Irish third-level students are to get direct access to over 8,400 academic journals through an agreement between HEAnet and the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). This will provide ISI's Web of Science Internet-based service to third-level institutions.
HEAnet says that the online availability of information will replace the costly and limited CD-Rom format and will ensure currency, remote accessibility and greater efficiency in information searching.
Opening Up The Orchard: Apple has become the first major company to release the programming secrets behind an operating system to software developers through its plan to give free access to the source code of parts of its just-released operating system software for network servers. Apple said the move, part of the "open source" movement fuelled by the emergence of Linux, will hopefully get more developers interested in its Mac OS server software.
Opening The Door: The US government said that Intel promised, as part of its second recent antitrust settlement last week, to share important technical details with other companies about its computer chips, except in rare circumstances. In a significant legal victory for Intel, however, the government did not require the company to acknowledge that it holds monopoly power over the microprocessor market. Intel's inside roughly 85 per cent of the world's PCs.
Belgian Invasion: Norkom Technologies has announced the opening of a European office in Belgium and a new European subsidiary company, Norkom Technologies NV. Norkom, established in Dublin last year,is a business intelligence consulting and research company.
Web As You Walk: Motorola has announced plans to move to Internet access for all its digital wireless devices by the end of 2000 and make all its digital phones wireless application protocol (WAP) compliant. A spokesperson for the company expects the first WAP-compliant Motorola GSM phones capable of Internet browsing to be available by the end of this year. The phones are likely to use Symbian's EPOC operating system.
Portals Mushroom: East Telecom has established an electronic publishing division in an effort to become a key player in the increasingly competitive Irish Internet portal market. The electronic publishing team aims to establish a prominent online presence in conjunction with, as yet unspecified, media and technology partners.
Euro Working: Compaq Services has developed a portfolio of services to assist customers adapt business applications to the euro. EuroWorks includes a euro currency solution strategy based on a three-year transition period in line with the business integration of the euro and enables customers to trade in the euro without changing their systems and applications.
All Points: Over the last year Kompass Ireland, www.kompass.ie, saw a 167 per cent increase in businesses with a Web presence and a 67 per cent increase in companies with business email addresses. The information was taken from the comprehensive database of 22,000 businesses registered in the Kompass online directory.
Net Gymnastics: An application developed to bring computer skills to the most remote schools in the country will form the centrepiece of the Siemens stand at the forthcoming Education Show in the RDS. Computer Gym is a mobile computer lab and software library, has full Net access, heating and is wheelchair accessible. The mobile unit, consisting of five trucks, each equipped with eight PCs and a server, calls to schools at an agreed time each week and over a 12-week period children can hone their computer skills.
In Brief...Intel has unveiled its Pentium III Xeon processor family extending the company's products further into e-commerce and high-end computing solutions. . . Dell has announced availability in Europe of the Intense3D Wildcat 4000 as the highend graphics option for Dell Precision WorkStations. . . Sun Microsystems and Symbian have announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding to incorporate Java as part of Symbian's standard EPOC platform solution. . .