e-Business as usual at CeBIT

Business as usual at CeBIT 2001

The BBC's Andrew Godleman found that despite recent market problems with high-tech shares, the CeBIT Business Fair in Hanover was as buoyant as ever.

CeBIT 2001 boasts an estimated 8,106 exhibitors (up from the final tally of 7,892 last year).

It seems that the CeBIT juggernaut has just kept on moving. It is possible that firms did not want to be seen to not be in the game anymore.

CeBIT boasts an estimated 8,106 exhibitors

Similarly, the immense organisation of the event may have simply had too much pre-organisation to be de-railed by market trends.

The exhibitors seemed unfazed: Simon Fletcher, European PR Manager for Autonomy, said "the atmosphere here is very 'gung ho'".

"There's a great atmosphere of entrepreneurship about the event. We (Autonomy) are in the business of making efficiency tools and so for us a downturn is good news."

Last year's World Expo had led to new facilities for exhibitors. Brokat had a stand last year, but this year they have their own pavilion.

In these sessions, the attendees were more interested in technology than business trends.

Microsoft learns to read

For Microsoft "more of the same" appeared to be the order of the day as they announced new versions of familiar products such as their Office suite.

There were one or two new items such as the Microsoft Reader product which puts books on to PCs and handhelds, and allows you to scribble on your copy and earmark pages in ways that would have got you thrown out of the lending library.

One new presence at the show was the Web Washer (www.webwasher.com) firm offering free client software that allows you to scrub the web items that annoy you.

It can render web pages without their adverts, control cookies, and even override "server side detecting" of your browser (used by some sites to point to different renderings of content).

It uses an algorithm based on size, origin and name of object to detect adverts which can be entirely removed or replaced with "blank areas".

The software also allows you to weed out the practice of ordinary looking web addresses sending your PC pornography. It is available for Mac, PC and Linux and can be set differently for two browsers running on the same PC.

Web Washer was invented by Siemens employees, and the way that the software prevents the exploitation of the web by adverts led to accusations that it was anti-web technology.

Now, the firms have separated and they have English, German and presently Spanish versions of the software.