Monday, July 15, 2002		Newsscape

Refined search

THE Internet search engine AltaVista has unveiled new service to help people refine their searches by offering subgroups of results, along with a single long list of all websites containing the search term, Reuters reports. The company, a division of CMGI, which has lost traffic steadily to search engines such as Google, said the new service was found to increase the amount of time persons spent on its site, as well as the number of searches conducted. Called AltaVista Prisma, the new service produces up to 12 subgroups of results when a given term is entered. The term 'eagles,' for example, calls up subgroups including 'legal eagles,' 'nest,' 'Philadelphia eagles' and 'lyrics.' An AltaVista spokesman said the service also offered additional research benefits.

PC sales decline

PC sales has declined by 11 per cent in 2001-02 despite phenomenal growth in the smaller cities and recovery in the second half of the year, Hindustan Times reports. The PC sales stood at 16.7 lakh units but with hopes of imminent recovery the market is projected to notch 12 per cent growth in 2002-03. The survey conducted by IMRB revealed that 30 per cent of total PC sales was accounted for by B and C class cities with a phenomenal growth of 106 per cent. In the last fiscal smaller towns had accounted for only 13 per cent of the overall PC sales. Likewise, notebooks sales grew by 200 per cent in small towns whereas sales to top 4 cities declined by 28 per cent.

Personalised e-cards

Corporate giants, small companies and even grandmothers can now design and order name cards online and receive them the next working day, Straits Times reported. The company that has made this possible is NameCardonline.com, which was launched recently. At its Website, customers can browse through its image library for a suitable picture for their card, as well as choose from more than 350 English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts. And they do not need any special software to do this. If what they see is not what they want, they can provide their own picture and font. Customers need pay just the shipping and handling charges for the service now. This comes to $ 2.88 for an order of 50 cards in one design, printed on one side and in full colour. An order for 100 cards in full colour with information on both side costs $ 24. Generally, card-printing companies charge between $ 35 and $ 80 for a similar order and will not take such small orders. Customers can also ask for an electronic version of their card, which they can then attach to e-mail if they use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express programs.

Net attacks grow

The number of Internet attacks so far this year is up 64 per cent from a year ago, with some of the incidents showing "very advanced hackers," a security firm told AFP. The report by the group Riptech found that Internet attacks grew at an annualised rate of 64 per cent in the period from January-June 2002. The study detected potential cyber terrorism activity from countries where conventional terrorists are known to be harboured or recruited, including Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Kuwait, and Indonesia, the study found. But it noted that 80 per cent of all attacks originated from only 10 countries: the United States, Germany, South Korea, China, France, Canada, Italy, Taiwan, Britain and Japan. Elad Yoran, one of the authors of the report, noted that cyber attacks could be launched from a friendly country as well as one that supports terrorists. "Many of these countries (linked to terrorists) are undeveloped in their Internet infrastructure," he said.