TIME EUROPE
APRIL 10, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 14
Techwatch
WEBCASTS FROM THE WILD
Next Out of Africa: Virtual Safaris
Fans of nature documentaries need look no farther than their desktops . Africam (www.africam.com), a virtual South African wildlife safari firm, was founded by Graham Wallington and Paul Clifford in 1998 when they set up a webcam near a water hole in a private game reserve. Now Africam has about a dozen cameras in private and national parks and is negotiating with nature reserves in the U.S. and Australia to create a live Web-based TV service that the firm's founders describe as "the cnn of the bush." For a glimpse of what Africam has to offer, check out the leopard-cam, a photographic chronicle of the daily life of a specific leopard in the South African Mala Mala game reserve. Africam has already branched out into Net travel and tourism, offering online travel services and Webcast tours. In addition the company set up a commercial photo library, Afripics, and sells African arts and crafts through its online Afrishop. Africam is also involved in an Internet-based wildlife education project, linking schools in the U.S. with its wildlife viewing sites, and plans to launch Wild Campus--an online educational and information service for wildlife enthusiasts--soon.
SMART CARDS
New Kind of Cash Cow
In Naila, a village in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, smart cards are helping women help themselves. The all-female members of the local Milk Cooperative Society use the technology to keep accurate supply records and to secure proper payment. The milk is weighed and matched to personal details on the cards, which replace inaccurate paper records and prevent the women's husbands or male relatives from fraudulently collecting payments on their behalf.
FAX VIA E-MAIL
Any Way You Like It
Need to receive a fax but don't have or want a fax machine? XOIP (pronounced "keysop"), a three-year old Dutch firm, offers Internet users a free service by which they can receive faxes through their e-mail accounts. The company gives clients a special telephone number in the Netherlands, U.K. or Belgium to be used as a personal fax line. XOIP (www.xoip.com) forwards any faxes received on that line to the user's e-mail address as an image file. The sender of the fax pays a normal telephone charge, and XOIP gets a share of the revenue from the phone company. No special software is needed. More than 100,000 people already use the service, which also includes a free voice mail system that transmits voice messages as downloadable sound files to the client's computer.
SITE SEEING
IslamiQ.com allows Muslims to trade shares and make investments online in accordance with the principles of Islamic Shari'a law. The site (www.IslamiQ.com) offers services which comply with Shari'a decrees forbidding investments in gambling, alcohol or conventional financial institutions.
British students can consult the first free interactive exam revision service. Revise.It (www.revise.it) offers curriculum-based guides, a personal coach and message board for queries. The site is intended to make those national tests for 16- and 18-year-olds less time-consuming, boring and expensive.
WHAT'S NEXT
Unstructured information is "the dirty little secret at the bottom of the new economy," says Mike Lynch, British founder of software firm Autonomy. "Searching for relevant information [on the Internet] is like looking for a needle in a haystack." Lynch's solution is Kenjin, new software that eliminates the search function altogether and makes information on the Web come to you. Once installed on your PC, Kenjin--which means "wise man" in Japanese and operates as a window at the bottom of your screen--analyzes the documents on your display, then extracts concepts from the text and determines which ideas are the most important. The software identifies similar concepts and ideas in other sources and automatically suggests links to related websites and other files on your hard drive, ranking them in order of relevance. So rather than having to stop what you're doing to search the Net, Kenjin (which can be downloaded free of charge at www.kenjin.com) analyzes what you need and brings the data to your desktop. Over time, Kenjin learns about the subjects that interest you and uses this knowledge to further refine and personalize the information it offers.
To read more, go to James Geary's column at TIME.com/europe.
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April 10, 2000
AFRICA
Tragedy Unearthed
Ugandan investigators believe the leaders of a religious cult murdered hundreds of followers
EUROPE
Enter the Old Guard
Jospin calls time as veteran players replace reformers in a radical cabinet reshuffle
Confidence Meltdown
The future of British Nuclear Fuels is jeopardized by a series of safety problems at its Sellafield plant
A Greek Tragedy
As Greece's stock market plunges, small investors face ruin while Simitis risks electoral defeat
BUSINESS
Germany's Glass Ceiling
Women managers are rare in corporate Germany, where a culture of old boy prejudice still prevails
The Future Is Now
European e-tailers must cement their Continental presence before their American competitors arrive
Your Money: The Law of Averages
Cautious investors may consider staggering their entry into equities
THE ARTS
Defenders of the Faith
The Greek Orthodox Church is incensed by a novel that touches on the sexuality of Jesus Christ
DEPARTMENTS
Techwatch
World Watch
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