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December 13, 1997
News
Giveaway: 3 copies of SegaSoft Lose Your Marbles; 2 Microsoft Gift Certificates; 3
copies of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 Book
Speaking of Internet Explorer, the big news this week was the Federal Judge’s
decision in the Microsoft-DOJ case to issue a temporary restraining order preventing
Microsoft from forcing computer manufacturers to pre-load Internet Explorer as a condition
of getting a license for Windows 95. [Explain]. So, what does it mean to you and me?
Frankly not much right now. What we’ll probably see is a few new computers will now
come bundled with Netscape Navigator instead of Internet Explorer, but many manufacturers
have chosen and will continue to choose to include Internet Explorer. Plus, you can
obviously get either one of them free off the ‘net. This does remove the unfair
advantage that Microsoft had and it should force the battle of the browsers to be a long
ongoing effort, which will ultimately benefit all of us as each company tries to outdo the
other. The big question is what does this mean long term. There was some vague wording in
the decision that hinted at the decision affecting future versions of Windows as well.
Given that the biggest feature of Windows 98 is the complete integration of Internet
Explorer into the OS, this could cause some big problems for Microsoft if there forced to
develop a version with the Internet Explorer integration. If they did, there wouldn’t
be a whole lot new there, which could even put the whole project in doubt. I think what
will probably happen is that Windows 98 will be delayed as a result of this, but it’s
still too early to tell.
In other news, the popular search engine Yahoo was broken into early this week by a
group of hackers who posted a note saying they had hidden a virus on the web site. These
hackers claimed that anyone who had been to Yahoo over the last month was infected with a
virus that was due to wreak havoc on Christmas Day. They claimed also to have an
"antidote" for the virus that they would only release if a fellow hacker
currently spending time behind bars was released. Yahoo vigorously denied the virus
theory, saying that absolutely no virus was there and that no one will be affected. Still,
it’s just another example of how security on the web is still nowhere near as good as
it should be or needs to be.
Last week was the Internet World conference in New York, and there were several
interesting web and Internet-related products and services introduced there. One of them
was an interesting new technology from a new startup company called Sitara Networks
that’s designed to speed up web browsing. The technology consists of two parts:
SpeedServer, which is for web sites themselves, and SpeedSeeker, which is a free plug-in
for Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. What the products
basically do is use a more efficient mechanism for sending data back and forth, which can
speed up web browsing by a factor of three. The best results only occur if you connect to
a web server that uses the SpeedServer technology—which isn’t probably going to
be that many—but apparently it also helps even with sites that don’t. Basically,
this is a good example of the kinds of tools and workarounds that we’re probably
going to be dealing with on the Internet for some time to come.
Connectix also introduced a new software tool designed to improve surfing speeds called
Web SurfExpress. The product, which retails for $35, is only available for Windows 95 and
NT right now, but a Mac version is due in January. SurfExpress uses a combination of local
cacheing—where it stores your frequently accessed sites on your hard drive—and
intelligent prefetching, which means it goes out to get pages it thinks you’ll need
before you ask for them. Connectix claims that the pre-fetching they do—which it
"learns" by tracking which sites you go to—is better than the random
prefetching done by other web accelerators, such as Peaknet.jet. Connectix is making some
pretty outlandish claims for the results of SurfExpress—saying that web surfing can
be made up to 36 times faster—but it sounds like a pretty interesting product. The
real issue with web surfing is the speed of your connection, which is determined by the
size of your "pipe", be it 28.8 modem, ISDN, cable modem or some other
technology. These kinds of products can’t actually fix that issue, but they can
improve your surfing experience by making more efficient use of the connection you do
have. That’s the trick.
One product that may actually help fix the size of your pipe just shipped last week. The
$279 Boca DynamicDuo 112K from Boca Research uses two separate phone lines to create a 112
Kbit/sec connection to the net. The product consists of two K56Flex 56K modems in one
unit, each of which requires a dedicated phone line and its own ISP account (thus doubling
the cost of your Internet access). The DynamicDuo can combine these two lines internally
to make the computer think it has a single 112 K connection, which is pretty clever. The
company says they will be trying to work with some ISPs to reduce the connection costs for
users of the DynamicDuo, but nothing officially has been created yet.
There’s interesting news in the e-mail front as well. Qualcomm this week announced
the official release of version 4.0 of their popular Eudora Pro e-mail package for Windows
95 and NT. The $39 app now includes support for creating HTML messages, as well as several
new Internet standards, including the LDAP directory access standard [explain].
In related news, the company also announced a new free e-mail service in conjunction
with WhoWhere called Eudora Web-Mail. The free e-mail service uses a browser to send and
receive e-mail from anywhere using any computer system. You can check it out at
www.eudoramail.com.
If you’ve always wanted to create your own web site, but didn’t want to deal
with the hassles of working with an ISP to host your site, you might want to check out the
latest version of WebSuite from SmartDesk. The $99 product lets any Windows 3.1, 95 or NT
computer function as a stand-alone web server, complete with multimedia chat and lots of
other high-end-like features. In addition, it comes with tools and templates to create the
HTML pages you need to populate your site. Finally, it’s currently being bundled
along with the company’s WebDesk product, which lets you get access to your computer
and the files on it from anywhere on the Internet. To find out more, check out the
company’s website at www.smartdesk.com.
Ever wanted to view a web site from a foreign manufacturer, only to find the info you
want is in a different language? Well, Digital’s AltaVista search is now previewing a
software tool that can automatically translate web pages from several European languages
into English. The service runs on high Digital Alpha servers and lets you view foreign
language pages from within the AltaVista site. Pretty cool.
So, more Americans now own computers than ever before. According the most recent study
by IDC, PC ownership is up to 43% of all American households, 8% points higher than last
year’s 35% figure. The primary reason being touted for the increase is the phenomenal
growth of sub-$1,000 computers, many of which are being bought by first time buyers.
Here’s another interesting factoid: According to a study performed by Nielsen Media
Research (you know, the TV ratings people), more than 25% of all US and Canadian adults
(that’s 58 million people) now use the Internet. That figure is 14% higher than a
number that a similar survey produced last spring, although that rate of growth is
apparently slowing. Interestingly, a little over 15% had made a purchase online, a number
that is also up over previous years. However, even more telling is that 59% of the
"surveyees" said that had not intention of making a purchase online, which is up
from only 34% in the previous study. Maybe online shopping won’t grow that fast after
all….
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