ePostal News articles from March 2005

ePostal News archives from March 2005

Walz turns certified mail into e-certified mail.(Walz Group service enhancements)
March 7, 2005... Certified mail is big in the states. Some 274 million pieces of certified mail were sent out last year. Temecula, California-based Walz Group is one of a handful of outfits that are trying to make the process of sending US Postal...

Italy to privatize post.(Poste Italiane S.p.A.)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... The Italian government said the other day that it intends to move ahead with its plans to privatize Poste Italiane. The initiative is geared to reducing Italy's public debt, which is now 106% of the country's gross domestic product. ...

Ipswitch lands postal networking deal.(WhatsUp network monitoring software)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... The US Postal Service is deploying Ipswitch's WhatsUp network monitoring software at 180 mail processing and distribution centers across the US. WhatsUp is touted as a comprehensive network monitor that can be easily implemented and...

Zix upgrades e-mail encryption app.(ZixVPM 2.3)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... Zix Corporation, the secure e-messaging ISV, has upgraded its enterprise e-mail encryption software, ZixVPM (Virtual Private Messenger). ZixVPM 2.3 is now qualified on the Dell 1850 or Dell 750 platforms and the upgrade features new...

Strong growth seen for unified messaging.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... IDC, the market researcher, is forecasting solid revenues from unified messaging for both enterprises and service providers. Unified messaging refers to those applications that unite email, fax and voice messages in a single mailbox accessible...

Microsoft opens Office 2003 format.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... Microsoft has reportedly revised the patent license on its ML formats for Office 2003 so Word and Excel ML formats are really and in fact open. An agreement, credited to Massachusetts, is supposed to benefit governments globally. The...

IBM & SAP cuddle up.(partnership)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... In a move observers predicted was bound to happen in the wake of Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, IBM and SAP are getting cozier. They've cut an agreement to develop and market case management solutions for the global social services and...

Online shopping grows 27.4%.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... Market research shop Verdict calls the net the fastest-growing retail sector last year and says it attracted one in four shoppers and hit a 27.4% growth rate. Verdict said the figures for online buying have been six times better than for the...

European landline revenues to drop $13b.(forecasts)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... IDC says landline European revenues will decline by $13 billion over the next five years. Broadband and TV/video content are the only two things that can fill the vacuum for the affected telcos.

Is 2005 the year of broadband over power lines?
March 7, 2005... Few have taken seriously the possibility that electric utilities can develop satisfactory broadband technology that will run over the electrical grid and throughout the house, making every AC outlet a network connection and a gateway to the...

Chinese phone companies add 11.3m broadband customers.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... China Netcom added 3.6 million subscribers in 2004, according to Alastair Lynch of Merrill Lynch, and should do about the same in 2005. The company reportedly charges about $10 a month for phone service. Merrill says China Telecom added 7.7...

Online ad spend tops $10b.(PricewaterhouseCoopers reports)(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... US online advertising grew to about $10 billion in 2004 compared with $7.3 billion in 2003, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report sponsored by the Interactive Advertising Bureau that estimates that online advertising increased by about...

Sony stops making PDAs, blames cell phones.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... Sony is going to stop making PDAs for the Japanese market in July because of multi-function cell phones. Japan was Sony's last PDA bastion. It stopped making the devices for markets outside of Japan last year. "The PDA market is being...

UK government launches security alert service.(Brief Article)
March 7, 2005... The British government has set up a free online security alert service called IT Safe to notify home and small business computer users of any serious Internet security problems. It will help them deal with serious viruses, software...

Royal Mail gung-ho over SmartStamps.
March 14, 2005... A year since its launch and the Royal Mail is gung-ho about the response its SmartStamp PC postage service has had and its prospects. Kicked off a year ago January, SmartStamp lets UK consumers buy postage on the Internet and print it...

DHL Global Mail goes with Salesforce.com.(contract)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... DHL Global Mail has standardized on upstart Salesforce. com as its global customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Part of Deutsche Post's Mail International Division, DHL Global Mail has rolled out the CRM system to 320 employees...

Pitney snaps up legal support services provider.(Compulit Inc.)(Pitney Bowes Inc.)
March 14, 2005... Postage meter giant Pitney Bowes has signed a definitive agreement to acquire litigation support services provider Compulit Inc. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed but the transaction is not material. Besides giving...

Post PNG to offer debut e-banking services.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... Post PNG, Papua New Guinea's national postal operator, plans to provide electronic banking services and expand its postal services. The Port Moresby postal operator has teamed with ANZ, the Australian bank, to offer the banking services....

Princeton eCom gets new CEO.(appointments)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... Electronic billing and payment services provider Princeton eCom has promoted its president Ron Averett to CEO. Averett has been president and COO of Princeton eCom since 1999. He replaces Craig Kirsch, who now becomes the company's executive...

UK advisor claims broadband is critical to the country.(Philip Graf, new chairman of Broadband Stakeholder Group)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... Philip Graf, the former CEO of the Trinity Mirror Group, has been named chairman of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, the advisory group to the British government on broadband. Its goal is for the UK to be a world-leading broadband-enabled...

Only volume servers grow.
March 14, 2005... Driven by the growth in volume servers, worldwide server revenues grew 5.1% to $14.4 billion in the fourth quarter representing the seventh consecutive quarter of growth, according to IDC's number crunchers. The volume segment--servers...

IBM targets SMEs.(Small and medium sized companies)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... IBM says it's gonna put $300 million into getting SME business through its channel. The money is supposed to go into new services, programs and education. SMEs currently represent 20% of IBM's revenues. IDC is projecting SMEs will...

Microsoft bailing out of MSNBC loser.(MSNBC Cable Network)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... NBC, the General Electric-owned broadcast network, is negotiating to buy Microsoft's interest in their combined MSNBC cable news network, according to the New York Post. Microsoft has been dumping its content deals so as not to be seen as...

Rogers first North American ISP to ration the internet.
March 14, 2005... Rogers Cable has slapped a 60GB-a-month total upload/ download limit on its Rogers Yahoo Internet service subscribers. Rogers said the move was "to keep pace with the evolving Internet needs" of its customers. It calls 60GB "a very...

Charter near 2m broadband customers.(Charter Communications Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... Charter Communications added 64,500 broadband customers during its fourth quarter, bringing its total to 1.9 million. The spike helped it increase revenues 4.8% for the quarter to $1.2 billion. However, America's two satellite TV services...

41% of European homes to get broadband by '10.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... By 2010, residential broadband adoption is expected to reach 41% of Western European households, according to Forrester Research. Enthusiasm for the connected-home experience is growing, driving broadband demand.

KPN shows way forward for phone companies.
March 14, 2005... KPN, the Dutch phone company, added more than 160,000 broadband subscribers in Q4, bringing its total to almost 1.4 million. KPN had only 700,000 subscribers at the end of 2003. It attributed its growth to an intensive customer-acquisition...

Worldwide broadband users grow to 150m.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... The number of broadband subscribers has just passed 150 million worldwide, according to IMS Research, up 51 million since the beginning of 2004 with no sign of abating. IMS predicts the number will surpass 400 million during 2009. ...

UK web searchers more savvy than US counterparts.(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... Web searchers in the UK are savvier than those in the states, according to a survey by Internet marketing specialist Agence Virtuelle, which shows that 93% of UK Internet users understand the difference between sponsored and organic search...

Happy 10th birthday to Yahoo!(anniversary)(Brief Article)
March 14, 2005... Yahoo just celebrated its 10th birthday--can anything on the net be so old? It used its web page to give away a free ice cream.

Pitney claims Internet isn't displacing the mail but hedges its bet.(Pitney Bowes Inc. sees growth opportunities in the internet business)
March 21, 2005... Postage meter maven Pitney Bowes says absolute mail volume are growing despite predictions that electronic substitution will practically eradicate physical mail while it invests in various online technologies like Internet postage, mail...

LaBarge bags $12m mail sorting system order.(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... LaBarge Inc brags that it's won a $12.3 million order to provide Northrup Grumman with electromechanical subsystems and modules for an automated mail sorting system. LaBarge said the widgetry will be part of an Automated Flats Sorting...

Stamps.com faces new patent suit.(VCode Holdings Inc and VData LLC have filed a patent infringement suit)(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... VCode Holdings Inc and VData LLC have filed a patent infringement suit against PC postage vendor Stamps.com. The complaint, quietly lodged in late December in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota, charges Stamps.com with...

Canada Post deploys new software to fix HR bugs.(Human resource management software)(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... Canada Post has deployed Synactive's GuiXT software to improve how its SAP R/3 ERP system work and optimize its human resources appraisal process. Canada Post expects the GuiXT software to reduce training time, improve user compliance and...

Zix sells Message Inspector, Web Inspector.(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... Zix Corporation, the secure electronic messaging software and services provider, has sold its Message Inspector and Web Inspector line to CyberGuard Corporation. The deal is valued at $4 million including $2.1 million in cash, a $1.5...

Francotyp-Postalia gets new owner.(Quadriga Capital )(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... Mailroom products vendors Francotyp-Postalia has been acquired by European private equity firm Quadriga Capital on undisclosed terms. Francotyp-Postalia's product range includes digital postage meters and mailing systems, folding and...

The web whips newspapers for political news.(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... More Americans turned to the web for information and analysis during the last presidential election than newspapers, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The...

Strong broadband growth continues, up 24%.
March 21, 2005... The number of people that used broadband as their primary method for connecting to the net shot up 24% in 2004, an "astounding" number, according to "The Face of the Web," an annual study of Internet trends by Ipsos-Insight, which has tracked...

Lots of consumer gear to come Wi-Fi-enabled.(Consumer electronic devices equipped with wireless networking set to increase)
March 21, 2005... Consumer electronic devices equipped with wireless networking will increase rapidly, according to Mario Morales, a semiconductor analyst with market research shop IDC, who was speaking to Taiwanese semiconductor executives at a conference...

Cameras, lower prices drove mobile sales in '04.(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... A solid fourth quarter drove 2004 mobile phone sales to 674 million units, up 30% over 2003, according to Gartner, the market research house. Sales in Q4 were up 24% year-over-year. Nokia, the market leader, regained lost share, rebounding...

Storage revenue growth slows.(computer storage device industry sales)
March 21, 2005... Growth in storage revenues slowed in the fourth quarter and was weaker-than-expected, according to IDC. The researcher estimated external storage system revenues grew just 1% year-over-year to $3.8 billion in the quarter. However, the...

16m US teens own cell phones.(Brief Article)
March 21, 2005... Some 16 million US teens and 'tweens own cell phones, according to NOP World Technology whose "mKids Study" found that nearly half (44%) of 10- to 18-year-olds own a wireless phone. The study was made in the top 25 markets and found that...

Istanbul turns Office Communicator 2005.(Microsoft Corp. develops new business software)
March 21, 2005... Istanbul has had many names in its day--Byzantium, Constantinople, the Second Rome--now it appears it's become Office Communicator 2005, Microsoft's given a name for the enterprise real-time collaboration client that it used to call Istanbul....

Banctec promises digital mailroom Nirvana.(mail and document management software)
March 28, 2005... Handling huge volumes of incoming mail is as complex as managing a large external mail campaign. For big organizations, managing the sheer volume of incoming messages arriving in various formats--mail, e-mail and fax--and routing them to...

Microsoft inches closer to war with Google & Yahoo.(MSN adCenter, an online advertising platform, is set to launch)(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... Microsoft has started previewing a new online advertising platform called MSN adCenter as its sniping at Google and Yahoo over search-based ad dollars intensifies. adCenter features a paid MSN search component that links search results on the...

Group 1 debuts new address-quality program.(Group 1 Software Inc. DualCoder address-quality software)(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... The Pitney Bowes subsidiary Group 1 Software has released a new address-quality application for high-volume mailers. Dubbed DualCoder, the new program combines the features of two Group 1 coding engines--Finalist and Code-1 Plus--with an...

Parascript upgrades address validation app.(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... Parascript has released rev 2 of its AddressSelect address-validation software. The Boulder, Colorado outfit reckons that 23% of US mail is incorrectly addressed, which costs business millions in postage. AddressSelect consists of an...

GrayHair, Monticello team up.(GrayHair Software and Monticello Software partners to enhance online postal services)(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... GrayHair Software and Monticello Software have come together in a workflow partnership to let small and medium-volume mailers take advantage of the US Postal Service's PostalOne online acceptance, verification and postage payment system. ...

Online content purchases exceed $413m.(consumer spending on online entertainment services doubles)(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... The growth of broadband and online music services helped entice consumers to spend $413.5 million on online entertainment and lifestyle content last year--almost double the $217.6 million spent in 2003, according to an Online Publishers...

Storage software shows growth.(market research)
March 28, 2005... Storage software worldwide grew 15% year-over-year to $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter, according to the folks at IDC. According to IDC analyst Bill North, the growth was "fuelled by the increased business investment in data protection...

Africa wants first world to impose Digital Divide tax.(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... African countries want first-world countries, states, provinces and cities to voluntarily impose a tax that would be sent to third-world countries to help them narrow the Digital Divide. The money would go to the United Nations-backed...

Ireland gets faster broadband; Lobby group wants more.(Eircom provides high speed broadband services; IrelandOffline pessimistic about the company)(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... Ireland's incumbent telco, Eircom, will double the entry-level speed for its broadband from 0.512 Mbps to 1 Mbps. The company also offers 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps. Lobbyist IrelandOffline claims the increase doesn't go far enough. Its chairman...

A growing consumer discontent with PCs.(personal computers maintenance)(Brief Article)
March 28, 2005... "Crisis? There is growing consumer discontent--crisis--with PC performance thanks to the emerging cottage industries of spyware, malware, adware.... I mentioned recently that my wife Kelly paid $600+ and a batch of homemade brownies to a man...