28th September 2001 Archive

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Future Network suspends shares

Very short story

The Future Network PLC, the Bath, UK publisher of computer games, consumer PC, and hobby magazines has had its shares suspended on the London Stock Exchange, "pending an announcement" later today. And, err, that's it. As a background we could add that companies request for share dealing to be suspended, usually because they …

Business 28 Sep 2001, 08:22
New Media Spark wins German bid battle

Hostilities ceased

New Media SPARK, the UK VC house, has won its battle to assume control of Sputz AG, the German online brokerage. The company today declared that it had received 53.7 per cent acceptance of shareholders for its hostile bid for Sputz. The current supervisory board of Sputz has resigned, to be replaced by SPARK's own nominees. …

e-Business 28 Sep 2001, 09:03
Northamber weathers storm

Profits down - but still a profit

Northamber, the Pan-UK IT distie, this week reported a decline in profit before tax (PBT) of #163;5.5m on sales of £299m, for the year to June 30, 2001 (2000: PBT £7.5m on sales of £284m) But the company says the fact that it "continued to trade profitably in the second half which proves its resilience in adverse conditions". …

Channel 28 Sep 2001, 09:28
MS spinmeisters invent huge demand for WinXP ‘story’

'Balanced to positive quotes only please...'

"One month to go and customers can't wait for Windows XP! Thanks Microsoft for letting us - the public - have a try before we buy!" So shrieks the latest excitable press release from the Microsoft UK spinmeisters at Augusto Ne. "Thousands of people," it says here, "both technical as well as those who wanted to get a look at the …

Software 28 Sep 2001, 10:08
Sun and Microsoft move on J2EE

Soft SOAP

Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have both made significant announcements on J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) this week. Sun has unveiled the latest specification for J2EE, version 1.3. The main changes are a new Java connector architecture, XML integration capabilities (including support for parsing and transforming XML within …

Software 28 Sep 2001, 10:18
Telewest launches gaming service

Eurogamer was there - in more ways than one

On Wednesday (Sept 26), Telewest Blueyonder herded a bunch of journalists and suits into Covent Garden’s glitzy Nutopia, an all-white dungeon populated by tropical fish and broadband-connected computers. Plying us with champagne and increasingly bizarre and occasionally appetising morsels of food, the cableco. unveiled its new …

Games Industry 28 Sep 2001, 10:54
E-minister tells us where he's been for four months

Alexander pops up again to launch new government site

The formerly elusive e-minister Douglas Alexander turned up for the third time this week at the launch of new government Web site www.beyondbricks.com, a portal for Internet entrepreneurs. We took the opportunity to ask him where he's been for the last four months and if this sudden flurry of activity was a one-off. "We have …

e-Business 28 Sep 2001, 11:26
Tempo in adminstration

Will keep trading through Xmas to attract buyer

Tempo, the computer and electrical retailer, has gone into administration. All its 37 stores will be kept trading through the Christmas period and the administrators have said a potential buyer has already expressed interest in the business. The chain, which along with Comet, John Lewis and the stores set up by the old …

Channel 28 Sep 2001, 12:09
Future makes enormous loss

£33m rights issue

This morning Future Network requested that its shares be suspended on the London Stock Exchange. This afternoon, it has revealed the reason - it did not want a false market to develop in advance of a "significant announcement". The news from the Bath, UK publisher of games, PC and hobby mags, is that it is in "advanced" talks …

Business 28 Sep 2001, 13:29
User group calls for anti-virus early warning alerts

Virus Bulletin Vendors don't seem very happy

A grassroots organisation representing the interests of corporate users has received a frosty welcome from the anti-virus community. Avien.org, which was represented by IT admins from Boeing, Ford and KPMG during a keynote presentation at Virus Bulletin yesterday, generated mutterings of discontent by stating that its early …

Anti-Virus 28 Sep 2001, 13:39
Microsoft mulls patch distribution with AV updates

Virus Bulletin Lookouts for Outlook

Microsoft is considering using anti-virus vendors to deliver security patches for its product alongside their own updates for virus definition files. Randy Abrams, release antivirus specialist at Microsoft, whose main job is to ensure that software shipped of Redmond is virus-free, told us the idea, still in its formative …

Anti-Virus 28 Sep 2001, 14:03
.Net may lead to fewer viruses

Virus Bulletin But different threats

Antivirus vendors will have to significantly redesign their products in order to address risks of malicious code arising from the release of Microsoft's .Net platform. The change of computing model to Web services that comes with .Net will almost undoubtedly create fresh infection mechanisms for virus writers to exploit. In …

Anti-Virus 28 Sep 2001, 14:03
Beware the Pulsing Zombies

Virus Bulletin DDoS attacks with devilish twist

Distributed denial of service attacks, one of the most difficult security risks to guard against, could become even harder to detect with the development of tools that turn agents on and off during an attack. So called 'pulsing zombies' (which sounds like something from the Night of the Living Dead) will be difficult to detect …

Security 28 Sep 2001, 14:09
Not so Easy Everything gets £15m

Net cafe chain runs out of capuccino

EasyEverything, the Internet cafe chain, has received a lifeline injection of £15m cash from founder and Easyjet chairman Stelios Haji-Ionnou. This is constructed as an issue of fresh capital in which Stelios' share in EasyEverything will rise to 99 per cent. "This company had run out of cash," he told the FT. It could not meet …

e-Business 28 Sep 2001, 15:32
AMD Palominos to ship 9 October

Athlon XP prices, and speed fudging

AMD's Palomino processors will launch on 9 October. Now called the Athlon XP, it will come in 4 speeds - the XP 1500 plus, XP 1600 plus, XP 1700 plus and XP 1800 plus. Prices to OEMs are $115, $124, $152 and $210 respectively, but may vary depending on volume. The clock speeds of the chips are: XP 1500 - 1.33GHz XP 1600 …

Channel 28 Sep 2001, 16:07
Psion launches industrial PDA

Keep taking the tablets .....

Psion Teklogix has launched a ruggedised * industrial handheld device it calls the netpad. It's a half-kilo "half-VGA" (640x240) tablet. This was first showed in prototype form two-and-a- half years ago at CeBIT alongside the prototype netBook. Like the netBook, it uses an SA-1100 StrongARM and Symbian's ER5 OS. Unlike the …

Hardware 28 Sep 2001, 16:15
Judge sentences MS, DoJ to 24x7 settlement talks

Cruel and unusual punishment...

MS Antitrust Judge 2.0 Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has ducked the prospect of early and intensive legal sessions with the warring parties and told them to sort themselves out instead. They've been given till 2nd November to come to a settlement, and told to talk 24 hours a day, seven days a week until then. The judge apparently …

Software 28 Sep 2001, 16:25
Liverpool better than Man U: official

And its Web site is better too

For those poor misguided souls who don't think Liverpool football club is superior to Manchester United, the latest figures from Nielsen/Net Ratings should put you straight. Liverpool's Web site tops the poll of visitors - 152,000 over a three-month period, compared to just 135,000 for Man U. Plus, Liverpool fans stayed on the …

Music and Media 28 Sep 2001, 16:37
MS scraps Internet-control deal

Master of dark arts squashes apprentice

The latest version of Internet Explorer is routing mistyped Web addresses through MSN's search engine, in direct contravention of a contract that RealNames (in which Microsoft has a significant stake) has with domain name company XTNS. Or so XTNS claims. If someone types a misspelled Web address into the browser - or one that …

Music and Media 28 Sep 2001, 16:52
What is the point of e-district.net?

None, so far as we can see

We wrote about e-district.net for the first time in February 2000, when the London-based leisure/community site announced its intention to list on the AIM stock market (WebTV propels e-district to financial stratosphere). We could not understand how such a shoddy-looking site that none of us had heard of could generate so many …

e-Business 28 Sep 2001, 22:05