Website 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.
…Publishing on the Net is taking a significant change in the way information can be accessed as many newspaper groups move towards charging for the content they provide. This represents a turn towards using the Internet as a business strategy by converting current readers into paying subscribers. The New York Times, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal have all successfully introduced subscription charges for archived content. Many online publishing sites are still currently losing money despite increases in online advertising. Similarly, last week the website design company WebMedia went out of business, claiming there isn’t enough money in designing websites.
…Despite this, predictions by the International Data Corporation (IDC), show that the Web is becoming increasingly important as an electronic marketplace. The IDC predicts that by the end of 1998 the Internet will be very close to claiming 100 million users and that Web commerce will exceed $20 billion (approximately £12.3 billion); this is double the amount achieved in 1997. The IDC believes that the ability to do business online will move from being a luxury to being a necessity. It argues that the whole Internet marketplace is currently reorienting around the goal of building and supporting a billion-user marketplace by 2005.
…Internet research company Jupiter Communications is also making predications for the state of play on the Internet in the coming few years. Jupiter’s research shows that the European online advertising market will take until the 2000 to grow as large as the 1996 US market – in which major US publishers were far from profitable. It also claims that:
- By 2002, says Jupiter, the European online ad market will reach $1.2 billion (approximately £735 million).
- While US publishers now enjoy heavy international traffic, usage and ad spending will gravitate toward locally generated content as it becomes available.
- Germany and the UK will emerge as the most attractive European markets, mainly be virtue of their size. By 2002, Germany will lead the market with $500 million (£306 million) spent on online spending; the UK will follow with around $330 million (£202 million).
- Online advertising will remain a small percentage of total ad spending around the world. By 2002, Jupiter expects that online ad spending will represent just 1.7% of ad spending in the UK.
The steady increase in access to the Internet and the concurrent increase in advertising expenditure in Europe can be seen in the trend chart below.
Total European Online Households, 1995-2002 
Source: Jupiter Communications, 1997
…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.