Cool on the heels of Yahoo’s Pager and Mirabilis ICQ, Australian internet service provider OzEmail Ltd has unveiled its Buddy system, yet another internet messaging service. With his customary penetration, OzEmail president and CEO David Spence observed: The trick is to pick the voids in the consumer market and fill them. So naturally we’re placing the first stake in the Australian soil. Buddy uses IP addresses and simple Ping software to help users identify who’s online and willing to chat. Subscribers download a small program and register their friends, either by searching among existing subscribers or by sending their friends an invitation to join. When a ping confirms that one of the listed buddies has come online, both users can be notified. The friends can then send and receive messages in real time. Such messaging systems have been around for a long time and were a staple of mainframe and microcomputer operating systems, but the latest rash of vendors have found new markets by bringing the same capabilities to the web. Buddy’s big selling point is that it’s the first such system to be based in Australia, but when you consider that Mirabilis won users from all over the world in spite of its Israeli origins, it seems unlikely that geography can confer any particular advantage. Just in case the stalking possibilities of the technology had been lost on anyone, Spence concluded: Let Ozemail Buddy track down you friends wherever they are! Stalkees can sign up at http://www.buddy.com.au.
