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Week Ending February 12Dear Diary: -
Industry Highlights: Idealab startup Free-PC.com says that they had 500,000 people sign up for their free PC offer. The company gives users a Compaq Presario in return for them having to watch ads as they use the machine. Originally, Idealab offered the PCs to the first 10,000 applicants, but after 200 people lined up outside their office on the first day, and 500,000 more applied on line in the following two days, they are now trying to find ways to finance a bigger debut. - ZDNET.
HearMe.com is the internet’s largest Live Audio Community. They offer live talk, entertainment, and personal conferencing for everyone. There is no cost to join HearMe.com.
Jaw-Droppers: A new near real-time video car navigation system demonstrated by NTT paves the way to projecting live video images and location data onto a car windscreen, according to the company. The system consists of a video camera, GPS, 3-axis sensor, and PC equipped with high-speed software and a map database. The system tracks an auto’s coordinates to within 0.1 sec and can display building and road names as the user is driving.
Want to know where I live? Click here! My house is in the middle of the map.
Week Ending February 5
Dear Diary: EDT could not figure out why I cannot update my webserver and therefore the Web Academy site has not been updated.
Industry Highlights: Silicon Valley web-based start-up incubator Garage.com has got a competitor in Silicon Alley: Elevator.com.
Goodbye, family life! Small investors may get 24-hour trading. Now that huge numbers of investors have become accustomed to trading from their desktop computers, their next step may be to trade online around the clock. At least two firms plan online stock markets that let small investors trade shares among themselves after the regular market closes, just as professional money managers do. - CNET
San Francisco-based Critical Path filed preliminary papers for an IPO that offered scant else for valuation purposes but how much the company wanted to raise, $51.8 million. For all of 1998 this startup generated $897,000 in revenues and $11.46 million net loss. Will Wall Street be critical of the lack of top line? This is certainly a future winner, I pointed it out some six months ago for IP@S people. - INTERNETNEWS.
Over 2.2 million Web sites use the Apache server, representing 54.22 percent of the market, according to the January 1999 Netcraft server survey. Further, Apache is the only server to increase its percentage share of the market since December 1998. - SURVEY.
The online auction industry will generate USD3.2 billion per annum by 2002, according to Jupiter Communications. The report estimates that the total spending at online auction over the next four years will reach USD7.1 billion. Jupiter predicts that that number of people buying at auction will surge from 1.2 million in 1998 to 6.5 million in 2002, to account for 11 percent of the overall online shopping public. While small, this segment will represent a lucrative market as auction consumers typically visit and spend more than the average online consumer. - JUPITER.
Online trading rose 34 percent in the fourth quarter of 1998, according to a report by Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. Overall, online trades accounted for 13.7 percent of the stock trading market, or one in seven trades. The top three online brokers ranked by CS First Boston were, in first place, Chales Schwab, followed by Toronto-Dominion Bank’s Waterhouse Investor Services, which overtook the Etrade Group, in third place.
There are 600,000 cable operators in India, most of which have a small customer base of 50 to 100 households. Ashok Desai, Managing Director of Silicon Graphics Systems argues that even if just one percent of these can offer Internet access, it will dramatically increase the number of ISPs, making the market more competitive and in turn reducing prices and increasing access. - SJ MERCURY.
Paris city council tree surgeons are implanting 90,000 trees with 1-inch long computer chips that track the location, age, and condition of the tree. The chips, which will all be installed by the end of 1999, will give council officials the ability to identify the trees in a database — thereby letting them ascertain on return visits how each tree is doing. The technology cost is 39 francs ($7) for each tree, compared to 15,000 francs to remove a dead tree and plant a new one.
Jaw-Droppers: Victoria’s Secret sets live video show for Wednesday. Is it marketing genius to marry three hot subjects — sex, sports and the Internet? Whatever. Hundreds of thousands of men looking for Valentine’s Day gifts or fantasies, and maybe a few women, are expected to log-on Wednesday at 7 p.m. EST to a live video broadcast of a Victoria’s Secret lingerie show. Some 125 million TV viewers of Sunday’s Super Bowl got a sneak peek of the show that will feature Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Stephanie Seymour and other top models in assorted silky items. The 30-second Super Bowl commercial cost $1.6 million but was well worth it, according to Victoria’s Secret parent company Intimate Brands Inc.. - THE SHOW.
In the town of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, people are sending email using a PC and a high frequency radio modem. Users access the Net through Bushnet, an ISP based in Uganda. Via the radio modem, the email is bounced of Bushnet’s server in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. In Goma, the cost of accessing a page of online text ranges from USD2 to USD3, a phenomenal amount relative to the average monthly salary of USD30. Bushnet reports over 210 subscribers in a town with a population of hundreds of thousands, the vast majority of which live in poverty. Goma officials estimate that there are an estimated 700 subscribers to the private analog cellular phone network.
Bill and Melinda Gates, the world’s richest couple, have donated $3.34bn for new health and education projects worldwide.
A survey commissioned by British Gas found that while many Britons felt pessimistic about the future of marriage and family life in the coming millennia, 83 percent believe the Internet will help maintain close family links. The report, “Sci-Fi Decade”, aimed to find out what affect Britons
believed technology would have on their lives over the next ten years… 91 percent were convinced that animal organs would be used for transplants in the future, 47 percent said they were not averse to getting a chip implanted in their brains to improve personality disorders. - BBC.
Week Ending January 29
Dear Diary: This week Ericsson announced the 1998 results and the press conference was webcasted. The event was very professional except the fact that the Ericsson website was hardly accessible during the event due to congestion. This is not good for our image. With very little money arrangements can be made so that the webcast can be viewed by anyone. If http://www.superbowl can make it, this event should make it as well… It is not good for our “carrier-class” image to show poor performance like this. (By the way, I am hooked up to an ATM backbone via DSL, the main routers on the Internet in both Europe and USA had a healthy traffic condition and according to Netmedic perfomance tool the congestion was server-related. So at least no easy excuses, please!)
Industry Highlights: Nearly 50% of the U.S. population, or 135 million people, will communicate via email by 2001. Source: Forrester Research. Date: 1998
While spammers have given e-mail a bad rap, one thing is for sure: The volume of solicited commercial e-mail (SCE) will climb
steadily. Forrester Research projects that some 250 billion SCE messages will be sent by 2002, creating a $1 billion
market. Hewlett Packard achieved an 11% response rate for its first campaign. With response rates like that, it’s no wonder that more marketers are looking into e-mail to boost ROI. But, it’s an uphill battle given that most marketers remain uncomfortable with the idea of SCE.
Jaw-Droppers: Push technology is seeing new light in LA. It’s being used to alert TV viewers of high-speed chases. Live televised hot-pursuit car chases and police sieges are the rage among LA television viewers. In fact, they outdraw some daytime soap operas. At least one cable provider in LA has found a way to cash in on this with low-level subscription-based push technology. When LA TV stations go live, the cable operator sends e-mail and pager messages to alert subscribers that a chase is in progress. Only in Los Angeles.
Week Ending January 22
Dear Diary: Back from the BIAP course - sorry about the interruption in updating EWA.
The Ericsson Internet Community Award contest ERICA (http://www3.ericsson.se/erica) has been launched and within a week it has received 70 entries and a mailing list of 650 people. I think it would be even more popular if the project would place an ad banner on http://www.erica.com… (you need to be over 21 to enter)
The terminal guys at Ericsson CyberLab have an industry watch activity called Lighthouse - you might want to bookmark it, they are producing news quite actively.
Industry Highlights: IDT’s Net2Phone has announced its plans to launch one of the first Web shopping portals powered by Internet telephony. The new site, EZSurf, is expected to integrate voice, graphics, and eventually video and push technology to enhance the online shopper’s experience. EZSurf can offer users — specifically those outside the United States — value-added information required to buy products online, including various retailer sites, as well as important information on each vendor such as multiple payment options, availability of global shipping, and the ability to track orders online. In addition, visitors can contact retailers via voice interaction in real time without visiting that retailer’s site, through Internet telephony communications services. IDT’s Net2Phone and Click2Talk services are planned to be fully integrated into the new site. For more information, visit Net2Phone’s Web site at www.net2phone.com
I understand Cyberlab in Menlo Park has become a member and executive sponsor of CommerceNet. More info is available from staffan.nilsson@ericsson.com.
Jaw-Droppers: An amazing worldwide white/yellow pages catalogue put together by a Swedish company: http://www.phonenumbers.net/
Week Ending January 8
Dear Diary: I just found a new comparison site for ISPs and various Internet services, looks really attractive. - Internetlist.com
Want to know everything about choosing a mobile service plan and a mobile phone in the US - in less than 30 minutes? - http://www.wirelessdimension.com/
Industry Highlights: U.S. business trade on the Internet will explode from $43 billion in 1998 to $1.3 trillion in 2003, Forrester Research Inc. predicted in a recent report. “One of the major factors in the new forecast is recent research indicating that the United States has entered the commerce threshold — an 18- to 24-month building period preceding five to 10 years of Internet commerce hypergrowth,” Forrester said. Computing and electronics sectors have already entered a ”hypergrowth” phase, and several others are set to follow, the report said. - SJ MERCURY NEWS
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Week Ending January 1
Dear Diary: I updated the “living chronicle, take a look”. I have also started adding events to my events calendar.
Industry Highlights: The number of people with Internet access will quadruple by 2005, according to a research conducted by Ovum. The report, “Internet Market Forecasts: Global Internet Growth 1998-2005 predicts that by 2005, there will be 206 million dial-up connections and 17.5 million permanent connections worldwide. However, the report warns that the international Internet backbone is on the point of collapse. If capacity crisis is to be prevented, it is essential that transatlantic fibre build be completed to schedule.
77 percent of Internet users in the US say that having Internet access has improved their lives, according to a study conducted by Roper Starch and AOL. Further, 44 percent described the Net as an essential part of their lives. The study is based on a survey sample of 1,001 US home users over the age of 18, half of whom are AOL subscribers. The telephone survey was conducted during the summer of 1998 and has a margin error of 3 percent.
Jaw-Droppers: MBT International, Inc., parent company of AgriMall.com (http://www.agrimall.com), announced today that as a result of the pending acquisition of HorseNet.com (http://www.horsenet.com), and the blending of shared technology between the firms, MBTI is poised to enter the online auction services. MBTI’s strategy is to build very strong web portals such as AgriMall.com to become a leader in the $300 billion agricultural industry.
Pierre Bourdieu argues that neoliberalism intends nothing less than the destruction of human sociality — all in the name of “market logic” … Can machines tell us about the nature of the human mind? Are we nothing but great, complex, organic robots? Philosopher Daniel Dennett has an answer … Take a look at Arts and Letters Daily, the “porthole” for intellectuals (not a portal, that is). Also, look at an article on those portholes - first time in a long time I see something so eye-opening! Where else would you get access to all this stuff?
Week Ending December 25
Dear Diary: The Consumer Electronics Show will take place next week in Las Vegas. They say home networking will be a big thing there. I might as well go and check it out. When is Ericsson going to start marketing their home communications efforts? - THE INDUSTRY STANDARD.
I was pretty amazed to find out that we have made Erlang open source. This would merit much more publicity than it has received so far… http://www.eddieware.org.
Industry Highlights: Ireland went ahead and changed their telecom regulatory environment and strategy overnight - on a kind suggestion from Microsoft… - ZDNET.
Jaw-Droppers: Japan’s NTT Mobile Communications Network is worried that it cannot sustain the business growth it’s come to expect. If nothing else, at present growth rates every Japanese citizen will soon have at least one cellular telephone. So how to keep the curve up? “We have to target everything that moves,” says company president Keiji Tachikawa. But not just cars, bikes and laptop computers: he wants family pets to have their own phones too. “Depending how your dog barks, you could tell whether it is in an emergency or not,” Tachikawa claims.
Week Ending December 18
Dear Diary: The success of ecommerce depends on technology but even more on the good businessmen finding the opportunity. Look at Xoom.com, the recent successful IPO on Wall Street. These people have a direct marketing background, they know how to sell… Look at this wonderful example: “Dear XOOM.com member, We here at XOOM.com want to thank you, our members, for making XOOM.com one of the largest and the best sites on the Internet. So our holiday gift to you is one FREE hour of shopping in the next week. For one hour between December 17 and December 24,1998, all purchases made with XOOM.com will be fully refunded. This hour will be randomly selected, and if you order during that hour, your purchase will be fully refunded on December 28, 1998!
Check out this video presentation on the business benefits of wearable computing - sounds actually very interesting… - http://www.kanakaris.com/xybernaut/webcast/
Boy, am I glad I found this: “If you ever have problems receiving files attached to your e-mail messages then you should know about e-ttachment Opener from DataViz. Designed for Windows 95 & NT 4.0, e-ttachment Opener will decode any file attachments you receive. Additionally, the product will allow you to double click and view files that Windows does not recognize regardless of the program that created it. e-ttachment Opener can also decompress archived files and allow you to quickly view the contents.” - http://www.dataviz.com/eto
Industry Highlights: Jesse Berst of ZDNet Anchordesk speaks about mobile computing. Jesse is one of the most influencial journalists in the industry.
“I see more and more signs that you and I will soon be free of the shackles that bind us to desktop computers. Consider these trends:
Telecommuting has increased threefold since 1990. Gartner Group predicts there could be more than 100 million telecommuters in the world by 2002.
The mobile market is growing nearly twice as fast as the desktop market. Giga Information Group thinks the market will be 50% mobile computers by 2004 or so, provided vendors can solve the remaining hardware limitations.
Mobile gadgets are growing even faster than mobile computers. Giga thinks mobile devices — handhelds, smart phones and similar gadgets — will exceed sales of mobile computers by 2001.
Now consider these events from the industry:
The industry is rallying around “Bluetooth,” a standard to let mobile devices communicate without wires. Click for more.
New Web-based products make it easy to synchronize a mobile computer with a home-office machine. Companies such as Visto (click for more), Magically (click for more) and many others are building Web-based products to keep a mobile computer up-to-date with data from home.
Led by Sybase, database vendors are perfecting lightweight databases for tiny devices. Corporate employees will no longer be chained to a local area network to get access to essential information.
Taken together, trends like these suggest that the mobile market is set to take off — provided the industry overcomes these four obstacles:
Obstacle No.1 — High power with low power. Chipmakers must deliver the processing power of desktop chips while consuming less battery power.
Obstacle No. 2 — Cheaper solid state memory. Small devices use solid state memory, not hard disk drives.
Obstacle No. 3 — Great Web-based services. Giga analyst Rob Enderle says the world is moving away from desktop computers toward computing appliances. The limiting factor, he believes, is how fast the market develops services that can be delivered over the Web to those appliances. Click for more.
Obtacle No. 4 — Better input. We need foldable keyboards or better handwriting recognition or better voice recognition. Some way to get data into small devices without the need for a bulky, full-size keyboard.
If the world is heading the way I think it is, we’ll all need to adapt. Vendors (both software and hardware) will need to rethink their products from the mobile point of view. To name just one example, Microsoft Office is a terrible choice for mobile computing. Huge, bloated, slow and terrible at synchronization.
As for computer buyers, they may not want to buy a desktop computer again. Ever. They may be better off with a more versatile mobile device. As for IT managers, they may want to devote more time and resources toward supporting remote workers. If I’m right, there will be many, many more people in this category over the next few years.
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Week Ending December 11
Dear Diary: Orbital Technologies (http://www.orbital-tech.com) just got equity financing from Novell. Orbital is a company in the knowledge management space, an area deserted by Ericsson in the recent reorganisation. Hopefully Ericsson finds it again anytime soon. A fortune 1000 company cannot excel without effective knowledge management solutions.
Industry Highlights: In 1997 just 27 percent of online transactions were paid for using credit-cards. Describing the 1998 season as a watershed, Harry Wolhandler, VP of Market Research at ActivMedia, estimates that ecommerce revenue will generated three times as much revenue as in 1997. However, at present only one in 10 ecommerce sites can process credit card transactions without staff intervention. The report found that 60 percent of sites expect to have automated credit card transactions in place by the summer of 1999. 38 percent of sites plan to automate credit card transactions in early 1999.
In the UK, holiday flights booked over the Internet will generate over USD660 million by 2003, according to Inteco Research. High-income households will generate the majority of this revenue.60 percent of those surveyed said they would like to have the option to book holidays via digital TV. 90 percent of the households surveyed have Teletext and almost one-fifth of these have used it to book travel flights. Inteco believes that this augurs well for Internet travel industry, which already offers a faster service and better deals.
A survey of over one thousand people in the US found that two thirds of Internet users would rather give up their phone and TV access than Internet access. The survey, conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide, found that three quarters of Internet users log on regularly to make decisions on various purchases. 70 percent said they go online to get additional information on a given product. … Of those who own laptops, nearly 50 percent bring them on vacation with them. 25 percent download email throughout vacation.
Jaw-Droppers: One-Woman Multimedia Enterprise Lives in Tree. An environmental activist “planted” herself in an ancient redwood tree in Northern California over a year ago to protest the cutting down of redwoods. She has no interest in coming down from the tree due in part to the technological gadgets - cell phone, laptop, solar power gizmos - she has with her. … In addition to now holding the record for the longest stretch of time spent tree-sitting in the United States, Hill also conducted the first-ever live Internet chat from a tree… (WIRED)
Week Ending December 4
Dear Diary: -
Industry Highlights: -
Jaw-Droppers: The PalmPilot has been touted as capable of doing almost anything–from organizing contacts and email to playing games and eventually providing two-way wireless communications. But these handhelds could now excel at another task–breaking into cars. (CNET)
Week Ending November 27
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Week Ending November 20
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Industry Highlights: Microsoft and Sun battled over the future of PCs and networking at NDA98 in La Jolla. Is Sun able to get it right with Jini? - RED HERRING.
Hey, t-shirts and shorts don’t last forever. Every once in awhile, you’ve got to go shopping and Macy’s is going to build a huge retail Web site for all of us fashion-challenged tech heads (and others too).
ZDNet summarises the current trends on the market in five “myths” worth repeating here:
MYTH #1: The flashier, the better. No, the faster, the better. Take a look at the way super-successful Hotmail has revamped its site to stress simplicity and speed. Click for more.
MYTH #2: The Web is a new advertising medium. We don’t want more ads on the Internet, we want to do something. Like save money. Find merchandise faster. Get immediate assistance. Click for more.
MYTH #3: It’s more important to be perfect than to be first. What would have happened if Amazon.com had waited until it got bookselling exactly right? The Internet demands you act fast, then make frequent tweaks.
MYTH #4: Ecommerce will grow, and grow and grow. Yes, ecommerce is going to explode, but not in a straight line up. Once we’ve gotten all the early adopters online, we’ll face a pause while more cautious mainstream users make up their minds to take the plunge.
Myth #5: Portals are your most important partner. Companies have vastly overpaid for real estate on the major portals. Most of that real estate is gone now. In any event, it may be smarter to look for space on “vertical portals” or “hubs” as we call them here at AnchorDesk. Click for more. You pay less and you get a more targeted audience.
Jaw-Droppers: Starcraft Interns Wanted - Mature and responsible Interns needed. Must be familiar with Starcraft, and are able to commit consistant hours in the afternoons. Will get to watch lots of great game actions executed by the best Starcraft players in the world. This internship is non-paid but participants will receive food credit and computer credit which can be used in the facility. Satisfactory job performance can advance to paid position. Inquire with Barbara or Heman. http://www.club-i.com/club-iframe.htm
Week Ending November 13
Dear Diary: The TapioFriendz Business Networking event at O-Baren succeeded above all expectations: some 20 people showed up. A number of innovators and owners of Internet development projects were able to meet, actually in several cases for the first time. I will do this again! Please mark your calendars for the evening of Wednesday November 25, starting 18:00 (in Stockholm). Send me an email and I will put you on the list for the official invitation.
Industry Highlights: One quarter of all households in the US, namely 16 million households, will be using broadband Internet connections by 2002. The study, At Home Rich Media Study, by Forrester predicts that cable data services will increase from 350,000 subscribers in mid 1998 to more than 2 million by the start of 2000. Forrester predicts that by 2002, cable will account for 80 percent.
The next big thing in portal wars will be online loyalty schemes. The technologies are being developed by Intellipost and others. This is what CyberGold started three years ago, but they were ahead of their time. Red Herring article. How can direct marketing services and loyalty services be implemented for wireless services? An important question!
Talus is a company pioneering in Real-Time Economy with its dynamic pricing service. Other realtime economy players include the auction houses Moai Technologies and AdAuction. Is realtime economy something Ericsson should worry about? Our strategic intent in the ‘wireline datacom’ area focusses on realtime Internet solutions…
Jaw-Droppers: “Thanks, and report responsibly. Your life history and financial records are only keystrokes away.” Hackers are escaping the FBI behind fancy design websites.
Week Ending November 7
Industry Highlights: The online porn industry has reported an annual growth rate of 40 percent over the last number of years. There are currently an estimated 60,000 porn Web sites in the US. Forrester Research estimates that the revenue generated by the online porn industry in 1998 will Mtotal USD1 billion dollars. This represents over 20 Mpercent of the overall ecommerce industry, which Forrester estimates is worth USD4.8 billion. As credit card companies such as American Express and other financial institutions consider cutting off services to porn sites, the future of this lucrative industry look far from certain.
Jaw-Droppers: Invisible, odorless, and undetectable, when unknowingly inhaled by any adult woman, Androstenone Pheromone Concentrate for men unblocks all restraints and… This is an example (from the more creative side) of the surging Christmas sale happening on the web.
Week Ending October 31
Industry Highlights: The
Jaw-Droppers: IS
Week Ending October 24
Dear Diary: I am dying under all this email… People might think I am not working when I am not updating this website very often…
You might want to check out my new Portico unified messaging service by calling +1 877 232 4654. I can also be reached via the new RIM two-way pager. Just send me email on tapio@bellsouthips.com.
Industry Highlights: The story of the week in the industry was the Lucent - Winstar deal which will give a $ 2 bn infusion into the LMDS business Winstar is building. The business case looks attractive. (WIRED)
Bob Seidman gives some predictions to the future in the current issue of his newsletter. What is the future of portals? Why you can forget broadband for the moment? (ONLINE INSIDER)
TIBCO’s Reliable IP Multicast Speeds Delivery of ZapMe! Netspace Educational Content; ZapMe! Corporation Uses TIBCO Technology to Further Electronic Education Neighborhood (INFOSEEK) This announcement is an example of media networking solutions where Ericsson should be more active in.
The ‘Webmaster’ has vanished — replaced by a host of other positions. Find out what they are and who makes most.
Jaw-Droppers: IS YOUR KID A HACKER? Is your teen hacking the Pentagon instead of doing homework? How to tell — and how to handle it. Convicted hacker gives his views.
I read the release announcing the official Cindy Crawford web site. And as I read it, my jaw dropped as I saw Cindy planned to charge $39.95 a year for annual membership to her page! I thought, thinking, “man, there must be thousands of Cindy Crawford pictures freely available on the Web. What’s Cindy smoking?” (ONLINE INSIDER)
Aspiring pathlogists can now hone their medical skills by performing a virtual reality autopsy on the Internet. Instead of a pathologist’s knife, medical students can use a computer mouse to perform the virtual post mortem on the autopsy website created by staff and students at Leicester University in central England. (SJ MERCURY NEWS)
Week Ending October 16
Dear Diary: What is the next trend after Unified Messaging (UM)? I would suggest Unified Gaming (http://www.ugo.com). Unified Gaming would be a great business opportunity for Ericsson, we could provide the underlying ISP and e-commerce infrastructure for seamless gaming over a variety of networks. See http://www.actionworld.com/. By the way, I hate games and gambling, my interest driven purely by the sheer magnitude of the business opportunity.
Industry Highlights: ActivMedia project that E-commerce will reach $1.2 trillion by 2002. Despite this tremendous growth, ‘Net-generated revenues are still only 0.1% of the total GDP for all OECD countries ($24.8 trillion in 1997 according to the OECD Statistics Bureau). Assuming steady 2.7% real growth and inflation at 3% annually for five years, total GDP will rise to $32.7 trillion, and on-line activity for all goods and services will be 3.8% of that total. The vast majority of this revenue stream will continue to cannibal sales from traditional channels as businesses and customers adopt nearly instantaneous transaction patterns and abandon the slower off-line business environments.
- Free and Purchasable Webcasts from Symposium/ITxpo 98: Experience Symposium/ITxpo 98 at your desktop with free audio and video webcasts of all keynote presentations and selected GartnerGroup analyst sessions — only on Symposium/ITxpo Online.
StarMedia Network Inc. has raised $80 million to fuel its next round of expansion, placing the Latin American portal service on the receiving-end of the largest private equity investment ever made in a Web content company.
Cisco now sees about $550 million a year in reduced costs as a result of transferring most of its business to the Net, a top company executive told attendees at the Gartner Group Symposium and ITxpo98 conference.
USWeb hosting services will cover applications in four areas: email and streaming media, e-commerce transactions and personalization, customer care and sales force automation, and back-office functions such as human resources or value chain management. This is exactly what the IP @S product unit should be looking to do. Read more in the CNET article.
Jaw-Droppers: Boy Scouts to Honor Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang. The Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts will host a reception to honor Jerry Yang this Thursday, Oct. 15 at Windows on the World. RSVP at www.bsa-gnyc.org/inm.htm or 212-242-110 x. 329.
Week Ending October 9
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Industry Highlights: Long-distance communications in the USA are predicted to drop down to one cent per minute within a year. People are wondering where all the broadband content will come from… - USA Today article.
Netscape started an online service together with Qwest. - http://www.msnbc.com/news/202706.asp
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Week Ending October 2
Dear Diary: -
Industry Highlights: iBEAM Launches Satellite Network to Bring Large Scale Streaming Media to the Internet. - http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/980929/ibeam_broa_1.html
Microsoft goes international in the portal game, MSN.com in 24 countries announced.
@Home Network will peddle its cable Internet service at CompUSA stores, with in-store demos, hotlines for setting up service and a pre-installation kit. It’s the first time @Home has gone the retail route.
Jaw-Droppers: Virage unleashes video search on Clinton testimony. - Red Herring article.
Microsoft employees are having an charity auction on who gets to have a private tour of Bill Gates’ mansion - highest bid so far $25,025. “Bill will show you his favourite rooms and refreshments will be provided…”.
Week Ending September 25
Dear Diary: I was totally impressed to find this LiveScope video monitoring site with remote controllable cameras. It is a huge market. Check out the Times Square demo. - http://www.netyear.net/livescope/
Industry Highlights: Linux is here to stay. Here are some announcements from last week. - Linux Gets Application Boost Wired News 1:20pm 9/24/98 - Caldera Will Ship Open Linux Upgrade TechWeb 6:50am 9/26/98 - Microsoft Says Linux Making Gains On Windows - IBM, Sybase latest to put RDBMS on Linux InfoWorld 12:20am 9/26/98 - MS hears Linux’s footsteps News.com 6:05pm 9/25/98 - Oracle Expands Commitment to Linux - Intel, Netscape stake Linux? News.com 4:35pm 9/25/98 - MIKE BERMAN: Linux users ready for battle Nando InfoTech 10:50am 9/25/98 - IBM’s DB2 Goes Universal With Linux InterActive Week 5:35am 9/25/98
Now it is official: Wireless Internet will not start with the Symbian, it will start with two-way paging. - Enterprise-level apps find their way onto two-way pagers InfoWorld 12:20am 9/26/98
12 percent of Americans have accessed the Kenneth Starr report on the Internet, according to a poll conducted in the US by Frank Lutz polling company. The 20 million Americans who accessed the Starr Report is the single highest number to have ever used computers to access a single document.
Californian company eBay Inc. reports 850,000 registered users and says it has taken more than 80 million bids on 21 million items since going online three years ago. Items for sale are posted on its website, with photos and descriptions.
A clear profile of the average Dutch Internet user emerged from Pro Active’s latest study. The average user is male, 87 percent, relatively young, aged 34, and typically both well-educated and well-salaried. 42 percent are connected to the Net by ISDN or faster modems. Only 16 percent are using modems with speeds slower than 33.6kbps.
One research company, Student Monitor, has estimated that the US college market is worth USD 27 billion with 93 percent of students Internet
users.
eBay went public on Nasdaq at $18 a share, surged to nearly triple that level and closed at $47.1875, giving the company a stock-market value of $1.8 billion and leaving Mr. Omidyar with $611 million in shares. In two days, eBay reached a market cap equal to that of Barnes & Noble. That’s why B&N is spinning off its online unit with an IPO.
Jaw-Droppers: Find answer to everything you never thought you would want to ask. - http://www.answers.com
Week Ending September 18
Dear Diary: -
Industry Highlights: SOFTBANK will soon offer small-lot forex brokering services over the Internet. The company will take currency buy and sell orders, combine them, pass them on to forex dealers. To start the service, SOFTBANK is putting up 60% of the capital and an unnamed U.S. forex broker 40%. Operations begin the end of this year. (source: LincMedia in Japan)
According to Irish-based consultant and survey company NUA, there are now approximately 147 million Internet users in the world. Details can be found at http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html .
The most recent Dutch National Internet Monitor found that the Dutch will have spent 1.1 billion guilders online, USD572.5 million, by the end of 1998. The article.
Online sales of software packages are estimated to reach USD5.9 billion by 2001, up from an estimated USD200 million in 1997, according to an International Data Corp report.
Online coupons are expected to become the next big advertising phenomena on the Net. Coupons are set to become hugely successful because of the ability to measure exactly how online advertising affects offline sales by monitoring the information on the coupons. The coupons are placed on ad banners and when the user clicks on the ad banner they can print out the coupon and bring it to a physical store to cash in. The coupon industry is worth USD3 billion.
Jaw-Droppers: -
Week Ending September 11
Dear Diary: -
Industry Highlights: Free Email Address Directory now lists more than 400 sources of free email. Click to visit the directory. With free email so pervasive, it’s getting hard for these businesses to show a unique selling proposition. - http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_2512.html
IDC estimates Australian Internet users at 5.76 million in 2002. China is forecast to have 9.4 million users, Taiwan 3.3 million, Hong Kong 2.43 million, Malaysia 1.34 million, the Philippines 0.9 million and Singapore 1.37 million in that year. http://www.internetnews.com/Reuters/1998/09/0903-lags.html
Jaw-Droppers: Vatican is getting serious about the Internet. By 2000 all the teachings of this century’s nine popes will be available on the Internet. That includes the 20 thick volumes of John Paul II, who is one of the most prolific popes in recent times.
Week Ending September 4
Dear Diary: I found out about ARS ELECTRONICA, taking place on Sept 7-12 in Linz, Austria. If I were in Europe now, I would definitely go. The event is full of new-thinking and setting new media in a new perspective. Remember to check out their webcast (active all week) starting Sept 7th on http://web.aec.at/infowar/
People at Ericsson developing ISP-related businesses (such as IP @S and The Link) should take a look at the CNET reource guide at http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reports/Special/ISP/ in order to get ideas on pilot customers.
Industry Highlights: IBM has quietly put its Global Network operations up for sale, a transaction that could fetch between $3 billion and $4 billion, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. - WSJ. - ComputerWorld
SBC Internet Services announced an agreement that will bring customers access to the rich Internet content and powerful search and navigation capabilities of Snap!, the Internet portal service jointly owned and operated by CNET and NBC.
PacBell announced their ADSL offering bringing the price of 384/128 DSL down to $89 per month - excluding the Internet access which has to be purchased from one of their partner ISPs (adding perhaps another $50 per month flat fee).
Technology supplier Linkon Corporation has announced that its customer, Sequel Communications, Inc., an alternative international carrier and value-added service provider, is making commercial, transpacific telephone calls over a central office-based network with an SS7-enabled LinkNet IP telephony gateway. - Did Ericsson wake up in time?
Forrester Research last week increased its estimate of the cybersex industry’s revenues this year from $185 million to $500 million.
Jaw-Droppers: A whopping 95% of undergraduate university students used the Internet during the second semester of last school year, according to a recent poll. - http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9808/31/opstud.idg/index.html
You might want to learn some salsa? - http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/dancewithme/
Week Ending August 28
Dear Diary: I went to the social event of the web yuppies here in San Francisco called Drinkexchange.com. It would be a good lesson for our management to see what kind of people move this industry forward. To the most part they are very young and rather “nerdish”. But extremely effective and to the point. Just imagine the social connotations of a 20-year old macho entrepreneur shouting (very) loud: “I run a colocation facility, you can bring your servers to my place…”. One of the interesting companies I talked to was http://www.compare.net.
Ericsson was rumoured to be planning a mobile phone embedded in a teddy bear. And Ericsson reacted with an emotional press release stating that it would never do such an irresponsible thing as marketing their products to children. Great move to reinforce our brand as a fortress of traditional values. How about Ericsson building the “haven of decency” in one of the corners of the Internet?
Perhaps you should take a look at the San Francisco web community nightlife at Geekapalooza 1.0. Tune your browser into the webcast. - http://www.geekapalooza.com
Industry Highlights: Read the great article on “Ten Driving Principles of the New Economy” from Business 2.0. - http://www.business2.com/articles/issue1.html
If videoconferencing will ever take off, it will do so through Internet chats. Go to this secret web site of the web community XOOM to judge it for yourself. - http://orders.xoom.com/zvc/gozvc829/
Telecommunications giant Siemens AG has just joined a growing number of large corporations starting venture capital funds to tap the ingenuity behind high-tech startups. - http://www.redherring.com/insider/1998/0826/siemens.html
Motorola Selects Nuance as Natural Language Speech Recognition Provider for ‘Myosphere’ Service.
Lycos and online print shop iPrint.com today announced a $2.25 million, multiyear deal that makes iPrint the exclusive print shop on both Lycos and its Tripod subsidiary for several years. - CNET article.
Internet Unplugged, a report on the development of wireless communication systems and mobile data on the North American market is now available at: http://switchlab.ericsson.se:8080/nrg/docs/Utlandsrapport.pdf
The present Internet supports an average throughput per user of only 40 kbps, but Mr. Van Houweling claims that “Internet 2 will begin at 2.4 gbps near the end of 1998, and we have a path to get us up to 9.6 gbps.” - http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue58/i2.html
IBM and Swiss researchers have developed a new method of cryptography, which, unlike conventional methods, protects against active, “back-door” attacks from hackers. Best of all, the researchers plan to give the technology away for free.
A new secure access mechanism, based on typing patterns, has been announced. - http://www.biopassword.com/
Jaw-Droppers: Looking to buy the right cow at the right price? Cattle auctions are mooving online.
In the near future, microfilm machines might be cast on the junkheap of history. UMI is digitizing its collection of newspaper and periodical microfilms and plans to place the collection — some 5.5 billion pages — on the Internet.
Direct customer feedback on the web is becoming popular, frustrated consumer will voice their opinions to hurt the company which gave them bad service. - http://www.bellatlanticsucks.com/
Wanna adopt a horse? - http://www.adoptahorse.blm.gov/
Week Ending August 21
Dear Diary: I am after quite some months at Telefonplan, hooked up to the corporate gigabit ECN out to the Internet. The Internet connectivity is very slow, you guys using this connection only have no idea of the true performance of the Internet… Back in my home office in SFO, I am listening to live radio stream at 80 kbps from Finland with my DSL connection without any performance degradation.
Hotel Anglais in Stockholm has a laundry service which destroyed half of my clothes yesterday. Please avoid that hotel. By the way, feedback like this will be more common in the future - consumers will have their voice heard.
Industry Highlights: Jesse Berst from ZDNet Windows CE is in serious trouble.
Wells Fargo Bank Offers 80,000 Merchants Free Internet Presence Through Verio’s TABNet Subsidiary.
University of Central Florida scientist has invented a new chip-making technology that may be a catalyst to mega-fast computers of the future.
French businesses’ spending on web sites, Internet hardware, and other Internet-related facilities is set to leap from around $4.5 billion in 1998 to around $13 billion in 2000, a recent report says.
Online precision marketing is a hot subject and right in the middle of the blossoming privacy debate. - SJ Mercury News article. Engage.com.
Jaw-Droppers: Internet Society has got a new “organisational member”: International Federation of Butterfly Enthusiasts.
“Europe lacks 10,000 Internet technicians. Salaries are spiraling, so training newcomers is essential,” said Bernard Incorvaia, joint founder of Paris-based service provider Groupe Cyber Informatique. - How is Ericsson going to retain theirs…?
Week Ending August 14
Dear Diary: Please see the events calendar, I am updating it regularly with events I might participate in. I also did some updating on the Chronicle.
Industry Highlights: Network Wizards announced the latest Internet Domain Survey and found over 36 million Internet hosts worldwide. The rapidly growing countries seem to be Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Korea, Brazil, Switzerland, Belgium, Mexico, Greece, Thailand and Argentina to name a few.
Terabit startups challenge Cisco - an excellent overview of the emerging competition. The first PC for $399 has arrived.
Excite signed a two-year agreement with Net2Phone to bring Internet telephony to Excite customers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, and Sweden. - When will Yahoo and other portals follow? NextGen multimedia communications (the generation after pure voice over IP) will be launched by the leading portals, not by any telecom operator! Hello Ericsson!
The second day in the public life of Geocities is over. The company has a valuation of $1.4 bn and each of its 114 employees is worth $12.2 million. Quite well for a company with 1997 revenues of $4.6 million and losses of $8.9 million.
Digital music distribution is gathering speed, read the latest news from IBM.
How about immersive sports? - http://www.quokka.com
Jaw-Droppers: Pretty amazing that you can visit the recent Giga Information Group e-commerce conference on the web - this was just the event I missed when traveling. - http://www.vosaic.com/giga/content/giga-tv-archive.html
Week Ending August 7
Dear Diary: Updating my web page from home is currently impossible because PacBell cut off my phone line. Calling the Dallas modem pool with AT&T long distance was so expensive that they requested “immediate payment within seven days” while I was on vacation. On the positive side, now I have found a discount operator to reduce these costs in the future. However, if tunneling into ECN were available, I could use my 384 kbps DSL for the purpose and would not need a phone line at all. Sigh!
Today’s Business Opportunity … is China. My holiday in Shanghai and visit to the Ericsson Communication Software R&D Ltd. confirmed my earlier assumptions. China is a huge, almost untapped market opportunity for IP solutions. Fortunately we have the largest western R&D center in our industry up and running in Shanghai. You can contact Soren Elsborg in case you want to know more about their services.
I am back from my vacation and I just spent the ten-hour flight reading my email and news. So much happens in ten days!
Industry Highlights: Forrester just released a research summary where they downgrade the business potential of voice-data integration.
Procurement and T&E (Travel and Entertainment) automation via web technologies is the “red hot” domain of the Silicon Valley investment Community. Read more in the following Red Herring articles by Alex Gove: one - two.
Customer support-chain automation is a new hot business opportunity drawing plenty of venture finance from the Silicon Valley VCs. Read the Red Herring article and the white paper from Motive Communications.
SendMail is the favourite startup of the Band of Angels. - http://www.sendmail.com/pr07_27.html
The portal war has turned into an Online Community War. Portals are adding community technologies in their service at a furious pace. Just study the press releases of Excite, Lycos, Onsale, etc.
Today’s Jaw-Dropper: The so-called self-improvement industry is using the web to sell a variety of products. - http://208.166.10.7/Thera/index.htm
SlashDot (News for Nerds - Stuff that Matters) - http://www.slashdot.org/
The first online clinique for online addiction has opened its cyberdoors. - http://www.netaddiction.com/
