Telecom Eireann has just completed a direct marketing campaign offering a free extra phone line to residential customers who spend hours on the Net. It targeted its top 15,000 "marathon" phone users, offering the extra line with free installation and free line rental for a year - worth £244.20.
"If the Internet is to continue to grow it obviously offers potential to Telecom, both to have customers use second lines, and for us to sell a package of a second line, a PC, and Internet connectivity," says Telecom's direct marketing manager Eoin Dunne. Meanwhile, on Thursday BT said it would be offering business and residential customers a second line at half price (£58.16 sterling instead of £116.33) from October to December.
MS translation: Microsoft is to buy 20 per cent of German-based translation software maker Trados GmbH, with a clear eye for productivity savings in its "localisation" departments (such as its European HQ in Co Dublin). Microsoft software is shipped in more than 30 languages but, rather than performing machine translation, Trados's software stores phrases and sentences after they have been translated; then when similar phrases recur the translation automatically pops up.
Meanwhile, Chinese researchers have developed translation software for "quick and rough" translation of Web pages. It can translate 150,000 characters per hour, with some 80 per cent of the total content easily understandable afterwards.
Crash Sites: Within a week of Princess Diana's death, the following were just some of a flood of Internet domain names which had already been registered (no, not all of them work yet, but don't blame us): diana-princessofwales.com; diana-princessofhearts.com; dianapeoplesprincess.com; diana-dodi.com; diana1961- 1997.com; dianaisdead.com and princessdiana-dead.com
Meanwhile Club Internet's weekly online poll has asked who was most to blame for the princess's death (see http:// www.clubi.ie/cgi-bin/question.pl?init): Web users blamed the paparazzi (30 per cent), newspaper editors (15 per cent) and newspaper readers (54 per cent). So much for the drink driving theory. . .
Belfast bytes: Springvale in West Belfast is to be the site for ICL and the University of Ulster's £2.5-million "Synergy Centres" venture. It aims to give computer training to unemployed 18 to 25-year-olds and marginalised groups.
Multimedia at DIT: Dublin Institute of Technology is launching a part-time Postgraduate Diploma in Media Management (Multimedia) starting next month. It will be run over two evenings per week (six hours total) and is aimed at the multimedia and related industries. - info: Teresa Ward, tel 01-402-3098 or email tward@dit.ie
Control+alt+del: We said UCD's Internet-based creative writing course was at http//.ucd.ie/deltti - apologies to those who tried it, because it should have been http//www.ucd.ie/ deltti). And Republican Sinn Fein's site was missing a tilde. The correct address is http://iol.ie/saoirse.
In Brief. . . Over 700,000 people have called France Telecom in less than a week to protest against its plan to signal the telephone number of incoming callers. . . Iona has unveiled OrbixWeb 3.0 for creating Java-based Internet applications. . . If you are involved in computers and education in Ireland, Joe Griffin is looking for you for his case study (email him at bealtaine@iol.ie). . . The 24-year-old Ohio woman who neglected her three small children while spending several hours a day on her home PC has been placed on two years' probation. . .
Three months after demonstrating a prototype, IBM has abandoned the market for NetPCs - stripped-down £1,000 versions of a desktop computer. . . America Online is to acquire CompuServe in a complex deal with WorldCom. . . Psion has recalled all UK stocks of its mains adaptors used with the Series 5 Psion and PC Card Modem, for safety reasons. . . Irish company Softech Telecom is to supply its PC-based Ringmaster Call Accounting software to up to 150 Microsoft offices worldwide. . . Bull Information Systems Ireland is to supply an order communications system to the Adelaide and Meath Hospital. . .
Year 2000Real costs: This week CNet's popular Web site has a special on the myths and reality behind the year 2000 (Y2K) bug. Though it's US-biased, it's a very sensible read - particularly on the more alarmist estimates and the methodologies behind them. - http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Dlife/Millbug/?ibd
MicrofileNo. of users of Europe's largest online service, the joint partner- ship of Deutsche Telekom and Bertelsmann: 1.4 million subscribers No. of CompuServe users in Europe: 870,000 No. of AOL users in Europe: 650,000 Combined no. of AOL/CompuServe subscribers in Europe after last week's merger deal: 1.52 million
Source: The Observer
Modem Worldhttp://www.csci.ca/ Computer Security Canada's online library of computer security breaches that have occurred on the Web.
http://www.salonmagazine.com
Salon magazine has launched its "Salon Classics Book Group". Starting this morning (with Erica Jong on Madame Bovary), leading contemporary authors will contribute original essays and lead discussions on "classic" literary works.
http://www.sf-fantasy.com
Includes what is billed as a science fiction and fantasy search engine, but really more like a index.
http://newciv.org/gib/bovtop.html
The Global Ideas Bank - where anyone can submit imaginative and feasible non-technological ideas or projects for improving society - has presented awards and £1,000 sterling in prize money to this year's winners.
http://homepage.tinet.ie/ennisnet/
Ennis, the fourth of the finalists in the Information Age Town Competition, goes online.
http://www.adweb.co.uk
AdWeb has begun broadcasting live weekly interviews (using Internet Relay Chat) with guests from the British media industry. The weekly "Question Time" runs from 4-5 p.m. our time on Fridays.
http://www.slingshot.net
Dublin-based developer CSK Software has announced channels on Marimba's Castanet for Slingshot, putting market data on computer desktops in real time.
http://www.corkfilmfest.org/ciff/
The Cork Film Festival is on the Web again this year.
http://www.software.psion.com/EPOCWorld/
Psion has launched its Web-based EPOC World support service for developers and licensees of EPOC-based platforms.
Textbites
"Sticking my head into the mouth of the electronic lion." - Novelist John Updike, describing the gimmicky "interactive writing" competition which has just finished, in which he penned the first and last paragraphs of a crime novel. Ordinary Net users filled in the missing middle (see www.amazon.com).
Diary
September 15th-16th: Introduction to Macromedia Director, course at Arthouse. Other training at the multimedia centre in Dublin's Temple Bar includes a two-day course next Saturday and Sunday on Quark Xpress. - info: tel 01-605-6800
September 23rd (Dublin) and 24th (Limerick): free Sun Customer Technical Forum, on topics such as developing a network security policy and firewalling. Venues: Institute of Engineers (Dublin) and Limerick Inn (Limerick). - info: tel Fiona Kelly, 01-805-5600 or email techforum@horizon.ie
September 22nd and 29th: Iona seminars in Dublin on CORBA, Java and building distributed applications with OrbixWeb. - info: email training@iona.com and http://www.iona.com/
September 25th: Irish Computer Society's day-long conference at UCD Industry Centre about the Euro, Year 2000 tools and Y2K case studies. - info: tel Jennifer Leech 01-667 0599
Computimes is edited by Michael Cunningham. Email to computimes@irish- times.ie (private correspondence should be marked Not For Publication).