants
of Silicon Valley. It was widely tipped this week that if the DOJ succeeds
in its action against Microsoft, chip-making giant Intel may be the next
company in the regulators' line of fire. Regulators have pointed out that
Intel's share of the chip market has remained static at almost exactly 80%
for the last 5 years and infer that this is a sign of market manipulation.
They claim that the company is so dominant in the PC chip market that it,
too, constitutes a new form of "silicon monopoly" - one that can set its
own level of market penetration
-
SENATORS SUPPORT SPAM CONTROL
BILL
-
Support is growing in the USA for a
spamming bill to control the practice.Although US senators were unanimous
in their support for the legislation, concerns have been expressed that parts
of the proposed bill may only make matters worse. One aspect of the bill
that is provoking particular concern amongst anti-spam lobbyists will require
that all unsolicited commercial email carry complete and correct reply
information. The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) believe
that this alone may confer respectability on junk mailers and that far from
stamping out the practice, may cause an avalanche of new advertisers to be
attracted by the legitimacy this would afford spamming, making the problem
worse than ever. The new bill also proposes that spammers would have to honour
a recipient's request to be removed from a mailing list and proposes fines
of up to $US15,000 a time if this request isn't honored.
-
Monday 1st
June 1998
AUSTRALIAN NET GROWS 15%
The Australian Internet took
an upward swing of more than 15% last month after the search engines we monitor
to construct our monthly Australian Internet Growth Index (AIGI) took
a fresh look over .AU domains and updated their databases. The AIGI, which
is constructed from a composite of several major international engines, has
been measuring the approximate number of Australian sites on the Internet
since January 1996. The latest figures show that Sydney broadcasts the most
sites, followed by Melbourne. On a pro-rata basis, however, the ACT is
responsible for the highest number of web sites per capita. The June 1st
figures (with May 1st figures in brackets) are as follows:
Australian
Internet Growth Index May 1998
(Figures Show Estimated Sites) |
-
Brisbane - 2,798 (2,191)
-
Sydney - 10,068 (8,107)
-
Melbourne - 7,305 (6,155)
-
Adelaide - 2,848 (2,694)
|
-
Perth - 2,869 (2,191)
-
Hobart - 1,207 (1,100)
-
Canberra - 2,348 (2,694)
-
Darwin - 2,700 (2,191)
|
|
During May Australian Cybermalls
hosted 46,713 visitors, almost even with the 47,953 visitors who dropped
by to see us in April 1998. We were also offline for several days during
the month with computer system faults.
|
