Subject: Online Reporter March 17 - 21 1997 Issue Number 040
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 08:55:37 -0500
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Sent: Friday, March 14, 1997 11:36 AM
To: olr_all@computerwire.co.uk
Subject: Online Reporter March 17 - 21 1997 Issue Number 040
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| O N L I N E R E P O R T E R |
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Weekly dispatches from the Internet Front
Online Reporter is published weekly by G-2 Computer
Intelligence Inc and ComputerWire Plc.
Editor: Nick Patience (nick@computerwire.com)
Editorial consultant: John Abbott (johna@computerwire.co.uk)
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(c) Copyright 1996 APT Data News Ltd.
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London, March 17 - 21 1997
Issue Number 040
*** JavaOne(sm) -
Sun's 1997 Worldwide Java Developer Conference(sm) ***
San Francisco, April 2-4, 1997
Shake the hands that shook the world...wide web. Time is
running out, register now for JavaOne(sm), while space
is still available.
JavaOne is the only Java developer conference that offers
the face-to-face time with the experts from Sun that
developers need. Join James Gosling, Scott McNealy, Alan
Baratz and Sun's Java Development Team for the best in-
depth technical information available on Java technology at
JavaOne.
JavaOne is Sun's 1997 Worldwide Java Developer
Conference and is held at San Francisco's Moscone
Convention Center this April 2-4. JavaOne is co-sponsored
by the biggest names in Java; Apple, Corel, Fujitsu, IBM,
Mitsubishi, Netscape, Novell, Oracle and Silicon Graphics.
Don't miss out, space is limited! For more information, or
to register, visit the JavaOne web site at:
http://java.sun.com/javaone/
Please use source code G2JO7 when registering.
------------------------ HEADLINES ------------------------
OR040-01 SUNRIVER EXITS INTERNET SECURITY TO CONCENTRATE ON NCS
OR040-02 JAVASTATIONS ARE ON TRACK: BRICK FAVORED OVER COFFEE MAKER
OR040-03 DEC DIVERSIFIES INTO E-PAYMENTS WITH MILLICENT
OR040-04 MONDEX ADOPTED BY AT&T FOR WEB PAYMENTS TEST
OR040-05 SUN SHIPS JDK 1.1, HOTJAVA HOT ON ITS HEELS
OR040-06 HP TAKES AND TWEAKS SUN'S JAVA WORKSHOP FOR UNIX & NT
OR040-07 POINTCAST THROWS OPEN CHANNELS TO EVERYONE FOR FREE
OR040-08 NETSCAPE LOOKS TO EXTRANET TO KEEP DISTANCE FROM REDMOND
OR040-09 SPYGLASS LAUNCHES EMBEDDED WEB BROWSER & SERVER
OR040-10 JAVA NAMING SPEC SUPPORTS MULTIPLE DIRECTORY SERVICES
OR040-11 CONTENT FREE LA-LA VIRUS STRIKES INTERNET WORLD
OR040-12 IBI SHIPS WEBFOCUS 3.0 WITH JAVA GRAPHING
OR040-13 PERICOM LAUNCHES JAVA HOST CONNECTIVITY RANGE
OR040-14 INCOMMON LOOKS TO PUBLISHING TO PUSH DOWNTOWN UPTOWN
OR040-15 IBM PREVIEWS OS/390 RELEASE 3 WITH WEB EMPHASIS
OR040-16 MICROSOFT GATHERS PUSH PARTNERS BEHIND ITS SPEC
OR040-17 LUCENT UNLEASHES INFERNO - WEB PHONE DUE
OR040-18 JAVASOFT, REDMOND SOLVE JAVA INTERFACE PROBLEM
OR040-19 HP SHIPS PRAESIDIUM SMART CARD AND LAYS OUT PLANS
OR040-20 WINTEL NETPC SPEC: SEEMS LIKE WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
OR040-21 DOT GOSSIP
OR040-01 SUNRIVER EXITS INTERNET SECURITY TO CONCENTRATE ON NCS
SunRiver Corp has given up on everything that's not network
computers and scrapped its loss-making TradeWave Corp subsidiary.
It will now concentrate solely on its Boundless network
computers.
Between 70 and 80 employees will lose their jobs now, with about
10 to 15 staying around to handle the dissolution of the unit,
which had internet security products primarily for the health
market and virtual private networks. SunRiver will take a hit of
$6.6m in its fourth quarter to cover all the costs associated
with TradeWave's demise. TradeWave lost $2.5m in the first nine
months of the current fiscal on revenues of just $1.5m.
Chairman and CEO Len Mackenzie, who was installed in late
November, said the subsidiary was "spending $1m a month." In the
same period Boundless generated net profits of $1.5m on revenues
of almost $100m. The company is looking to change its name to
Boundless pending shareholder approval. It also expects to
announce a chief technology officer within about a week,
according to Mackenzie. A consultant fills the role at the
moment.
With what now looks like remarkable audacity, SunRiver tried to
float TradeWave last September under the previous management.
That management team was ousted and Mackenzie and his colleagues
postponed the idea, blaming a soft market for internet-related
stocks. The team looked for a private placement of the stock last
November before killing the idea off completely (OR 24, 25). Some
100 people were also given pink slips for Christmas present as
things got worse at SunRiver (OR 30).
The future then is network computers and nothing else. Right now,
Boundless' range of NCs run Windows applications using Citrix
Systems' ICA protocol to run them locally on the machines, which
have no hard drive.
The company has pushed back its plans for a Java machine until
next year for a number of reasons. It hasn't yet licensed JavaOS
from JavaSoft; the company has merely signed a letter of intent
to do so. But it will go ahead and license it, according to VP
marketing Mike Stebel.
He said JavaOS' lack of support for peripherals right now "is a
real issue" for Boundless. It intends to market its NCs in the
retail sector among others where support for printers and barcode
readers is crucial. Stebel also reckoned the current releases of
JavaOS and the Java Development Kit (JDK) - 1.0 and 1.1
respectively - are "not playing together" and will be out of step
until the next cuts, without mentioning specifics apart from
peripheral support once more.
He also had little time for Citrix Systems' planned Java version
of its ICA protocol (OR 36). It's "tediously slow" and "not
suitable for running a business," he said.
Boundless' current NCs run on the Intel Corp i960 RISC mainly.
The plan for next year's Java NC is to run on the StrongARM RISC
chip from Digital Equipment Corp, but the company is also
evaluating Intel CISC platforms. http://www.boundless.com
OR040-02 JAVASTATIONS ARE ON TRACK: BRICK FAVORED OVER COFFEE MAKER
Sun Microsystems Inc's desktop chief, Gene Banman, explains that
most of his JavaStation business is, at this point, in
development systems and pilot trials, except for a few of the
poster-boy early adopters who began work with his group well
before the JavaStation announcement that took place last October
(OR 23).
Responding to reports which suggest that there's not much
JavaStation activity out there he advises us to remember that
while there are massive amounts of Java application software
currently under development, very little of it will appear on the
market until later this year.
Sun's early accounts are busy writing their own custom
applications for deployment on JavaStations. Sun says it's been
shipping the microSparc II-based JavaStation 'brick' design "in
volume" since December. The fan-less 'coffee tower' model based
upon the microSparc IIep processor is due "late spring."
The IIep-based system adds support for Flash RAM, modems and
local printing.
Clearly shipments "in volume" has quite a different meaning from
what shipments "in volume" will mean a year from now.
Sun believes that its current volumes are appropriate for this
stage of the market's development.
OR040-03 DEC DIVERSIFIES INTO E-PAYMENTS WITH MILLICENT
Digital Equipment Corp has entered the electronic payments
business with its Millicent micropayments system, currently in
the pilot stage, but which could eventually see DEC acting as a
bank, which would be ironic considering the current state of the
company.
The Maynarder reckons it's different from other e-payment methods
for very small amounts, such as that of CyberCash Inc because it
uses what the company calls a distributed broker's approach as
opposed to a central clearing house approach. This is a bit
confusing, but it appears that vendors (merchants or publishers)
go to a broker, which could be any kind of financial institution
or company that wishes to front the money, and authorizes that
broker to sell a certain amount of its "scrip" - code that is
equivalent to money.
Millicent electronic wallet
Money is made by the middleman - the broker, which is where DEC's
interest in all this lies, and by the vendors, according to DEC.
Millicent is meant as an alternative revenue stream for the
vendors rather than the only one.
For instance, the user may pay 10 cents of its scrip money to the
broker, but the broker may only give the vendor (publisher) of
the article 9 cents back, say. Vendors are able to use as many
brokers as they choose and users can sign to as many brokers as
they want.
Users would buy scrip from brokers using a standard payment
method, such as a credit card. Running totals are maintained in
users' Millicent electronic wallet. DEC reckons vendors can make
money using this method on transactions worth a fraction of a
cent.
It was developed by Digital's Systems Research Center at Palo
Alto and is currently being piloted within the DEC firewall using
employees as guinea pigs and information from its partners in the
scheme - Reuters News Service, Infoseek information Network and
Tele Danmark. It's expected to be rolled out commercially in late
summer or the fall. http://www.millicent.digital.com
OR040-04 MONDEX ADOPTED BY AT&T FOR WEB PAYMENTS TEST
Mondex International Ltd, the MasterCard International Inc-owned
smart card and electronic wallet-based electronic payment system
appears to have won its first heavyweight seal of approval from
existing investor AT&T Corp, which will integrate it with its
SecureBuy web hosting service.
Hewlett-Packard Co and OpenMarket Inc are also working with AT&T
on SecureBuy-Mondex integration. OpenMarket's will be the first
web server to use the technology. Testing with selected merchants
will start this summer, and the company hopes to fully integrate
the two by the first half of next year.
Mondex is designed to handle small cash-size payments, in other
words not for buying a car, or for the micro-payments that
CyberCash Inc's solution is designed. It can be used across
currencies, is downloadable from ATMs or Point of Sale systems
and can access other bank account functions. The internet is the
obvious application of Mondex and was a major factor in
MasterCard's decision to take a controlling stake last November
in the London-based company (OR 26).
AT&T's Universal Card Services senior VP Keith Kendrick said this
plan was in place long before the MasterCard takeover. He added
that it is also separate from HP's work on its Praesidium
ImagineCard smart card work (see page 6). Mondex users can make
card-to-card transactions as well as buy things, so people can
lend each other money electronically, for instance.
Mondex, AT&T and HP are also proposing an Internet Open Trading
Protocol which will be published next quarter, and in which AT&T
Labs was instrumental in developing. The protocol is not
proprietary to Mondex however, and are compliant with the Secure
Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol devised by MasterCard and
Visa International. Mondex will publish the spec on the net soon
and will suggest it to its investors as the way forward.
The trio also said the protocol is being evaluated by other e-
commerce types and investors in Mondex: apart from MasterCard and
AT&T, all the other investors are banks, mostly from Australia
and New Zealand, but also including Wells Fargo and The Hong Kong
& Shanghai Banking Corp Ltd and Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce.
OR040-05 SUN SHIPS JDK 1.1, HOTJAVA HOT ON ITS HEELS
Sun Microsystems Inc's JavaSoft Inc unit made a clutch of minor
announcements last week at Internet World in Los Angeles. The
company is now shipping the JavaBeans Development Kit (BDK) 1.0
and it has the JavaBeans-to-ActiveX bridge available in beta.
JavaBeans is the component-based development tool, and the bridge
provides a link to Windows-based systems so applications written
using JavaBeans can run in Windows.
JavaBeans application programming interfaces (APIs) have also
been included in the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.1, which also
features 15 example Beans and a BeanBox test container to test
Bean behavior. Both the BDK and bridge are free downloads at
http://java.sun.com/beans.
JavaBeans product line manager Gina Centoni said the Beans APIs
are, and will remain a core element of JDK and support of them is
a necessary element of JDK license compliance. Centoni said the
fact that the likes of IBM, Oracle and many others are doing more
with Beans than Sun itself was the intention all along.
JavaSoft's role is to develop the APIs and tools, rather than the
applications themselves, she said.
Separately, the HotJava browser 1.0 will ship March 24. It's
meant for system integrator and independent software vendors
(ISVs) to develop customized browsers for clients. It's targeted
at things like network computer, personal digital assistant (PDA)
and kiosk vendors, as it has a footprint of 2.5Mb, which is
pretty big for these things, and runs in less than 1.5Mb RAM.
The other thing JavaSoft announced last week was the Java Runtime
Environment (JRE), which appears to be a kind of 'JDK Lite' - a
"compact solution" for developers that is compatible with JDK. It
is meant for developers to bundle with their application while
operating systems vendors get round to embedding JDK 1.1 into
their OS.
OR040-06 HP TAKES AND TWEAKS SUN'S JAVA WORKSHOP FOR UNIX & NT
As expected, Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co last
week announced that HP has signed a global licensing agreement
with Sun for its Java Workshop Java development environment (OR
39).
HP will use its source code license to tweak Java Workshop to run
better on its systems - "write once run best on HP." HP will
extend the environment, adding its own plug-ins and build it onto
its HP-UX Unix virtual machine, and market it as the HP edition
of Java Workshop by Sun. HP will also sell Workshop on Windows
NT.
HP is not going the same execution route as Sun. Instead, as well
as fine-tuning the Java virtual machine (JVM) to run better on HP
systems, it is also using a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler of its
own to translate the bytecode into machine code. Sun doesn't yet
have a JIT of its own and doesn't appear to want one.
But Daniel Charlu, HP's Java product manager said the company
would ensure 100% Java compatibility at all times as it extends
the JVM. HP will use what it calls its Dynamic Optimization
Technology which Charlu says will "come close to native
performance."
Joe Keller, Sun's director of marketing for Workshop products
said the plug-ins are likely to become part of the standard
product as it goes forward, but has not sorted out the licensing
of future enhancements with HP or with Novell, which is also
writing plug-ins for Java Workshop.
The NT version of Java Workshop arrives this month with HP-UX
coming next quarter. Both versions will be the same price as on
Sun's platforms: $99 per user. Charlu said the Java market has
moved too fast for HP to consider doing its own environment, when
Sun has one ready.
OR040-07 POINTCAST THROWS OPEN CHANNELS TO EVERYONE FOR FREE
PointCast Inc knows it's got some real competition in the
webcasting arena and its answer is to throw open its doors and
let any publishers push stuff down to its million or so
'subscribers.'
The PointCast Connections software will be part of the next
release of the PointCast client, due next month. PointCast won't
be making any direct revenues from this move, merely "derivative
revenues," through a larger circulation and as a result of this
increased circulation a more varied product - "more pointcasted"
was the phrase used.
Connections will be another channel, to add to its existing ones
from the New York Times and others, though Connections will not
be "eclipsing any affiliates" as the company put it. They will
all still have their existing channels.
However, there are various options to deal with Connections if
it's not wanted. It can be turned off at a firewall, PointCast I-
Server owners can pick and choose various channels within the
greater Connections channel or use a ratings system to choose
appropriate channels for employees. Individuals can choose
whether or not to get it and there are filtering options, says
the company.
Incidentally, the Mac version of PointCast may finally be upon
us, honest. It was late going into beta sometime in the fall and
has been there ever since.
The company was demonstrating it at Internet World last week and
is promising that it will deliver it by the end of the month - or
maybe the beginning of April,. its not quite sure.
http://www.pointcast.com
OR040-08 NETSCAPE LOOKS TO EXTRANET TO KEEP DISTANCE FROM REDMOND
Since it retreated from the browser war front line, and for some
time before, Netscape Communications Corp was pretty much focused
on the intranet market. Using its client software as a loss-
leader it has managed to snatch a fair bit of market and mind
share with its SuiteSpot server package, while Microsoft Corp has
not really got it together in the corporate space, by most
observer's reckoning.
Now Netscape reckons it is time to look beyond the intranet to
the extranet: the corporate intranet linked to the intranets of
large customers and/or partners. The Mountain View-based company
last week issued a white paper that spells out a roadmap for its
client and server software into next year. Netscape did a similar
thing in June of 1996 describing its intranet strategy.
It's chosen the suitably virile codenames of Mercury for the
client and Apollo for the server for its march into the nascent
extranet space. Netscape got 40 other vendors together to support
something it's calling Crossware: software that supports
standards, many of which are managed, or in draft form with the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The poster boys among the
40 include Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corp, Novell Inc,
Oracle Corp, Silicon Graphics Inc and Sun Microsystems Inc.
Thumbs up
Microsoft Corp was not approached to add its name to the list,
and although Windows platforms are not mentioned at all in two
releases, and the Crossware approach is contrasted favorably to
"fat clients" that "cannot scale or be extended beyond the
firewall," Netscape said all Windows platforms would be
supported, adding that the standards are all publicly available
for any company to give them the thumbs up.
The white paper also talks about a Crossware visual development
tool, codenamed Palomar (a mountain north east of San Diego). It
features HTML, JavaScript and Java components, and will be
available in the second half of this year.
The Mercury client vision will feature a local object store to
store content, application and data from the internet; an agent
technology called Compass that will add to the information-
handling capabilities of the Constellation desktop, which is due
around mid-year; a hypertree feature that gives a unified view of
folders, bookmarks, email - something Microsoft has been touting
for a long time, and is due to deliver in Internet Explorer 4.0.
It also promises run-time environment and rendering engine called
Gemini and a universal in-box for e-mail, fax and voicemail.
Apollo server plans call for enhanced workflow technology,
specifically e-mail and calendaring; integrated agent technology
so agents can be written for specific tasks across different
events; load-balancing, back-up; software distribution and
management; a programmable content management store.
The standards supported by the 40 include the Lightweight
Directory Protocol (LDAP); S/MIME secure e-mail messaging; X.509
certificates version 3 for electronic credentials; Versit's vCard
contact and registration standard; signed objects, also part of
JavaSoft's Java Archive (JAR) specification and EDIINT for
implementing Electronic Data Interchange over the internet.
Crossware applications must be interoperable seamlessly across
"major" client and server operating systems, including network
computers; they must be able to be centrally-deployed and
managed; they must be modular in nature and scalable, accessible
on-demand with interfaces written in HTML, JavaScript and Java.
Wall Street liked what it saw and Netscape shares closed up
$3.125 at $29.625 on the day of the announcement. The white
paper's up at
http://home.netscape.com/comprod/at_work/white_paper/vision/intro.html
OR040-09 SPYGLASS LAUNCHES EMBEDDED WEB BROWSER & SERVER
After having had its PC browser business snatched from its grasp
by Microsoft and Netscape, Spyglass Inc's re-invention as an
embedded software company manifested itself for the first time
last week as the company began shipping its Device Mosaic 1.0
embedded browser and MicroServer embedded web server, both in
line with its strategy for the 'new' Spyglass that the
Naperville, Illinois company laid out last December (OR 28).
One thing that has changed however, is the Remote Mosaic browser
for things like phones and pagers, which had been due next
quarter, but is still in development and won't now be available
until some time in the second half, according to Randy Littleson,
VP marketing.
Device Mosaic runs in 1.7Mb, which Littleson said includes both
the code and data actually running. The code itself fits in less
than 890Kb.
As far as rumors about IBM taking Device Mosaic, or any other
Spyglass product for its Network Stations network computers:
"there's going to be some work going on there," is all Littleson
could say, as IBM isn't ready to say anything yet (OR 37).
Network Computer Devices Inc is the only endorsee mentioned thus
far.
Device Mosaic development licenses start at $50,000. In
quantities of tens of thousands and up Littleson said Spyglass
can get below one dollar per device running the stuff.
MicroServer is an HTTP server than fits in about 60Kb of memory
on Intel processors, says the company. It's got a set of
application programming interfaces (APIs) and error logging
support. Other functions can be added to extend the server in the
areas of event logging, security, additional APIs, content
management, administration and cross-platform support.
Embedded web servers are meant to be used as an interface between
a non-PC product - anything from a telephone to a car and feed
information about that device back to a standard browser.
MicroServer licenses also start at $50,000, and Spyglass offers
support and services through its professional services group as
part of the licensing agreement. As expected, Xerox Corp stood up
to say that it will use MicroServer when it is rolled out fully
at the month-end OS support will include Solaris, Lynx, VxWorks,
QNX, OS/9, pSOS Windows CE and Java. http://www.spyglass.com
OR040-10 JAVA NAMING SPEC SUPPORTS MULTIPLE DIRECTORY SERVICES
Java is gradually getting kitted-out with the kind of support it
needs if it is to become a fully-fledged participant in the
enterprise, and Java creator Sun Microsystems Inc is getting
plenty of help from its industry partners to fill in the blanks
where they still exist.
Last week the company announced a JNDI Java Naming and Directory
Interface specification which will enable developers to create
Java applications with a unified way of accessing multiple naming
and directory services across networks. It includes support for
Novell Inc's NDS NetWare Directory Services, Sun's NIS naming
service, DNS Domain Naming Service and the standard LDAP Light
Directory Access Protocol.
The JNDI specification has been developed by Sun, Hewlett-Packard
Co, IBM Corp, Netscape Communications Corp and Novell. Each will
develop its own implementation once the spec, currently out for
review at http://java.sun.com, has been finalized. A polished
version of the spec is due for release next quarter.
First out of the chute claiming support is Novell, saying it will
make an early version of a JNDI implementation providing access
to NDS available to developers later this month. In addition to
Novell's internet-enabled version of NetWare - IntranetWare - NDS
runs on Solaris, NT and other Unixes and is supported by the
likes of HP, SCO and Microsoft. JavaSoft says it will make a
reference version of the spec available in the third quarter.
OR040-11 CONTENT FREE LA-LA VIRUS STRIKES INTERNET WORLD
by Gary Flood
Proctor & Gamble Inc's Olestra is fat-free fat. It has some great
attributes - it passes through the body without being digested or
absorbed, so it has no calories, meaning an ounce of Olestra
potato chips would have no fat and just 70 calories, compared to
10 grams of fat and 150 calories in conventional chips.
However, it is alleged to have some less pleasant attributes -
possible depletion of fat-soluble vitamins and blood carotenoids.
There is also a high risk of diarrhea and abdominal cramping,
according to critics, and an even more socially embarrassing side
effect that as a family newspaper we forbear to mention.
This side effect was, queerly enough, reproduced in the
collective brains of journalists worldwide this week, as a result
of the wave of fat-free Grand Alliances and Portentous
Somethingorothers that have swept the industry like Ebola for
some reason. Actually, the reason is mainly Spring Internet World
in that City of Angels, LA. A rash of mental Olestra-containing
announcements have left us calling for a global ban on the
emission of pointless alliances, grand strategies, and corporate
mutual appreciation society meetings.
Breathless analyst
First we had the Gang Of Four Who Don't Like Microsoft And So
Will Bolster Up The OMG - Somehow, of Tuesday.
Not to be outdone, Hewlett-Packard's grand strategy for last week
was called ACT (Access, Collaboration and Transactions), a set of
words claimed to enable corporations to "radically improve
productivity, customer responsiveness and market reach for their
Intranets." A breathless Hurwitz analyst was suitably amazed,
dubbing it a "broad, compelling vision of what companies can do
with an Intranet." In other words, HP Professional Services will
come in and make your intranet ten pounds lighter and more
attractive to an opposite intranet with cool software from
Netscape, Marimba, Informix Universal Server, and PointCast, and
quite possibly a zillion other companies, but we got lost with
all the new services With Names In CAPS.
Again, not being outdone, Microsoft Corp had its own grand
alliance announcement last week: a virtual wonderfulness called
the Networked Multimedia Connection (NMC), lining up its
fraternal 800 pound gorillas in networks and chips, Cisco Systems
Inc and Intel Corp to "break barriers for multimedia in business,
establish standards, and collaborate on open testing and
marketing of intranet solutions."
The three intend to "provide support and resources for multimedia
applications developers, service providers and corporate
information technology (IT) managers, collaborate on the
development of networked multimedia technologies, and implement
and promote industry standards."
Mr Armani
The Networked Multimedia Lab, a complete end-to-end networked
multimedia facility for development and interoperability testing,
will open at Cisco at the end of the month, and promised are NMC
toolkits, with software development kits from all three, will be
offered in conjunction with the Lab. Standards the three
companies intend to support include IP Multicast, a definition
for sending one copy of information to many recipients over a
network; the ITU H.323 standard, which defines how PCs can share
audio and video data over computer networks; and the ReSource
reserVation Protocol (RSVP), which provides a means for networks
to support special quality of service applications.
More than 20 companies have already demonstrated support for the
NMC, and their names and gushes can be read at
http://developer.intel.com. (Sadly, this announcement seemed to
have at least a fact or two, which may explain the absence of an
analyst sounding as if he was seeing the end of "Close
Encounters" for the first time.)
Digital Equipment Corp's chairman Bob Palmer was unable to
announce a Grand Alliance, but he did stun one and all by
revealing that the web was, wait for it, swift emerging as the
"universal computing platform of choice."
Other zingers "Mr Armani" downloaded as part of his keynote:
apparently there's something smashing on the way called the
information superhighway (Bob! purleeze!), the impact thereof on
electronic commerce and consumers etc to be highly impactful.
Digital, it now emerges, has a two-pronged strategy for this
great thing. Three technology trends will provide the support and
reliability needed for exponential internet growth, and luckily
DEC still sells two of 'em: 64-bit computers and high-speed
networks, patently great news for anyone still holding DEC stock.
Let's have some fat back
First, it is investing in new technology to build a web
infrastructure that provides greater capacity, reliability and
security, which are key to unlocking the global, networked
economy. Second, it is helping leading-edge companies shape the
future internet landscape, by preparing and empowering them to
capitalize on emerging markets. And don't forget society, a good
thing to meander on about at the end of any self-respecting
keynoter's keynote: "The potential for revolutionizing education,
for re-invigorating our national political dialog, [and] for
transcending geographic and national boundaries is almost
unlimited," Wow, what a relief to know that somebody's thinking
about all that stuff.
Finally, we have Colliance, a worldwide Unix-NT integration
service from HP, which is so plainly an obviously good idea and a
perfectly sensible way for it to make more money that we're a bit
worried that it hadn't been doing it already.
Gosh. Can't anyone do any work out there and actually release
something that doesn't exist in any other dimension other than
marketing?
In other words, let's have some fat back in our potato chips,
please.
OR040-12 IBI SHIPS WEBFOCUS 3.0 WITH JAVA GRAPHING
Information Builders Inc (IBI) has revved its WebFocus to 3.0.
WebFocus is the web version of its Focus 4GL reporting engine.
WebFocus enables reports to be written from a web browser using
IBI's connections to more than 65 databases.
The new thing this time is Java applets, specifically to do
charting and graphing. The applet is downloaded, the answer set
imported and a graph is created in runtime. Charts can also be
linked together on the fly, with no browser plug-ins required.
WebFocus is up on Windows NT, OS/390 and most Unixes, with
Digital Equipment Corp VMS and Alpha support coming soon, with
AS/400 support due in a few months, according to Kevin Quinn,
IBI's sales director for internet products. WebFocus 3.0 is the
same price as the first cut, ranging from $6,500 to $100,000.
OR040-13 PERICOM LAUNCHES JAVA HOST CONNECTIVITY RANGE
UK-headquartered connectivity specialists Pericom Software has
launched what it claims is the first range of connectivity
products for Java. Its teemWorld range of terminal emulators/host
connectivity products supports over 20 different alphanumeric
terminal emulation including DEC VT/100/220/320/420, IBM 3270,
IBM 5250 and Tandem 6530. These legacy systems can now be
accessed from any client that supports Java - including PCs, Unix
workstations, and thin clients such as network computers, claims
Pericom.
The company's also hoping that teemWorld may score with companies
looking to standardize on a single product across different
desktops - like Windows, OS/2, and Unix. TeemWorld can be used as
either a standalone Java app or as an applet to run within a web
browser. TeemWorld is available before the end of March. No
prices.
OR040-14 INCOMMON LOOKS TO PUBLISHING TO PUSH DOWNTOWN UPTOWN
The push posse of Marimba, PointCast, BackWeb and co have one
thing in common; they don't reckon the browser is the best way to
push content down to the desktop and have their own alternative
software.
But inCommon LLC, a San Mateo, California-based competitor thinks
they're wrong, and prides itself on not requiring the users to
download any extra software to have information pushed down to
them; it works inside Netscape and Microsoft browsers.
It's targeting the publishing industry, which it believes is
going to be very reluctant to part with HTML as a publishing
language "unless something appears that's easier," says Larry
Neumann, inCommon's VP marketing. He said the company would
rather promote an existing technology than bet on something
that's unproven, in what is after all a fairly conservative
industry.
Heuristics
The company's Downtown product was launched last December, and
last week the company announced alliances with Informix Software
Corp, NetGravity Inc and WiseWire Corp to expand the technology.
The product emerges from beta in about 30 days.
Downtown uses a variety of technologies that the company reckons
makes it that bit special. It has intelligent quick caching, so
when a page is reloaded, only the parts that have changed are
requested, so a newspaper's masthead wouldn't be reloaded, just
the refreshed content.
It uses heuristics - rules of thumb - to look ahead and fetch the
next page based on a user's browsing habits, which of course
takes time to build up. Obviously there's push stuff to update
users interfaces in the background, and the interface is
customizable. So why haven't Microsoft and Netscape incorporated
this stuff into their browsers themselves, you may ask? Neumann
says Redmond hasn't because it isn't really in the back-end
corporate space yet with NT, and Netscape is diverted by its
intranet push, rather than going after publishing companies.
The deal with NetGravity gives inCommon access to the company's
AdServer ad scheduling and billing technology. It means page
impressions can be audited easily because they will be in the
familiar AdServer format.
But Neumann said there is a crucial difference between the way
Downtown tracks ads and the way others do it. Downtown can track
and report all the ad impressions served to a browser regardless
of their source. They could come from the original source, a
corporate caching server or the user's own server in a browser.
So ad impressions from the caches don't get counted or billed.
Cache all that
The WiseWire neural net-based learning engine summarizes content
by category, rather than keywords and register user's interest.
Users also rate the hits they get from the technology by a
metering process, thus helping the neural net learn faster.
Downtown already had pattern recognition stuff that tracked what
articles were read first, what was read each Thursday, and so on,
and looked ahead and cached the relevant pages.
inCommon is writing a Downtown Datablade component to fit into
Informix' Universal Server database. It will expose inCommon to
the market of publishing houses that use Informix - the data from
those databases could be pushed into browsers using Downtown.
Neumann reckons Informix is big in the publishing industry. We're
not too sure how many publishing companies have even advanced
fast enough to be contemplating such technology yet, but it's a
start. The Datablade should be with us by the end of April -
Informix and inCommon are just sorting out inCommon's status with
Informix in terms of its Datablade partner program.
Neumann said the main competitor it comes up against is BackWeb,
but said the company's so-called Polite Agent protocol, based on
UDP means it can't get through firewalls in many cases. BackWeb
was too busy to talk to us all week about this, apparently.
The client stuff is all Windows-based right now, and there are no
plans for Java clients. Neumann said Java applets - such as they
are at the moment - don't change much, they just need downloading
a lot - "we can cache all that," he said.
Oracle refugees
inCommon has been privately-funded until now and is talking to
venture capitalists about a first round which should be finalized
by the end of March. The Downtown client is up on Windows 95 and
NT, while the server supports all the flavors of Unix and NT.
Neumann said the company has been talking to Apple for some time
trying to figure out its operating strategy since the acquisition
of Next Software Inc. Like most others, inCommon hasn't got a
clear idea of whether MacOS or Rhapsody support would be a viable
long-term option.
The company also talks to Netscape a lot, and is ready for its
Constellation desktop and Microsoft's Active Desktop alternative,
says Neumann.
The year-old company is run mainly be Oracle refugees who worked
on Oracle wide area network technology. CEO Jay Verkler founded
Oracle's network product, mobile system and international product
groups. http://www.incommon.com
OR040-15 IBM PREVIEWS OS/390 RELEASE 3 WITH WEB EMPHASIS
The internet, and more specifically web-based commerce is so
central to IBM Corp's mainframe business, or at least it hopes it
will be, that it chose Internet World in Los Angeles to announce
a clutch of updates to its OS/390 program last week. Release 3 of
OS/390 - what used to be called MVS - is due March 28.
The Internet Connection Secure Server for OS/390, which came out
last fall, has been integrated with the Workload manager load-
balancing software. At the moment it works with a single system
running the server, but parallel Sysplex support will arrive by
the year-end, according to Susan Puglia, Systems/390 director for
emerging technologies and industry business. The OS/390 Internet
BonusPak II contains more sample web pages for developers to play
with and OS/390 will also get cryptographic hardware support
using IBM's PowerPC G3 chip in late spring and a firewall in late
fall.
The Net.Commerce electronic shopping mall framework will be ready
late spring also. IBM Network Station Manager, the server
software for booting and firing down applets to its network
computers arrives March 28.
Puglia said IBM is not currently working on booting any NC other
than its own Network Stations right now. Net.Data for OS/390, the
web-based database interface, is in beta from this month.
As far as Java support goes, the beta program is now underway for
OS/390, but general availability won't happen until IBM gets Java
Development Kit (JDK) 1.1, which Sun duly announced yesterday as
well. However, the Java virtual machine (JVM) is not yet
integrated into the operating system itself, which is IBM's plan,
but there's no word on when that will happen. There's also a
bunch of internet gateways to CICS, IMS, MQSeries and DB2, among
others, in Release 3. Release 4.0 is due in the fall, adding
performance analysis enhancements, more programming tools and
better TCP/IP performance.
OR040-16 MICROSOFT GATHERS PUSH PARTNERS BEHIND ITS SPEC
Microsoft Corp last week proposed its own Channel Definition
Format (CDF) set of push software technologies to the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C), which are the standards to be used in its
forthcoming Internet Explorer release 4.0.
The majority of the participants in the nascent push - or
webcasting - market stepped forward to say it was a good thing,
as they know they had to, given Redmond's proven track record in
dominating the desktop market.
The details were scarce apart from it involves HTML, Dynamic HTML
and ActiveX. Redmond said the spec is a secret until the W3C is
through with it and appeared slightly over-confident that it was
a rubber stamp job with the consortium. The W3C emphasized that
it had not endorsed the format in any way, merely acknowledged
its receipt. The consortium could not comment on whether it was
the first such push proposal it had received.
Incidentally, Marimba Inc announced the same day that it had
joined the W3C, but the consortium said it happened a while ago,
its just that announcing things takes time. The principal
enthusiasts for CDF were PointCast Inc, America Online Inc and
BackWeb Inc. All agreed to support it with their internet
broadcasts.
OR040-17 LUCENT UNLEASHES INFERNO - WEB PHONE DUE
Lucent Technologies Inc has announced version 1.0 of Inferno -
the Bell Laboratories Inc-developed real-time operating system
that fits in just 1Mb of memory, including the kernel itself,
virtual machine, language and application management software.
Lucent is using Inferno in its own networking and switch products
including network and systems management, IP gateways, firewalls,
central office switches and domain name servers. The company will
also introduce a web phone running Inferno in an announcement
with about 10 partners due the first week in April.
Mike Skarzynski, VP and general manager of the Inferno network
software solutions group at Lucent said the operating system has
no competition as far as the footprint is concerned, including
JavaOS. "Nobody can beat us, nobody," he said.
Inferno can run Java, C or C++ in emulation and run on top of
Unix or Windows NT and connect devices, rather like the way
Novell Inc's IntraNetware does. While Inferno's not intended to
knock other products out of the market - it's designed to work
with them - Skarzynski says Inferno certainly blows other
technologies out of the water in terms of cost. There is no
upfront license fee, and for license quantities in the hundreds
of thousands, the royalty fee is about $5 per device.
Lucent may even create application-specific versions of Inferno
where customers require it, he says. However Skarzynski
emphasized Lucent's mission is to grow its $24bn switching
business, not to generate a huge revenue stream from operating
system sales, and sees Inferno as the means to achieve it.
Third parties creating Inferno-based devices will simply be more
inclined to use Lucent's Inferno-based access and transmission
gear at the back end, he reasons.
Dis virtual machine
Inferno 1.0 is claimed to provide end-to-end communication over
the public telephone network, the internet, corporate networks,
cable television and satellite broadcast.
With Inferno, networking and security protocols are built into
the operating system, Lucent says, and applications run unchanged
across any communications network or device. Inferno 1.0 includes
the Styx communications protocols, the Limbo programming language
and the Dis virtual machine.
However the Limbo moniker is due to live up to its transitional
name and is to be changed to Network C shortly, said Skarzynski.
Inferno's written mostly in C and Lucent wants to maximize its
appeal to developers.
Inferno also includes drivers for speech and audio applications,
and Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) for Informix, Microsoft,
Sybase and Oracle databases.
Processor families currently supported are Hitachi Ltd SH-3,
Digital Equipment Corp StrongARM and Advanced RISC Machines Ltd
ARM, iAPX-86, R-series, 68030, PowerPC and Sparc. The porting
work for these chips was done by Lucent and the partners, said
Skarzynski.
It can also be hosted as a virtual system under Solaris, Irix,
Digital Unix, HP-UX, Windows NT and Windows 95. Lucent claims
that more than 10,000 developers are currently working with the
Inferno network operating system, and that it also has "several
thousand" developers inside the company working with it.
Evaluation copies and application demos are up at
http://www.lucent.com/inferno/.
Skarzynski says Lucent's recent deal with Chorus Systemes SA
which will see the French company's Chorus/OS embedded operating
system deployed on some of Lucent's future access and
transmission products is not a kick in the teeth for Inferno.
"Chorus is being used to light up some LEDs on some future access
products. They'll also be running Inferno," he said.
Novera ships Epic 1.1 back-end Java classes
Novera Inc has released version 1.1 of its EPIC Enterprise
Computing Platform for internet Computing software: a set of Java
classes that does all the back-end stuff including file sharing
and printing and database connectivity that used to be done by
network operating systems, but which, until now, appears to have
been overlooked by the Java mavens (OR 33).
It is the first revenue-generating release for the 18-month
company staffed by ex-Sun and Brixton Systems employees, which
won Corel Corp as a very early endorsee way back in October.
There are no other signatories to talk about yet, though Richard
Reichgut, director of business development said some will be
announced in the next few weeks.
This cut adds the DB Blend feature, that enables corporate
databases to be represented as Java classes, a management systems
users interface, support for the IETF's Lightweight Internet
Person Schema (LIPS) and a service toolkit featuring a code
generator. Available now, Novera Epic 1.1 costs from $7,500 for a
50-user license. http://www.novera.com
OR040-18 JAVASOFT, REDMOND SOLVE JAVA INTERFACE PROBLEM
Redmond and JavaSoft appear to have come to terms over the
incompatible JNI interface in the first cut of the Java
Developer's Kit 1.1 (JDK 1.1) that interferes with Microsoft's
own native interfaces in its Java virtual machine and its new
Visual J++ 1.1 and prevents programs using the JNI from running
on Internet Explorer.
According to Microsoft, JavaSoft is going to do a "B" rev of JDK
1.1 and tinker with the code to tune it more to Redmond's liking,
reneging on its previous attitude that it's solely Microsoft's
responsibility to fix the problem. Microsoft will do an in-line
upgrade to VJ++ once the B rev is ready. JavaSoft's been stung by
criticism that it's been taking a proprietary attitude toward
defining Java. Redmond's been roasted for having tools that don't
work with "standard" Java.
OR040-19 HP SHIPS PRAESIDIUM SMART CARD AND LAYS OUT PLANS
Hewlett-Packard Co today introduces the penultimate piece of its
Praesidium security architecture with the ImagineCard smart
cards, which were manufactured by smart card specialist Gemplus
SA. Informix Software Corp produced a database to go with it.
There's two configurations being supplied by HP: a corporate
intranet and a web package. The corporate solution comprises an
HP K class directory server, where the public keys are also held;
the Gemplus card reading client software and readers; the
Praesidium smart card administration server - an HP D class,
Informix smart card database; Datacard card printer, and the
smart cards themselves.
The web package differs only in that it includes Netscape
Enterprise server and Gemplus web server software, plus browsers
on the client.
Digital signatures are only used in the intranet version, not the
web version, because HP doesn't reckon companies are yet ready to
farm out thousands of cards to their users when the technology is
still largely untried on the general public. The lack of the two-
factor digital signature technology also cuts the cost of each
smart card to about $60 per user if user numbers are in the
thousands at least - from about double that if digital signatures
are required, which is the case with the corporate package,
according to Feisal Mosleh, HP's security and internet solutions
marketing director.
Imagine almost anything
The corporate package comes in development and deployment forms.
It is designed to be contained either within a corporate intranet
- including initial corporate log-in procedures, or even getting
in the front door of the building - to the extranet - the
corporation and its trusted partners, a bit like Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI).
The development kit comes with 100 smart cards and the necessary
software, whereas the full deployment package is for large
numbers of cards, in the thousands at least, bringing the cost
per user down to around $50 per head, according to Mosleh.
The web architecture is not a web free-for-all just yet; it's
still meant to be used with pre-registered customers only, mainly
because of the lack of digital signature support. Mosleh said he
expected such support to arrive by next year. It is meant to span
from the intranet out to consumer services like home banking and
shopping, but without stored monetary values just yet.
The piece of the Praesidium framework yet to be completed is the
International Cryptography Framework (ICF) which needs more
supporters in terms of countries and companies before its is
released commercially.
British Telecommunications Plc (BT), Cap Gemini Sogeti and German
bank Gries & Heissel are testing the product internally. BT's
using it to replace a paper-based employee expense claim system
using the ImagineCard corporate; Cap Gemini is using the web
product to enable small-to-medium business to deploy virtual
intranets over the internet.
The timetable for the rest of the smart card roll-out is as
follows. The ImagineCard Corporate 1.0 and Web 1.0 starts
shipping April. In the fall version 2.0 will include integration
with HP Authentication Server, Virtual Vault server, ICF and the
Single Sign-On (SSO) mechanism (OR 39).
A year from now, with ImagineCard 3.0 the corporate and web
packages will merge, featuring both strong authentication and
digital signature.
Then, in the fall of 1998 ImagineCard 4.0 will feature stored
value capabilities, that is buying things. HP will strike up
partnerships to achieve this. Incidentally, why the ImagineCard
name? Because you can apparently imagine almost any application
of this technology. Don't blame us, we didn't think of it.
Pricing for 100 smart cards will be roughly as follows. The
Corporate development kit will cost $153,000; $129,000 buys the
web development package. The corporate deployment package will go
for $176,000, with the web deployment package costs $100,000. For
10,000 smart cards, the corporate package goes for around $1.3m
and the web for $700,000. Once you get into 50,000 users, its $6m
for the corporate bundle and half that for the web.
http://www.hp.com/go/security
OR040-20 WINTEL NETPC SPEC: SEEMS LIKE WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
When Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp first announced their NetPC
Reference Platform last October, in reaction to all the talk from
its rivals about network computers (OR 23) it was somewhat hard
to tell its rather vague specification from those of a standard
Windows personal computer.
And the same was the case last week, as the companies released
the 'official' specification, saying it was intended "for broad
industry review". Any objections, however, will have to be filed
fast, because Microsoft expects the first product announcements
from PC manufacturers "within the next 90 days." The name of Dell
Computer Corp has been added to the previously-committed Hewlett-
Packard Co and Compaq Computer Corp as manufacturing partners.
There appears to be no difference between the spec now and the
spec last November. The Wintel axis is hedging its bets, and is
not alone in this. The industry has gone too far down the NC-hype
road to turn back, but nothing has been delivered in volume yet.
And limbo tends to induce hedge-betting. The hasty 90-day review
period of course, is only possible because the specification is
so close to the systems those manufacturers are already offering.
One not participating in the review is Oracle Corp's Network
Computer Inc unit, due to launch its Intel and StrongARM-based
network computers and other devices April 15 in Japan.
It produced a checklist of six items upon which it claims its
entire NC strategy is based; you know the stuff, affordability,
simplicity, openness, scalability and so on. The last of those
has not been addressed by the NetPC crowd in any way shape or
form, it seems to us. NetPC was mocked as "PC Junior by NCI's
director of product marketing, Jeff Menz.
NetPC requirements include a 133MHz Pentium processor or
equivalent, 16Mb RAM, Universal Serial Bus with a least one USB
port, and a SMART-compliant hard drive. Full guidelines can be
downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/pc97.htm - except
that it's not there and the site hadn't been updated since
February 28 when we took a peek last Thursday.
Just like PCs
So, as a matter of record, the primary difference between a PC
and a NetPC will be the management software, and the sealed-case
design with no ISA slots. All hardware devices can be recognized
and managed by the software, there are remote management and
configuration tools, and facilities for updating in off-hour
periods. The aim is to cut down administration costs and increase
security.
Intel worked with Microsoft on the manageability software, while
Compaq, Dell and HP helped with reference specification itself,
so expect them to be amongst the first with product. Another 100
or so PC manufactures are also supporting the effort. For those
who want the software but not the restricted hardware, Microsoft
will be offering a Zero Administration Kit for Windows NT
Workstation 4.0, also within the next 90 days, and it expects PC
manufacturers to begin bundling it with their standard products.
The kit includes centralized configuration, a security system
preventing local access to the desktop computer, and software to
load applications from the network. Meanwhile, NetPCs will
include entry-level systems starting below the $1,000 price point
- just like PCs.
Sausage Software started shipping its Java-based Lockout Internet
tool last week. To control access to certain web pages within the
same site, a web site owner can load images into the applet and
select and choose a pattern in which the objects should be
clicked. The correct sequence would take the user to a specified
URL. It's available on Windows 95/NT and standard browsers,
costing $25.
OR040-21 DOT GOSSIP
Trusted Information Systems Inc (TIS) has added a firewall
breaking tool called SmartGate that enables access to specified
data through a firewall depending on a security profile and
mutual authentication. Server licenses cost $6,000 and clients
$79
The Internet Developers Association (IDA) has merged with the
International Society of Internet Professionals (ISIP).
Apple Computer plans to bundle a bunch of products with its
server software, AppleShare IP 5.0 that ships next quarter. It'll
have Vicom's Internet Gateway which gives up to 25 users
simultaneous access using one IP address; Open Door Networks
LogDoor displays server activity with support for multi-domain
web servers; Claris Home page for web page authoring; Claris E-
mailer; Santorini Server Manager software to let administrators
monitor and control AppleShare IP servers from a remote location
and Imagina's Newstand Demo CD-ROM containing 30,000 Usenet news
groups.
Sun Microsystems Inc has apparently pulled all the planets back
into the mothership. It doesn't want us to refer to its
subsidiaries by name anymore: SunSoft, JavaSoft, SMCC, SME -
they're all to be referred as Sun Microsystems' software
division,or Java division, or whatever. The company apparently
wants to "build brand equity" in the Sun name. They will still be
referred to internally by their original names.
America Online Inc has acquired LightSpeed Media a so-called
pioneer of soap operas on the web and other exciting stuff. It
has also appointed Bob Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment
from 1980 to 1991 to head AOL's original content division,
Greenhouse Networks. Tartikoff had already been working with AOL
to develop interactive brands as a consultant.
Hitachi Computer Products Inc has released its ZooWorks Research
Personal 2.0 application that remembers the URL and full text of
every web page visited. It creates a searchable index for off-
line searching and online retrieval and works with standard
browsers. ZooWorks runs on Windows 95 and NT, and costs $30.
Marimba Inc has joined the W3C. Sam Hobson, director of product
marketing says the company has not submitted anything yet, but
intends to do so in the future. He also says that Microsoft's
Channel Definition Format (CDF) (see page 7) represents the
"simplest kind of push technology you can imagine," and Marimba
can support it but it's only a fraction of the marketplace his
company is going after.
Berkeley Software Design Inc (BSDI) began shipping C2Net Software
Inc's Stronghold encrypting SSL Web server last week. It claims
that because Stronghold isn't made in the US, it does not have to
adhere to the government encryption policies, and reckons it's
the only commercial encrypting web server to provide full-
strength, uncrippled cryptography worldwide. BSDI is selling the
server for $500 and bundling it with its BSDI Internet Server
3.0.
Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems will resell software.com's
Post.Office mail server and InterMail 3.0 messaging server
worldwide and port it to its Reliant Unix platform.
IBM Corp's Systems/390 director of emerging technologies and
industry business said that Lotus Domino for the mainframe OS
will be up to supporting 3,200 users inside IBM Poughkeepsie by
June. It is intended to support 10,000 concurrent users when its
released in the fall.
Fulcrum Technologies Inc has introduced a Java SDK for its search
engine products. SearchBuilder for Java enables developers to add
custom web interfaces to the engines. It's available next quarter
for $1,000. http://www.fulcrum.com
He could have fooled us - "The internet gold rush is over: we've
had this big phenomenon, but there's not a lot of gold there,"
Frank Gill, executive vice-president and general manager of Intel
Corp's Internet & Communications Group told Reuters on the eve of
Internet World in Los Angeles. Certainly a lot of the froth is
off the top of share prices of companies like Netscape
Communications Corp and Yahoo! Inc, but if the Wall Street market
ever does crack the share prices of firms that cannot deliver
convincing and regularly repeatable profits will be punished
unmercifully. But what of the Netscape share price? Well the
company, which set an original price per share of $12 to $14 and
sold the issue at $28, was running at around $28 last week, but
remember it split its shares two for one last year, so that is
equivalent to $56.
UK-based Psion Software PLC said it's licensed Sun's Java
technologies and plans to port them to its EPOC32 operating
system running on low-power RISC processors for hand-held
computers. The agreement lets it re-license the Java-ized EPOC32
to Psion Computers PLC, Psion Industrial PLC and external
licensees so they can develop smart phones, mobile network
computers and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).
Seagate Technology Inc, has taken a small stake in WebTV Networks
Inc. Reports had Seagate buying 3% of the company for $14m, but
WebTV wouldn't comment on the actual figures. It's a continuation
of Seagate chairman and CEO, Al Shugart's policy of making
investments that will give the company returns so it can rapidly
expand.
WebTV uses a lot of Seagate disk drives and will use more as it
expands internationally.
@Home Network, the cable modem pioneer was recently touting a
Deutsche Morgan Grenfell report that reportedly said everything
in the cable garden was rosy. Indeed customers of @Home investor
Tele-Communications Inc (TCI) seemed very satisfied, but Time
Warner's Road Runner service, springing up in New York state, San
Diego and elsewhere came off worst, with the five users surveyed
dissatisfied. One assessed Time Warner's technical support as
"abysmal." But there's no subscriber numbers or penetration rates
from any of the participants, which is what we really want.
Infodata Systems Inc, the Fairfax, Virginia consulting and data
management software company, reported fourth-quarter net income
down 57% at $50,000 on revenue up just 2% at $2.2m. This drop is
largely due to R&D costs of $279,000 for the quarter for the
company's Virtual Filing Cabinet software that shipped last week
(OR 39). Net income for the year was $503,000 compared to
$131,000 in 1995, on revenues up 36% at $9.6m. Earnings per share
for the quarter fell 60% at $0.02, and $0.18.in the year, up from
a cent.
NetGravity Inc has released the third version of its AdServer
advert management and scheduling software. It includes a new
reporting system that delivers information in different formats
than before, and ones it says ad-vertising agencies have asked
for. The information can also be published directly to the web
with version 3.0. This cut also features integration with
products from Verisign, Firefly, NetPerceptions and the Actra
joint venture of Netscape and GE Information Services.
http://www.netgravity.com
Yes, we know it is a serious subject, but in case any of you guys
out there are worried about the effects of testosterone, or even
want to know what hypogonadism is, go to SmithKline Beecham's new
site at http://www.testosteronesource.com.
The London Times reports that the next edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary will add the new social group to the other
generalizations. Mouse potatoes are those among us who prefer the
company of their computer to that of their peers. They are
defined as those "having a twilight existence, cut off from
reality". Now turn the machine off and go and do those things
only humans can do.
JavaStation activity out there he advises us to remember that
while there are massive amounts of Java application software
currently under development, very little of it will appear on the
market until later this year.
Sun's early accounts are busy writing their own custom
applications for deployment on JavaStations. Sun says it's been
shipping the microSparc II-based JavaStation 'brick' design "in
volume" since December. The fan-less 'coffee tower' model based
upon the microSparc IIep processor is due "late spring."
The IIep-based system adds support for Flash RAM, modems and
local printing.
Clearly shipments "in volume" has quite a different meaning from
what shipments "in volume" will mean a year from now.
Sun believes that its current volumes are appropriate for this
stage of the market's development.
OR040-03 DEC DIVERSIFIES INTO E-PAYMENTS WITH MILLICENT
Digital Equipment Corp has entered the electronic payments
business with its Millicent micropayments system, currently in
the pilot stage, but which could eventually see DEC acting as a
bank, which would be ironic considering the current state of the
company.
The Maynarder reckons it's different from other e-payment methods
for very small amounts, such as that of CyberCash Inc because it
uses what the company calls a distributed broker's approach as
opposed to a central clearing house approach. This is a bit
confusing, but it appears that vendors (merchants or publishers)
go to a broker, which could be any kind of financial institution
or company that wishes to front the money, and authorizes that
broker to sell a certain amount of its "scrip" - code that is
equivalent to money.
Millicent electronic wallet
Money is made by the middleman - the broker, which is where DEC's
interest in all this lies, and by the vendors, according to DEC.
Millicent is meant as an alternative revenue stream for the
vendors rather than the only one.
For instance, the user may pay 10 cents of its scrip money to the
broker, but the broker may only give the vendor (publisher) of
the article 9 cents back, say. Vendors are able to use as many
brokers as they choose and users can sign to as many brokers as
they want.
Users would buy scrip from brokers using a standard payment
method, such as a credit card. Running totals are maintained in
users' Millicent electronic wallet. DEC reckons vendors can make
money using this method on transactions worth a fraction of a
cent.
It was developed by Digital's Systems Research Center at Palo
Alto and is currently being piloted within the DEC firewall using
employees as guinea pigs and information from its partners in the
scheme - Reuters News Service, Infoseek information Network and
Tele Danmark. It's expected to be rolled out commercially in late
summer or the fall. http://www.millicent.digital.com
OR040-04 MONDEX ADOPTED BY AT&T FOR WEB PAYMENTS TEST
Mondex International Ltd, the MasterCard International Inc-owned
smart card and electronic wallet-based electronic payment system
appears to have won its first heavyweight seal of approval from
existing investor AT&T Corp, which will integrate it with its
SecureBuy web hosting service.
Hewlett-Packard Co and OpenMarket Inc are also working with AT&T
on SecureBuy-Mondex integration. OpenMarket's will be the first
web server to use the technology. Testing with selected merchants
will start this summer, and the company hopes to fully integrate
the two by the first half of next year.
Mondex is designed to handle small cash-size payments, in other
words not for buying a car, or for the micro-payments that
CyberCash Inc's solution is designed. It can be used across
currencies, is downloadable from ATMs or Point of Sale systems
and can access other bank account functions. The internet is the
obvious application of Mondex and was a major factor in
MasterCard's decision to take a controlling stake last November
in the London-based company (OR 26).
AT&T's Universal Card Services senior VP Keith Kendrick said this
plan was in place long before the MasterCard takeover. He added
that it is also separate from HP's work on its Praesidium
ImagineCard smart card work (see page 6). Mondex users can make
card-to-card transactions as well as buy things, so people can
lend each other money electronically, for instance.
Mondex, AT&T and HP are also proposing an Internet Open Trading
Protocol which will be published next quarter, and in which AT&T
Labs was instrumental in developing. The protocol is not
proprietary to Mondex however, and are compliant with the Secure
Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol devised by MasterCard and
Visa International. Mondex will publish the spec on the net soon
and will suggest it to its investors as the way forward.
The trio also said the protocol is being evaluated by other e-
commerce types and investors in Mondex: apart from MasterCard and
AT&T, all the other investors are banks, mostly from Australia
and New Zealand, but also including Wells Fargo and The Hong Kong
& Shanghai Banking Corp Ltd and Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce.
OR040-05 SUN SHIPS JDK 1.1, HOTJAVA HOT ON ITS HEELS
Sun Microsystems Inc's JavaSoft Inc unit made a clutch of minor
announcements last week at Internet World in Los Angeles. The
company is now shipping the JavaBeans Development Kit (BDK) 1.0
and it has the JavaBeans-to-ActiveX bridge available in beta.
JavaBeans is the component-based development tool, and the bridge
provides a link to Windows-based systems so applications written
using JavaBeans can run in Windows.
JavaBeans application programming interfaces (APIs) have also
been included in the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.1, which also
features 15 example Beans and a BeanBox test container to test
Bean behavior. Both the BDK and bridge are free downloads at
http://java.sun.com/beans.
JavaBeans product line manager Gina Centoni said the Beans APIs
are, and will remain a core element of JDK and support of them is
a necessary element of JDK license compliance. Centoni said the
fact that the likes of IBM, Oracle and many others are doing more
with Beans than Sun itself was the intention all along.
JavaSoft's role is to develop the APIs and tools, rather than the
applications themselves, she said.
Separately, the HotJava browser 1.0 will ship March 24. It's
meant for system integrator and independent software vendors
(ISVs) to develop customized browsers for clients. It's targeted
at things like network computer, personal digital assistant (PDA)
and kiosk vendors, as it has a footprint of 2.5Mb, which is
pretty big for these things, and runs in less than 1.5Mb RAM.
The other thing JavaSoft announced last week was the Java Runtime
Environment (JRE), which appears to be a kind of 'JDK Lite' - a
"compact solution" for developers that is compatible with JDK. It
is meant for developers to bundle with their application while
operating systems vendors get round to embedding JDK 1.1 into
their OS.
OR040-06 HP TAKES AND TWEAKS SUN'S JAVA WORKSHOP FOR UNIX & NT
As expected, Sun Microsystems Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co last
week announced that HP has signed a global licensing agreement
with Sun for its Java Workshop Java development environment (OR
39).
HP will use its source code license to tweak Java Workshop to run
better on its systems - "write once run best on HP." HP will
extend the environment, adding its own plug-ins and build it onto
its HP-UX Unix virtual machine, and market it as the HP edition
of Java Workshop by Sun. HP will also sell Workshop on Windows
NT.
HP is not going the same execution route as Sun. Instead, as well
as fine-tuning the Java virtual machine (JVM) to run better on HP
systems, it is also using a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler of its
own to translate the bytecode into machine code. Sun doesn't yet
have a JIT of its own and doesn't appear to want one.
But Daniel Charlu, HP's Java product manager said the company
would ensure 100% Java compatibility at all times as it extends
the JVM. HP will use what it calls its Dynamic Optimization
Technology which Charlu says will "come close to native
performance."
Joe Keller, Sun's director of marketing for Workshop products
said the plug-ins are likely to become part of the standard
product as it goes forward, but has not sorted out the licensing
of future enhancements with HP or with Novell, which is also
writing plug-ins for Java Workshop.
The NT version of Java Workshop arrives this month with HP-UX
coming next quarter. Both versions will be the same price as on
Sun's platforms: $99 per user. Charlu said the Java market has
moved too fast for HP to consider doing its own environment, when
Sun has one ready.
OR040-07 POINTCAST THROWS OPEN CHANNELS TO EVERYONE FOR FREE
PointCast Inc knows it's got some real competition in the
webcasting arena and its answer is to throw open its doors and
let any publishers push stuff down to its million or so
'subscribers.'
The PointCast Connections software will be part of the next
release of the PointCast client, due next month. PointCast won't
be making any direct revenues from this move, merely "derivative
revenues," through a larger circulation and as a result of this
increased circulation a more varied product - "more pointcasted"
was the phrase used.
Connections will be another channel, to add to its existing ones
from the New York Times and others, though Connections will not
be "eclipsing any affiliates" as the company put it. They will
all still have their existing channels.
However, there are various options to deal with Connections if
it's not wanted. It can be turned off at a firewall, PointCast I-
Server owners can pick and choose various channels within the
greater Connections channel or use a ratings system to choose
appropriate channels for employees. Individuals can choose
whether or not to get it and there are filtering options, says
the company.
Incidentally, the Mac version of PointCast may finally be upon
us, honest. It was late going into beta sometime in the fall and
has been there ever since.
The company was demonstrating it at Internet World last week and
is promising that it will deliver it by the end of the month - or
maybe the beginning of April,. its not quite sure.
http://www.pointcast.com
OR040-08 NETSCAPE LOOKS TO EXTRANET TO KEEP DISTANCE FROM REDMOND
Since it retreated from the browser war front line, and for some
time before, Netscape Communications Corp was pretty much focused
on the intranet market. Using its client software as a loss-
leader it has managed to snatch a fair bit of market and mind
share with its SuiteSpot server package, while Microsoft Corp has
not really got it together in the corporate space, by most
observer's reckoning.
Now Netscape reckons it is time to look beyond the intranet to
the extranet: the corporate intranet linked to the intranets of
large customers and/or partners. The Mountain View-based company
last week issued a white paper that spells out a roadmap for its
client and server software into next year. Netscape did a similar
thing in June of 1996 describing its intranet strategy.
It's chosen the suitably virile codenames of Mercury for the
client and Apollo for the server for its march into the nascent
extranet space. Netscape got 40 other vendors together to support
something it's calling Crossware: software that supports
standards, many of which are managed, or in draft form with the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The poster boys among the
40 include Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corp, Novell Inc,
Oracle Corp, Silicon Graphics Inc and Sun Microsystems Inc.
Thumbs up
Microsoft Corp was not approached to add its name to the list,
and although Windows platforms are not mentioned at all in two
releases, and the Crossware approach is contrasted favorably to
"fat clients" that "cannot scale or be extended beyond the
firewall," Netscape said all Windows platforms would be
supported, adding that the standards are all publicly available
for any company to give them the thumbs up.
The white paper also talks about a Crossware visual development
tool, codenamed Palomar (a mountain north east of San Diego). It
features HTML, JavaScript and Java components, and will be
available in the second half of this year.
The Mercury client vision will feature a local object store to
store content, application and data from the internet; an agent
technology called Compass that will add to the information-
handling capabilities of the Constellation desktop, which is due
around mid-year; a hypertree feature that gives a unified view of
folders, bookmarks, email - something Microsoft has been touting
for a long time, and is due to deliver in Internet Explorer 4.0.
It also promises run-time environment and rendering engine called
Gemini and a universal in-box for e-mail, fax and voicemail.
Apollo server plans call for enhanced workflow technology,
specifically e-mail and calendaring; integrated agent technology
so agents can be written for specific tasks across different
events; load-balancing, back-up; software distribution and
management; a programmable content management store.
The standards supported by the 40 include the Lightweight
Directory Protocol (LDAP); S/MIME secure e-mail messaging; X.509
certificates version 3 for electronic credentials; Versit's vCard
contact and registration standard; signed objects, also part of
JavaSoft's Java Archive (JAR) specification and EDIINT for
implementing Electronic Data Interchange over the internet.
Crossware applications must be interoperable seamlessly across
"major" client and server operating systems, including network
computers; they must be able to be centrally-deployed and
managed; they must be modular in nature and scalable, accessible
on-demand with interfaces written in HTML, JavaScript and Java.
Wall Street liked what it saw and Netscape shares closed up
$3.125 at $29.625 on the day of the announcement. The white
paper's up at
http://home.netscape.com/comprod/at_work/white_paper/vision/intro.html
OR040-09 SPYGLASS LAUNCHES EMBEDDED WEB BROWSER & SERVER
After having had its PC browser business snatched from its grasp
by Microsoft and Netscape, Spyglass Inc's re-invention as an
embedded software company manifested itself for the first time
last week as the company began shipping its Device Mosaic 1.0
embedded browser and MicroServer embedded web server, both in
line with its strategy for the 'new' Spyglass that the
Naperville, Illinois company laid out last December (OR 28).
One thing that has changed however, is the Remote Mosaic browser
for things like phones and pagers, which had been due next
quarter, but is still in development and won't now be available
until some time in the second half, according to Randy Littleson,
VP marketing.
Device Mosaic runs in 1.7Mb, which Littleson said includes both
the code and data actually running. The code itself fits in less
than 890Kb.
As far as rumors about IBM taking Device Mosaic, or any other
Spyglass product for its Network Stations network computers:
"there's going to be some work going on there," is all Littleson
could say, as IBM isn't ready to say anything yet (OR 37).
Network Computer Devices Inc is the only endorsee mentioned thus
far.
Device Mosaic development licenses start at $50,000. In
quantities of tens of thousands and up Littleson said Spyglass
can get below one dollar per device running the stuff.
MicroServer is an HTTP server than fits in about 60Kb of memory
on Intel processors, says the company. It's got a set of
application programming interfaces (APIs) and error logging
support. Other functions can be added to extend the server in the
areas of event logging, security, additional APIs, content
management, administration and cross-platform support.
Embedded web servers are meant to be used as an interface between
a non-PC product - anything from a telephone to a car and feed
information about that device back to a standard browser.
MicroServer licenses also start at $50,000, and Spyglass offers
support and services through its professional services group as
part of the licensing agreement. As expected, Xerox Corp stood up
to say that it will use MicroServer when it is rolled out fully
at the month-end OS support will include Solaris, Lynx, VxWorks,
QNX, OS/9, pSOS Windows CE and Java. http://www.spyglass.com
OR040-10 JAVA NAMING SPEC SUPPORTS MULTIPLE DIRECTORY SERVICES
Java is gradually getting kitted-out with the kind of support it
needs if it is to become a fully-fledged participant in the
enterprise, and Java creator Sun Microsystems Inc is getting
plenty of help from its industry partners to fill in the blanks
where they still exist.
Last week the company announced a JNDI Java Naming and Directory
Interface specification which will enable developers to create
Java applications with a unified way of accessing multiple naming
and directory services across networks. It includes support for
Novell Inc's NDS NetWare Directory Services, Sun's NIS naming
service, DNS Domain Naming Service and the standard LDAP Light
Directory Access Protocol.
The JNDI specification has been developed by Sun, Hewlett-Packard
Co, IBM Corp, Netscape Communications Corp and Novell. Each will
develop its own implementation once the spec, currently out for
review at http://java.sun.com, has been finalized. A polished
version of the spec is due for release next quarter.
First out of the chute claiming support is Novell, saying it will
make an early version of a JNDI implementation providing access
to NDS available to developers later this month. In addition to
Novell's internet-enabled version of NetWare - IntranetWare - NDS
runs on Solaris, NT and other Unixes and is supported by the
likes of HP, SCO and Microsoft. JavaSoft says it will make a
reference version of the spec available in the third quarter.
OR040-11 CONTENT FREE LA-LA VIRUS STRIKES INTERNET WORLD
by Gary Flood
Proctor & Gamble Inc's Olestra is fat-free fat. It has some great
attributes - it passes through the body without being digested or
absorbed, so it has no calories, meaning an ounce of Olestra
potato chips would have no fat and just 70 calories, compared to
10 grams of fat and 150 calories in conventional chips.
However, it is alleged to have some less pleasant attributes -
possible depletion of fat-soluble vitamins and blood carotenoids.
There is also a high risk of diarrhea and abdominal cramping,
according to critics, and an even more socially embarrassing side
effect that as a family newspaper we forbear to mention.
This side effect was, queerly enough, reproduced in the
collective brains of journalists worldwide this week, as a result
of the wave of fat-free Grand Alliances and Portentous
Somethingorothers that have swept the industry like Ebola for
some reason. Actually, the reason is mainly Spring Internet World
in that City of Angels, LA. A rash of mental Olestra-containing
announcements have left us calling for a global ban on the
emission of pointless alliances, grand strategies, and corporate
mutual appreciation society meetings.
Breathless analyst
First we had the Gang Of Four Who Don't Like Microsoft And So
Will Bolster Up The OMG - Somehow, of Tuesday.
Not to be outdone, Hewlett-Packard's grand strategy for last week
was called ACT (Access, Collaboration and Transactions), a set of
words claimed to enable corporations to "radically improve
productivity, customer responsiveness and market reach for their
Intranets." A breathless Hurwitz analyst was suitably amazed,
dubbing it a "broad, compelling vision of what companies can do
with an Intranet." In other words, HP Professional Services will
come in and make your intranet ten pounds lighter and more
attractive to an opposite intranet with cool software from
Netscape, Marimba, Informix Universal Server, and PointCast, and
quite possibly a zillion other companies, but we got lost with
all the new services With Names In CAPS.
Again, not being outdone, Microsoft Corp had its own grand
alliance announcement last week: a virtual wonderfulness called
the Networked Multimedia Connection (NMC), lining up its
fraternal 800 pound gorillas in networks and chips, Cisco Systems
Inc and Intel Corp to "break barriers for multimedia in business,
establish standards, and collaborate on open testing and
marketing of intranet solutions."
The three intend to "provide support and resources for multimedia
applications developers, service providers and corporate
information technology (IT) managers, collaborate on the
development of networked multimedia technologies, and implement
and promote industry standards."
Mr Armani
The Networked Multimedia Lab, a complete end-to-end networked
multimedia facility for development and interoperability testing,
will open at Cisco at the end of the month, and promised are NMC
toolkits, with software development kits from all three, will be
offered in conjunction with the Lab. Standards the three
companies intend to support include IP Multicast, a definition
for sending one copy of information to many recipients over a
network; the ITU H.323 standard, which defines how PCs can share
audio and video data over computer networks; and the ReSource
reserVation Protocol (RSVP), which provides a means for networks
to support special quality of service applications.
More than 20 companies have already demonstrated support for the
NMC, and their names and gushes can be read at
http://developer.intel.com. (Sadly, this announcement seemed to
have at least a fact or two, which may explain the absence of an
analyst sounding as if he was seeing the end of "Close
Encounters" for the first time.)
Digital Equipment Corp's chairman Bob Palmer was unable to
announce a Grand Alliance, but he did stun one and all by
revealing that the web was, wait for it, swift emerging as the
"universal computing platform of choice."
Other zingers "Mr Armani" downloaded as part of his keynote:
apparently there's something smashing on the way called the
information superhighway (Bob! purleeze!), the impact thereof on
electronic commerce and consumers etc to be highly impactful.
Digital, it now emerges, has a two-pronged strategy for this
great thing. Three technology trends will provide the support and
reliability needed for exponential internet growth, and luckily
DEC still sells two of 'em: 64-bit computers and high-speed
networks, patently great news for anyone still holding DEC stock.
Let's have some fat back
First, it is investing in new technology to build a web
infrastructure that provides greater capacity, reliability and
security, which are key to unlocking the global, networked
economy. Second, it is helping leading-edge companies shape the
future internet landscape, by preparing and empowering them to
capitalize on emerging markets. And don't forget society, a good
thing to meander on about at the end of any self-respecting
keynoter's keynote: "The potential for revolutionizing education,
for re-invigorating our national political dialog, [and] for
transcending geographic and national boundaries is almost
unlimited," Wow, what a relief to know that somebody's thinking
about all that stuff.
Finally, we have Colliance, a worldwide Unix-NT integration
service from HP, which is so plainly an obviously good idea and a
perfectly sensible way for it to make more money that we're a bit
worried that it hadn't been doing it already.
Gosh. Can't anyone do any work out there and actually release
something that doesn't exist in any other dimension other than
marketing?
In other words, let's have some fat back in our potato chips,
please.
OR040-12 IBI SHIPS WEBFOCUS 3.0 WITH JAVA GRAPHING
Information Builders Inc (IBI) has revved its WebFocus to 3.0.
WebFocus is the web version of its Focus 4GL reporting engine.
WebFocus enables reports to be written from a web browser using
IBI's connections to more than 65 databases.
The new thing this time is Java applets, specifically to do
charting and graphing. The applet is downloaded, the answer set
imported and a graph is created in runtime. Charts can also be
linked together on the fly, with no browser plug-ins required.
WebFocus is up on Windows NT, OS/390 and most Unixes, with
Digital Equipment Corp VMS and Alpha support coming soon, with
AS/400 support due in a few months, according to Kevin Quinn,
IBI's sales director for internet products. WebFocus 3.0 is the
same price as the first cut, ranging from $6,500 to $100,000.
OR040-13 PERICOM LAUNCHES JAVA HOST CONNECTIVITY RANGE
UK-headquartered connectivity specialists Pericom Software has
launched what it claims is the first range of connectivity
products for Java. Its teemWorld range of terminal emulators/host
connectivity products supports over 20 different alphanumeric
terminal emulation including DEC VT/100/220/320/420, IBM 3270,
IBM 5250 and Tandem 6530. These legacy systems can now be
accessed from any client that supports Java - including PCs, Unix
workstations, and thin clients such as network computers, claims
Pericom.
The company's also hoping that teemWorld may score with companies
looking to standardize on a single product across different
desktops - like Windows, OS/2, and Unix. TeemWorld can be used as
either a standalone Java app or as an applet to run within a web
browser. TeemWorld is available before the end of March. No
prices.
OR040-14 INCOMMON LOOKS TO PUBLISHING TO PUSH DOWNTOWN UPTOWN
The push posse of Marimba, PointCast, BackWeb and co have one
thing in common; they don't reckon the browser is the best way to
push content down to the desktop and have their own alternative
software.
But inCommon LLC, a San Mateo, California-based competitor thinks
they're wrong, and prides itself on not requiring the users to
download any extra software to have information pushed down to
them; it works inside Netscape and Microsoft browsers.
It's targeting the publishing industry, which it believes is
going to be very reluctant to part with HTML as a publishing
language "unless something appears that's easier," says Larry
Neumann, inCommon's VP marketing. He said the company would
rather promote an existing technology than bet on something
that's unproven, in what is after all a fairly conservative
industry.
Heuristics
The company's Downtown product was launched last December, and
last week the company announced alliances with Informix Software
Corp, NetGravity Inc and WiseWire Corp to expand the technology.
The product emerges from beta in about 30 days.
Downtown uses a variety of technologies that the company reckons
makes it that bit special. It has intelligent quick caching, so
when a page is reloaded, only the parts that have changed are
requested, so a newspaper's masthead wouldn't be reloaded, just
the refreshed content.
It uses heuristics - rules of thumb - to look ahead and fetch the
next page based on a user's browsing habits, which of course
takes time to build up. Obviously there's push stuff to update
users interfaces in the background, and the interface is
customizable. So why haven't Microsoft and Netscape incorporated
this stuff into their browsers themselves, you may ask? Neumann
says Redmond hasn't because it isn't really in the back-end
corporate space yet with NT, and Netscape is diverted by its
intranet push, rather than going after publishing companies.
The deal with NetGravity gives inCommon access to the company's
AdServer ad scheduling and billing technology. It means page
impressions can be audited easily because they will be in the
familiar AdServer format.
But Neumann said there is a crucial difference between the way
Downtown tracks ads and the way others do it. Downtown can track
and report all the ad impressions served to a browser regardless
of their source. They could come from the original source, a
corporate caching server or the user's own server in a browser.
So ad impressions from the caches don't get counted or billed.
Cache all that
The WiseWire neural net-based learning engine summarizes content
by category, rather than keywords and register user's interest.
Users also rate the hits they get from the technology by a
metering process, thus helping the neural net learn faster.
Downtown already had pattern recognition stuff that tracked what
articles were read first, what was read each Thursday, and so on,
and looked ahead and cached the relevant pages.
inCommon is writing a Downtown Datablade component to fit into
Informix' Universal Server database. It will expose inCommon to
the market of publishing houses that use Informix - the data from
those databases could be pushed into browsers using Downtown.
Neumann reckons Informix is big in the publishing industry. We're
not too sure how many publishing companies have even advanced
fast enough to be contemplating such technology yet, but it's a
start. The Datablade should be with us by the end of April -
Informix and inCommon are just sorting out inCommon's status with
Informix in terms of its Datablade partner program.
Neumann said the main competitor it comes up against is BackWeb,
but said the company's so-called Polite Agent protocol, based on
UDP means it can't get through firewalls in many cases. BackWeb
was too busy to talk to us all week about this, apparently.
The client stuff is all Windows-based right now, and there are no
plans for Java clients. Neumann said Java applets - such as they
are at the moment - don't change much, they just need downloading
a lot - "we can cache all that," he said.
Oracle refugees
inCommon has been privately-funded until now and is talking to
venture capitalists about a first round which should be finalized
by the end of March. The Downtown client is up on Windows 95 and
NT, while the server supports all the flavors of Unix and NT.
Neumann said the company has been talking to Apple for some time
trying to figure out its operating strategy since the acquisition
of Next Software Inc. Like most others, inCommon hasn't got a
clear idea of whether MacOS or Rhapsody support would be a viable
long-term option.
The company also talks to Netscape a lot, and is ready for its
Constellation desktop and Microsoft's Active Desktop alternative,
says Neumann.
The year-old company is run mainly be Oracle refugees who worked
on Oracle wide area network technology. CEO Jay Verkler founded
Oracle's network product, mobile system and international product
groups. http://www.incommon.com
OR040-15 IBM PREVIEWS OS/390 RELEASE 3 WITH WEB EMPHASIS
The internet, and more specifically web-based commerce is so
central to IBM Corp's mainframe business, or at least it hopes it
will be, that it chose Internet World in Los Angeles to announce
a clutch of updates to its OS/390 program last week. Release 3 of
OS/390 - what used to be called MVS - is due March 28.
The Internet Connection Secure Server for OS/390, which came out
last fall, has been integrated with the Workload manager load-
balancing software. At the moment it works with a single system
running the server, but parallel Sysplex support will arrive by
the year-end, according to Susan Puglia, Systems/390 director for
emerging technologies and industry business. The OS/390 Internet
BonusPak II contains more sample web pages for developers to play
with and OS/390 will also get cryptographic hardware support
using IBM's PowerPC G3 chip in late spring and a firewall in late
fall.
The Net.Commerce electronic shopping mall framework will be ready
late spring also. IBM Network Station Manager, the server
software for booting and firing down applets to its network
computers arrives March 28.
Puglia said IBM is not currently working on booting any NC other
than its own Network Stations right now. Net.Data for OS/390, the
web-based database interface, is in beta from this month.
As far as Java support goes, the beta program is now underway for
OS/390, but general availability won't happen until IBM gets Java
Development Kit (JDK) 1.1, which Sun duly announced yesterday as
well. However, the Java virtual machine (JVM) is not yet
integrated into the operating system itself, which is IBM's plan,
but there's no word on when that will happen. There's also a
bunch of internet gateways to CICS, IMS, MQSeries and DB2, among
others, in Release 3. Release 4.0 is due in the fall, adding
performance analysis enhancements, more programming tools and
better TCP/IP performance.
OR040-16 MICROSOFT GATHERS PUSH PARTNERS BEHIND ITS SPEC
Microsoft Corp last week proposed its own Channel Definition
Format (CDF) set of push software technologies to the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C), which are the standards to be used in its
forthcoming Internet Explorer release 4.0.
The majority of the participants in the nascent push - or
webcasting - market stepped forward to say it was a good thing,
as they know they had to, given Redmond's proven track record in
dominating the desktop market.
The details were scarce apart from it involves HTML, Dynamic HTML
and ActiveX. Redmond said the spec is a secret until the W3C is
through with it and appeared slightly over-confident that it was
a rubber stamp job with the consortium. The W3C emphasized that
it had not endorsed the format in any way, merely acknowledged
its receipt. The consortium could not comment on whether it was
the first such push proposal it had received.
Incidentally, Marimba Inc announced the same day that it had
joined the W3C, but the consortium said it happened a while ago,
its just that announcing things takes time. The principal
enthusiasts for CDF were PointCast Inc, America Online Inc and
BackWeb Inc. All agreed to support it with their internet
broadcasts.
OR040-17 LUCENT UNLEASHES INFERNO - WEB PHONE DUE
Lucent Technologies Inc has announced version 1.0 of Inferno -
the Bell Laboratories Inc-developed real-time operating system
that fits in just 1Mb of memory, including the kernel itself,
virtual machine, language and application management software.
Lucent is using Inferno in its own networking and switch products
including network and systems management, IP gateways, firewalls,
central office switches and domain name servers. The company will
also introduce a web phone running Inferno in an announcement
with about 10 partners due the first week in April.
Mike Skarzynski, VP and general manager of the Inferno network
software solutions group at Lucent said the operating system has
no competition as far as the footprint is concerned, including
JavaOS. "Nobody can beat us, nobody," he said.
Inferno can run Java, C or C++ in emulation and run on top of
Unix or Windows NT and connect devices, rather like the way
Novell Inc's IntraNetware does. While Inferno's not intended to
knock other products out of the market - it's designed to work
with them - Skarzynski says Inferno certainly blows other
technologies out of the water in terms of cost. There is no
upfront license fee, and for license quantities in the hundreds
of thousands, the royalty fee is about $5 per device.
Lucent may even create application-specific versions of Inferno
where customers require it, he says. However Skarzynski
emphasized Lucent's mission is to grow its $24bn switching
business, not to generate a huge revenue stream from operating
system sales, and sees Inferno as the means to achieve it.
Third parties creating Inferno-based devices will simply be more
inclined to use Lucent's Inferno-based access and transmission
gear at the back end, he reasons.
Dis virtual machine
Inferno 1.0 is claimed to provide end-to-end communication over
the public telephone network, the internet, corporate networks,
cable television and satellite broadcast.
With Inferno, networking and security protocols are built into
the operating system, Lucent says, and applications run unchanged
across any communications network or device. Inferno 1.0 includes
the Styx communications protocols, the Limbo programming language
and the Dis virtual machine.
However the Limbo moniker is due to live up to its transitional
name and is to be changed to Network C shortly, said Skarzynski.
Inferno's written mostly in C and Lucent wants to maximize its
appeal to developers.
Inferno also includes drivers for speech and audio applications,
and Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) for Informix, Microsoft,
Sybase and Oracle databases.
Processor families currently supported are Hitachi Ltd SH-3,
Digital Equipment Corp StrongARM and Advanced RISC Machines Ltd
ARM, iAPX-86, R-series, 68030, PowerPC and Sparc. The porting
work for these chips was done by Lucent and the partners, said
Skarzynski.
It can also be hosted as a virtual system under Solaris, Irix,
Digital Unix, HP-UX, Windows NT and Windows 95. Lucent claims
that more than 10,000 developers are currently working with the
Inferno network operating system, and that it also has "several
thousand" developers inside the company working with it.
Evaluation copies and application demos are up at
http://www.lucent.com/inferno/.
Skarzynski says Lucent's recent deal with Chorus Systemes SA
which will see the French company's Chorus/OS embedded operating
system deployed on some of Lucent's future access and
transmission products is not a kick in the teeth for Inferno.
"Chorus is being used to light up some LEDs on some future access
products. They'll also be running Inferno," he said.
Novera ships Epic 1.1 back-end Java classes
Novera Inc has released version 1.1 of its EPIC Enterprise
Computing Platform for internet Computing software: a set of Java
classes that does all the back-end stuff including file sharing
and printing and database connectivity that used to be done by
network operating systems, but which, until now, appears to have
been overlooked by the Java mavens (OR 33).
It is the first revenue-generating release for the 18-month
company staffed by ex-Sun and Brixton Systems employees, which
won Corel Corp as a very early endorsee way back in October.
There are no other signatories to talk about yet, though Richard
Reichgut, director of business development said some will be
announced in the next few weeks.
This cut adds the DB Blend feature, that enables corporate
databases to be represented as Java classes, a management systems
users interface, support for the IETF's Lightweight Internet
Person Schema (LIPS) and a service toolkit featuring a code
generator. Available now, Novera Epic 1.1 costs from $7,500 for a
50-user license. http://www.novera.com
OR040-18 JAVASOFT, REDMOND SOLVE JAVA INTERFACE PROBLEM
Redmond and JavaSoft appear to have come to terms over the
incompatible JNI interface in the first cut of the Java
Developer's Kit 1.1 (JDK 1.1) that interferes with Microsoft's
own native interfaces in its Java virtual machine and its new
Visual J++ 1.1 and prevents programs using the JNI from running
on Internet Explorer.
According to Microsoft, JavaSoft is going to do a "B" rev of JDK
1.1 and tinker with the code to tune it more to Redmond's liking,
reneging on its previous attitude that it's solely Microsoft's
responsibility to fix the problem. Microsoft will do an in-line
upgrade to VJ++ once the B rev is ready. JavaSoft's been stung by
criticism that it's been taking a proprietary attitude toward
defining Java. Redmond's been roasted for having tools that don't
work with "standard" Java.
OR040-19 HP SHIPS PRAESIDIUM SMART CARD AND LAYS OUT PLANS
Hewlett-Packard Co today introduces the penultimate piece of its
Praesidium security architecture with the ImagineCard smart
cards, which were manufactured by smart card specialist Gemplus
SA. Informix Software Corp produced a database to go with it.
There's two configurations being supplied by HP: a corporate
intranet and a web package. The corporate solution comprises an
HP K class directory server, where the public keys are also held;
the Gemplus card reading client software and readers; the
Praesidium smart card administration server - an HP D class,
Informix smart card database; Datacard card printer, and the
smart cards themselves.
The web package differs only in that it includes Netscape
Enterprise server and Gemplus web server software, plus browsers
on the client.
Digital signatures are only used in the intranet version, not the
web version, because HP doesn't reckon companies are yet ready to
farm out thousands of cards to their users when the technology is
still largely untried on the general public. The lack of the two-
factor digital signature technology also cuts the cost of each
smart card to about $60 per user if user numbers are in the
thousands at least - from about double that if digital signatures
are required, which is the case with the corporate package,
according to Feisal Mosleh, HP's security and internet solutions
marketing director.
Imagine almost anything
The corporate package comes in development and deployment forms.
It is designed to be contained either within a corporate intranet
- including initial corporate log-in procedures, or even getting
in the front door of the building - to the extranet - the
corporation and its trusted partners, a bit like Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI).
The development kit comes with 100 smart cards and the necessary
software, whereas the full deployment package is for large
numbers of cards, in the thousands at least, bringing the cost
per user down to around $50 per head, according to Mosleh.
The web architecture is not a web free-for-all just yet; it's
still meant to be used with pre-registered customers only, mainly
because of the lack of digital signature support. Mosleh said he
expected such support to arrive by next year. It is meant to span
from the intranet out to consumer services like home banking and
shopping, but without stored monetary values just yet.
The piece of the Praesidium framework yet to be completed is the
International Cryptography Framework (ICF) which needs more
supporters in terms of countries and companies before its is
released commercially.
British Telecommunications Plc (BT), Cap Gemini Sogeti and German
bank Gries & Heissel are testing the product internally. BT's
using it to replace a paper-based employee expense claim system
using the ImagineCard corporate; Cap Gemini is using the web
product to enable small-to-medium business to deploy virtual
intranets over the internet.
The timetable for the rest of the smart card roll-out is as
follows. The ImagineCard Corporate 1.0 and Web 1.0 starts
shipping April. In the fall version 2.0 will include integration
with HP Authentication Server, Virtual Vault server, ICF and the
Single Sign-On (SSO) mechanism (OR 39).
A year from now, with ImagineCard 3.0 the corporate and web
packages will merge, featuring both strong authentication and
digital signature.
Then, in the fall of 1998 ImagineCard 4.0 will feature stored
value capabilities, that is buying things. HP will strike up
partnerships to achieve this. Incidentally, why the ImagineCard
name? Because you can apparently imagine almost any application
of this technology. Don't blame us, we didn't think of it.
Pricing for 100 smart cards will be roughly as follows. The
Corporate development kit will cost $153,000; $129,000 buys the
web development package. The corporate deployment package will go
for $176,000, with the web deployment package costs $100,000. For
10,000 smart cards, the corporate package goes for around $1.3m
and the web for $700,000. Once you get into 50,000 users, its $6m
for the corporate bundle and half that for the web.
http://www.hp.com/go/security
OR040-20 WINTEL NETPC SPEC: SEEMS LIKE WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
When Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp first announced their NetPC
Reference Platform last October, in reaction to all the talk from
its rivals about network computers (OR 23) it was somewhat hard
to tell its rather vague specification from those of a standard
Windows personal computer.
And the same was the case last week, as the companies released
the 'official' specification, saying it was intended "for broad
industry review". Any objections, however, will have to be filed
fast, because Microsoft expects the first product announcements
from PC manufacturers "within the next 90 days." The name of Dell
Computer Corp has been added to the previously-committed Hewlett-
Packard Co and Compaq Computer Corp as manufacturing partners.
There appears to be no difference between the spec now and the
spec last November. The Wintel axis is hedging its bets, and is
not alone in this. The industry has gone too far down the NC-hype
road to turn back, but nothing has been delivered in volume yet.
And limbo tends to induce hedge-betting. The hasty 90-day review
period of course, is only possible because the specification is
so close to the systems those manufacturers are already offering.
One not participating in the review is Oracle Corp's Network
Computer Inc unit, due to launch its Intel and StrongARM-based
network computers and other devices April 15 in Japan.
It produced a checklist of six items upon which it claims its
entire NC strategy is based; you know the stuff, affordability,
simplicity, openness, scalability and so on. The last of those
has not been addressed by the NetPC crowd in any way shape or
form, it seems to us. NetPC was mocked as "PC Junior by NCI's
director of product marketing, Jeff Menz.
NetPC requirements include a 133MHz Pentium processor or
equivalent, 16Mb RAM, Universal Serial Bus with a least one USB
port, and a SMART-compliant hard drive. Full guidelines can be
downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/pc97.htm - except
that it's not there and the site hadn't been updated since
February 28 when we took a peek last Thursday.
Just like PCs
So, as a matter of record, the primary difference between a PC
and a NetPC will be the management software, and the sealed-case
design with no ISA slots. All hardware devices can be recognized
and managed by the software, there are remote management and
configuration tools, and facilities for updating in off-hour
periods. The aim is to cut down administration costs and increase
security.
Intel worked with Microsoft on the manageability software, while
Compaq, Dell and HP helped with reference specification itself,
so expect them to be amongst the first with product. Another 100
or so PC manufactures are also supporting the effort. For those
who want the software but not the restricted hardware, Microsoft
will be offering a Zero Administration Kit for Windows NT
Workstation 4.0, also within the next 90 days, and it expects PC
manufacturers to begin bundling it with their standard products.
The kit includes centralized configuration, a security system
preventing local access to the desktop computer, and software to
load applications from the network. Meanwhile, NetPCs will
include entry-level systems starting below the $1,000 price point
- just like PCs.
Sausage Software started shipping its Java-based Lockout Internet
tool last week. To control access to certain web pages within the
same site, a web site owner can load images into the applet and
select and choose a pattern in which the objects should be
clicked. The correct sequence would take the user to a specified
URL. It's available on Windows 95/NT and standard browsers,
costing $25.
OR040-21 DOT GOSSIP
Trusted Information Systems Inc (TIS) has added a firewall
breaking tool called SmartGate that enables access to specified
data through a firewall depending on a security profile and
mutual authentication. Server licenses cost $6,000 and clients
$79
The Internet Developers Association (IDA) has merged with the
International Society of Internet Professionals (ISIP).
Apple Computer plans to bundle a bunch of products with its
server software, AppleShare IP 5.0 that ships next quarter. It'll
have Vicom's Internet Gateway which gives up to 25 users
simultaneous access using one IP address; Open Door Networks
LogDoor displays server activity with support for multi-domain
web servers; Claris Home page for web page authoring; Claris E-
mailer; Santorini Server Manager software to let administrators
monitor and control AppleShare IP servers from a remote location
and Imagina's Newstand Demo CD-ROM containing 30,000 Usenet news
groups.
Sun Microsystems Inc has apparently pulled all the planets back
into the mothership. It doesn't want us to refer to its
subsidiaries by name anymore: SunSoft, JavaSoft, SMCC, SME -
they're all to be referred as Sun Microsystems' software
division,or Java division, or whatever. The company apparently
wants to "build brand equity" in the Sun name. They will still be
referred to internally by their original names.
America Online Inc has acquired LightSpeed Media a so-called
pioneer of soap operas on the web and other exciting stuff. It
has also appointed Bob Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment
from 1980 to 1991 to head AOL's original content division,
Greenhouse Networks. Tartikoff had already been working with AOL
to develop interactive brands as a consultant.
Hitachi Computer Products Inc has released its ZooWorks Research
Personal 2.0 application that remembers the URL and full text of
every web page visited. It creates a searchable index for off-
line searching and online retrieval and works with standard
browsers. ZooWorks runs on Windows 95 and NT, and costs $30.
Marimba Inc has joined the W3C. Sam Hobson, director of product
marketing says the company has not submitted anything yet, but
intends to do so in the future. He also says that Microsoft's
Channel Definition Format (CDF) (see page 7) represents the
"simplest kind of push technology you can imagine," and Marimba
can support it but it's only a fraction of the marketplace his
company is going after.
Berkeley Software Design Inc (BSDI) began shipping C2Net Software
Inc's Stronghold encrypting SSL Web server last week. It claims
that because Stronghold isn't made in the US, it does not have to
adhere to the government encryption policies, and reckons it's
the only commercial encrypting web server to provide full-
strength, uncrippled cryptography worldwide. BSDI is selling the
server for $500 and bundling it with its BSDI Internet Server
3.0.
Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems will resell software.com's
Post.Office mail server and InterMail 3.0 messaging server
worldwide and port it to its Reliant Unix platform.
IBM Corp's Systems/390 director of emerging technologies and
industry business said that Lotus Domino for the mainframe OS
will be up to supporting 3,200 users inside IBM Poughkeepsie by
June. It is intended to support 10,000 concurrent users when its
released in the fall.
Fulcrum Technologies Inc has introduced a Java SDK for its search
engine products. SearchBuilder for Java enables developers to add
custom web interfaces to the engines. It's available next quarter
for $1,000. http://www.fulcrum.com
He could have fooled us - "The internet gold rush is over: we've
had this big phenomenon, but there's not a lot of gold there,"
Frank Gill, executive vice-president and general manager of Intel
Corp's Internet & Communications Group told Reuters on the eve of
Internet World in Los Angeles. Certainly a lot of the froth is
off the top of share prices of companies like Netscape
Communications Corp and Yahoo! Inc, but if the Wall Street market
ever does crack the share prices of firms that cannot deliver
convincing and regularly repeatable profits will be punished
unmercifully. But what of the Netscape share price? Well the
company, which set an original price per share of $12 to $14 and
sold the issue at $28, was running at around $28 last week, but
remember it split its shares two for one last year, so that is
equivalent to $56.
UK-based Psion Software PLC said it's licensed Sun's Java
technologies and plans to port them to its EPOC32 operating
system running on low-power RISC processors for hand-held
computers. The agreement lets it re-license the Java-ized EPOC32
to Psion Computers PLC, Psion Industrial PLC and external
licensees so they can develop smart phones, mobile network
computers and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).
Seagate Technology Inc, has taken a small stake in WebTV Networks
Inc. Reports had Seagate buying 3% of the company for $14m, but
WebTV wouldn't comment on the actual figures. It's a continuation
of Seagate chairman and CEO, Al Shugart's policy of making
investments that will give the company returns so it can rapidly
expand.
WebTV uses a lot of Seagate disk drives and will use more as it
expands internationally.
@Home Network, the cable modem pioneer was recently touting a
Deutsche Morgan Grenfell report that reportedly said everything
in the cable garden was rosy. Indeed customers of @Home investor
Tele-Communications Inc (TCI) seemed very satisfied, but Time
Warner's Road Runner service, springing up in New York state, San
Diego and elsewhere came off worst, with the five users surveyed
dissatisfied. One assessed Time Warner's technical support as
"abysmal." But there's no subscriber numbers or penetration rates
from any of the participants, which is what we really want.
Infodata Systems Inc, the Fairfax, Virginia consulting and data
management software company, reported fourth-quarter net income
down 57% at $50,000 on revenue up just 2% at $2.2m. This drop is
largely due to R&D costs of $279,000 for the quarter for the
company's Virtual Filing Cabinet software that shipped last week
(OR 39). Net income for the year was $503,000 compared to
$131,000 in 1995, on revenues up 36% at $9.6m. Earnings per share
for the quarter fell 60% at $0.02, and $0.18.in the year, up from
a cent.
NetGravity Inc has released the third version of its AdServer
advert management and scheduling software. It includes a new
reporting system that delivers information in different formats
than before, and ones it says ad-vertising agencies have asked
for. The information can also be published directly to the web
with version 3.0. This cut also features integration with
products from Verisign, Firefly, NetPerceptions and the Actra
joint venture of Netscape and GE Information Services.
http://www.netgravity.com
Yes, we know it is a serious subject, but in case any of you guys
out there are worried about the effects of testosterone, or even
want to know what hypogonadism is, go to SmithKline Beecham's new
site at http://www.testosteronesource.com.
The London Times reports that the next edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary will add the new social group to the other
generalizations. Mouse potatoes are those among us who prefer the
company of their computer to that of their peers. They are
defined as those "having a twilight existence, cut off from
reality". Now turn the machine off and go and do those things
only humans can do.
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