US Commerce Secretary William Daley has warned that a draft EU law allowing disgruntled online shoppers to sue foreign companies in their own national courts could have a "chilling" effect on online trade. The draft could be ratified by December, despite opposition from Internet businesses. Currently, people who buy products online can only sue in the country where the vendor is based, but if the offending company's website can be accessed in the EU, it could find itself facing lawsuits in any one of the member countries if the draft becomes law.
HIGH COST OF GOING WEST: Irish high-tech companies serious about entering the US market require a minimum marketing budget of between $1.5 and $6 million a year, said Mary Cryan, chief executive of the marketing company Cryan Consulting, at the launch of her book The New Pioneers - Build- ing a Winning Company in the US High-Tech Market. She also warned that the market would not consider a company credible unless it established a US office.
NO GO AREA: The Chinese government is to enforce its ban on foreign investment in operating Internet and other telecommunication services - one of China's fastest-growing industries. The Minister of Information Industry, Wu Jichuan, said last week that since 1993, Chinese regulations "clearly stipulated that no foreign investment is allowed in the operation of telecoms networks and services". However, China has until now not actively enforced the regulations.
LOAN GUNMEN STRIKE: Computer hackers vandalised the sites for Nasdaq and the American Stock Exchange in an electronic affront to the world's financial markets. The group, calling itself "United Loan Gunmen", infiltrated the financial servers but were unable to manipulate any data within the exchanges. They have also claimed responsibility for recent attacks against ABC and C-SPAN, as well as the site run by gossip columnist Matt Drudge.
TRAVEL WITH CARE: The US has advised its citizens that they could run into Y2K problems in countries including Brazil, China, India, Russia and the Ukraine at year's end. In updating travel advice for 196 countries and territories, however, the State Department stopped short of saying that any particular country might be unsafe to visit. Ireland is described as being "generally prepared to deal with Y2K-generated disruptions, having made progress on remediating Y2K problems and developing contingency plans". Japan and Germany are also considered to be well prepared, while Italy received a could-dobetter report.
DON'T TRAVEL: American Airlines is to cut 20 per cent of its New Year's Eve flights due to low bookings over the period. The company said that it had spent $220 million on Y2K testing and was confident that its systems would work correctly. Bookings indicated that people wanted to spend the holiday on the ground, however.
THINKING LINUX: IBM officials have heralded the company's ThinkPad 600 as the first laptop certified to run Red Hat Linux. The move keeps IBM one step ahead of Dell, which recently announced its plans to put Linux on its Inspiron laptop line by the end of the year.
AND THE WINNER IS? The Irish Software Association is looking for nominations for this year's Software Industry Awards, which will be presented at a function in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin, on November 12th. Categories include Company of the Year, Innovation Achievement and New Company of the Year. The deadline for the awards, which are open to non-members as well as members of the ISA, is October 8th. Details are available from Katherine Lucey, isa@ibec.ie, or 01-605 1582.
ONLINE SHOPPING ON THE UP: A new survey by Which? Online suggests that online shopping has doubled in Britain over the past year. The survey of 2,000 people found that consumer confidence about shopping online increased the longer they had been using the Web. Fifty-eight per cent of those who had been online for more than two years had purchased something, compared to only a quarter of those using it for less than a year. It is estimated that 10 million people are now using the Net in Britain, but 40 per cent of the adult population say they have no intention of ever going online, the survey found.
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: European small businesses are failing to take advantage of the international opportunities the Internet affords them, according to research by Compaq and Novell. The research shows that while over half of the 1,035 small companies interviewed have a website selling on a global basis only 42 per cent currently conduct business outside the borders of their own country.
OPENING UP ENCRYPTION: The US is to relax controls on the export of data encryption technology, a step long sought by the computer industry but resisted by law enforcement officials. White House spokeswoman Nanda Chitre said the move, which affects both software and hardware, was intended to benefit the economy, preserve privacy, serve the national security interest and protect law enforcement capabilities.
CONTROL ALT: The Millennium Group, an Irish-owned provider of e-commerce, euro and Y2K software, has completed the acquisition of Dublin based Anna Livia Technologies (ALT) for £2.3 million. ALT also specialises in the e-commerce area, developing advanced databases for use across networks.
Y2K BOTTLENECKS: The US Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, has warned of a risk of bottlenecks in the US economy resulting from the fear of the Y2K bug, but said widespread disruption was unlikely. Speaking before the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, Greenspan said he was confident that the risk of any widespread breakdown to critical business infrastructure from Y2K was "negligible".
DREAMCAST DELAYS: Sega says that its Dreamcast Network will not support online gaming until the second half of 2000. But it will offer functions such as Web browsing, chat and email by the end of the year and support online mini-games like board, puzzle and card games by the spring, the company said.
IN BRIEF...Hewlett-Packard has announced the availability of the HP CapShare 920 handheld e-copier, which electronically captures paper documents, flip charts and graphics. . . Microsoft plans to buy Visio for $1.3 billion in stock, with each Visio share to be exchanged for 0.45 Microsoft shares. . . A US federal court has dismissed a lawsuit by Xerox against Hewlett-Packard, ending one of five technology-related lawsuits between the two companies. . . Shannonsoft and Beckinridge Technology Training have joined forces to bring an export sales development programme, specific to the software industry, to the Shannon Region. . . Adobe Systems has continued its explosive comeback, beating analysts' forecasts for third-quarter earnings by 19 percent and announcing a two-for-one stock split. . .