Europe is "the third world of computing today", according to MIT's Nicholas Negroponte. The best-selling author made the claim in a keynote address at the Interactive Learning Conference in Edinburgh last week. "Talk about digital homeless - you have a situation where the children are, in my opinion, being absolutely shortchanged by their parents, by their government, and by the local situation. . . You have less than 5 per cent penetration of computers in French homes, which is absolutely shameful." He said Scandinavia was an exception to this.
Negroponte, who is also the keynote speaker at next month's IBEC's "Irish Business in the Information Age" conference, said "there really isn't a digitally illiterate 10-year-old in the United States", where up to 85 per cent of teenagers have Net access. Meanwhile, leading investment banker Anthony Fry of BZW told the Edinburgh International Television Festival yesterday that Britain's ITV television network should be controlled by a single owner if it is to compete effectively in the international media market
Points Race Online: From midnight last night the first round of points required for 1997 college entry have been up on The Irish Times on the Web. It's the first time the CAO's cut-off points for third-level courses have been published on the Net. - http://www.irish-times.com
Early Birds: Arthouse in Temple Bar, Dublin, has launched a series of "cyberbreakfasts" from 8-10 a.m. each weekday morning. "For busy companies who want to improve their employees' skillbase pleasurably and cost-effectively", it gives the employees two hours of training (how to use a Web browser, search engines and email etc) and hands-on access during a breakfast of coffee, fresh croissants and orange juice. - info: tel 01-605-6800
Hit Parade: Web "hits" statistics are notoriously misused - Web publishers often give them to naive advertisers (and their own board directors) without explaining that hits aren't the number of visitors. Every single graphic file involved in a Web page is counted as a separate hit, so one visitor on several pages might generate several hundred hits! But now the Internet Advertising Bureau is drafting a list of definitions (from "hit" and "click" to "page view") as common standard terms in the buying and selling of online advertising space.
AST'S £699 PC: AST's Limerick factory has launched a £669 Bravo Pentium PC for the small and medium business market. Marketing director Con Mallon says: "Currently, seven out of 10 small businesses don't have a PC because small profit margins don't support a high IT spend." AST has also started selling its workgroup Manhattan A servers.
The Truth Is Out There: They say the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that, well, it has never tried to contact us. But now scientists at SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) want to harness the power of thousands of home PCs to analyse extraterrestrial radio signals. This autumn, users will be able to download test copies of a one-meg screensaver-like program which grabs a small piece of radio data when they go online. Then it works on the data when the PC is on but not being used. When they go online again it sends the results and collects more raw data. - info: http://bigscience.com/setiathome.html
Scanner-Copier: Xerox is introducing a $499 machine that combines scanning, printing and copying capabilities. Industry analysts don't expect its rival Hewlett-Packard to incorporate colour scanners into its products before next spring.
By Degrees: UCG has brought forward the introduction of a new four-year BE Degree in electronics and computer engineering to this September, due to "the growing national concern over the shortage of graduate engineers" in the sector. - http://www.ee.ucg.ie or email caroline.griffin@ucg.ie
In Brief. . .Dell's second-quarter earnings more than doubled to $214 million. . . The US Justice Department is scrutinising Microsoft's $150-million investment in Apple; meanwhile Apple clone maker Power Computing's president Joel Kocher has resigned over a licensing row. . . China's flagship Long March 3B rocket has fired a communications satellite into orbit, 18 months after the disastrous failure of its inaugural mission. . . Sony and Motorola are to work together on developing integrated circuit (IC) cards by combining two existing formats, in order to establish a de facto standard. . . German Technology Minister Juergen Ruettgers has urged security authorities to crack down harder on neo-Nazis using the Net to spread propaganda. . . Sun's new Enterprise 450 workgroup server pitches it directly at Compaq - its retail price of $14,650 is comparable to that of a similarly configured system from Compaq. . . Corel has abandoned its efforts to develop a version of its office software based on the Java programming language.
Year 2000
Web Crash: The latest issue of New Scientist suggests that parts of the Web will have to be turned off temporarily at the end of 1999 due to the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. On new PCs, the BIOS should switch the century from 19 to 20 automatically, but the BIOS only works each time a machine is switched on. If the PC is left on while the clock strikes midnight at the end of 1999, it will probably crash - and machines most at risk would be network and Web servers.
Microfile
Total no. of names registered on Irish email directory E-Search (www.esearch.ie) since its launch eight months ago1: 6,200
Growth in the no. of PCs connected to the Net this year2: Up 71% to 82 million
Predicted no. of computers connected to the Net by 2001: 268 million
Amount of Internet service providers in the US that could be out of business within five years3: 80-90%
The Internet is still a complete mystery to most of the British public4:
only 21% of those surveyed had any idea of what it was;
35% of people aged 15-24 were familiar with it;
of people aged over 55, 57% said they didn't understand what it was or how to access it
Sources: 1 E-Search; 2 Dataquest; 3 Gartner; 4 PA News
Modem World
http://www.castlebar.ie
The judges of Telecom Eireann's "Information Age town" competition arrive in Castlebar, Co Mayo, sometime today. Competing finalists include Kilkenny (www.kceb.ie), Killarney (www.killarneyonline.ie/kate) and Ennis (no, we haven't found its homepage yet).
http://www.dublinbrewing.com/
The Dublin Brewing Company in the Smithfield Market.
http://www.wizards.com/Games/CorporateShuffle/WoWContest.html
Win a month's pay, in the Corporate Shuffle "Words of Wisdom" online contest - tell in 50 words or less "the dumbest thing you've ever heard management say." Entries accepted until next Sunday.
http://www.mediadome.com/Webisodes/Xena/index.html?dd
From this morning, a special about warrior princess Xena - and download the software you'll need to play a Xena-inspired 3D game.
http://goireland.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa081897.htm
"Ireland's Lost Leader, Michael Collins."
http://www.sectorel.pt/gaudela/prior/
Site about English folk singer Maddy Prior - including her own recent letter about why she's finally quitting Steeleye Span after 28 years.
http://www.rac.co.uk
Motoring organisation the RAC's new traffic guide - "Using the superhighway to help travel on the real one has become a reality."
Textbites
"What does information technology do? It speeds things up.
Try. Fail. Learn. Try fail learn. Tryfaillearn, tryfaillearn, tryfaillearn, tryfaillearntryfilearntryfaillearrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn... well, you get the point."
- Forbes magazine online version's feature about why failure can actually be good for business (http://www.forbes.com/)
"By 2001, it will become nearly pointless to pay for a desktop computer for an employee without including Internet access."
- Dataquest analyst Kathryn Hale.
Computimes is edited by Michael Cunningham. Email to computimes@irish- times.ie (private correspondence should be marked Not For Publication).