Monday, April 22, 2002		Latest in IT world

Verdict on ‘immorality’

A man who ran up € 3,000 ($2,600) bill in phone sex calls in a month cannot accuse his mobile phone provider of immorality and thus refuse to pay up, a German appeals court ruled last week. The man sued his mobile phone provider, arguing that phone sex is immoral and thus he should not have to pay for it, but the Munich court threw out his case, Reuters reports. "The contract for telephone use is not subject to immorality," the court said in a statement. "It is contradictory to make expensive, immoral phone sex calls first and then refuse to pay the bill."

IMs not private

The nature of instant messaging could change drastically. Those who use it compare the spectre of being spied on to someone tapping their phone conversations, AP reports. Sonalysts, which uses software developed by Vericept, is ahead of most of its peers in logging and monitoring instant messages but, over the last several months, many firms are discovering that instant messaging - once the province of chatty teenagers - has invaded the workplace. Jupiter Media Metrix says more than 15.6 million people send instant messages at work. Free services like America Online's Instant Messenger give companies the most grief, because they are not designed to be controlled by anyone but end users. Some firms and government offices have simply banned the software. Others have invested in systems that run from central servers. Still others rely on free systems and have installed software that intercepts messages.

AOL dumps MS browser

AOL Time Warner Inc. told Reuters last week that the latest version of its discount Internet service, CompuServe, is using browser technology by its Netscape unit, instead of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer. An AOL spokesperson said the company has not yet decided whether the next version of its flagship AOL service, due out in autumn, will continue to use Microsoft's browser or switch to the Gecko browser technology used by Netscape. Industry analysts following twisted relationship between AOL and Microsoft said AOL's decision to use Netscape in its CompuServe service was a "big deal." AOL still uses the Microsoft browser in its AOL service, with 34 million members worldwide.

Railway project

Coral Telecom, a company with a major presence in the telecom equipment-manufacturing sector in India and abroad, has recently bagged prestigious projects from Indian Railways. This project is spread across Northern, Southern and Western Railways with an estimated value of Rs. 7crores. The project for Northern Railways consists of commissioning of EPABX’s with 2,500 lines capacity at three of the most prestigious locations of the Indian Railways. Coral Telecom also achieved a technological breakthrough in Western Railways by installing 23 exchanges with a total capacity of 3,000 ports.

.us domain names

CWSTeam.com, a Chandigarh based company, announced the introduction of .us domain names by opening it’s registration and availability. This top-level domain (TLD) will give corporate and individuals a fresh opportunity to build online presence using names that may not be available in the .com, .net or .org TLD segments. The .us classification on the Internet will make it easier for customers to access information, according to the company press release. Domain names under this newly introduced TLD segment can be initially registered for a period of 1-10 years. This is being made open to the public for the first time starting April 24. Earlier, registration of this Domain TLD was open only to Trademark Owners in the United States of America.