24th March 2000 Archive

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Don't believe the m-commerce hype

Pizza delivery shows why

The current frenzy about gizmo mobile phones providing wireless access to the Net is nothing short of hype, according to a report by analysts Ovum. In its report Mobile E-commerce - Market Strategies, Ovum claims those involved in this fledgling industry should concentrate on providing "genuinely unique and compelling services" …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 06:30
Telewest has bandwidth ‘coming out of its ears’

Jumps into the wide blueyonder

Telewest, Britain's second biggest cableco, has finally launched its new broadband service, details of which were unintentionally leaked last week. The only thing Telewest managed to keep under wraps was the name of the new service: "Blueyonder". So, now you know. Blueyonder is set to offer unmetered access to broadband services …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 06:34
We're expecting some in today, sir

Orange WAP woes continue...

Orange is still suffering a shortage of WAP phones, while its rivals are scooping up spare handsets. Demand is outstripping supply on the Orange Nokia 7110e (navi-bar WAP phone), the company confirmed. It received a shipment from Nokia today, but was unable to say how big the order was, or how long stocks would last. According …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 06:38
Less to Free Internet than meets the eye

Ts&Cs you can do without

Another Net company has announced its intentions to launch an unmetered flat-fee service. Free Internet Group of Brentford, Middlesex, says it will provide the service for a one-off payment of £50 and £20 a year membership fee. Family membership costs £100. The outfit says it is "aiming to be the biggest ISP in Europe within …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 08:19
UK online ad spend: puny but growing fast

Revenues more than double

Online advertising sales in Britain leapt 122 per cent in Q2 1999 compared to Q1, according to the latest detailed survey by Pricewaterhouse Coopers for the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). Although the percentage increase sounds impressive, in monetary terms ad spend only increased from £7.9 million to £17.3 million between …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 08:42
T-Online puts IPO to the ballot

Avoids Lastminute.com error

T-Online's chairman, Wolfgang Keuntje, told German business television channel n-tv that he has not excluded the possibility of offering shares in his company via a lottery. The details of how it would work are not clear yet, he told n-tv, but the demand is so high that a traditional quotation is just not possible. T-Online, the …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 09:01
Acer looks to Net for post-hardware profits

Looking for US cash to fund Asia-oriented Internet services

Acer, like the world+dog, plans to expand beyond its traditional hardware markets into the Internet business, the company's co-founder said today. George Huang, Acer's corporate general controller, told Reuters that the company wants to become a major player in the Asia Internet market. The report paints Huang's comments as a …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 09:19
Rambus extends Hitachi legal action

Follow my leader (Intel) action drags Sega into court

In a ploy closely mirroring an Intel legal strategy, Rambus yesterday filed a suit with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in an attempt to prevent Hitachi from importing its memory into the US, reports Semiconductor Business News. At the same time, Rambus also filed an action against Sega, which uses Hitachi memories …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 09:22
Micron rolls out faster DDR chips

Full production in Q3

US semiconductor firm Micron said yesterday it has started to sample 150MHz and 166MHz versions of 2MB x 32 double data rate (DDR) memories. The firm said the memories, which uses 0.18 micron process technology, are intended for high bandwidth applications. The parts are intended for graphics and telecoms applications, Micron …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 09:36
Undercover Intel goons terrorise dealers

Kolley Kibber back from the dead

Intel resellers are bracing themselves for visits from trenchcoated undercover agents checking up on their recall of Chipzilla marketing speak. Under the 'Intel Mystery Shopper' T scheme, dealers who drop casual references to Advanced Transfer Cache, Screaming Sindy's Extensions and the very wonderful* WebOutfitter service, can …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 10:45
Allchin admits Win2001 code leak after Web slagfest

Why can't you guys just be nice to each other?

The strange escape of pre-beta code for Whistler, the proposed successor to Windows 2000, earlier this week was followed up by a bizarre flurry around the Web over the last 12 hours or so. Several sites seem to have seized on an apparent Microsoft claim that the whole thing was a fraud, and then retreated with their tails …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 10:54
Who you gonna call? Scambusters!

Office of Fair Trading gets on the get rich quick case

The Office of Fair Trading has issued e-mail alerts to 100 potentially misleading Web sites offering "get rich quick scams", warning them that they could face prosecution. The scambusting clampdown was part of a co-ordinated sweep of the Net conducted by authorities in 27 countries and led by the US Federal Trade Commission. In …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 12:01
Sneak thief steals state secrets in MI5 laptop

Careless. Very careless

A careless M15 spy has lost top Government secrets after his laptop was pinched while he was buying a train ticket. The thief snatched the £2000 computer from between the agent's feet as he was rummaging in his pockets for change at Paddington station. The agent and two London bobbies gave chase through the crowded station, but …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 12:19
Nvidia to bring volumetric rendering to X-Box, GeForce

Next stage in evolution of 3D graphics to be supported in DirectX later this year

Now Nvidia and Microsoft are the best of chums, thanks to X-Box, the 3D graphics specialist's technology is beginning to appear in DirectX, Microsoft's games-oriented API. The first contribution is Nvidia's Volume Texture Compression (VTC) format, which doesn't sound much but gives a very tasty hint about the direction Nvidia is …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 12:52
California woman dreaming of bricks for clicks

Show me a home where the domain names roam

A Californian woman wants to swap her domain name for a new home because she can't afford to buy a house in Palo Alto. Ann Bradley, children's author and Web designer, placed a small ad in the Palo Alto Daily News offering to swap thiswiredhouse.com or etake-out.com for something compact and bijou. Although she has yet to …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 13:00
EU chief slams US strong-arm phone tactics

Spectrum wars?

In a strange reversal of the usual roles, European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy has lashed out at US strong-arm tactics in the Brazilian mobile phone market. With a population of 165 million Brazil is a huge prize for revenue-hungry telecoms manufacturers, but for whose telecoms manufacturers? Lamy says that the US is …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 14:09
Virtual voyeurs watch DIY peep show

Driller Killer

An enterprising British couple has saved £100,000 by decorating their bungalow live on the Web. DIY fanatics Paul and Louise Jones are pulling in around 32,000 hits every night from surfing voyeurs keen to watch them grouting and wallpapering their Dorset home. The two were quick to pick up on the advertising potential, and have …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 15:20
Hacking credit cards is preposterously easy

Better sit down for this one

Recent headlines exposing vast credit card heists from retail Web sites have prompted a media frenzy around issues of Internet security. Most recently, MSNBC broke the story of one semi-malicious hacker who gathered the details of nearly a half-million credit cards which he tauntingly stored on a US government computer. …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 15:25
Intel 0.18 micron Celerons to tip up next week

Can these parts with multimedia extensions be Athlon killers?

Intel is now expected to roll out high-end Celeron processors next week based on the Coppermine Pentium III core and including Screaming Sindie, multimedia extensions. We revealed the existence of these processors earlier on this year. But, like Celerons based on Pentium II technology, the cache on the processors is expected to …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 15:55
K I L L K I L L K I L L – Baan Company

ERP firm commits suicide by email

Press release headline of the year (so far) has to go to those whacky creatives at Dutch software outfit Baan. Yesterday at 5:00 pm, Eastern Time, the company issued the rather plodding PR: "Baan Company Announces Changes to its Supervisory Board". Ninety one minutes later it issued: "K I L L K I L L K I L L -- Baan Company". …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 16:37
Hewitt declares war on ‘devastating’ hackers

That's £15 million down the drain, then

The government has earmarked £15 million to fight Web hackers. E-Commerce Minister Patricia Hewitt today unveiled the Computational Immunology for Fraud Detection (CIFD) project, part of the DTI's Management of Information (MI) programme. Details of how the scheme will stop hackers doing their worst are hazy, but funding for the …

Business 24 Mar 2000, 17:43