ePostal News articles from March 2006

ePostal News archives from March 2006

France Telecom spin-off introduces Europe's first legally recognized e-mail.
March 6, 2006... CertiMail, the privately held France Telecom R&D spin-off whose main shareholder is now the XandMail messaging house, has launched the first e-mail service recognized by the courts as having the same legal weight as a hand-signed, time-stamped...

The lights could go out in conventional Norwegian Post.
March 6, 2006... The Norway Post says that it needs to change its network and replace several post offices with Post in Shop outlets because of flat-out inactivity both in banking transactions and postal customers. Norway Post reckons it's losing somewhere...

Elsag & Parascript team on Poste Italiane project.(Elsag Spa and Parascript LLC teams up to develop automatic mailing system)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2006... Elsag Spa, the Italian IT and mail automation supplier, is partnering with US-based OCR house Parascript LLC to provide a mail automation solution for Poste Italiane. In the coming months, Elsag says it will integrate Parascript's OCR...

Swiss Post buys back oneReason.
March 6, 2006... The Swiss Post Office has repurchased oneReason AG from Siemens. No price was given. The repurchase is retroactive to January 1. The little 17-man Kloten company was started in 2000 and specializes in managing numerical documents and...

Neopost adopts a new logo.
March 6, 2006... Looking for a new image. Neopost, the Paris-based mailing solutions specialist, has redone its logo and come up with the tagline "We value your mail." Neopost's logo hasn't changed since 1992 when it was active in just four countries, was...

ColiPoste tickles e-commerce.
March 6, 2006... ColiPoste, the parcel division of La Poste in France, has had a study done on e-commerce by Ipsos, the research house, and has found that delivery terms and methods are actually a key factor in buying off the Internet. So to up its...

Online shipments through correos up 63%.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2006... The Balearic Islands, Valencia, Catalonia, Madrid and Andalusia make greater use of the Spanish post office's e-commerce services and web site than other communities, according to a study on Internet shipments done last year that it just made...

BCC releases Mail Manifesting option for Standard Mail jobs.(BCC Software Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2006... BCC Software Inc, the BOWE BELL + HOWELL company and developer of high-performance software and solutions for professional mailers, has released another premium option for its Mail Manager 2010 presorting and list-management software. The...

Americans say the USPS is the agency they trust the most.
March 6, 2006... For the second year in a row, Americans have rated the US Postal Service as the agency they trust the most to protect their privacy. The national study also found that customer satisfaction and trust scores increased year-over-year. ...

Russia's been booking it.
March 6, 2006... Russia held a three-day mail seminar in Saint Petersburg the middle of February dedicated to IT in the post network as a reported prelude to determining what it will do in 2006-2007 to create a contemporary IT infrastructure and introduce new...

Office named in antitrust complaint lodged with EC.
March 6, 2006... The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), some of whose members took money from Microsoft to resolve their legal issues, filed a formal new complaint against the Evil Empire with the European Commission on Wednesday, hitting at...

Tangent antitrust suit against Microsoft cites documentation.
March 6, 2006... California box maker and Microsoft Certified Partner Tangent Computers Inc has filed a private antitrust suit against Microsoft in the Northern District of California claiming it was forced to overpay for Windows. It says Microsoft raised the...

Microsoft to try divide & conquer approach.
March 6, 2006... Microsoft--prematurely, mind--posted some marketing information about its precious Vista operating system on the web the other day and--before it was removed--it was discovered that Microsoft is segmentation-happy and that there are going to be...

IDC says servers are slowing.
March 6, 2006... The server market was flat to a tad down in the fourth quarter according to IDC's latest batch of numbers, which put its value of $14.5 billion, down 0.2% year-over-year. The top five vendors were still the same. HP and Dell and IBM, to a...

Sun says Java's gonna be simpler now.
March 6, 2006... Sun has released preview versions of its Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 SDK and NetBeans Enterprise Pack 5.5 software intended for building and deploying Web Services and SOA-ready applications. Sun describes the Java widgetry as a...

AMD-Lenovo team break out of China.
March 6, 2006... Lenovo is going to put AMD Athlon 64 or Sempron chips in a new line of XP-bearing professional desktops and sell the Lenovo 3000 J105 to SMEs worldwide for the first time. Half the desktops Lenovo currently sells in China are reportedly...

IBM brings Microsoft, Sun & HP into SCO suit; SCO wants to involve Intel & the Open Group.
March 6, 2006... Groklaw is beside itself at the prospect of IBM--which is defending itself against SCO's $5 billion Linux lawsuit--subpoenaing Microsoft, HP, Sun and BayStar, taking their depositions and getting documents related to their dealings with...

Huh-oh, there could be trouble in river city.
March 6, 2006... Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and the other big web businesses better pray that Linux and any other Linux code that they're dependent on never falls under the proposed GPL 3 rewrite according to a piece by Australian software engineer Tony Healy,...

MySQL buys Netfrastructure; may recompense it for the Oracle-Poached InnoDB.(MySQL AB acquires Netfrastructure Inc. and appoints Jim Starkey and Taneli Otala )
March 6, 2006... MySQL has bought little Netfrastructure and its chief, relational database pioneer Jim Starkey, the guy who designed DEC's relational database architecture and then wrote the InterBase RDBMS that Borland is now trying to sell, is going to work...

Sun buys Aduva.
March 6, 2006... Sun has added to its string of start-up acquisitions by buying Israeli-based Aduva and its automated patch and dependency management technology, a pain reliever that currently embraces both Linux and Solaris servers. No price was mentioned but...

Ex-Massachusetts CIO does Europe.
March 6, 2006... Ex-Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn was in Brussels the other week on Open Forum Europe's nickel, the kind of junket that got him into trouble when he was in office, breakfasting with members of the European Parliament, European Commission...

Google bound?
March 6, 2006... Rumor has it that Dan Nault, the guy who's overseen Microsoft IP, licensing, acquisitions and business development for, ooh, a long time, has lost his 300- to 400-man staff and is down to a single admin, reportedly because he's a friend of...

OMG to work on ODBMS standards.(Object Management Group Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2006... The Object Management Group has acquired the rights to develop new fourth-generation standards based on the work of the disbanded Object Data Management Group (ODMG), which issued its last ODMG 3.0 standard in 2001, and has set up an Object...

Woodcrest coming in Q3.
March 6, 2006... There's unlikely to be much hard news at the Intel Developer Forum March 7-9. However, given the competition with AMD, Intel is likely to disclose that Woodcrest, the Xeon chip that's supposed to re-establish Intel's benchmark leadership, will...

It's hard being all things to all people.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2006... Okay, there's an updated test version of Vista out and about with businesses so the operating system isn't mistaken for a consumer release even if the consumer is expected to be the first to adopt the thing. Microsoft is now reinforcing the...

Linux gets a room of its own.
March 6, 2006... By the end of March the Korean government is going to pick a city--and a university--and make Linux predominate there. According to the Korea Times, they're supposed to be test beds supported by Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC)...

The six percent solution.
March 6, 2006... You have of course heard that we're not going to be treated to the spectacle of a proxy fight for control of Time Warner this spring or see it divided into four parts. Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons and disgruntled stockholder Carl Icahn, the...

e-Boks pushes new paid archive service.
March 13, 2006... This past Monday Post Danmark's minority owned e-Boks operation started pushing a new advanced version of the five-year-old classical Danish electronic mailbox-cum-archive now used by some 810,000 people, roughly 15% of the total population,...

Emirates Post & Iran Post to cooperate.
March 13, 2006... The Emirates Post has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iran Post to cooperate on IT, parcel delivery and mail hub services and a separate MOU with the Post Bank of Iran to promote money transfers between the two countries. ...

AOL answers its e-mail tax critics.(America Online Inc.)(Brief article)
March 13, 2006... In an answer to sharp criticism about its plan, and Yahoo's, to charge for bulk e-mail sent to its members, AOL has said it will pick up the tab for non-profits. AOL said they will be offered two new options that possess many of the...

The future belongs to chip-less RFID tags: IDTechEx.
March 13, 2006... RFID tags that don't contain a silicon chip are called chipless tags. The most promising ones may eventually be printed directly on products and packaging for a tenth of a cent and replace 10 trillion barcodes a year with something far more...

Posts & couriers: the big RFID players.
March 13, 2006... Research and Markets is peddling a new report on "RFID for the Postal and Courier Service" that estimates that the global postal market for RFID systems, including tags, will be worth $3 billion in 10 years. It could be much bigger if current...

BEA shows off RFID products.
March 13, 2006... Leveraging its recent acquisition of ConnecTerra, BEA Systems has been showing off a new standards-based WebLogic RFID Edge Server infrastructure software product designed to help companies develop, deploy and manage RFID-enabled business...

Correos deals with the 'digital divide'.(Correos y Telegrafos)(Brief article)
March 13, 2006... Correos, the Spanish post office, says that its online services will be accessible though a network of 30,000 "Telecentros" terminals distributed by municipalities throughout Spain for the benefit of some five million people living in more...

PB figures the mailstream will still butter its bread.(Pitney Bowes Inc.)(Brief article)
March 13, 2006... Despite declining mail volumes, Pitney Bowes, the great mail giant, says its strategy is to continue to expand in the global mailstream market, particularly high-growth segments. The company defines the mailstream market to include data,...

Xequte upgrades MailList King.
March 13, 2006... New Zealand-based Xequte Software has released a major upgrade for its mailing list management software, MailList King, which is supposed to bring the functionality of a mailing list server to a PC. The company says rev 6 is the most...

Network issues blamed for USPS glitch.
March 13, 2006... Network issues were blamed for causing delays and limiting service at nearly 2,000 American post offices for a few hours last Thursday. The USPS said it involved the NCR equipment that processes credit cards and weighs mail. NCR has installed...

Microsoft calls the EC a dirty name.
March 13, 2006... Microsoft promised the European Commission that things would get ugly if it persists in harrying the world's largest software company. The pair has traded blows again. Microsoft accused the EC of being biased, colluding with its...

Oracle to muscle into search.
March 13, 2006... Larry Ellison isn't about to let Eric Schmidt and his kid bosses lap up all that rich search gravy or hand over the leftovers to Microsoft and Yahoo. From OracleWorld in Tokyo, he announced that Oracle is going to elbow its way into search...

Google scares the Bejesus out of its investors.
March 13, 2006... You have of course heard by now how Google CFO George Reyes apparently put his foot in his mouth at a Merrill Lynch conference precipitating a run on the stock and an intra-day 13% crash to $338.51 on fears that Google will slow and that it has...

Microsoft broadens Live Expo beta.
March 13, 2006... Microsoft said Tuesday has released a national US beta of Windows Live Expo, opening up its previously closed beta. The widgetry includes classified ads that are "geo-tagged" by ZIP code, not city, specifically defining where the product...

Corel gets into Lenovo's act.
March 13, 2006... Well, it seems that Lenovo, despite it's increasing Chinese face, has inherited some of IBM distaste for Microsoft and is going to bundle Corel's Small Business Center software with the new China-created, Thinkpad-inspired, Lenovo-branded line...

Oracle freebie goes gold.(Brief article)
March 13, 2006... Oracle's freebie starter kit Database 10g Express Edition has gone GA. It was in beta since October on both 32-bit Windows and Linux distributions like Red Hat and Novell. It's designed to run on uniprocessors with up to 4 gigs of user data and...

IBM brings new meaning to the expression 'cat & mouse game'.
March 13, 2006... IBM is taking another shot at Microsoft from behind the cover of open source this time targeting Microsoft's upcoming Passport-replacing Active Directory-based proprietary InfoCard identity management widgetry. IBM, Novell and a...

About that new user interface ...(Microsoft Corp. on its new user interface)(Brief article)
March 13, 2006... Office automation doyenne Amy Wahl remarks that Microsoft could be taking its life in its hands by changing the user interface on the upcoming Office 12, now restyled Office 2007. She says that when an established product is overhauled like...

Western Union pushes e-bills.
March 20, 2006... Western Union Financial Services Inc announced that it will now offer an e-billing option from Striata, the e-payment and bill presentment house, that eliminates steps previously used when paying a bill online and reduces the time consumers...

DHL & IBM show off RFID widgetry.
March 20, 2006... DHL unveiled the radio frequency identification (RFID) pilot project that it's developing with IBM at CeBit. They demonstrated how the use of RFID-tagged packages can improve tracking and security. The pilot is the first example of the "DHL...

SPI buys MDS.
March 20, 2006... Swiss Post International (SPI), the international business arm of the Swiss Post, has acquired Media Data Services AG (MDS). The post says MDS, five years old and based in Kriens, is specialized in professional subscription management for...

Tumbleweed's VA & DV certified for federal agencies.
March 20, 2006... Tumbleweed Communications Corporation, the provider of e-mail security, file transfer security and identity validation solutions, says that the Federal Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Policy Authority's Path Discovery and Validation (PD-Val)...

FedEx enhances its online shipping tools.
March 20, 2006... FedEx says it has significantly upgraded its Global Trade Manager, the free online resource designed to help small and medium-sized businesses reduce the complexities of shipping internationally, and FedEx Ship Manager at fedex.com, the online...

Wincor Nixdorf joins the RFID/EPC global implementation network of GS1 Germany.
March 20, 2006... Wincor Nixdorf has become a full member of the worldwide RFID/EPC global network to help shape the standardization of Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID) and the Electronic Product Code (EPC). Wincor Nixdorf, a supplier of IT...

UPS pushes its jet fleet into the digital information age.
March 20, 2006... UPS says it's going to retrofit much of its jet fleet with a computerized display system to improve safety in the air and on the ground while saving fuel. The company says it thinks the retrofit program is the first of its kind attempted...

DHL implementing route optimization.
March 20, 2006... DHL, which is hurting in the states, has kicked off a new software-based route optimization initiative to help its facilities map out optimum delivery routes, streamline sorting processes and balance daily loads better. The program will be...

Google buys web word processor.
March 20, 2006... If you listen carefully you can hear Google making like a snapping turtle around raw hamburger. Microsoft, of course, being the provocative hamburger. Google has bought a little four-person company called Upstartle LLC that got started in...

Microsoft & EC trade more punches.
March 20, 2006... After Microsoft accused the European Commission of colluding with its worse enemies and sitting on the proof, it took its claims to US federal courts in New York, Massachusetts and California and asked them to compel IBM, Novell, Oracle and Sun...

Made-in-India bug bites IBM bad--leaves welts elsewhere.
March 20, 2006... Well, it appears that IBM is going to move the design and development of all its vaunted consulting software--the stuff it depended on to get it out of the hole it got into a year ago--to Bangalore, that...

ODF wing turns evangelical.
March 20, 2006... There is now an OpenDocument Format Alliance--composed of all the usual suspects--like Sun, IBM, Novell, Oracle and Red Hat plus about 30 other entities like the American Library Association--that intends to push the luck that ODF had with the...

HP stockholders want Carly to return her golden parachute.
March 20, 2006... The prize for the most popular lawsuit lately has got to go to the 31-page class action-in-waiting that institutional stockholders Indiana Electrical Workers Pension Trust Fund and the SEIU Affiliates' Officers and Employees Pension Plan filed...

Intel unwraps its new core microarchitecture--and prays.
March 20, 2006... Intel has started unwrapping more of its next-generation Core microarchitecture, the multi-core Pentium M-based widgetry that's supposed to contribute to its ultimate salvation, but hasn't had a name until now. Intel is depending on the thing...

Google accused of ripping off GDrive idea.(Google Inc.)
March 20, 2006... Guidance-shy Google has confessed to the SEC that it accidentally made its first "non-projection" projection and posted a PowerPoint slide on its investor web site during its analysts meeting--a slide it didn't show to the assembled...

Google evidently needs its Feng Shui adjusted.(Google Inc.)(Brief article)
March 20, 2006... Google's vaunted aura looks like it needs some adjusting. Lately it's been arm wrestling with the Justice Department, collaborating with the Communist Chinese, putting its foot in its mouth on Wall Street, posting supposedly secret...

Salesforce.com packages up another offer.(Salesforce.com Inc. introduces Unlimited Edition)(Brief article)
March 20, 2006... Salesforce.com has launched a new service for large enterprises called Unlimited Edition, an offer to support any number of applications that customers acquire via its AppExchange platform and throws in increased storage and additional...

Microsoft buys Alohabob.
March 20, 2006... In the name of Windows, Microsoft has bought Apptimum Inc, a little Florida-based company whose Alohabob PC Relocator products automatically transfer applications from one machine to another, particularly new machines. Terms were not disclosed....

VMware & M'soft back VT; Intel moves to VT-d.
March 20, 2006... Intel turned up at its Developer Forum with its next-generation virtualization in tow. It's called VT-d or Intel Virtualization for Directed I/O, described as providing hardware assistance in assigning I/O devices to virtual machines to...

IBM & Cognos strike SOA alliance.
March 20, 2006... IBM has struck a new expanded non-exclusive three-year strategic alliance with Cognos on the business processes front that now involves joint development, marketing and sales of SOA-based solutions so customers can optimize their analytics...

Microsoft eats greens.
March 20, 2006... Microsoft has acquired the iSCSI technical assets and IP of one String Bean Software for Windows Storage Server 2003 so direct OEMs can build hybrid NAS and iSCSI appliances. Fujitsu Siemens already had a deal with String Bean for its iSCSI...

AMD tries to spook Intel.
March 20, 2006... On the eve of Intel's Developer Forum, AMD trotted out three new dual-core Opterons including an eight-way 885 that'll put 16 cores in a server, the two-way 285 that'll put four cores in a server and the one-way 185, the only one of the three...

Novell previews new Linux desktop.
March 20, 2006... Novell, as it said it would, unveiled its SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop at CeBit, the successor to the Novell Linux Desktop 3. It thinks that it's now positioned to serve the proverbial sweet spot of the market, the general office worker. ...

Scooter watch.(Scott McNealy of Sun )(Brief article)
March 20, 2006... According to an open e-mail posted on Sun's site a few days ago, Sun CEO Sun Scott McNealy has proposed to HP CEO Mark Hurd that they converge HP-UX and Solaris and combine their resources and developer communities. See...

Microsoft to Linux: 'be afraid, be very afraid'.
March 20, 2006... Microsoft the other day announced that it had gotten its 5,000th US patent, remarking in the process that these patents make it possible for Microsoft to license its technology and that it's following the example of IBM, which has some 25,000...

On to 100 cores.
March 20, 2006... Intel says it has started to formally research how to get 10-100 cores on a die, how to develop the multithreaded software to support it, how to get around problems like all those threads converging on the same bit of memory at once and how to...

Open but not open.(America Online Inc.)(Brief article)
March 20, 2006... AOL has created a thing called Open AIM, a free developer's kit for creating plug-ins and third-party applications that connect to its instant messaging client--basically access to the Triton API, AOL's new IM client--but they're not allowed to...