ePostal News articles from December 2004

ePostal News archives from December 2004

Italy Post teams with Microsoft to deliver new online services.(Italian Postal service)
December 6, 2004... Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service, and Microsoft are going to work together to expand the post's portfolio of e-services. The two companies plan to collaborate on developing an integrated platform that will let consumers,...

MailersClub snags $1.5m.(investments)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... MailersClub.com has raised $1.5 million in venture capital. The Los Angeles firm said its current private investors underwrote the round. The start-up provides web-based printing and mailing services for businesses and organizations of...

Wincor Nixdorf bags Taiwan Post order.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... Taiwan Post has awarded Wincor Nixdorf a contract to upgrade its ATM network. The rollout of 532 units of the ProCash 2000xe ATMs is supposed to be completed by the end of March. Apparently, some units have already been installed and are...

Neopost debuts new digital meters.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... Neopost has introduced a new line of digital mailing systems. The new meters--the IJ 80, IJ 90 and IJ 110--feature speeds of up to 250 letters a minute, mixed mail feeding capacities and nested or non-nested envelope sealing. The...

Royal Mail sees merry e-Christmas.(Royal Mail Group PLC)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... Britain's Royal Mail expects to deliver 55 million items ordered online this Christmas, 15 million more than last year. The post says the projected increase reflects "a buoyant Christmas period for e-retail." Market researcher IMRG...

Open Text to launch e-mail Management apps.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... Open Text Corporation plans to roll out a suite of e-mail management programs in the coming months under the Livelink moniker. The upcoming products include e-mail Archiving for offloading emails and attachments from e-mail servers and...

Microsoft to Linux: eat your heart out.(Microsoft inks a deal with US Air Force)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... The US Air Force has signed a half-billion-dollar six-year mega-deal for Microsoft software and services. Microsoft will supply the core server software, maintenance and upgrade support. Dell will supply about 525,000 Windows desktop and...

Mozilla takes share from Microsoft.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... Although Microsoft's buggy IE browser still accounts for a whopping 89% of the overall browser market, its share has eroded by 5% since May, according to Dutch web analytics concern OneStat. At the same time, Mozilla's market share rose by...

Linux servers top $1b; IBM tops in server revenues.(industry sales and revenues)(Illustration)
December 6, 2004... Linux servers topped a billion dollars for the first time in Q3, according to IDC. They accounted for 9.2% of all server revenues. Revenues were up 42.6%; unit shipments were up 31.7%. By comparison, Windows server revenues grew 13.3%...

AOL abandoning AOL for Broadband.(America Online Inc.)
December 6, 2004... AOL's latest reorganization will lead the company to abandon AOL for Broadband as its primary platform for generating revenue to replace what it has lost due to its shrinking dial-up subscriber base. Instead, it intends to transform itself...

AOLers prefer online holiday shopping.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... For the first time an AOL survey found that its subscribers plan to do more of their holiday shopping online than in stores. AOL shoppers figure they will spend 53% of their holiday dollars on the web. The reasons cited were the ease of...

US broadband use still lags other countries, new policy needed.
December 6, 2004... President Bush has championed affordable high-speed Internet access to the net for all consumers by 2007. However, despite the fact that broadband connections doubled between 2001 and 2003, the US is still far behind in broadband use compared...

Wi-Fi shipments to homes rise 73%.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2004... In Q3 unit sales of Wi-Fi wireless networking gear to residences--the so-called small office/home office (SOHO) market--rose 73% in year-over-year, according to market researcher Dell'Oro Group. It traced the increase to back-to-school buying....

French start-up takes a stab at solving the last-mile hurdle.(E-Box an industrial solution to parcel distribution)
December 13, 2004... Navigating the last-mile hurdle of getting packages to consumers who may or may not be at home when the carrier comes to the door parcel in hand has proven to be a major issue for delivery companies and postal operators worldwide. In fact,...

After fruitless struggle, IBM dumps its PC unit in Lenovo's lap.(personal computer)
December 13, 2004... In a tacit admission of failure, IBM, the archetypal capitalist that pioneered the personal computer two decades ago, is selling its loss-ridden PC unit to Lenovo, the Chinese PC maker partly owned by the communist Chinese government, in a...

USPS to enhance its retail POS system.(Postal Service)(point-of-service)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... The US Postal Service plans to upgrade its retail point-of-service (POS) systems and is seeking bids for the software from a single vendor. In its request for bids on November 30, the post said the software should be able to run on its...

Three million and counting.(postal carriers pick up three millionth package)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... The US Postal Service brags that since kicking off its online carrier pickup notification service in February, its letter carriers have picked up three million packages. The landmark three-millionth package was picked up in Fairmont City,...

USPS ends '04 in the black.(United States Postal Service)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... The United States Postal Service earned $3.1 billion on revenues of $69 billion in its fiscal year ended September 30, the second consecutive year that the post has been solvent. Revenues were up $265 million year-over-year and came in $100...

Address Validator certified for warehouse builder.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... Melissa Data has certified its Address Validator program for use with Oracle's Warehouse Builder software. Address Validator for Warehouse Builder is a plug-in that's designed to let Warehouse Builder users clean, validate and standardize...

Wal-Mart picks up Xandros.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... Walmart.com, which pioneered Linux PCs, is now selling cheap Microtel boxes with the Xandros brand of desktop Linux that Xandros bought off Corel. Walmart's Linux wares include Microtel boxes with Xandros, Linspire, which was originally...

Gartner claims we're gonna be three PC giants shy.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... Gartner is betting that slower growth rates and thinning margins will force three of the top 10 PC vendors to exit the market by 2007. Gartner says PC unit growth will hit only 5.7% a year from 2006 through 2008, only half the 11.3% it's...

Microsoft betas blogs.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... Microsoft's MSN network is expanding its portfolio with a beta of a free blogging service called MSN Spaces. Available in 14 languages and 26 markets, Spaces follows Microsoft's well-worn tradition of hooking its various products together and...

Consoles to ace out PCs.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... Peering into its crystal ball, Merrill Lynch says that game consoles will beat out PCs as the centerpiece of the family room. PCs--even the newfangled Media Center boxes--can't win because they are too complex and unstable. Merrill thinks...

TV coming to a cell phone near you.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... With mobile phones featuring digital cameras, FM radios and MP3 players, ABI Research says that TV on a cell phone isn't far away. According to Alan Varghese, the firm's principal semiconductor research analyst, mobile network operators...

Mobile Web users near 110m in 2004.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... Japan and South Korea lead the world in mobile multimedia users, says a new report from Telecommunications Management Group (TMG). The study, "Superstars of the Mobile Internet," found that nearly 30% of Japan's population use mobile...

UK broadband use exceeds 50%.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... More than 50% of Britain's Internet users now connect by broadband, doubling to almost 12 million over the last year, according to ACNielsen's European Internet analyst Gabrielle Prior. The total number of UK Internet users is now 22.8 million...

Internet cannibalizing TV viewing time.(Brief Article)
December 13, 2004... About 27% of Europe's Internet users said they spend less time watching TV because of the increasing amount of time they spend online, according to a Jupiter Research study called "Evolution of Media Use in Europe: Web Impacting Consumption."...

Hongkong Post, Yahoo in payment, logistics deal.
December 20, 2004... The Hongkong Post is going to use Yahoo Hong Kong to provide payment and logistics services to local online merchants through Yahoo's new Shopping platform. The partnership is targeted at small and medium-sized Hong Kong businesses that...

Sigaba gets COO.(Appointment)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Secure messaging software and services provider Sigaba has named Al Cohen to the newly created position of president and COO. The San Mateo, California concern said Cohen would be responsible for all operations including sales, marketing,...

Cingular debuts Mobile Photo Postcards.(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Cingular Wireless has introduced a new Mobile Photo Postcard application that's designed to let customers use their camera phones to create personalized photo postcards and send them to anyone in the US through the regular mail. Mobile...

Royal Mail chairman re-appointed.(Appointment)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... The UK government has re-appointed Allan Leighton chairman of the Royal Mail for another three-year period. The UK's Secretary of Trade and Industry Patricia Hewitt said, "Allan Leighton and his team have done an excellent job to help turn a...

UPS expects record online tracking.
December 20, 2004... UPS expects a record 16 million online package tracking requests on its peak day this holiday season. The average daily number is about 7.9 million. UPS figures it will deliver over 20 million packages on December 21, its busiest shipping...

USPS, others to combat phishing.(US Postal Service)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... The US Postal Service has joined hands with Microsoft, AOL, EarthLink, the FBI and several top financial institutions to combat the phishing menace through a joint effort called Digital PhishNet. An unsavory offshoot of the Internet,...

No lines at USPS NetPost Cardstore.(United States Postal Service )(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Hoping to capitalize on the greeting card frenzy at the holidays, the US Postal Service is pitching its NetPost Cardstore as the best way to send out personalized greeting cards to friends and family. Its Cardstore lets users design their...

Bill Clinton, Yes, that Bill Clinton, shills for new Google rival.
December 20, 2004... Former Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer is now the chairman of Jersey City-based Accoona Corporation, a new search engine house that claims to deliver smarter, more relevant results than Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Accoona, a Swahili word...

Commerce one patents go to mystery bidder.(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Abatch of potentially key Commerce One e-commerce patents that went to court-ordered auction over the objections of folks like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the cyber-liberties watchdog that claimed the bankrupt company always meant its...

BellSouth upgrading DSL to 24 Mbps.(digital subscriber line)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... BellSouth will spend $2 billion over the next three years to install new technology that will provide speedier Internet access to 80% of the 13.8 million households in its territory. It has had some of the slowest DSL speeds and highest...

Open or closed Internet?(broadband internet services management)
December 20, 2004... There is a danger that the Internet with its freedom and open access could soon be under the control of the phone and/or cable TV companies whose networks connect consumers to the net. A major controversy that consumers, politicians and...

DSL growth continues worldwide surge, minus US.(Digital Subscriber Line )
December 20, 2004... More than half a million people a week worldwide are choosing DSL rather than DOCSIS (cable modem) for their high-speed Internet connection, according to the DSL Forum based on data from industry analyst Point Topic. DSL is, with the...

Siebel lusts after SMBs--again.(Siebel Systems Inc. )(small and medium-sized business )(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Siebel is going to take another crack at the SMB market, a road it's been down before with little success and this time it's up against stronger competition and Microsoft. This time it's recruiting market-savvy resellers as well as hiring...

Linux server revenues to cross $9b in '08.(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... The growing adoption of Linux by customers worldwide for enterprise workloads, hosting ISV applications and databases will yield Linux server revenues of $9.1 billion in 2008, according to a new study by IDC. Linux server revenues are...

Hewlett-Packard has toyed with breaking up.(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina told Wall Street critics, who would like to see the company's profits-producing printer division spun out, that the board has given serious thought to breaking up the company three times. She didn't say why the...

Euro software patents in limbo.(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... The European Union won't be able to decide whether or not to adopt the controversial American model of software patents until next year, according to anti-patent watchdog nosoftwarepatents.com. It seems the EU Council now lacks a qualified...

Online spending jumps 19% in November.(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Online consumers in the United States spent $8.8 billion, excluding travel purchases, in November, a 19% increase over the $7.4 billion spent online a year earlier, according to Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen//NetRatings. Their...

Open source circa 560 A.D.(first copyright infringement)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2004... Once upon a time, back in sixth-century Ireland, there lived a monk named Columba with a mad passion for books who wasn't above pinching the books of other monks so he could copy them, a little habit that did nothing for his reputation. In...