ePostal News articles from May 2004

ePostal News archives from May 2004

DigiStamp-USPS Fight over E-Postmark Heats Up.(Electronic Postmark service case)(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... DigiStamp has asked the Postal Rates Commission (PRC) to hold hearings as to whether, as it claims, the US Postal Service's Electronic Postmark service is anticompetitive and illegal and should therefore be discontinued. DigiStamp CEO Rick...

Stampit Home Version Coming.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... Deutsche Post will put out another version of its Stampit PC postage service on Monday, May 10. Dubbed Stampit Home, the new kit is targeted at private users and businesses with low mail volumes. Stampit Home includes the basic PC...

Pitney Debuts New Cost-Cutting Enterprise Mail Manager.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... Pitney Bowes has launched a new application for managing enterprise mailing operations. Dubbed Business Manager, the program is meant to let operations manage their mailing operations better by consolidating information from local and...

Yahoo's Small Biz Site Will Use UPS Shipping Tools.(UPS online shipping tools)(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... UPS has teamed up with Yahoo to integrate a suite of UPS online shipping tools into Yahoo's Small Business web site, which provides services such as web hosting and online credit card processing. The tools are supposed to give merchants...

Google Begs Microsoft To Make It Road Kill.
May 10, 2004... Google has waved a $2.7 billion red flag under Microsoft's nose. Anybody in a market that Microsoft wants to enter that files for a $2.7 billion IPO is asking to be treated the way Hitler treated Poland. Google's S-1 filing indicates...

A Chicken in Every Pot, A Broadband Connection in Every Home.
May 10, 2004... In an election speech to the American Association of Community Colleges convention in Minnesota, President George Bush elevated universal broadband to a national goal by calling for every home to have a high-speed Internet connection by 2007....

Yahoo, MSN Messenger Services Get More Content.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... Remember the old days -- five, six years ago -- when web sites such as Yahoo, Lycos and Excite started trying to squeeze as much content as possible on their sites to keep the "eyeballs" from leaving? Apparently, the battle for eyeballs has now...

America Online's Off Life Support, Breathing Again.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... As part of its Q1 financials, Time Warner reported that America Online had better-than-expected results: - The rate of defections among its dial-up subscriber slowed. It only lost 237,000 in the quarter. - It has more than three million...

AusPost Inks Deal with Online DVD Start-up.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... Australia Post has cut a deal with local Internet-based DVD home delivery service Homescreen Entertainment to provide distribution services for the start-up. Founded in November, Homescreen users can borrow an unlimited number of DVDs for...

Dell Says Proprietary Systems Might As Well Lay Down & Die.(Brief Article)
May 10, 2004... Dell CEO Michael Dell, who says tech spending is improving, climbed on a stage in New York last week claiming that his proprietary RISC rivals might as well roll over because the industry is at another one of those world famous inflection...

La Poste Slashes Broadband, Dial-up Net Access Fees.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... French postal operator La Poste is cutting its Internet access rates in a bid to compete more effectively with strong rivals such as France Telecom's Wanadoo service. The move is also intended to increase the subscriber base of the La...

BCE Emergis Kills Standalone E-Invoice.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... Canadian e-business outfit BCE Emergis is dropping the development of its standalone e-invoicing product. BCE said demand for electronic invoice presentment and payment products was less than anticipated and that customers were buying...

AOL Rumor Central: Microsoft and Yahoo on the Prowl.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... An unconfirmed report out of the UK has Microsoft and Yahoo each negotiating to buy AOL from Time Warner. The theory is that either could combine its portal operation with AOL and cut out a lot of operating cost. The New York Daily News claimed...

Millionth SmartStamp Printed.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... The UK's Royal Mail brags that the millionth SmartStamp was printed recently. Launched in January, the SmartStamp system lets people buy postage on the Internet and print it directly on envelopes or sticky labels. Businesses can print a...

Broadband on the Agenda.
May 17, 2004... The National Cable & Telecommunications Association's annual show convened in New Orleans last week with one thought uppermost in its mind. Broadband. Internet telephony and new content networks crept into some agendas but it was...

Mobile Content Consumers Willing To Pay More.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... Mobile phone leader Nokia commissioned a study to get a feel for the future of mobile content services. The survey, conducted by market researcher NOP World, found that people want content and information that's useful while they're on the go...

Deutsche Post To Float Postbank.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... Deutsche Post plans to IPO its Postbank subsidiary in June. Postbank is Germany's largest retail bank with about 11.5 million customers. The plan is to sell off one share short of 50% of the bank's equity. Deutsche Post expects to...

Proximus To Kick Off E-Invoices.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... Belgian mobile telecommunications service provider Proximus has teamed up with Certipost to offer e-bills to companies that want to integrate Proximus invoices automatically into their accounting systems. The invoices are encrypted and...

Microsoft's Capitalism Extends to Unix.
May 17, 2004... Microsoft wants to staunch the flood of spam swamping the mailboxes of its MSN and Hotmail subscribers as much as the next guy, but card-carrying capitalist that it is, it doesn't want to restrict free enterprise either. Even if it means using...

Microsoft Swears Longhorn Server Will Beta Next Year Too.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... The on-again off-again Longhorn server is supposed to beta next year, according to what Microsoft group VP Jim Allchin said at WinHEC. Apparently it's now being built in sync with the Longhorn client operating system. Evidently...

Tom Siebel Vacates Executive Suite; Exit Impacts IBM.(Brief Article)
May 17, 2004... Siebel founder and CEO Tom Siebel has stepped down and will be the company's non-executive chairman. He has brought in IBM senior VP and head of worldwide sales and distribution J Michael Lawrie, 50, to replace him. Lawrie's departure from...

Finland Post Faces Tough Slog with Digital Mailbox.(digital mailbox service )
May 24, 2004... Finland Post is scaling down expectations for its Netposti digital mailbox service and has discontinued some of the value-added services surrounding it. Netposti, which debuted in January 2001, lets consumers specify what mail they want to...

Smart Online To Peddle Pitney Meters.(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... Smart Online plans to offer small businesses Pitney Bowes' Personal Post postage meter and scale on its portal. The first 60 days the meter will be free. It will then rent for $19.75 a month on a 12-month contract.

Deutsche Post Frontrunner for Stake in Austria Post.(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... Deutsche Post is seen as the frontrunner in the race to pick up a stake in the Austria Post, when it is partially privatized. The Austrian privatization agency Osterreiche Industrieholding is expected to approve partial privatization in June....

Deutsche Post, eBay Ink Pact.(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... Deutsche Post has signed a deal with eBay that'll make the post eBay's preferred logistics partner. The arrangement integrates the post's dispatch services into the auction site to make it easier for buyers and sellers to complete their...

Singapore Post Debuts New Service.(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... Singapore Post has introduced a new service that will let users make online requests to transfer registered mail to another post office. Users will also be able to ask the post electronically to redeliver an article to the same address.

Gartner Tells Fortune 1000s Their Data Stinks.(Fortune 1000s)(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... According to Gartner, upwards of 25% of the critical data used in Fortune 1000s to make important decisions is inaccurate and will continue to be inaccurate or incomplete through 2007. It's unclear how Gartner comes to that Pollyanna-ish...

Biggest US Broadband Increase Ever, 2.3m in Q1.
May 24, 2004... Broadband ISPs started the year with a bang, adding 2.3 million new subscribers in Q1. That's the biggest quarterly increase ever, according to the Leichtman Research Group whose study covers the 20 largest DSL and cable modem broadband service...

Nortel CTO: Telcos Will Have To Increase Broadband Speeds.(Greg Mumford forecast)(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... The cable companies will force the phone companies to boost their DSL broadband speeds up to 20 Mbps to deliver video to consumers, Nortel Networks CTO Greg Mumford said in London at a product launch. He forecasts that content and services...

Web Services Starts To Look Like a Keeper.(forecasts)(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... IDC says demand for professional services for web services is rising. Firms are reporting significant increases in the number of projects, project complexity and penetration of web services in their everyday service activities. ...

Google Beneficiaries.(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... In the run-up to the great Google auction, Heidrick & Struggles, the chi-chi headhunter that recruited CEO Eric Schmidt for Google, has warrants that it can exchange for 1.19 million shares of Google for 30 cents apiece. That would work...

Microsoft Bounty Outs Sasser Author; Agobot Creator Nailed.
May 24, 2004... The vandal who wrote the Sasser worm was ratted out by his buddies thanks to the lure of the $250,000 bounty Microsoft had on his head. It turned out to be a withdrawn 18-year-old in Germany, who also appears to be responsible for the Netsky...

SAP, Microsoft Ink Broader Partnership.(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... At SAP's annual Sapphire user conference the other day, SAP and Microsoft announced plans for deeper integration between .NET and the SAP NetWeaver platform and described web services as their common denominator. A closer relationship is...

A Word to the Wise.(Brief Article)
May 24, 2004... For about 15 years, Fred Hickey has written the monthly "High-Tech Strategist" newsletter on investing in technology companies and lately he's been very bearish. "Government policies worldwide have been overly stimulative and have...

Post Danmark Extends Electronic Post Office.
May 31, 2004... Post Danmark is expanding its ePosthuset electronic post office. Launched last August, ePosthuset lets people decide how they want their mail. They can get all or part of it electronically and the rest conventionally. The e-mail currently...

Royal Mail Deploys Content Administration App.(Content Administration to help Royal Mail Group in simplifying its web content creation process)
May 31, 2004... The Royal Mail has gone live with ATG's Content Administration program for managing the content for its self-service e-commerce and other apps. Content Administration, which runs on top of the Royal Mail's existing ATG-powered e-business...

Transend To Peddle Escher Products.(Escher Group Ltd. signed a distribution agreement with New Zealand Post's subsidiary Transend)(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... The New Zealand Post's consulting subsidiary Transend has inked an agreement with the Escher Group to distribute and support Escher's products. Transend will be designated an Escher Preferred Distributor. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based...

Click-N-Ship Reaches Milestone.(United States. Postal Service shipping label printing service)(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... The US Postal Service's Click-N-ship online service has reached a milestone: a customer recently printed the 100 millionth Click-N-Ship label. Click-N-Ship lets people print shipping labels with the right postage from the post's web site....

AuthentiDate Lands John Deere E-Bill Deal.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... AuthentiDate International has signed a five-year deal to provide the big agricultural and construction equipment maker John Deere Central Services in Mannheim, Germany with eBilling Signature products. The arrangement will let Deere...

Escher Lands Mauritius Post Contract.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... The Mauritius Post has picked the Escher Group's WebRiposte and Essential products to automate its counter network. The post expects the new gear will meet its current needs and help it to generate additional revenues. "Escher...

Postbank May Raise $3.63b.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... Postbank, Deutsche Post's banking unit, expects to raise $3.63 billion in its upcoming IPO, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which quoted unnamed banking sources. The bank plans to sell one share short of 50% of its equity.

Google Thumbs its Nose at Microsoft.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... Google is getting ready to introduce a mechanism to search files stored on a PC just like the functionality Microsoft is supposed to be working on for the delayed Longhorn operating system, now due -- if Microsoft is lucky -- in mid-'06,...

Media-Savvy Consumers Present a 'Moving Target'.
May 31, 2004... Media-savvy consumers -- those with broadband Internet connections, DVD players and burners and MP3 players -- tend to experiment with new gadgets and media formats, and may well have a significant impact on how media vendors do business...

European Broadband Content To Hit $2.15b.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... The value of content sold over broadband will reach 1.8 billion euros ($2.15 billion) in Europe in 2007 according to Screen Digest. Only 24 million euros ($28.8 million) were reportedly spent on broadband content in 2003. Key predictions in...

Microsoft Contemplates Commerce Server "2006".(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... Microsoft has put out a feature pack for Commerce Server 2002 and is starting to talk up the next version scheduled for early '06. The next version will focus on connecting online order management with other business applications and...

Oracle-PeopleSoft Bid: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... For the third time in its quixotic 11-month pursuit of PeopleSoft, Oracle has changed its bid, this time cutting it $1.7 billion from $9.4 billion to $7.7 billion, it said, because PeopleSoft has been trading below $18 a share for the last...

HP Reports Robust Q2 Results.
May 31, 2004... Hewlett-Packard reported strong second-quarter results with profits rising 34% year-over-year and revenues up 12%. For the April quarter, HP earned $884 million, or 29 cents a share, on revenues of $20.11 billion. In the same quarter last year,...

Spam Hits All-time High in April.(Brief Article)
May 31, 2004... Spam, virus and hackers, if left unchecked by those who run the Internet, will destroy any chance of using the net to deliver entertainment by broadband connections to the home. Consumers won't abide having to reboot their TV, their home...