WHAT’S NEW
Once upon a time, there was another browser called Netscape. Your grandparents may have told you about it. Its makers spent a lot of time rabbiting on to the United States Justice Department about being monopolised, and rather less time making their product more useful and reliable.
Now the next generation of Netscape, or Mozilla, is almost upon us, built on the Open Source model in part by volunteers. It’s still in Alpha form: that is, a rather unstable version for testing, but you can download Mozilla from www.mozilla.org.
If Toshiba gets its way in a few years’ time, when you’ve finished with your notebook PC, you’ll roll it up and put it in your pocket.
At CeBIT, as part of its series of concept gadgets, the company unveiled its ultra- flexible DynaSheet screen-based PC. Its key feature is a fold-away Polymer display which is being developed in conjunction with British company CDT. There’s no keyboard as it uses voice and handwriting technology, while compatibility with the cordless Bluetooth system means there are no wires. It could be available in the United Kingdom within three to five years.
Though different distributions of the Open Source operating system Linux can be downloaded for free from the Internet, you’ll have to pay Telkom for the privilege. It’s probably a lot cheaper to get it on CD-ROM from www. linuxwarehouse.co.za. For just R25, you can get either Red Hat 6.1, Caldera 2.3, SuSE 6.3 or Corel Linux. Postage is another R10.
The Linux Warehouse will even give you CD-ROMs of slightly out- dated distributions for free, as long as you buy something else.
Standard Bank has introduced South Africa’s first water-marked cheques, in an effort to fight widespread cheque fraud, which is causing them ”a great deal of concern”. The water-mark logo is easily seen when the cheque is held up to the light, and all new Standard Bank cheques will carry it.
Meanwhile, Absa has introduced an Argus Cycle tour affinity card. The Absa Cycling Mastercard is a conventional credit card, but ”a portion” of the revenue generated by the cards for the bank goes to the Cape Cycle Tour Trust.