Monday, June 17, 2002		Latest in IT world

The man in charge of archiving and maintaining electronic copies of Norway's most important historical documents is dead and so is access to those archives. So the director of the Norwegian cultural centre is pleading for hackers to help him crack the centre's password-protected database, wired.com reports. The problem started when the technician responsible for the archives at Norway's National Centre of Language and Culture never divulged the password before he died a few years ago. Since then, employees at the centre have been unable to access some of the password-protected archives that contain data on a collection of thousands of documents and books. A national database that allowed researchers access to those documents is also partly inaccessible. So the centre director Ottar Grepstad sent out an appeal last week on a national radio broadcast, asking for hackers to help crack into the system and discover the programmer's password.

A study released by NFO WorldGroup shows that a significant number of Hong Kongers plan to place bets during the World Cup 2002 tournament. Among the 835 respondents surveyed, 12 per cent indicated definite plans to bet on the World Cup 2002 event, with another eight per cent indicating that they might do so. Sixteen per cent of the respondents had bet on soccer matches within the past year (compared with 33 per cent for horse-racing and 60 per cent for Mark Six). Among those who intended to place bets, 70 per cent said they would do so via the Internet. This is more than twice the number of those who plan to place bets with local syndicates (34 per cent), indicating that the rapid growth of the online-betting industry has clearly left its mark on the Hong Kong consumer in recent years. The NFO WorldGroup survey also highlights clear divisions among the Hong Kong public when it comes to the issue of legalising sports betting.

Web-savvy travellers on Emirates are booking online in increasing numbers with most of bookings going to first or business class. Since April 2000, when Emirates first launched its online booking service in its home market, the Dubai-based international airline has seen its popularity soaring. After a successful take-off for the service in the UAE, Emirates' second online market was the UK, followed by Singapore, Kuwait, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, France, Australia, India, Italy and Sri Lanka. This month six new countries, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are set to join the 12 already online with Thailand, Turkey and Malaysia launching the service from next month. First and Business Class customers give Emirates a substantial slice of its online sales - nearly two thirds of its bookings from Australia, almost a third from Germany and the UAE and one in 10 from the UK. Now the award-winning airline is boosting the service still further.

IBM has created software that alters personal data to keep it private on the Internet while letting companies make enough sense of the numbers to see customer trends, The Straits Times reports. The software balances a user's need for Web anonymity with a company's desire to learn more about clients to tailor products, IBM said. The software falsifies real numbers by adding or subtracting random amounts. Companies can still use statistics to turn batches of these numbers into data without knowing individual responses. The world's largest computer maker and other technology companies say software advances can improve Net privacy, making proposed laws barring collection of certain data unnecessary.