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The industry news page contains stories from our industry which itomic have found interesting and possibly of interest to you as well.
17th Nov 2005RUPERT Murdoch said yesterday it did not matter whether newspapers were being sold in paper form or online in 20 years; they would succeed as long as they retained a focus on quality journalism.
The chairman and chief executive of News Corporation was in Adelaide to deliver a briefing to shareholders and meet the press to talk about the future of the media conglomerate. He repeated a view that newspapers were facing a "sticky" advertising environment, indicating that the "nascent explosion" in internet advertising was hitting newspapers hard.
See:
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17269603%5E1...
Australian IT is reporting that newspaper job advertisements fell in February while internet job ads grew.
The amount of Internet job ads increased 47.6 per cent in February since the year before, according to an ANZ study. Newspaper job ads increased just 0.7 per cent.
See:
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,12466540%5E1...
Microsoft recently released their new web search service available at http://search.msn.com.
The release sees numerous improvements, including a news, image and encyclopedia search. Itomic's SEO service will continue to incororate MSN Search as part of a broad campaign to target the most popular search engines.
The new search has received mixed reaction online. PC Magazine said, "though Google still reigns supreme, Microsoft's effort is clearly catching up. It's definitely worth a try." However, Seattle PI were quick to find an embarrasing flaw in MSN Search's geographic filters.
See:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1723645,00.asp
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/004325...
This great article on the "Traffick" website explores the evolving role of SEO Consultants, and how they fit into the internet services industry.
Check out:
http://www.traffick.com/article.asp?aID=118
NASA puts its faith in the open-source Linux operating system to create a supercomputer 10 times more powerful than before.
'Project Columbia' will help the agency model flight missions, climate research, and aerospace engineering.
The system will have 500 terabytes of storage, the equivalent of 800,000 CDs. It will use the might of 10,240 Intel Itanium 2 processors for complex computer simulations.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3532706.stm
Microsoft's 'Internet Explorer' (IE) is the current undisputed heavyweight market leader in the Internet browser software industry. For many people (especially new users who don’t remember the now defunct Netscape browser), IE and the Internet are one and the same, indistinguishable from one another. Although alternatives to IE exist, current estimates indicate that about 94-94% of the world’s Internet-using population use IE.
So what of the competitors? The leading three browser alternatives to IE are Firefox, Opera, and Safari. The first two are cross-platform, meaning that versions are available for all the major operating systems (PC, Mac, Linux, etc.), whilst Safari has been custom-written to run only on Mac computers running the ‘X’ version of its operating system. Note also that whilst Firefox and Safari are free to download and use, Opera currently charges a modest licence fee of US$39.
We at Itomic are of course heavy ‘power’ users of the Internet. If we weren’t, you should be concerned! As website designers and developers our preferred Internet browser is Firefox, and we recommend it to everyone. Why? There are many reasons, some technical, some functional, some a matter of design. For us it’s all about productivity. We want to use an Internet browser that allows us to do our work as efficiently and enjoyably as possible, and Firefox delivers in all departments. By using Firefox we are able to produce higher quality work in a shorter (and therefore more economical) time frame than if we were using IE.
So if you’re currently an IE user and are feeling adventurous or just plain curious to see how good an Internet browser can be (and getting better all the time) why not take Firefox for a spin today?
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Recommended reading:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3886861.stm
http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/
‘Tis winter in Perth, Western Australia, and instead of wall-to-wall blue skies we get these funny grey things in the sky that occasionally (not often enough, actually) drop water on us.
If you like to get out and about in Perth despite (or because of) the chance of being rained on, then here’s a great online resource thanks to the Australia Bureau of Meteorology: the 128km Perth Radar Loop.
http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR123.loop.shtml#image
Visit the above address and you get a (almost) live, animated map of the current rain showers in affecting the Perth metro area and beyond. Three of us at Itomic cycle to and from work, and we’ve used this service to get a fair idea whether or not we’re going to get drenched en-route. The same service is available for other major Australian cities.
If you’re wondering whether or not the rain is making much of an impact on our dam levels (relative to the previous 4 years), here’s another website to keep an eye on: the ‘Water Storage in Our Dams’ from the Western Australia Water Corporation:
http://www.watercorporation.com.au/dams/dams_storage.cfm
The internal network at the All-England Tennis Club has been fully converted to the Linux open source operating system. Last year the official Wimbledon website served up more than 27 million pages to visitors, and Linux was seen as the most stable and cost-effective operating system for the job.
Linux is the operating system of choice for Itomic's wide range of website services.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3798393.stm
According to new information recently released by VeriSign, a record 4.7 million new domain names were registered in the first 3 months of 2004. This is more than at any time, including the early 2000 before the so-called dot.com crash.
This trend is indicative of a steady increase in business confidence in all things Internet-related.
The .com domain suffix remains the most popular first choice (approximately 45% of all registered domain names end in .com), which means that it's harder than ever before to find meaningful .com domain names for your business that are still available for registration.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3793825.stm
New profession-specific .pro domain names are soon to become available. These are:
.law.pro (Legal and Legal-related services)
.cpa.pro (Accountancy and accountancy-related services)
.med.pro (Medical and health-related services)
For a detailed FAQ, please see:
http://www.registrypro.pro/support/faq.php
The latest timetable looks like this:
* May/June 2004: Preparation and translation
* June/July 2004: Accrediting .eu Registrars
* December 2004 (approximately): Sunrise period (phased registration) begins
* April 2005 (approximately): eu goes live and general registrations begin
Remember: At this time it is not possible to register or pre-register .eu domain names as there are no accredited Registrars. Companies should ignore any offers to pre-register .eu domain names at this stage, because it is not possible to do so.
As if PC users don't have enough challenges already! In addition to viruses and spam, personal computer users should also be aware of 'spyware' - programs that hide on a person's computer without their knowledge.
A new study by Earthlink, a major US Internet Service Provider (ISP), found an average of 28 programs per PC that could be deemed as spyware.
Spyware can range from the relatively harmless to the outright disastrous. Some of the worst spyware, for example, might monitor your keystrokes when you login to your Internet banking and transmit this information to a web criminal in another country without (of course) your knowledge or consent.
For the full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3633167.stm
Currently it is only possible to register a .fr domain name that exactly matches a registered trademark or company name. However from May 11, 2004 this will no longer be the case. This means many .fr domain names which were previously not possible to register, will now become available on a first-come first-served basis.
In order to successfully register .fr names, registrants of .fr domains will need to be identifiable online within official and national French public databases (databases containing companies, businesses, associations such as those listed in the INSEE directory or the directory of trade mark owners will be used for this purpose).
Source: NetNames
The operators of the Australian (.au) domain name registry, auDA have won a claim against Domain Names Australia and its owner Chesley Rafferty, filed under the Trade Practices Act.
The claim was launched as a representative or class action on behalf of all those who had existing .au domain names and who received notices from Domain Names Australia and made payments as a result.
On April 8, 2004 Justice Finkelstein found that the notices sent by DNA in July and September 2003 were, as alleged by auDA, misleading and deceptive.
If you receive an invoice for a domain name renewal (or anything else web related) and you're not sure of its authenticity - call your local trusted Internet consultant for advice.
Source: NetNames
The good news is that the web is getting easier to use according to Dr Jakob Neilsen, a strong advocate of simplicity over style.
Search engines have become more efficient in delivering useful results, but the bad news is that the majority of the population:
1. Still only use one or two words in a search engine (when 3-5 would typically deliver much more targeted results).
2. Never look beyond the first page of search engine results.
The implications for people who build websites (that's us!) are to:
1. Continue to work hard on the general usability of websites
2. Make simple, high-level information available to people quickly and easily (if that's all they want), and more in-depth information available to people who want to search 'deeper' into a site.
3. Ensure that text content on websites is both well-written and rich in appropriate, search engine friendly, key words and phrases.
More reading:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3578149.stm
The occurence of Internet Banking fraud "Phishing" is increasing. And even more alarming is that the fraudulent activity is reaching new heights of sophistication.
Visit Source for more:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39116416,...
The sale of generic domain names is seeing increased levels of interest, the likes of which have not been seen since the .com boom.
The most recent sale reported has been the sale of mercury.com, which was bought by Mercury Interactive Corporation (Nasdaq: MERQ), for $1.1 million. It was also reported last week that the domain name smoking.com was sold for $500,000, mr.com for $350,000 and americans.com for $150,000.
Source: http://www.n3lite.com/
New Australian anti-spam legislation comes into effect from 10 April 2004.
"The Spam Act 2003 prohibits the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages that have an Australian link. This means that commercial spam, sent by mobile phones as well as by e-mail, is not permitted to originate from Australia and or to be sent to Australian addresses from other countries."
Itomic recommends that all Australian businesses, but particularly those who send out bulk emails (for whatever reason), familiarise themselves with the new anti-spam laws.
Like 99.9% of the population, Itomic detests spam and the people who send it. It's estimated that up to 60% of all emails in circulation are now accounted for by spam, which diminishes the "Internet Experience" for all of us by wasting our time, and clogging inboxes and mail servers worldwide.
Related links:
A practical guide for business
http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/spam/Act2003/guide4...
Official government news release
http://www.darylwilliams.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_7-2_4011-...
