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Friday 7th December 2001

What 'it' is

So Ginger is a scooter? I admit I'm disappointed, not least because when speculation about a radical new transport device that would revolutionise personal transport (and stuff like that) first surfaced about a year ago, there were pictures on the internet that showed "it" (also codenamed "Ginger") pretty much as the "Segway Personal Transporter" has turned out to be. I should be impressed - with a claimed range of 27km on a single battery charge and a top speed of nearly 20kph, posture-guided movement plus some stair-climbing ability, this would probably handle most of my daily transportation needs. The US post office is said to be considering putting its posties on them, with the help of a carrier attachment that in civilian life would make a handy place to stow groceries. The ingenious self balancing mechanism with five gyroscopes and two digital signal processors to go wrong sounds interesting, too and film of the personal transporter in action certainly looks like a fun ride - but a price of $US3000? A perfectly adequate second-hand Japanese car costs less. At a predicted weight of 27kg the basic consumer model is light for a vehicle too but would certainly feel much heavier if you were 5km from home with a dead battery and the rain just starting to set in. The consumer model is scheduled to appear some time next year. If it's a success in the US prices may drop to something vaguely plausible.

E-Media seeks Xtra orphans

One door closes, another opens: Xtra's recent decision to drop its BusinessBuilder e-commerce system's existing Intershop-based service in favour of a system based on one that offers fewer features and is incompatible with many users' sites is seen as an opportunity by Dunedin-based ASP e-Media. That's because e-Media claims to have a seamless migration path from Xtra's old system to its Marketeer product. Marketeer apparently doesn't discard customer and product data and the look and feel of the online stores Xtra customers may have built for themselves. Of course, shifting to e-Media's product will require a change to a server in Dunedin but that shouldn't be a problem. E-Media claims to use a template-based system that allows quick modifications to store design and which is ideal for small to medium-size businesses.

Gen-i to market LiveLink

Gen-i has taken on New Zealand distribution of Open Text's Livelink collaborative knowledge management system. Livelink's specialty is (or perhaps used to be) distributing masses of information through organisations via intranets and the internet, although the system is versatile enough to be put to other uses than purely corporate ones. Nevertheless, the Livelink family of products has a mostly commercial focus, which according to gen-i will be a good fit with its other offerings. According to Garth Biggs, gen-i's CEO, applications for Livelink include virtual team collaboration, business process automation, knowledge library, information retrieval and enterprise group scheduling.

Toshiba tweaks Satellite

Toshiba's Satellite 3000 notebook computer joins Toshiba's existing line of flash-looking portables. An adjustment to the Toshiba line rather than a major revision, as happened a couple of months ago, the Satellite 3000 has a Pentium III 1GHz processor and an nVidia GeForce2Go 3D accelerator, Windows XP preinstalled and a TouchPad, which I've always preferred to the rubber eraser-type mouse controller found on some laptops. Prices start at $4715 plus GST, for which you'll get a 14.1'' display, a 20 Gb hard drive, 128Mb of Ram, a DVD-Rom drive and a SmartMedia expansion slot.

NZ directory site opens

We've had New Zealand search engines before but the Yahoo-style directory-based model where entries are scrutinised by real humans hasn't been as popular. Welcome, therefore, to www.NewZealandSites.com, which aims to combine Yahoo's human editing with a legible Google-style appearance. Based in Christchurch, NewZealandSites has so far listed more than 25,000 New Zealand sites. Mark Rocket of Avatar Web Promotions dreamed up the scheme, which aims to foil search engine spammers simply by putting every listing through a filter of human judgment. Mr Rocket expects to have 30,000 site listings by Christmas and 50,000 by the middle of next year - assuming that there are that many New Zealand sites.

Vodafone picks packets

Vodafone has announced it will be installing Nortel gear to run its packet backbone network that will connect Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington. Part of Vodafone's move towards a 3G network (that's telco-talk for "third generation," meaning fast enough to compete with similar offerings from Vodafone's competitors), Vodafone's modest $6.8 million purchase will allow it to blur the boundaries between voice and data on its network, hopefully reducing the costs of delivering both to customers.

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