After such a tumultus end, it is a wonder anyone remembers what happened six months ago, let alone twelve. As ZDNet Australia reviews 2001's hottest IT stories a pattern emerges. 2001 was the year of the virus, the year of Linux, and the year the music industry began to seriously lose control of its intellectual property, as audio file swapping proliferated across the Net.

January 2001, and the biggest story on ZDNet Australia was a massive Mac price cut, as Apple attempted to lure Windows users to its platform. However, the price cuts, which saw new computers discounted up to AU$2400, were not enough of a carrot for most.

The luke-warm response to the Apple offering was only the beginning of what became a tortured year in the channel, the rise and fall of Apple retail group Buzzle. But the news wasn't all bad, with the launch of the long awaited Unix-based Mac OS X, adding an animated interface to the company that already bought us tutti-frutti coloured computers. Apple even jumped into bed with that software mob from Seattle to create Office for Mac OS X.

In February a more serious event occurred, setting a trend that was to continue throughout the year: the Kournikova virus caught the world napping. Masquerading as information regarding an Argentine soccer team, or tennis starlet, the virus played havoc with mail servers, busily propagating itself to thousands of mailboxes via infected users' address books. The virus also had some quirky qualities, spontaneously sending its victims' computers to the Web site of a Dutch computer reseller for no apparent reason.

Largely innocuous the virus itself did little damage except to force IT departments to review their procedures for preventing infection. Based on the 'Love Bug' virus that blazed a trail across the world in 2000, users should have been well aware of how to protect themselves against the Kournikova. Nonetheless the infectious amour of the virus helped it evade attempts to stem its epidemic velocity, assisted by its highly 'polymorphic' nature.

March saw Linux come to the fore, with ZDNet Australia readers voting against Microsoft's stance on open-source software, collectively stating that the software behemoth was stifling innovation. Industry pundits are already looking back on 2001 as the year that Linux begun to achieve the recognition it deserved, as it appears to be gaining acceptance in the more conservative corporate environment. In fact, toward the end of 2000, IBM announced that it planned to spend US$1 billion developing and marketing of Linux based solutions.

By the third month of 2001 Microsoft was nervous enough to be scoring own goals in the contest for the public hearts and minds, giving the open source community a boost. Operating-system chief, Jim Allchin, described Linux as a threat to the "American way". Later in the year, as viruses were busily punching holes in Microsoft's IIS, mysteriously, Allchin stayed quiet.

April brought with it a sudden increase in interest surrounding 3G mobile phones, prompting Optus and Nokia to jump into a $900 million bed and attempt release the long awaited services ahead of the competition.

Optus announced that the deal would see commercially viable 3G services roll out in Australia by late 2002. That would have left Telstra and Vodafones' promise of 2004 floundering. However, Optus has since revised this figure, saying they will look at delivering 3G mobile services in late 2003, or perhaps 2004, putting them back on par with their rivals.

To stop the great unwashed, bandwidth hungry mobile users from becoming too fractious, vendors such as Ericsson ended the year with a preview of a range of 2.5G mobile devices designed to whet consumer appetites, or, at the very least, keep gizmo starvation to a minimum. However, the hunger isn't over yet, with the company pointing out their products won't hit the market until next year.

May was marred by the news that the Homepage worm had infected around 14000 computers as it tunnelled its way around the world. Using the same sorts of tricks as "I love you", and "Kornikova", this simple VBS-based worm mailed itself to every contact in the infected user's address book, and downloaded porn sites to their computers.

By this stage virus outbreaks were making the evening news, and companies finally started implementing procedural controls in an attempt to prevent infection before it could start. However, industry pundits agree, despite improvements aimed at preventing viruses from spreading, 2001 saw a disturbing trend towards increasingly complex viral designs carrying more dangerous digital epidemiology.

However, the month wasn't dominated by news of virus outbreaks -- in the wild world of business the collapse of One.Tel sent the telecommunications industry reeling and left 1400 workers wondering why they hadn't listened to union representatives calling for entitlement assurance. While former board directors Jodie Rich tried to keep a low profile, and the Murdoch and Packer boys bickered with their fathers about whose idea it was in the first place, CPSU representatives went into bat for the workers demanding entitlements, accrued holiday pay and superannuation.

June signalled the emergence of a new player in the digital music industry with the arrival of a new rival to Napster and Gnutella; Audiogalaxy. With Napster gagged by record companies that claimed they couldn't afford to allow file-swapping teenagers to cut into their thinning profit margins, ardent consumers of online music began looking for alternatives. They discovered it at Audiogalaxy. While the site itself only hosted non-copyrighted music, it assisted users to search for other titles it did not host directly.

2001 may well come to be known as one in which the record industry lost the fight against digital music sites. Music business analyst Phil Tripp points out that while they have succeeded in hobbling Napster, record companies will eventually have to find some middle-ground in which they can operate along side file swapping sites.

"The highest selling disk across the world at the moment is the blank recordable," Tripp said. "And as much as they are trying to fight it the record companies will eventually have to find different ways to make money."

For the time being however, the Recording Industry Association of America will continue to stamp its feet, warning Audiogalaxy that their operations are being observed closely.

June will also be remembered by Telstra's long suffering broadband customers as the "month of rage" when they found their "unlimited" access capped at three gigabytes per month. Broadband guru, and Webmaster of Whirlpool Simon Wright describes the 3-gig cap as the great saga of 2001, although he points out that it wasn't all bad news for consumers.

"The main gain, I guess, was Telstra finally caving in on wholesale ADSL pricing," Wright said. "At least we can look forward to some serious competition next year."

While July saw the kafuffle over the 3 gig cap continue, it also saw virus makers try a new ploy to con their way onto your desktops. This time it was via a fake Microsoft security alert. Masquerading as "Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-037" the W32.Leave.B.Worm encouraged unwary users to protect themselves by downloading a patch, which was in fact a Trojan.

Before the end of the another the worm was infiltrating desktops by posing as a "security patch". Playing on the high level of paranoia regarding viruses the Win32.All3gro.A offered to remove viruses such as SirCam and Badtrans -- it ended up deleting important files instead.

August revived the debate over Internet user privacy as Excite@Home Australia began conducting random raids on their broadband account holders, searching for "pirate activity". As heated as it became, by the end of September it was silenced. Excite@Home Australia sacked around half its staff and folded the rest of its operations into Optus.

September was the biggest news month of the year, both within IT and the mainstream media the events of each world overlapping onto the others. In the first week of September the biggest IT story for 2001 broke as Hewlett-Packard announced its intention to acquire Compaq in a stock swap deal which would see AU$47.5 billion change hands. In the second week of September the world watched as Islamic-extremists flew two hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers leading to the death of thousands.

News sites across the world fell over as people scrambled for information, and misguided cyberterrorism saw Web sites with even tenuous links to Arabic states or Islam hacked and defaced. In a bid to regain control, the US government attempted to impose global bans on encryption technologies prompting criticism by Civil liberties groups like Electronic Frontiers Australia.

Linux and Microsoft again hit the headlines in October as comparisons were drawn between the security of each, and while Microsoft Windows held its own against some of the different Linux distributions, its server software took a beating. iPrimus also attracted the ire of its DSL users by capping what had been unlimited download access accounts. And the end of October saw the release of Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows XP.

November was not a happy month for Microsoft. Looking for a positive spin on a lacklustre response to the release of XP, the company was greeted with an FBI report describing Microsoft IIS as the most vulnerable way to run a Web site.

November also presented online music buffs were presented with another choice in the wake of Napster's demise. Morpheus began to ping on Web traffic monitoring radars, as the site's traffic reached as many as 872,000 unique users per month.

"The cat is out of the bag," industry pundit Phil Tripp points out. "They might manage to catch one but another will open in its place, it is inevitable."

The biggest IT news in December was an international swoop on the so-called 'Warez' gangs, for the alleged distribution of pirate software. Australian Federal Police participated in a global campaign after a fifteen-month undercover investigation, which also spanned the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany.

This must have come as heartening news for those in the music industry fighting a losing battle against file swapping Web sites. Many alleged to be pirating and distributing copyrighted music were snagged by the Warez dragnet.

Everyone at ZDNet Australia contributed to this article, as it is based entirely on our most widely read stories of 2001.

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