Microsoft Web site to address Y2K problems
After years of customer frustration with Microsoft's inattention to the year 2000 problem and the impact the millennium crisis may have on its 9000-plus products, the software company finally announced plans to put a year 2000 resource centre on the World Wide Web by mid-March.
Microsoft's Year 2000 Resource Center will list information about which of the company's products are compliant, how the products handle dates and how to work around problems. It will also offer tools to help fix individual products.
Thirteen Australian multimedia developers have been selected to participate in Teltra's Broadband Developers Partnership. This Partnership is intended to allow developers, and their corporate customers, to develop, test and demonstrate their broadband applications real-time and online. The partners include MultiNet Interactive Web Consulting, Mainstreet Internet Services, Rhythm Media, HotHouse Interactive Productions, New Toys, TechTalk, Radiant Productions, WSA Holdings, IG Synergy, Clemengers Interactive, Creative Access, AAV Business Communications, and SAI Media.
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In a bid to fend off competition from increasingly powerful Windows NT-based desktop computers, Sun Microsystems unveiled two new lines of Unix workstations, with one system priced at $4900.
Sun's Darwin line, including the Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 computers, was designed to compete head-on with high-end PCs from Compaq Computer and others, the company said.
Public hearings called by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in Melbourne last month attempted to thrash out some of the problems associated with mobile phone towers.
In a significant about-face, a top Microsoft official has said the software giant will offer a direct migration path from existing Windows NT 3.51 servers to NT 5.0 when the new version of the operating system hits the streets late this year. Until now, Microsoft had said NT 3.51 users would first have to upgrade all of their servers to NT 4.0 before moving on to NT 5.0. That development angered the NT 3.51 user community, which at the beginning of 1997 comprised more than 70 per cent of the NT installed base.
Half of the Internet traffic originating in Australia will soon be routed via Bay Networks' routers, Bay officials claim. The Bay Backbone Concentrator Node routers are being purchased by Optus Communications to interface with its ATM network and route IP traffic for its commercial Internet services.
The Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA) has won a prestigious Smithsonian Bronze Medal for its visionary use of technology.
The Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History in Washington DC, recognised DEETYA's achievements in delivering such services as the Australian Job Search system.
Oracle's focus back from NCs to database
Oracle officials have confirmed that CEO Larry Ellison plans to tone down his network computer (NC) evangelising and pay more attention to the company's flagship database business. The move follows two straight quarters of single-digit growth in database sales for Oracle.