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For the record 19 July
Friday, July 19 2002
by Sylvia Leatham


KPNQwest network due for shutdown | New technology makes "roll-up" televisions
possible 



The KPNQwest network will begin to be shut down on Friday unless a buyer
can be found for the bankrupt operator's network. The company said in a statement
its services might continue if a suitable buyer could be found, but "If no
agreement can be reached, the network will be shut down in a controlled and
orderly manner." Over 40 groups were once interested in buying all or parts of
KPNQwest's network, but the liquidators have managed to sell only parts of it so
far.





UK consumers look unlikely to benefit from Oftel's decision to force BT to
cut the cost of its unmetered Internet access products, according to ZDNet UK.
Oftel said on Thursday that it was ordering BT to cut the cost of its wholesale
unmetered Internet access products by 8.5 percent. These products are used by
Internet Service Providers to provide customers with always-on narrowband
Internet access. However, BT does not sell these products directly to ISPs but
rather to other telecoms operators, such as Energis, Thus and WorldCom, who then
re-sell them to ISPs. Sources in the telecoms industry say that the savings are
likely to be swallowed up by telecoms operators before they can be passed on the
customers of ISPs.







Ask Jeeves and Google have signed a USD100 million three-year
deal.- Ask Jeeves Web Properties, a division of Ask Jeeves, has opted to use
Google's Sponsored Links Program, a paid listings advertising service, on Ask
Jeeves' search sites. Under the agreement, Ask Jeeves and Google will share the
more than USD100 million in estimated revenue to be generated from Google's
advertisers on Ask Jeeves' search sites over three years. Separately, Ask Jeeves
has announced its second quarter financial results, confirming the company's
fourth quarter pro-forma profitability target.







PC shipments declined 2.2 percent in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in the
second quarter of 2002, compared with the same quarter last year, according to
IDC. Cautious attitudes continued to prevail in the business sector, while
consumer spending slowed compared with the first quarter. Competition remained
fierce as vendors adopted aggressive pricing strategies in order to stimulate
demand and clear inventory. Corporate demand remained very slow and continued to
impact vendors' results as the number of large-scale projects was limited.
Nonetheless, vendors were able to sustain sales to the small and medium business
markets, which partially helped limit volume erosion.





Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard's merger with Compaq has made it the world's
leading PC maker, according to market research company Gartner Dataquest. H-P
edged ahead of rival Dell by just 0.6 percent for the second quarter. Gartner
says the global market for PCs slipped back during the quarter ending June, with
shipments totalling 29.9 million, down 0.6 percent from the same quarter last
year. Sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa fell 0.3 percent, according to
the Dataquest figures, while the US market fell 0.8 percent, and shipments in
Japan declined 7.5 percent.



The worldwide rich media asset management software market will be worth USD1.5
billion in revenue by 2006, according to IDC. The use of rich media asset
management will continue to expand to encompass a wide range of vertical markets,
submarkets and applications. Applications and solutions in the rich media asset
management vertical markets and submarkets will continue to become better defined
and fleshed out to include a range of partner technologies, content services,
integration capabilities and possibly applicable standards. 





Roll-up, flexible televisions have become possible thanks to a glowing plastic
compound produced in the laboratories of Cambridge Display Technology in
Britain. The technology stems from the discovery in 1989 of the compound
p-phenylenevinylene, which glows greeny-yellow when given an electric charge.
After some tweaking, the compounds were enabled to emit blue and red light,
paving the way for the roll-up TV. "You're effectively printing televisions,"
CDT chief executive David Fyfe told Reuters. "They can be printed onto thin
plastic almost like paper." He added that roll-up displays should be on the
market around 2004 or 2005. The market for light-emitting screens is expected to
grow from USD20 million to USD25 million in 2000 to over USD3 billion by 2005,
and CDT's Light Emitting Polymer screens are expected to take a majority chunk of
that market. 

 

There have been calls for the closure of a Spanish-language Web site that
predicts the date and manner of its of users' deaths. The predictions are based
on users' responses to a series of questions on issues such as driving habits and
suicide. Various users of the site have been told they won't come out of a coma,
they will kill themselves drink-driving and that they will be killed in a
terrorist attack. The site's designers claim that by answering truthfully, users
will get the answer to one of mankind's most frequently asked questions. The site
has proved a hit in South America but has also caused controversy.