The number of Irish houses connected to the Internet has more than quadrupled since 1998 with an estimated 262,700 or 20.4 per cent of Irish homes online, according to data released by the Central Statistics Office. The figures, produced as part of the Quarterly National Household Survey, show one in three Irish households has a home computer. Computer ownership has grown from 18 per cent in mid1998 to 32 per cent, or 417,000 homes, by the end of 2000.
But Ireland still lags well behind the world's leading countries. Figures supplied by Nielsen Net Ratings Global Internet Trends show Sweden has the highest household Internet penetration at 46.7 per cent, Hong Kong comes a close second with 46.3 per cent while Singapore scores 45.7 per cent.
ONLINE VOICE: Exchange House Travellers Service launched a site, www.exchangehouse.ie, to coincide with the International Day against Racism last Wednesday. Exchange House is an organisation of travellers and settled people working together to provide quality social work, youth work, and money advice services to the travelling community in the Dublin area.
BROUGHT TO BOOK: Amazon.com is being sued by a group of shareholders who claim the company gave false information about its finances. In a statement issued by lawyers representing the plaintiffs the suit alleges Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos and other executives gave "false and misleading" statements concerning the group's sales, profits and cash position.
SHOPPING FOR RUM: Eircell has signed up Digital Rum to develop its next generation e-commerce shopping portal. The WAP service is planned for launch later this summer and will allow mobile phone users search, compare prices among merchants and buy online.
SONY SHIPMENTS: Global shipments of Sony's PlayStation 2 has reached the 10 million mark. Shipments since the console's debut in Japan in March of last year were triple those of the original PlayStation during the same period after its launch in December 1994.
MEDICAL iPAQ: Compaq is to supply doctors in the US with handheld computers for use with a paperless prescription service. The agreement with Allscripts Healthcare Solutions means the more than 15,000 physicians in its program can use Compaq iPAQ handheld devices to write prescriptions, reference clinical material and record dictated notes and charges.
ONLINE SCAM: A restaurant worker has allegedly masterminded the largest theft of identities in Internet history and is suspected of stealing millions of dollars from some of the richest people in America. Abraham Abdallah (32) is accused of duping more than 200 chief executive officers listed in Forbes magazine, by using computers in Brooklyn libraries to obtain credit records of such luminaries as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and director Steven Spielberg.
AOL ALLIANCE: America Online and Ticketmaster have formed an alliance for AOL to offer Ticketmaster ticketing and personal services to its customers.
FAKE CERTS: Microsoft has warned users that an unauthorised party has obtained digital certificates that could enable them to falsely represent themselves as the software giant. VeriSign notified Microsoft that it issued two digital certificates in January to someone posing as a Microsoft employee. VeriSign's digital certificates - a key security feature of Microsoft's Internet software - are used to assure programs are genuine.
IN BRIEF...Allfinanz has announced the European rollout of xpertMatch which provides an electronic marketplace for buying and selling financial service products. . . Shannon based Avocent International is to provide technologies to EMC Corporation's manufacturing and support centre in Cork. . . Verizon Wireless, the largest US mobile phone carrier, has awarded a three-year $5 billion supply contract to telecommunications equipment-maker Lucent Technologies. . . The Northern Ireland owned IT company ICS Computing will invest £2.6 million sterling in two local plants creating almost 200 jobs over the next three years. . .