The release of the Starr report on the Web on Friday set new records of activity on the Web, but fears of major service problems did not materialise. "It's been a very busy day," said Charles Fleckenstein, manager of technology services at Sprint, one of the half-dozen companies that provide the US Internet backbone. "There's been a tremendous increase of traffic on the backbone."
The spike in traffic might have spelt trouble for individual sites hosting the report, but backbone suppliers and Internet Service Providers said that the backbones and access providers were well equipped to handle the additional usage.
Apple Leads PC Growth: Global sales of PCs will grow by 12.2 per cent in the second half of the year, a leading market research group, International Data Corporation, has predicted, with the iMac expected to fare best. IDC predicted European PC sales would increase by 16 per cent this quarter amid heightened interest in the Internet and low-cost PCs. US growth this quarter was forecast at 14 per cent, spurred on by a strong demand for laptop computers. IDC said the manufacturer expected to post the best growth would be Apple while Dell and Compaq were also predicted to post strong gains.
Fee-Free Certification: A year ago Sallynoggin Senior College became the first Post Leaving Certificate College to offer an Internet design course and this year it is adding a one-year course leading to the widely recognised industry qualification, Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP). There are no course fees and those interested in either the Web design or MCP courses should contact the College immediately on 01 2852997, 01 2852985 or ddolan@scs.dife.ie.
Interact In NYC: Multimedia company Interact Services Ireland has opened an office in New York at Ireland House on Park Avenue. The company was founded in January 1996 by Ian Spandau with four staff. Now it employs 32 designers, programmers and writers to produce touch-screen kiosks and interactive CD-Roms.
Sharp Act: IBM Research has developed a new flat-panel display that provides 200 pixels-per-inch resolution - four times that of a standard monitor. The prototype display, code-named Roentgen, uses new active-matrix liquid crystal technology to produce razor-sharp colour images. Early Roentgen displays will cost over $5,000 and first should be on sale later this year.
Esat's Intuition: Esat Net has signed Intuition Publishing, which provides Web-based financial training products, as one of its first integrated voice and Internet customers. Intuition, based at the International Financial Service Centre in Dublin, receives telephone service and Internet access through a direct connection to Esat Telecom's new fibre optic network.
Microsoft Fightback: In a move that could delay the landmark antitrust trial scheduled to begin on September 23rd, Microsoft has served subpoenas on competitors it accuses of ganging up on it. Microsoft is seeking evidence that Netscape and what the company called a "gang of four" aligned with it - Sun Microsystems, Novell, Oracle and IBM - tried to divide the market for Unix software among themselves. The subpoenas are a broad request for details of virtually all meetings between the firms since 1994. They also seek data on "any potential acquisition by Oracle or Novell of Lotus Development Corporation" or any of its assets. Lotus was acquired by IBM three years ago.
Talking To Lotus: Lotus has announced voice-activated templates for its spreadsheet. The Lotus 1-2-3 Millennium spreadsheet includes a customised version of IBM's ViaVoice software allowing users to open files, send email and surf the Net without using the keyboard. In addition to the new voice capabilities in 1-2-3, the SmartSuite Millennium Edition allows users to dictate text directly into the word processor and then have the text read proof-read back by one of eight computer-generated voices.
Dyson's Delivery: One of the key figures in e-commerce, Esther Dyson, will be the keynote speaker at the Internet Business Conference being run in conjunction with Internet World '98 at the RDS in October. Dyson has been described as "the most powerful woman in IT" and combines the roles of respected Net commentator and venture capitalist. The theme of this year's Internet World is 100 Great Things to do on the Net while the business event will focus on e-commerce.
Electronic Garbage: Most electronic gadgets bought to enhance business productivity fail to do so and end up as expensive garbage, according to a survey published late last week. The survey found that the growing number of mobile phones, pagers, personal organisers and palm-top computers in the European workplace often make no impact on business productivity and that fewer than 15 per cent of gizmo users are able to integrate the devices with their office systems.
I Can Do It: The Internet advertising service ICAN is to become the first Irish enterprise to use DART, the ad-management technology developed by DoubleClick. DART, or Dynamic Advertising Reporting and Targeting is DoubleClick's propriety ad management system for the delivery of dynamic ads onto websites.
Share Sale: The co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, is selling 200,000 shares in the company. Netscape confirmed that the $4.2 million sale was going ahead, but added that he still had 700,000 shares, plus options over another 1.6 million.
In Brief...Banca Nazionale de Lavoro in Italy, UNICRE in Portugal and VISA Austria have all installed SET-based e-commerce using secure payment technology from Trintech. . . Microsoft has announced version 6.0 of the Microsoft Visual Studio development system . . . South Wales Police intends to team up with Oracle as it begins its security preparations for the 1999 Rugby World Cup . . . Finalists for the 1998 Golden Spider Irish Internet Awards were announced last week. The winners, in 10 categories, will be announced on September 25th. . .