The spoils of war

USA Today reports that at least one technology is prospering from the war: high-speed Internet. War coverage has sparked a record number of video streams of major news Web sites and boosted broadband demand.

"The war is the latest - and most powerful - development in a confluence of events that have popularised broadband," the site reports analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research as saying.

It reports that MSNBC.com has averaged about five million video streams a day since the war started - or seven times its average in February. RealNetworks` demand for video streams doubled in March.

BT has fired the first shots in a telco price war aimed at defending its market share and beating off rivals such as Telewest, One.Tel and British Gas, reports The Register.

Although the move was widely followed, BT is making a stand against other fixed-line competitors by offering customers calls, it claims, up to 20 times cheaper than its major rivals.

Attacking what it calls "misleading" price comparisons by some of its competitors, BT said callers would make savings against NTL and One.Tel on all national calls lasting more than a minute. It also said savings would be made against other operators including Telewest, British Gas and the Carphone Warehouse.

You-Asked.com has launched an Internet-based knowledge base and communications tool. The system, developed on the Microsoft .Net platform, allows organisations to build up a base of intellectual capital, creating a pool of common information, which can be accessed by clients and staff via the Web and can eliminate repetitive answering of frequently asked questions.

If the full text search facility does not find any suitable results within the database, the administrator of the chosen category is notified via e-mail. The question and answer are stored in the database for future use.

This week on TechNiche:
Not another bubble, please
Urbanology in retail