Web Round-Up – W/E 16/01/98

The end of the Cold War means that the art of spying is no longer confined to the double-0s of this world because now anyone can order satellite photographs of anywhere in the world taken from a high-quality image satellite. The Earlybird-1 satellite, launched by US company called Earthwatch, is collecting a number pictures from different points in orbit in order to create a ‘digital globe’. These pictures, or specially ordered ones, can be bought via the Internet at a cost of £1.80 per sq ft and have detail to within 10ft.

This may already be starting to sound like a classic case of Big Brother but it is made even more worrying by the fact that the frequencies which are emitted by your mobile phone (used to keep them in touch with their transmitters) can be traced to an exact location by mobile phone companies. Futhermore, when required by court, mobile companies must hand over this information to law enforcement agencies. These agencies can then in turn point an imaging satellite directly at your head and have a look at what exactly it is you’re doing. So behave.

…One area in which the Web is not expanding quickly enough is the transmission of radio programmes. Although the process should be relatively simple, radio broadcasts received through the Internet are still of an annoyingly poor quality. The European Broadcasting Union believes that the Web should be an ideal vehicle for transmitting radio programmes across the world. However, to achieve this, argues the Union, the Net must increase its transmission capacity significantly to achieve an acceptable quality. The best audio software currently available for low-speed modems, according to the EBU’s research, is RealAudio. Even this is only able to deal with a spoken voice and disintegrates when given a music transmission. For faster modems (28.8bps or higher) WinPlay3 and Philips MPEG Audio Layer II performed better than RealAudio. Nevertheless, the EBU is endeavouring to create FM quality as soon as possible.

…The obligatory Microsoft bulletin this week sees our old friends caught in a cross-fire of legal accusations. The well-documented court case with the US Justice Department (see previous Web Round-Ups) has now been augmented by an attack from the Japanese Fair Trading Commission which is also concerned about infringements to the monopoly law perpetrated by the Tokyo arm of the software giant. Despite these constant setbacks, the war of the browsers is continuing to be led by Microsoft whose Internet Explorer is increasing its market share rapidly whilst Netscape is losing both market share and share value.

Some NetBites:

• Excite, the search engine company, has announced that it is to issue free email addresses to British schoolchildren and their teachers – for life. This is part of a wider initiative to wire all British schools to the Internet by 2002.
• A site called Science Odyssey has been launched celebrating and recounting 100 years of science. It accompanies the launch of a TV series in the US and can be found at http://www.pbs.org/aso.
• The latest film by Steven Spielberg, Amistad, has (surprise, surprise) a Website to accompany its launch. The site features downloads of films photos and a free screensaver. Point yourself at http://www.amistad-thefilm.com.