The fate of AST Research's Limerick factory will be known within two weeks, as the computer manufacturer cuts up to 37 per cent of its worldwide workforce, or 1,120 jobs. The job losses announced so far affect its North American and Asian operations, and it will announce its plans for Europe by Christmas. Now owned by Samsung, AST's move signals its shift out of the corporate market (apart from a few large accounts) and underlines the PC market's growing dominance by the "big four" - Compaq, Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. All four saw thirdquarter growth of 50 to 60 per cent, while the companies ranked six to 10 grew by just 1.5 per cent on average.
No filters: Despite universal hatred for junk email, none of Ireland's major Internet service providers (ISPs) uses filtering procedures to let customers delete unwanted spam mail rather than downloading it, Eoin Licken reports. Spokesmen for IOL, Telecom Internet and Indigo all confirmed last week that they had no facilities for users to set up filtering at the ISPs' computers, although Telecom Internet said it would attempt to block mail from a given address if a client complained of spam mail.
INTO it: The Irish National Teachers' Organisation has appointed a full-time official to promote the use of information technologies in Irish primary schools. Kathryn Crowley will also answer teachers' queries, put in place an in-service training model and distribute the INTO's new "Education Technology Starter Pack".
AI and AI: Dairy farmers can now choose the best sires for their herds via a PC. The Progressive Genetics cattle breeding co-op has put its 1998 catalogue of proven dairy bulls on disk. Farmers can select from breeding criteria such as greater than 20 kilograms of protein and greater than 600 kilograms of milk. "The sires meeting these criteria will appear on screen," says sales and marketing manager Paul Fagan, "then you can look at more detail on each sire." - info: tel 01-450-2142
IONA Coup: The Eurocontrol Experimental Centre, part of the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, is to use Iona Technologies' Orbix as the core infrastructure in the development of a new computer application for Eurocontrol's air traffic simulation exercises.
Online Books: Major online book store Amazon Books has appointed Irish-based Internet publisher Brian Rothery Benchmarks (www.rothery.com) as an associate. Hodges Figgis also went on the Web last week (at www.hodgesfiggis.com), with over 110,000 titles.
East Timor Launch: Writer Joseph O'Connor will launch East Timor's top-level Internet domain tomorrow in the Irish Film Centre at 2 p.m. Irish Internet service provider Connect Ireland has registered and activated the ".tp" domain, and a central Web site for the occupied country will also be launched at www.freedom.tp
Unhelp Desk: A temporary "help desk" employee sacked by publishers Forbes last spring for "rude and abusive" behaviour has been charged of committing "a serious act of computer sabotage" and causing $100,000 of damage to its computer system. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Snow Business: This morning sees the release of Maximized Software's Christmas Web browser that provides a festive interface on top of Internet Explorer. The shareware "theme browser" is also one of the first major applications to license Microsoft's Agent technology. To download, go to www.maximized.com
RTE Course: RTE will begin a multimedia authoring programme in Dublin's Arthouse this morning, for trainees from across the EU in the Media II programme. It will teach skills on Web design, Digital Video Disk (DVD), digital broadcasting and CD-Roms. The participants will continue their studies in their home countries via the Internet.
Entropy's Latest: WRQ has introduced Reflection NetApps, a suite of enterprise-quality intranet and TCP/IP utilities for corporate networks - info: Entropy, tel 01-294-0199, email fiona.sexton@entropy.ie
ITP expands: Computer products localisation firm International Translation & Publishing (ITP) of Bray, Co Wicklow, has opened three new offices in Budapest, Romania and Salt Lake City in the US.
In Brief...3,000 schoolchildren in Hertfordshire in England have been issued with smart cards instead of bus passes. . . Gateway 2000 has formally launched its Singapore operations in southern Malaysia, making up to 6,000 PCs a day. . . Motorola is to build its largest chip-making factory ever, near Richmond, Virginia. . . Microsoft says its Office 98 suite for Apple Macs will be released this winter; a "self-repairing" feature for applications will appear in the Mac edition before the Windows version. . . Ericsson has developed a new technology that lets you make phone calls and access the Net simultaneously on the same line. . . Eireann that it has been abusing its dominant position in the Irish market...Zip drive maker Iomega has unveiled a portable disk drive called Clik that's half the size of a credit card and stores 40 megabytes of data. . . Citibank has transformed its Web site into a transactional "virtual community", with chat rooms and bulletin boards. . .
Quake 2 will go on sale in North America tomorrow morning. . . Microsoft Network is to stop offering Internet access in Europe next year, focusing instead on developing content. . . Oracle has released its Data Mart Suite Sales & Marketing edition. . . . Dublin-based original software manufacturer FMS has announced a new product for the online sale of pensions products. . . Intel plans to develop a sub-$500 network computer, which will be able to use several different operating systems, including Microsoft's Windows CE.
Modem Worldwww.taxireland.ie After the Budget, check out the Institute of Taxation in Ireland.
www.iol.ie/ obroin/gaeloidnet/daidi.htm Write to "Daidi na Nollaig" (Santa) and get an answer from him as Gaeilge.
nollaig.iol.ie Ireland On-Line's Christmas site.
doras.tinet.ie/Cumasc Telecom Internet's latest online magazine is an Irish-language one.
hompage.tinet.ie/barretta/clubfm.html Several Dublin pirate radio stations are now online including Club FM, and requests can also be emailed to others such as jazzfm@hotmail.com
www.niceone.com The searchable and stylish database of Irish sites has been redesigned and grown yet larger again.
www.iol.ie/ejgrey Grey's Funeral Home in Templemore, Co Tipperary, is the latest to promote its services online.
www.geocities.com/Colosseum/9537 Tandragee Golf Club in Co Armagh.
www.groganspub.com/44.html An unusual site about the patrons of Grogan's Pub in Dublin's South William Street.
Textbites
"In general, people who write on computers don't write nearly as well as those who type or write longhand. They become `easy settlers', as we used to call movie writers who settled for their first notion of a scene. The computer page looks too perfect to alter the first time around. Hence, lousy, repetitive prose." - novelist Gore Vidal, talking to Forbes.
Diary
December 8th: The Irish Java User Group, 7 p.m., DIT Kevin Street, Room 108. - info: email chorn@lionet-technologies.com
December 11th: Lake Communications and Cabletron Systems are hosting a morning seminar in Croke Park on the benefits of migration from traditional LAN networks to switched virtual LANs . Registration free with advance booking - info: tel 01-403-1119, email kenk@lake.ie.
December 12th-13th: Workshop on "Techniques and Technologies for Information Retrieval and Resource Discovery", University of Ulster, Magee College, Derry. Includes coverage of SGML, neural network user interface technology, indexing and search engines. - info: http://www.infm.ulst.ac.uk/research/ccma/ir- workshop.html or email fd.murtagh@ulst.ac.uk
December 16th: Irish Computer Society Year 2000 and Euro special interest group meeting. Bob Semple of Price Waterhouse will report on a Y2K awareness survey. CATT, Leeson Place, Dublin 2 at 6.30 p.m. - info: email pobeirne@sysmod.ie
Computimes is edited by Michael Cunningham. Email only (no faxes please) to computimes@irish-times.ie (private correspondence should be marked NOT FOR PUBLICATION)