WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
July 15 - July 19 1996 Issue No 7
OMG ATTACKS JAVASOFT; FIGHTS TO MAKE IIOP UBIQUITOUS
JavaSoft has found itself caught in the middle of the on-going war between Object Management Group chief Chris Stone and Microsoft for control of distributed objects standards. Stone accuses JavaSoft of behaving exactly like Microsoft. "They actually believe their own press releases over there," he splutters. "They think that the world is completely homogeneous. That Java is everywhere and is gonna be everywhere on every box until the end of time."
Stone's current gripe is with Java's static RMI or Remote Method Invocation which assumes that there's Java at the other end. In Stone's mind, RMI is an affront to pragmatic real-world interoperability that ignores legacies among other things. It's not good enough for him that JavaSoft has provided a "secondary" Java IDL that embraces OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol (IIOP) and seems to provide some Java-to-nonJava connectivity. By not adopting IIOP as its native method, JavaSoft will dilute the OMG's battle: "The issue is simple. OMG's Corba vs. the looming DCOM," he says. "Now JavaSoft has thrown RMI into the ring, when it could have just used IIOP", he adds.
He wants both JavaSoft and Netscape to back OMG's IIOP in no uncertain terms. It would give them instant interoperability with any Corba 2-compliant ORB and advance OMG's fortunes, now heavily tied to the ubiquity of IIOP, in the process. It would also upset the Microsoft DCOM/ActiveX apple cart, a common goal for all three organizations.
HTTP WORKGROUP SHUTTING UP SHOP - NEXT STOP; THE OBJECT WEB
The biggest shake-up in the underlying structure of the Worldwide Web is on the way with proposals to completely change the nature of its underlying Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The likely outcome? A move from HTTP's simple 'Request-Send' model to one involving distributed objects.
With work on specifying Hypertext Transfer Protocol 1.1 nearing completion, the Internet Engineering Task Force HTTP workgroup is aiming to shut itself down by year end. But it is likely that the workgroup will be replaced with another, examining proposals for HTTP-NG, a next generation object-based protocol. "My personal bet is that the Corba-style of definition of distributed object interactions will dominate the thinking of advanced Internet protocols" says Larry Masinter, joint chair of the existing HTTP workgroup.
The main work on NG to-date is based on a proposal from Simon Spero of Verifone subsidiary EIT.
Conventional HTTP requires a browser to set up a new connection to the server for each request - for each image, or piece of text on a page - resulting in huge overheads. NG attempts to reduce this by allowing multiple requests to a server to be passed over a more persistent single connection. Moreover requests can optionally be handled asynchronously with the client able to fire out multiple requests without waiting for a response. Today's browsers try to mimic this effect by opening multiple connections to a host, but this tends to clog router caches on backbone connections.
While Spero's work substantially cuts the network overhead and paves the way for better multimedia integration, the Worldwide Web consortium wants to go a lot further: bringing object technology to the underpinnings of the Web. Moving HTTP towards an object framework would make it fit more comfortably into the corporate software world, and allow for multiple language support. A joint conference with the Object Management Group late last month was set up to explore the ways that the Web and objects could come together.
The W3C's favoured option is to implement an HTTP-NG proxy using Xerox Parc's Inter-Language Unification architecture (ILU). ILU is a meta architecture that allows, so its proponents say, the easy bridging of multiple protocols with multiple language bindings. You
SONY & PHILIPS CHOOSE WEBTV
WebTV Networks has sold two of the biggest players in the consumer electronics arena on its vision of Internet on the television. Last week it signed up Sony Electronics and Philips Consumer Electronics to build set top boxes based on its reference design.
But whereas last month WebTV was saying Web-enablement would up the price of a television by $50 to $100, last week it was vague on pricing details. None of the companies would officially comment on the hardware costs, but sources say the hardware will likely cost between $200 and $400.
The Palo Alto-based start-up, founded by three Apple alumni by way of General Magic, came out of the development closet last month. Its specifications allow manufacturers to build set-top boxes linking existing TVs to the Web. WebTV president Steve Perlman previously headed up General Magic's interactive TV efforts and used his existing contacts with Sony and Philips to get them on board.
Sony says its television Web peripheral will ship this Fall. Sony and Philips are both expected to have TVs with integrated Web access this year. Perlman says both companies are already in pre-production for the standalone boxes, which are built around a chip from Integrated Devices Technology Inc - using a MIPS R-4300, presumably.The online connection will come courtesy of WebTV which will pick the "best" ISP per region.
Other companies partnering with WebTV to offer software and content for its online service include Excite, Concentric Network, Integrated Device Technology, Progressive Networks and SurfWatch Software. WebTV expects to break even in 1997 and turn a profit the following year.
The custom browser, which formats Web content to fit the television screen, lacks support for Java and Macromedia's Shockwave. However RealAudio, MIDI music and MPEG 2 audio support are integrated into the system. It is run from a "One Thumb Browsing" universal remote control with a keyboard optional. Perhaps the most unusual feature of the deal is seeing Philips and Sony agree.
EUROPE ONLINE FILES FOR CREDITOR PROTECTION AS BURDA QUITS
The withdrawal of German publisher Burda GmbH as 26% direct shareholder has forced on-line service and Internet access provider Europe Online SA to apply for court protection from its creditors while it tries to find new investors.
Protection has been granted by the Luxembourg Court of Commerce and Europe
Online board member Candace Johnson told Reuter it had "a number of firm offers on the table" and expected to reach deals within weeks. Talks could involve one new shareholder taking a majority stake, and CompuServe Inc has confirmed it is one of the companies in talks.
The court commissioned two experts to prepare a detailed report on the company's finances by December 1. Europe Online's other shareholders include Meigher Communications Inc, and AT&T Corp, UK pursuer of high-tech disasters Pearson Plc, and Luxembourg's Societe National de Credit et d'Investissement SA and Banque et Caisse d'Epargne de l'Etat. The company has said it expects to be profitable in four years' time.
Europe Online, which now has about 25,000 subscribers, started charging for its services in March after a free preview period; it currently has national services in Germany, the UK and Luxembourg and an international service in English; it plans to start services this year in France, Sweden and the Netherlands.
YAHOO HIT WITH LOSS; SEARCH ENGINES FALTER
Last week was not a good week to be a search engine company. Market leading Yahoo suffered a double financial hit with a loss in the second quarter and a drop in its stock. The company had losses of $1.4 million on revenues of $3.3 million, and its stock price dropped to $16, the lowest it's been since Yahoo went public at $13 a share. The firm said it's optimistic that its fortunes will change, based on the number of advertisers, which more than doubled since the previous quarter.
Cynics, however, look at the business model and cruelly wonder if the Yahoos will ever make a profit. The company blames its increased loss for the second quarter on ramped up spending during the quarter as part of its effort to distinguish itself from more than a dozen hungry rivals.
Sales and marketing costs jumped to $3.3 million from $60,000 a year earlier.
Yahoo's rivals in the search engine market fared no better, with share prices dropping uniformly into single digits.
SYMANTEC EARNINGS TO FALL SHORT OF PROJECTIONS
Symantec met with investors last week to say it would finish the first quarter worse than predicted. After fiscal year end 1995 losses of $39.8 million, CEO Gordon Eubanks predicted strong 1996 financials. He was wrong.
The company, which is one of the leaders of the Java tool charge with its CafŽ toolset, was expected to increase revenues by about 5% from year-earlier turnover of $109.9 million, but revenues will now be lower.
Analyst James Greene at Summit Strategies said, "They need to get out a unified intranet strategy - soon." Symantec has a potential winner in its Java virus scanner for applets, but the product's still in the development stage.
MACROMEDIA PREDICTS SLUMP
Macromedia, San Francisco, California, said last week that its sales would be below analysts' expectations for its first quarter ended June 30. The multimedia company will report on July 22 and anticipates a profit of $9m on sales of about $35 million, compared to first quarter 1995 profits of $4.4 million on revenue of $22.3 million.
AOL SEEING DAYLIGHT AT LAST
America Online settled its courtroom battles over billing practices last week, breaking a long string of bad news, and was rewarded with a jump in its stock rates. Last week, the online service provider said it had preliminary approval to settle 11 class-action lawsuits which alleged AOL overcharged customers and didn't disclose its billing and cancellation procedures properly.
Bad news surrounded the company last month, when the Federal Trade Commission began poking into its billing practices, its competitors began sprinting the Web and its COO and president jumped ship after only four months on the job. But last week AOL vowed to improve communication with users and give free time to affected customers.
Analyst Morgan Stanley said although AOL's shares have been "falling like a knife" it will shake off recent turmoil. They shrugged off reports that the Web will crush proprietary services as exaggerated and "overdone." Also, earnings per share estimates throughout the stock decline have remained unchanged at $1.05 for fiscal 1997 and $0.54 for fiscal 1996.
The shares, which closed at $38 the day AOL settled in court, may reach $55 to $60 by late Fall, according to Morgan Stanley, which recently upgraded its shares from outperform to strong buy.
VISA MOVES TO PUSH FRENCH ONLINE COMMERCE
Visa International, French banks Banque Nationale de Paris and Societe Generale, France Telecom and Smart Card manufacturer Gemplus International SA last week announced a new consortium designed to integrate French experience with chip cards into existing electronic payment standards.
"The French market is the only market in the world where electronic payments via chip cards, with 5m such cards issued, and electronic commerce, via the Minitel, are so widely disseminated," said Baudouin Prot, associate managing director for BNP. France Telecom Multimedia director Gerard Eymery noted that the operator pays out approximately $700m annually to merchants that sell services and wares via the Minitel.
Since France Telecom introduced the credit card payment-enabled Minitel terminal Magis to the market about a year ago, it has sold 250,000 units, Eymery said. Indeed, echoed Hans van der velde, president of Visa's European Community region, "The French project is essential for advancing a worldwide solution."
Consortium members stressed that a global system is, in fact, their aim, by integrating French chip-card payment procedures into the Visa and Mastercard SET Secure Electronic Transactions and EMV Europay MasterCard Visa standards. The first was developed strictly for markets, in particular the US, that use magnetic-stripe cards. "We don't intend to work toward a strictly Franco-francais solution," said Prot, "but one that will function as well in France as abroad."
Prot and his colleagues said they are convinced that the card is better than software-only electronic "virtual wallets" because it is more portable, not being tied to a personal computer's hard disk, and is less susceptible to fraud. "All of the [Internet electronic payment] systems that have been proposed to date are software-only, and they can be defrauded," Mark Lassus, president and chief executive for Gemenos-based Gemplus International told Online Reporter.
Lassus said Gemplus has "several [electronic payment] projects under way," including a hardware (PCMCIA card, modem and keypad) and software system it has developed with Informix Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co. The device, which should sell for about $50 when it arrives on the market in the fall was unveiled at Informix's user conference in Chicago last week. Visa's van der Gelde said magnetic stripe and signature credit cards are likely to be replaced ultimately with chip-based cards: "You have to look at the future perspective for chip cards, with the enormous amount of information you can put on them," he said.
NIST FORMS CLIPPER III INDUSTRY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
The US federal government's Clipper III encryption management program has moved a step closer to reality with the formation of an advisory committee under the auspices of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology.
NIST says it is forming a 24-person advisory committee to study the feasibility of a key escrow scheme like Clipper III and to start pilots. The committee, to be chosen by the Commerce secretary, will be formed from the government and private sectors and will consist both of cryptographers and users.
Clipper III, or the Federal Key Management Infrastructure, until now just a white paper, calls for companies to leave encryption keys with third parties in case government investigators need to read encrypted data. While the government insists the initiative is key to fighting electronic crime, both civil rights advocates and businesses that sell or use encryption technology are opposed to it. Montana senator Conrad Burns is pushing a Pro-Code bill to prohibit key escrow policies, which is set to be reviewed by the Senate Commerce Committee on July 24.
NIST, which was also involved on the technical end of the first Clipper proposal, won't directly affect the United States' encryption export policy although it sets standards for federal procurement policies. The committee, which is still in the early formation stage, will develop a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for review by the Secretary of Commerce. wais.access.gpo.gov
AT&T AND UNWIRED PLANET PUT A BROWSER IN YOUR POCKET
AT&T Wireless will bring to market its unique version of an Internet device with PocketNet Phone, a cellular phone that gives users access to the Internet and e-mail. The phone is based on a specialized browser developed by Unwired Planet that sends and retrieves only text-based information, not multimedia and graphics. Unwired Planet is the Internet start-up where Oracle Network Computer veteran Andy Laurson fled; it's been cagey about its doings until now.
The UP.Link software consists of Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML), the UP.Browse client and the UP.Link Server middleware. The browser uses a menu-based interface that is manipulated by the cellular phone's keypad.
Existing Web sites don't have to be modified to run on the browser. Information requests are routed via UP.Link through AT&T's wireless IP network (Cellular Digital Packet Data or CDPD) and the wireline Internet to a Web server, where they're processed. The browser shows the results of the query, not the steps in between.
PocketNet phones will be available in the fourth quarter of this year for roughly $500, with exact pricing to be announced then. The AT&T-branded phones will be manufactured by PCSI, and Mitsubishi will also offer a version of PocketNet based on its MobileAccess Phone. AT&T will host a gateway server to the wireless IP networks, or companies may manage their own.
The UP.Link technology, written in HDML, can also be used in pagers. In addition to AT&T, Unwired Planet has lined up vendors such as Ameritech, Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile, Comcast Cellular Communications and GTE MobilNet and now has an SDK available for download. www.uplanet.com
GTE, ZIPLINK JOIN NET FRAY
GTE has signed a multi-million dollar deal with UUNet in order to use the ISP's network backbone for national service. The deal will carry GTE, already providing phone service in 28 states, to 46 states altogether. It's not clear why customers outside of GTE's traditional Southern stronghold would go to the company over other telcos, or why users would not go directly to UUNet.
The service will be the usual price - heaven forbid that a telco-cum-ISP charge anything other but $19.95 for unlimited Internet access - and includes standard Internet software.
Another entrant to the ISP field, Ziplink of Hartford, Connecticut, bought the Internet network infrastructure from The News Corporation's iGuide in order to open up Net access lines to major cities.
The surge of ISPs, as in all gold rushes, is liable to leave some people with empty gold pans. While it's not clear yet who the winners and losers will be, in a survey of business executives conducted by KPMG Peat-Marwick, 54% said that telecom companies will become the dominant Internet providers, while 23% cast their lots with traditional ISPs like Netcom and 18% said online services would carry the most Internet traffic.
SINCLAIR FOLLOWS INTEL'S LEAD
Sinclair Broadcast Group is gearing up to launch a television service called Supercast that broadcasts Internet data to PCs along with audio and video TV signals.
Sinclair, America's seventh-largest broadcast company, will transmit the digital information over the Vertical Blanking Interval, the area of the TV frequency that typically carries closed captions. Intel's Intercast broadcast uses VBI to broadcast the Internet as well. Both companies, in fact, use data-encoding technology from Norpak in Canada.
While Intel targets the home audience with promises of Internet-enhanced television on the PC, Sinclair plans to use Supercast for high-speed Internet access. And while Intercast is still limited to the Netscape Navigator, Supercast can use any browser. Sinclair's Net TV will work with computers that have a "broadcast modem," either an antenna or cable that hooks with a modem to PCs through a slot.
PHAR LAP CAN TURN DOOR-CHIMES INTO WEB SERVER
People tend to think of a Web server as a Sun Microsystems Inc Netra or one of Apple Computer Inc's specially configured Power Macs, but there's no reason why you shouldn't turn your electricity meter or a thermometer up Mount Snowdon into a Web server.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Phar Lap Software Inc has come out with what it calls "the world's smallest Web server for embedded devices." Based on Phar Lap's Embedded Web Technology, which includes Realtime ETS Kernel for embedded development, TCP/IP support and an HTML-On-The-Fly package, it is designed to enable embedded devices to be made universally accessible via the World Wide Web from any machine with a Web browser.
Phar Lap sees the system being used to monitor things such as weather stations, seismographic monitors or flood watch systems, or in-room patient monitors, factory-floor controller monitors and office systems such as smart copiers. It has put together the Phar Lap weather station, which runs on a 4" by 4" 80386 single board computer, provides worldwide access to the local weather outside Phar Lap's Cambridge, offices - want to check? It's at http://smallest.pharlap.com
The HTML-On-The-Fly package converts raw data into HyperText Mark-up Language; the suite includes dialler software so the remote system can dial a host. It will be available this quarter, but the firm is giving no prices.
FULCRUM BUYS WAIS FROM AOL
Fulcrum Technologies Inc has acquired the WAISserver search technology from America Online Inc and will take over the existing contracts with WAISserver customers and resellers. America Online will retain the World Wide Web production services business of WAIS.
The WAIS software is most popular in market sectors where adherence to standards is particularly important, such as the government and universities. Still, it turns up in less expected places too - like Informix' Web site.
Ottawa, Canada-based Fulcrum says it is committed to bringing the wide area search protocols available under Unix to Windows NT as well. Meanwhile, version 2.0 of the company's SurfBoard Internet search and retrieval engine is out now for HP-UX and Solaris, as well as Windows NT. It is $12,500 for Unix, and other versions of Unix will be out next quarter. It is $6,250 for NT.
PUTTING WEB SITES ON THE MAP
"Where's my nearest branch?" is a question that retailers go to great effort and expense to answer. Wouldn't it be great if it could be answered automatically by the corporate Web site? London-based QAS Systems' 'Quick Address Nearest' is a tool for Web developers that lets them build these kind of functions into their offerings. The existing version generates geographical location by using the UK's postcodes, however a US zip-code system will appear early next year. In the UK, the 1.7 million postcodes (with a format such as W1V 5FH) each refer to around 15 houses. The UK Post Office and the Office of National Statistics produce a data-file, mapping each postcode to a grid reference, which QAS licences. Once the company has hard-coded the location of the customers' sites, a little basic trigonometry gives the distance to the nearest site. The company also massages the data a little to account for major rivers, estuaries etc.
In the US, the Postal Service and the Census Bureau produce a similar file relating zip codes with geography. The five digit zip isn't accurate enough, Americans will need to wrap their heads around the full 9 digit code to use the system - this brings the accuracy down to 51 post-boxes.
QAS managing director Simon Worth says the company has obtained the data file and later this year will finalise the deal with the US postal service allowing them to apply the data to Web sites. Web developers should be able to get hold of the QAS system, which is designed to interwork with a variety of databases, by next April. Is anyone else doing anything similar? Not that Worth knows of, he says.
It is not cheap, however. In the UK the basic tool costs developers £950, on top of that there is a one-off charge of between £1,000 and £2,0000 to hard-wire in the retailer's locations. On top of that is a yearly £950 charge to maintain the database of post codes.
Pricing the US is a long way from being set, but the company is already on the look-out for likely authors who want to put their Web sites on the map.
POINTCAST TWEAKS ITS AD SYSTEM - GIVES MORE CONTROL
PointCast Inc, the privately owned news-dissemination company has tweaked its advertising system to give more control. Previously, buyers had to take a minimum of a month's airtime, which has been reduced to a week. Lead-times have also been cut and a new premium tariff lets the advertiser up the frequency of their presentation. Currently PointCast imposes a limit of 100 active adverts allowed at any one time.
The company has also struck a deal with the Audit Bureau of Verification Services, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Audit Bureau of Circulations which set up shop to provide advertisers with creditable Web access statistics. ABVS is having to develop a bespoke application to audit Pointcast's servers. It is expected to go into beta this Fall. Until then, advertisers will have to take Pointcast's access figures on trust.
l The Company also announced last week that it has teamed up with CNN. The Turner-owned cable channel will provide news to Pointcast and will also take PointCast's code to produce a 'co-branded' version of the software for download from its CNN Interactive site.
AD HOC GROUP TO FIGHT CAVEAT EMPTOR ON WEB
A small group of Internet companies and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have teamed to try and bolster consumer confidence in buying over the Web. Instead of concentrating on the pure financial security aspects, the Etrust group (www.etrust.org) is tackling users doubts about leaving their personal and financial details on Web sites. While the details of the scheme are still up in the air, the group says it will license symbols representing various types of privacy and security to online merchants. The standards will define how personal data is collected, and what is done with it. The group is also attempting to arrange a program of certification and auditing.
Those interested in participating can get more details from etrust@etrust.org
l At the same time that Etrust has identified security fears as a major block to Internet commerce, a survey in the Pacific Rim suggests that most people have yet to buy anything electronically on the grounds that... they have yet to see anything they wanted to buy.
MICROSTRATEGY HAS WEB-OLAP
MicroStrategy Inc has launched its relational on-line analytical processing tool for the World Wide Web, to turn a costly warehouse into a money spinner, it says.
DSSWeb gives browser-users access to existing warehouses. MicroStrategy founder and chief executive Mike Saylor says the firm aims to "commoditize the data warehouse".
Saylor who confesses to modeling himself on Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, wants to make his company "the Oracle of decision support."
What makes DSSWeb different from anything others may be touting, says Saylor, is the fact it will sit on top of any of the leading relational databases. DSSWeb integrates with MicroStrategy's relational on-line analytical server DSS Server.
NCD has named Rudy Morin, former SVP, Finance and Administration at Memorex Telex, as its executive VP of Operations and Finance.
Softbank Expos has named Greg Stern, who joined Softbank when it acquired Seybold Seminars, as the general manager of Softbank's recently acquired WebInnovation show. The show will take place October 28-30 in San Jose.
NEC's latest notebook computers are supposed to be "Internet-ready".
Costing $3,700, they come with 100MHz Pentium, 810MB disk, fax modem and "all the software necessary to connect to the Internet," although the Web browser was not specified.
With what now looks like a shudder of horror, AT&T Corp is disengaging from just about the last of its proprietary on-line services, saying last week that its AT&T PersonaLink Services for handhelds will be discontinued on August 30, and that it is following Burda AG out of Europe Online SA, where it inherited a 10.8% stake when it bought Ziff Communications Co's embryonic - and now aborted - on-line service: it says PersonaLink employees will be reassigned to other parts of the company; the business performed customised messaging tasks using the General Magic Inc Telescript scripting language for users of Sony Corp Magic Link and Motorola Inc Envoy personal communicators; it says airily that users of these will still be able to use the devices for mobile messaging through services such as that of America Online Inc or through the use of third-party software.
AT&T has cut the entry price of its Easy World Wide Web (EW3) services, allowing smaller companies to have their own Web sites. Web site hosting starts at $295 for AT&T business customers. The firm's cut its one-time registration fee to $500, from $1500.
Spider Technologies Inc has put its NetDynamics interactive database application development tool up at its Web site for 15 days' free evaluation. Support is also provided for the duration at www.w3spider.com.
Data General Corp is taking Open Market Inc's Internet software OEM for use with its B2 secure DG/UX and Windows NT offerings where it will be used in conjunction with BDM International Inc's Cybershield to manage, monitor, record, and analyse Internet-based transaction activities over the Internet from AViiON servers.
IN BRIEF
The biggest shake-up in the underlying structure of the Worldwide Web is on the way with proposals to completely change the nature of its underlying Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The likely outcome? A move from HTTP's simple 'Request-Send' model to one involving distributed objects.
With work on specifying Hypertext Transfer Protocol 1.1 nearing completion, the Internet Engineering Task Force HTTP workgroup is aiming to shut itself down by year end. But it is likely that the workgroup will be replaced with another, examining proposals for HTTP-NG, a next generation object-based protocol. "My personal bet is that the Corba-style of definition of distributed object interactions will dominate the thinking of advanced Internet protocols" says Larry Masinter, joint chair of the existing HTTP workgroup.
The main work on NG to-date is based on a proposal from Simon Spero of Verifone subsidiary EIT.
Conventional HTTP requires a browser to set up a new connection to the server for each request - for each image, or piece of text on a page - resulting in huge overheads. NG attempts to reduce this by allowing multiple requests to a server to be passed over a more persistent single connection. Moreover requests can optionally be handled asynchronously with the client able to fire out multiple requests without waiting for a response. Today's browsers try to mimic this effect by opening multiple connections to a host, but this tends to clog router caches on backbone connections.
While Spero's work substantially cuts the network overhead and paves the way for better multimedia integration, the Worldwide Web consortium wants to go a lot further:
JavaSoft has found itself caught in the middle of the on-going war between Object Management Group chief Chris Stone and Microsoft for control of distributed objects standards. Stone accuses JavaSoft of behaving exactly like Microsoft. "They actually believe their own press releases over there," he splutters. "They think that the world is completely homogeneous. That Java is everywhere and is gonna be everywhere on every box until the end of time."
Stone's current gripe is with Java's static RMI or Remote Method Invocation which assumes that there's Java at the other end. In Stone's mind, RMI is an affront to pragmatic real-world interoperability that ignores legacies among other things. It's not good enough for him that JavaSoft has provided a "secondary" Java IDL that embraces OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol (IIOP) and seems to provide some Java-to-nonJava connectivity. By not adopting IIOP as its native method, JavaSoft will dilute the OMG's battle: "The issue is simple. OMG's Corba vs. the looming DCOM," he says. "Now JavaSoft has thrown RMI into the ring, when it could have just used IIOP", he adds.
He wants both JavaSoft and Netscape to back OMG's IIOP in no uncertain terms. It would give them instant interoperability with any Corba 2-compliant ORB and advance OMG's fortunes, now heavily tied to the ubiquity of IIOP, in the process. It would also upset the Microsoft DCOM/ActiveX apple cart, a common goal for all three organizations.
Last week, irritated beyond belief at JavaSoft's overly simple "Just Do Java" refrain and anxious to stem the confusion it has created among OMG's end-user members who are starting to implement Corba, Stone fired off a piece of e-mail to JavaSoft boss Alan Baratz and COO Jon Kannegaard.
In it he wrote, "What's with you guys? You really believe that Java will be homogenous and run everywhere and that all software (including Corba which you, Sun, have spent the last seven years helping to create) is moot? And why won't the Java RMI use Corba? I have asked this numerous times and still no answer that makes sense. Just hype like 'Just do Java...'
"If you are looking for a real silver bullet, then in my opinion, for OMG, Sun, Netscape and IBM to agree to the APIs for Java Beans and the Java RMI would be compelling, competitive (towards the 'other' component model) and virtually unstoppable as an implementable distributed component standard." Then damningly he closed with, "This currently smells like Unix all over again...."
NEWSGROUP TERRORIST THREATS: CASE OF MISTAKEN ID?
The 19-year-old Texas college student arrested for terrorism because of remarks posted on a newsgroup under the name Zuma now says he isn't guilty of threatening a California congressman.
Jose Saavedra, who confessed to FBI agents that he posted the threatening messages, now says that someone else is Zuma and that he confessed only because the agents said they would drop charges if he did.
The "real Zuma" reportedly sent an envelope to Saavedra's lawyer with computer printouts that could prove the student's innocence.
COMPUSERVE BRINGS WEB TO THE BLIND AND PARTIALLY SIGHTED
CompuServe is teaming up with another software company to bring its online service and the Internet to the blind and visually impaired, people generally challenged by the graphically rich medium.
CompuServe has enlisted the help of Henter-Joyce, whose Jaws Windows application adds audio instructions to programs via a voice synthesizer and sound card. It specifically helps them to negotiate things like menus, pointers and arrows and interprets commands. The program reads back words the user types and reads content and link names.
The Jaws package works with both Explorer and Navigator browsers as well as e-mail and applications like Word; CompuServe and Henter-Joyce are building a version optimized for the online service that will ship in August for $300 cheaper than the $795 charged for the full version.
SINGAPORE CRACKS DOWN
In a move hardly surprising to observers familiar with its intolerance of public discourse, the nation of Singapore has laid down stringent rules governing political, religious, and pornographic content on the Internet.
The law, announced by the Singapore Broadcasting Authority, requires all Internet companies that provide political and religious information about the country to register with the Authority. If those companies don't comply by July 15, the government can impose fines. Notably, the rule prohibits anti-government messages.
The restrictions affect - at least for the time being - only content providers and users within the country, not those outside Singapore. A team of 10 broadcast authority employees will spend their time surfing the Web looking for unauthorised discussion.
RS/6000 WEB-SERVER REVAMP
IBM Corp has launched three new Web server packages for its RS/6000 "Web-optimised" AIX servers. It also announced future offerings which include a new version of the Internet Connection Secure Web Server for AIX that will include better performance, logging and reporting, and will have Netscape Navigator.bundled.
The three packages are: the RS/6000 Internet Powersolutions Web servers; the Internet Powersolutions Firewall and Proxy servers; and the Internet Commercial Application Servers. All include an RS/6000 system with AIX 4.1.4 or 4.2 optimised for the Web. IBM is also getting much closer to Netscape now, and is offering a choice of its own Internet Servers or Netscape's.
DOT Gossip
The word is that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a new chairman. Out goes Albert Vezza, one of the founders, in comes Jean-Fran‡ois Abramatic, Director for Development of INRIA who was responsible for setting up the European Arm of W3C. Abramatic has apparently garnered support from the W3C's fractious Advisory Council (OR issue 3) who like his commercial savvy. Before he joined INRIA in 1992 he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of an X-Windows start-up. www.w3.org
Meanwhile the W3C, recently under fire from its own Advisory Council for having no process making standards is said to be working on a "calendar of events" from which it is hoped a disciplined process will emerge.
The Apache project, home of the eponymous free Web server, has released version 1.1.1. Apache claims to be the world's favourite Web server with 36% of all Web servers. So no surprise that Netscape recently sent out "questionnaires" to Apache server admins. Apache 1.1.1 is essentially a big-fix release. www.apache.org
The Internet Industry Association of Australia is holding a closed meeting next week to try and sort out the assignment of domain names. Currently .au domains are issued by an ad hoc team headed by Robert Elz, systems administrator at Melbourne University. The industry association is looking for a more commercially structured and "efficient" approach. It is likely that an annual fee of Aus$20 to Aus$50 will be levied under the new regime.
Fortune magazine, in an article on RealAudio authors, Progressive Networks, reports that the atmosphere at the company is so intense that "local job seekers know the firm as 'Oppressive Networks'".
Hong Kong Telecom says it has launched an on-line shopping service on the Internet, in partnership with supermarket chain Wellcome Co. More than 3,000 products are supposed to go up on the service, the idea being that Wellcome will deliver the goods within a day to people's homes.
Sema Group Plc has a strategic partnership with BroadVision Inc to deliver personalised Internet and intranet applications.
BCE Inc unit Bell Canada has signed with Netscape to offer the latter's intranet and Internet-based kit to the former's customers in Ontario and Quebec. Bell is also using Netscape servers to build its own intranet.
The second beta version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has slipped a smidgen and is now expected sometime late this week, originally it was expected on July 8th.
Meanwhile, those few souls who have yet to be subjected to a preview of Explorer 4.0 and its Web-desktop integration can find screen shots of the Alpha at www.teamgates.com/newsstand/ienews.htm
Russell Siegelman, the Microsoft VP responsible for the launch of MSN last year is reportedly on the move; he's off to high-tech venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield and Buyers. Since MSN was refocussed on the Internet, he hasn't looked quite so central to Redmond's online strategies. The venture company was Netscape's original sole backer.
Microsoft Explorer might not have been the Explorer we know were it not for a slow Redmond wallet two years ago. A Business Week article says that Microsoft in spring 1994 had tried to buy BookLink, a browser owned by CMG Information Services, to form the core of its Internet client. It blinked, however, and while negotiations dragged on: AOL nabbed the browser for $30 million. Microsoft of course went on to build Explorer on top of Spyglass Mosaic, while AOL has essentially relegated its browser to the trash heap in favor of Explorer.
WebTV and its allies (page 1) are only the latest entrants to the Internet TV space. Thomson Consumer Electronics and Gateway 2000 are working on implementations, while Zenith will build them based on Diba Inc, the company led by the former head of Oracle's NC initiative.
Will Taligent ride again in a Java incarnation, sitting atop a JavaOS-type microkernel? It would be a nice idea wouldn't it? "There is an interesting potential there" agrees a wistful-sounding Mike Potel, VP and chief technology officer for the IBM-owned operation. However there are no plans in that area. Taligent is being kept to programing tools.
The WebBook Company, a Birmingham Michican start-up, is seeking full patent protection for the Java-based sub-notebook it's bringing to market. It had previously filed for a provisional patent. The portable WebBook loosely follows the design of the Network Computer, since data is stored on the server. The company says it will license the design since it's not capable of volume production itself.
China will have 120,000 Internet users by the end of 1996, up from around 1,700 at the end of 1993, the Xinhua news agency believes. That suggests greatly increased interest in Unicode character-set support.
Novell has released GroupWise WebAccess, which lets users of the groupware access their client - a "universal in-box" from any Web browser.
The US presidential race is being run on the Internet as well as the airwaves, with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole setting up rival Web sites. The Dole campaign claims it's signed up more than 6,500 of its 30,000 volunters through the Internet. www.cg96.org, www.dole96.com
Business Week reports that when Microsoft was still clueless about the Internet, Benjamin Slivka - now the Internet Explorer project leader - said that Microsoft should give away software on the Net as Netscape was doing.
Bill Gates, he said, "called me a communist." That from a comrade who now gives away both Internet client and server to get market share.
Connect! Corporation has released for download it's Quick Client, which compresses Java applets for 2-3 times faster download. Adding a Quick Server to the configuration increases performance even more. The client runs on Netscape Navigator on Windows 95 and NT and is being ported to Mac and Unix as well as browsers like Microsoft Explorer as Java support becomes firmer.
Winning our Rapid-Fire Name Change award is Business@Web, the Internet commerce startup that snared former SAP America president Klaus Besier as its CEO. Originally called Object Power, Business@Web has now jumped to, OneWave. Must be a fortune in business cards alone.
(c) 1996 May not be copied
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July 15 - July 19 1996 Issue No 7
OMG ATTACKS JAVASOFT; FIGHTS TO MAKE IIOP UBIQUITOUS
JavaSoft has found itself caught in the middle of the on-going war between Object Management Group chief Chris Stone and Microsoft for control of distributed objects standards. Stone accuses JavaSoft of behaving exactly like Microsoft. "They actually believe their own press releases over there," he splutters. "They think that the world is completely homogeneous. That Java is everywhere and is gonna be everywhere on every box until the end of time."
Stone's current gripe is with Java's static RMI or Remote Method Invocation which assumes that there's Java at the other end. In Stone's mind, RMI is an affront to pragmatic real-world interoperability that ignores legacies among other things. It's not good enough for him that JavaSoft has provided a "secondary" Java IDL that embraces OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol (IIOP) and seems to provide some Java-to-nonJava connectivity. By not adopting IIOP as its native method, JavaSoft will dilute the OMG's battle: "The issue is simple. OMG's Corba vs. the looming DCOM," he says. "Now JavaSoft has thrown RMI into the ring, when it could have just used IIOP", he adds.
He wants both JavaSoft and Netscape to back OMG's IIOP in no uncertain terms. It would give them instant interoperability with any Corba 2-compliant ORB and advance OMG's fortunes, now heavily tied to the ubiquity of IIOP, in the process. It would also upset the Microsoft DCOM/ActiveX apple cart, a common goal for all three organizations.
HTTP WORKGROUP SHUTTING UP SHOP - NEXT STOP; THE OBJECT WEB
The biggest shake-up in the underlying structure of the Worldwide Web is on the way with proposals to completely change the nature of its underlying Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The likely outcome? A move from HTTP's simple 'Request-Send' model to one involving distributed objects.
With work on specifying Hypertext Transfer Protocol 1.1 nearing completion, the Internet Engineering Task Force HTTP workgroup is aiming to shut itself down by year end. But it is likely that the workgroup will be replaced with another, examining proposals for HTTP-NG, a next generation object-based protocol. "My personal bet is that the Corba-style of definition of distributed object interactions will dominate the thinking of advanced Internet protocols" says Larry Masinter, joint chair of the existing HTTP workgroup.
The main work on NG to-date is based on a proposal from Simon Spero of Verifone subsidiary EIT.
Conventional HTTP requires a browser to set up a new connection to the server for each request - for each image, or piece of text on a page - resulting in huge overheads. NG attempts to reduce this by allowing multiple requests to a server to be passed over a more persistent single connection. Moreover requests can optionally be handled asynchronously with the client able to fire out multiple requests without waiting for a response. Today's browsers try to mimic this effect by opening multiple connections to a host, but this tends to clog router caches on backbone connections.
While Spero's work substantially cuts the network overhead and paves the way for better multimedia integration, the Worldwide Web consortium wants to go a lot further: bringing object technology to the underpinnings of the Web. Moving HTTP towards an object framework would make it fit more comfortably into the corporate software world, and allow for multiple language support. A joint conference with the Object Management Group late last month was set up to explore the ways that the Web and objects could come together.
The W3C's favoured option is to implement an HTTP-NG proxy using Xerox Parc's Inter-Language Unification architecture (ILU). ILU is a meta architecture that allows, so its proponents say, the easy bridging of multiple protocols with multiple language bindings. You
SONY & PHILIPS CHOOSE WEBTV
WebTV Networks has sold two of the biggest players in the consumer electronics arena on its vision of Internet on the television. Last week it signed up Sony Electronics and Philips Consumer Electronics to build set top boxes based on its reference design.
But whereas last month WebTV was saying Web-enablement would up the price of a television by $50 to $100, last week it was vague on pricing details. None of the companies would officially comment on the hardware costs, but sources say the hardware will likely cost between $200 and $400.
The Palo Alto-based start-up, founded by three Apple alumni by way of General Magic, came out of the development closet last month. Its specifications allow manufacturers to build set-top boxes linking existing TVs to the Web. WebTV president Steve Perlman previously headed up General Magic's interactive TV efforts and used his existing contacts with Sony and Philips to get them on board.
Sony says its television Web peripheral will ship this Fall. Sony and Philips are both expected to have TVs with integrated Web access this year. Perlman says both companies are already in pre-production for the standalone boxes, which are built around a chip from Integrated Devices Technology Inc - using a MIPS R-4300, presumably.The online connection will come courtesy of WebTV which will pick the "best" ISP per region.
Other companies partnering with WebTV to offer software and content for its online service include Excite, Concentric Network, Integrated Device Technology, Progressive Networks and SurfWatch Software. WebTV expects to break even in 1997 and turn a profit the following year.
The custom browser, which formats Web content to fit the television screen, lacks support for Java and Macromedia's Shockwave. However RealAudio, MIDI music and MPEG 2 audio support are integrated into the system. It is run from a "One Thumb Browsing" universal remote control with a keyboard optional. Perhaps the most unusual feature of the deal is seeing Philips and Sony agree.
EUROPE ONLINE FILES FOR CREDITOR PROTECTION AS BURDA QUITS
The withdrawal of German publisher Burda GmbH as 26% direct shareholder has forced on-line service and Internet access provider Europe Online SA to apply for court protection from its creditors while it tries to find new investors.
Protection has been granted by the Luxembourg Court of Commerce and Europe
Online board member Candace Johnson told Reuter it had "a number of firm offers on the table" and expected to reach deals within weeks. Talks could involve one new shareholder taking a majority stake, and CompuServe Inc has confirmed it is one of the companies in talks.
The court commissioned two experts to prepare a detailed report on the company's finances by December 1. Europe Online's other shareholders include Meigher Communications Inc, and AT&T Corp, UK pursuer of high-tech disasters Pearson Plc, and Luxembourg's Societe National de Credit et d'Investissement SA and Banque et Caisse d'Epargne de l'Etat. The company has said it expects to be profitable in four years' time.
Europe Online, which now has about 25,000 subscribers, started charging for its services in March after a free preview period; it currently has national services in Germany, the UK and Luxembourg and an international service in English; it plans to start services this year in France, Sweden and the Netherlands.
YAHOO HIT WITH LOSS; SEARCH ENGINES FALTER
Last week was not a good week to be a search engine company. Market leading Yahoo suffered a double financial hit with a loss in the second quarter and a drop in its stock. The company had losses of $1.4 million on revenues of $3.3 million, and its stock price dropped to $16, the lowest it's been since Yahoo went public at $13 a share. The firm said it's optimistic that its fortunes will change, based on the number of advertisers, which more than doubled since the previous quarter.
Cynics, however, look at the business model and cruelly wonder if the Yahoos will ever make a profit. The company blames its increased loss for the second quarter on ramped up spending during the quarter as part of its effort to distinguish itself from more than a dozen hungry rivals.
Sales and marketing costs jumped to $3.3 million from $60,000 a year earlier.
Yahoo's rivals in the search engine market fared no better, with share prices dropping uniformly into single digits.
SYMANTEC EARNINGS TO FALL SHORT OF PROJECTIONS
Symantec met with investors last week to say it would finish the first quarter worse than predicted. After fiscal year end 1995 losses of $39.8 million, CEO Gordon Eubanks predicted strong 1996 financials. He was wrong.
The company, which is one of the leaders of the Java tool charge with its CafŽ toolset, was expected to increase revenues by about 5% from year-earlier turnover of $109.9 million, but revenues will now be lower.
Analyst James Greene at Summit Strategies said, "They need to get out a unified intranet strategy - soon." Symantec has a potential winner in its Java virus scanner for applets, but the product's still in the development stage.
MACROMEDIA PREDICTS SLUMP
Macromedia, San Francisco, California, said last week that its sales would be below analysts' expectations for its first quarter ended June 30. The multimedia company will report on July 22 and anticipates a profit of $9m on sales of about $35 million, compared to first quarter 1995 profits of $4.4 million on revenue of $22.3 million.
AOL SEEING DAYLIGHT AT LAST
America Online settled its courtroom battles over billing practices last week, breaking a long string of bad news, and was rewarded with a jump in its stock rates. Last week, the online service provider said it had preliminary approval to settle 11 class-action lawsuits which alleged AOL overcharged customers and didn't disclose its billing and cancellation procedures properly.
Bad news surrounded the company last month, when the Federal Trade Commission began poking into its billing practices, its competitors began sprinting the Web and its COO and president jumped ship after only four months on the job. But last week AOL vowed to improve communication with users and give free time to affected customers.
Analyst Morgan Stanley said although AOL's shares have been "falling like a knife" it will shake off recent turmoil. They shrugged off reports that the Web will crush proprietary services as exaggerated and "overdone." Also, earnings per share estimates throughout the stock decline have remained unchanged at $1.05 for fiscal 1997 and $0.54 for fiscal 1996.
The shares, which closed at $38 the day AOL settled in court, may reach $55 to $60 by late Fall, according to Morgan Stanley, which recently upgraded its shares from outperform to strong buy.
VISA MOVES TO PUSH FRENCH ONLINE COMMERCE
Visa International, French banks Banque Nationale de Paris and Societe Generale, France Telecom and Smart Card manufacturer Gemplus International SA last week announced a new consortium designed to integrate French experience with chip cards into existing electronic payment standards.
"The French market is the only market in the world where electronic payments via chip cards, with 5m such cards issued, and electronic commerce, via the Minitel, are so widely disseminated," said Baudouin Prot, associate managing director for BNP. France Telecom Multimedia director Gerard Eymery noted that the operator pays out approximately $700m annually to merchants that sell services and wares via the Minitel.
Since France Telecom introduced the credit card payment-enabled Minitel terminal Magis to the market about a year ago, it has sold 250,000 units, Eymery said. Indeed, echoed Hans van der velde, president of Visa's European Community region, "The French project is essential for advancing a worldwide solution."
Consortium members stressed that a global system is, in fact, their aim, by integrating French chip-card payment procedures into the Visa and Mastercard SET Secure Electronic Transactions and EMV Europay MasterCard Visa standards. The first was developed strictly for markets, in particular the US, that use magnetic-stripe cards. "We don't intend to work toward a strictly Franco-francais solution," said Prot, "but one that will function as well in France as abroad."
Prot and his colleagues said they are convinced that the card is better than software-only electronic "virtual wallets" because it is more portable, not being tied to a personal computer's hard disk, and is less susceptible to fraud. "All of the [Internet electronic payment] systems that have been proposed to date are software-only, and they can be defrauded," Mark Lassus, president and chief executive for Gemenos-based Gemplus International told Online Reporter.
Lassus said Gemplus has "several [electronic payment] projects under way," including a hardware (PCMCIA card, modem and keypad) and software system it has developed with Informix Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co. The device, which should sell for about $50 when it arrives on the market in the fall was unveiled at Informix's user conference in Chicago last week. Visa's van der Gelde said magnetic stripe and signature credit cards are likely to be replaced ultimately with chip-based cards: "You have to look at the future perspective for chip cards, with the enormous amount of information you can put on them," he said.
NIST FORMS CLIPPER III INDUSTRY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
The US federal government's Clipper III encryption management program has moved a step closer to reality with the formation of an advisory committee under the auspices of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology.
NIST says it is forming a 24-person advisory committee to study the feasibility of a key escrow scheme like Clipper III and to start pilots. The committee, to be chosen by the Commerce secretary, will be formed from the government and private sectors and will consist both of cryptographers and users.
Clipper III, or the Federal Key Management Infrastructure, until now just a white paper, calls for companies to leave encryption keys with third parties in case government investigators need to read encrypted data. While the government insists the initiative is key to fighting electronic crime, both civil rights advocates and businesses that sell or use encryption technology are opposed to it. Montana senator Conrad Burns is pushing a Pro-Code bill to prohibit key escrow policies, which is set to be reviewed by the Senate Commerce Committee on July 24.
NIST, which was also involved on the technical end of the first Clipper proposal, won't directly affect the United States' encryption export policy although it sets standards for federal procurement policies. The committee, which is still in the early formation stage, will develop a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for review by the Secretary of Commerce. wais.access.gpo.gov
AT&T AND UNWIRED PLANET PUT A BROWSER IN YOUR POCKET
AT&T Wireless will bring to market its unique version of an Internet device with PocketNet Phone, a cellular phone that gives users access to the Internet and e-mail. The phone is based on a specialized browser developed by Unwired Planet that sends and retrieves only text-based information, not multimedia and graphics. Unwired Planet is the Internet start-up where Oracle Network Computer veteran Andy Laurson fled; it's been cagey about its doings until now.
The UP.Link software consists of Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML), the UP.Browse client and the UP.Link Server middleware. The browser uses a menu-based interface that is manipulated by the cellular phone's keypad.
Existing Web sites don't have to be modified to run on the browser. Information requests are routed via UP.Link through AT&T's wireless IP network (Cellular Digital Packet Data or CDPD) and the wireline Internet to a Web server, where they're processed. The browser shows the results of the query, not the steps in between.
PocketNet phones will be available in the fourth quarter of this year for roughly $500, with exact pricing to be announced then. The AT&T-branded phones will be manufactured by PCSI, and Mitsubishi will also offer a version of PocketNet based on its MobileAccess Phone. AT&T will host a gateway server to the wireless IP networks, or companies may manage their own.
The UP.Link technology, written in HDML, can also be used in pagers. In addition to AT&T, Unwired Planet has lined up vendors such as Ameritech, Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile, Comcast Cellular Communications and GTE MobilNet and now has an SDK available for download. www.uplanet.com
GTE, ZIPLINK JOIN NET FRAY
GTE has signed a multi-million dollar deal with UUNet in order to use the ISP's network backbone for national service. The deal will carry GTE, already providing phone service in 28 states, to 46 states altogether. It's not clear why customers outside of GTE's traditional Southern stronghold would go to the company over other telcos, or why users would not go directly to UUNet.
The service will be the usual price - heaven forbid that a telco-cum-ISP charge anything other but $19.95 for unlimited Internet access - and includes standard Internet software.
Another entrant to the ISP field, Ziplink of Hartford, Connecticut, bought the Internet network infrastructure from The News Corporation's iGuide in order to open up Net access lines to major cities.
The surge of ISPs, as in all gold rushes, is liable to leave some people with empty gold pans. While it's not clear yet who the winners and losers will be, in a survey of business executives conducted by KPMG Peat-Marwick, 54% said that telecom companies will become the dominant Internet providers, while 23% cast their lots with traditional ISPs like Netcom and 18% said online services would carry the most Internet traffic.
SINCLAIR FOLLOWS INTEL'S LEAD
Sinclair Broadcast Group is gearing up to launch a television service called Supercast that broadcasts Internet data to PCs along with audio and video TV signals.
Sinclair, America's seventh-largest broadcast company, will transmit the digital information over the Vertical Blanking Interval, the area of the TV frequency that typically carries closed captions. Intel's Intercast broadcast uses VBI to broadcast the Internet as well. Both companies, in fact, use data-encoding technology from Norpak in Canada.
While Intel targets the home audience with promises of Internet-enhanced television on the PC, Sinclair plans to use Supercast for high-speed Internet access. And while Intercast is still limited to the Netscape Navigator, Supercast can use any browser. Sinclair's Net TV will work with computers that have a "broadcast modem," either an antenna or cable that hooks with a modem to PCs through a slot.
PHAR LAP CAN TURN DOOR-CHIMES INTO WEB SERVER
People tend to think of a Web server as a Sun Microsystems Inc Netra or one of Apple Computer Inc's specially configured Power Macs, but there's no reason why you shouldn't turn your electricity meter or a thermometer up Mount Snowdon into a Web server.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Phar Lap Software Inc has come out with what it calls "the world's smallest Web server for embedded devices." Based on Phar Lap's Embedded Web Technology, which includes Realtime ETS Kernel for embedded development, TCP/IP support and an HTML-On-The-Fly package, it is designed to enable embedded devices to be made universally accessible via the World Wide Web from any machine with a Web browser.
Phar Lap sees the system being used to monitor things such as weather stations, seismographic monitors or flood watch systems, or in-room patient monitors, factory-floor controller monitors and office systems such as smart copiers. It has put together the Phar Lap weather station, which runs on a 4" by 4" 80386 single board computer, provides worldwide access to the local weather outside Phar Lap's Cambridge, offices - want to check? It's at http://smallest.pharlap.com
The HTML-On-The-Fly package converts raw data into HyperText Mark-up Language; the suite includes dialler software so the remote system can dial a host. It will be available this quarter, but the firm is giving no prices.
FULCRUM BUYS WAIS FROM AOL
Fulcrum Technologies Inc has acquired the WAISserver search technology from America Online Inc and will take over the existing contracts with WAISserver customers and resellers. America Online will retain the World Wide Web production services business of WAIS.
The WAIS software is most popular in market sectors where adherence to standards is particularly important, such as the government and universities. Still, it turns up in less expected places too - like Informix' Web site.
Ottawa, Canada-based Fulcrum says it is committed to bringing the wide area search protocols available under Unix to Windows NT as well. Meanwhile, version 2.0 of the company's SurfBoard Internet search and retrieval engine is out now for HP-UX and Solaris, as well as Windows NT. It is $12,500 for Unix, and other versions of Unix will be out next quarter. It is $6,250 for NT.
PUTTING WEB SITES ON THE MAP
"Where's my nearest branch?" is a question that retailers go to great effort and expense to answer. Wouldn't it be great if it could be answered automatically by the corporate Web site? London-based QAS Systems' 'Quick Address Nearest' is a tool for Web developers that lets them build these kind of functions into their offerings. The existing version generates geographical location by using the UK's postcodes, however a US zip-code system will appear early next year. In the UK, the 1.7 million postcodes (with a format such as W1V 5FH) each refer to around 15 houses. The UK Post Office and the Office of National Statistics produce a data-file, mapping each postcode to a grid reference, which QAS licences. Once the company has hard-coded the location of the customers' sites, a little basic trigonometry gives the distance to the nearest site. The company also massages the data a little to account for major rivers, estuaries etc.
In the US, the Postal Service and the Census Bureau produce a similar file relating zip codes with geography. The five digit zip isn't accurate enough, Americans will need to wrap their heads around the full 9 digit code to use the system - this brings the accuracy down to 51 post-boxes.
QAS managing director Simon Worth says the company has obtained the data file and later this year will finalise the deal with the US postal service allowing them to apply the data to Web sites. Web developers should be able to get hold of the QAS system, which is designed to interwork with a variety of databases, by next April. Is anyone else doing anything similar? Not that Worth knows of, he says.
It is not cheap, however. In the UK the basic tool costs developers £950, on top of that there is a one-off charge of between £1,000 and £2,0000 to hard-wire in the retailer's locations. On top of that is a yearly £950 charge to maintain the database of post codes.
Pricing the US is a long way from being set, but the company is already on the look-out for likely authors who want to put their Web sites on the map.
POINTCAST TWEAKS ITS AD SYSTEM - GIVES MORE CONTROL
PointCast Inc, the privately owned news-dissemination company has tweaked its advertising system to give more control. Previously, buyers had to take a minimum of a month's airtime, which has been reduced to a week. Lead-times have also been cut and a new premium tariff lets the advertiser up the frequency of their presentation. Currently PointCast imposes a limit of 100 active adverts allowed at any one time.
The company has also struck a deal with the Audit Bureau of Verification Services, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Audit Bureau of Circulations which set up shop to provide advertisers with creditable Web access statistics. ABVS is having to develop a bespoke application to audit Pointcast's servers. It is expected to go into beta this Fall. Until then, advertisers will have to take Pointcast's access figures on trust.
l The Company also announced last week that it has teamed up with CNN. The Turner-owned cable channel will provide news to Pointcast and will also take PointCast's code to produce a 'co-branded' version of the software for download from its CNN Interactive site.
AD HOC GROUP TO FIGHT CAVEAT EMPTOR ON WEB
A small group of Internet companies and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have teamed to try and bolster consumer confidence in buying over the Web. Instead of concentrating on the pure financial security aspects, the Etrust group (www.etrust.org) is tackling users doubts about leaving their personal and financial details on Web sites. While the details of the scheme are still up in the air, the group says it will license symbols representing various types of privacy and security to online merchants. The standards will define how personal data is collected, and what is done with it. The group is also attempting to arrange a program of certification and auditing.
Those interested in participating can get more details from etrust@etrust.org
l At the same time that Etrust has identified security fears as a major block to Internet commerce, a survey in the Pacific Rim suggests that most people have yet to buy anything electronically on the grounds that... they have yet to see anything they wanted to buy.
MICROSTRATEGY HAS WEB-OLAP
MicroStrategy Inc has launched its relational on-line analytical processing tool for the World Wide Web, to turn a costly warehouse into a money spinner, it says.
DSSWeb gives browser-users access to existing warehouses. MicroStrategy founder and chief executive Mike Saylor says the firm aims to "commoditize the data warehouse".
Saylor who confesses to modeling himself on Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, wants to make his company "the Oracle of decision support."
What makes DSSWeb different from anything others may be touting, says Saylor, is the fact it will sit on top of any of the leading relational databases. DSSWeb integrates with MicroStrategy's relational on-line analytical server DSS Server.
NCD has named Rudy Morin, former SVP, Finance and Administration at Memorex Telex, as its executive VP of Operations and Finance.
Softbank Expos has named Greg Stern, who joined Softbank when it acquired Seybold Seminars, as the general manager of Softbank's recently acquired WebInnovation show. The show will take place October 28-30 in San Jose.
NEC's latest notebook computers are supposed to be "Internet-ready".
Costing $3,700, they come with 100MHz Pentium, 810MB disk, fax modem and "all the software necessary to connect to the Internet," although the Web browser was not specified.
With what now looks like a shudder of horror, AT&T Corp is disengaging from just about the last of its proprietary on-line services, saying last week that its AT&T PersonaLink Services for handhelds will be discontinued on August 30, and that it is following Burda AG out of Europe Online SA, where it inherited a 10.8% stake when it bought Ziff Communications Co's embryonic - and now aborted - on-line service: it says PersonaLink employees will be reassigned to other parts of the company; the business performed customised messaging tasks using the General Magic Inc Telescript scripting language for users of Sony Corp Magic Link and Motorola Inc Envoy personal communicators; it says airily that users of these will still be able to use the devices for mobile messaging through services such as that of America Online Inc or through the use of third-party software.
AT&T has cut the entry price of its Easy World Wide Web (EW3) services, allowing smaller companies to have their own Web sites. Web site hosting starts at $295 for AT&T business customers. The firm's cut its one-time registration fee to $500, from $1500.
Spider Technologies Inc has put its NetDynamics interactive database application development tool up at its Web site for 15 days' free evaluation. Support is also provided for the duration at www.w3spider.com.
Data General Corp is taking Open Market Inc's Internet software OEM for use with its B2 secure DG/UX and Windows NT offerings where it will be used in conjunction with BDM International Inc's Cybershield to manage, monitor, record, and analyse Internet-based transaction activities over the Internet from AViiON servers.
IN BRIEF
The biggest shake-up in the underlying structure of the Worldwide Web is on the way with proposals to completely change the nature of its underlying Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The likely outcome? A move from HTTP's simple 'Request-Send' model to one involving distributed objects.
With work on specifying Hypertext Transfer Protocol 1.1 nearing completion, the Internet Engineering Task Force HTTP workgroup is aiming to shut itself down by year end. But it is likely that the workgroup will be replaced with another, examining proposals for HTTP-NG, a next generation object-based protocol. "My personal bet is that the Corba-style of definition of distributed object interactions will dominate the thinking of advanced Internet protocols" says Larry Masinter, joint chair of the existing HTTP workgroup.
The main work on NG to-date is based on a proposal from Simon Spero of Verifone subsidiary EIT.
Conventional HTTP requires a browser to set up a new connection to the server for each request - for each image, or piece of text on a page - resulting in huge overheads. NG attempts to reduce this by allowing multiple requests to a server to be passed over a more persistent single connection. Moreover requests can optionally be handled asynchronously with the client able to fire out multiple requests without waiting for a response. Today's browsers try to mimic this effect by opening multiple connections to a host, but this tends to clog router caches on backbone connections.
While Spero's work substantially cuts the network overhead and paves the way for better multimedia integration, the Worldwide Web consortium wants to go a lot further:
JavaSoft has found itself caught in the middle of the on-going war between Object Management Group chief Chris Stone and Microsoft for control of distributed objects standards. Stone accuses JavaSoft of behaving exactly like Microsoft. "They actually believe their own press releases over there," he splutters. "They think that the world is completely homogeneous. That Java is everywhere and is gonna be everywhere on every box until the end of time."
Stone's current gripe is with Java's static RMI or Remote Method Invocation which assumes that there's Java at the other end. In Stone's mind, RMI is an affront to pragmatic real-world interoperability that ignores legacies among other things. It's not good enough for him that JavaSoft has provided a "secondary" Java IDL that embraces OMG's Internet InterORB Protocol (IIOP) and seems to provide some Java-to-nonJava connectivity. By not adopting IIOP as its native method, JavaSoft will dilute the OMG's battle: "The issue is simple. OMG's Corba vs. the looming DCOM," he says. "Now JavaSoft has thrown RMI into the ring, when it could have just used IIOP", he adds.
He wants both JavaSoft and Netscape to back OMG's IIOP in no uncertain terms. It would give them instant interoperability with any Corba 2-compliant ORB and advance OMG's fortunes, now heavily tied to the ubiquity of IIOP, in the process. It would also upset the Microsoft DCOM/ActiveX apple cart, a common goal for all three organizations.
Last week, irritated beyond belief at JavaSoft's overly simple "Just Do Java" refrain and anxious to stem the confusion it has created among OMG's end-user members who are starting to implement Corba, Stone fired off a piece of e-mail to JavaSoft boss Alan Baratz and COO Jon Kannegaard.
In it he wrote, "What's with you guys? You really believe that Java will be homogenous and run everywhere and that all software (including Corba which you, Sun, have spent the last seven years helping to create) is moot? And why won't the Java RMI use Corba? I have asked this numerous times and still no answer that makes sense. Just hype like 'Just do Java...'
"If you are looking for a real silver bullet, then in my opinion, for OMG, Sun, Netscape and IBM to agree to the APIs for Java Beans and the Java RMI would be compelling, competitive (towards the 'other' component model) and virtually unstoppable as an implementable distributed component standard." Then damningly he closed with, "This currently smells like Unix all over again...."
NEWSGROUP TERRORIST THREATS: CASE OF MISTAKEN ID?
The 19-year-old Texas college student arrested for terrorism because of remarks posted on a newsgroup under the name Zuma now says he isn't guilty of threatening a California congressman.
Jose Saavedra, who confessed to FBI agents that he posted the threatening messages, now says that someone else is Zuma and that he confessed only because the agents said they would drop charges if he did.
The "real Zuma" reportedly sent an envelope to Saavedra's lawyer with computer printouts that could prove the student's innocence.
COMPUSERVE BRINGS WEB TO THE BLIND AND PARTIALLY SIGHTED
CompuServe is teaming up with another software company to bring its online service and the Internet to the blind and visually impaired, people generally challenged by the graphically rich medium.
CompuServe has enlisted the help of Henter-Joyce, whose Jaws Windows application adds audio instructions to programs via a voice synthesizer and sound card. It specifically helps them to negotiate things like menus, pointers and arrows and interprets commands. The program reads back words the user types and reads content and link names.
The Jaws package works with both Explorer and Navigator browsers as well as e-mail and applications like Word; CompuServe and Henter-Joyce are building a version optimized for the online service that will ship in August for $300 cheaper than the $795 charged for the full version.
SINGAPORE CRACKS DOWN
In a move hardly surprising to observers familiar with its intolerance of public discourse, the nation of Singapore has laid down stringent rules governing political, religious, and pornographic content on the Internet.
The law, announced by the Singapore Broadcasting Authority, requires all Internet companies that provide political and religious information about the country to register with the Authority. If those companies don't comply by July 15, the government can impose fines. Notably, the rule prohibits anti-government messages.
The restrictions affect - at least for the time being - only content providers and users within the country, not those outside Singapore. A team of 10 broadcast authority employees will spend their time surfing the Web looking for unauthorised discussion.
RS/6000 WEB-SERVER REVAMP
IBM Corp has launched three new Web server packages for its RS/6000 "Web-optimised" AIX servers. It also announced future offerings which include a new version of the Internet Connection Secure Web Server for AIX that will include better performance, logging and reporting, and will have Netscape Navigator.bundled.
The three packages are: the RS/6000 Internet Powersolutions Web servers; the Internet Powersolutions Firewall and Proxy servers; and the Internet Commercial Application Servers. All include an RS/6000 system with AIX 4.1.4 or 4.2 optimised for the Web. IBM is also getting much closer to Netscape now, and is offering a choice of its own Internet Servers or Netscape's.
DOT Gossip
The word is that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a new chairman. Out goes Albert Vezza, one of the founders, in comes Jean-Fran‡ois Abramatic, Director for Development of INRIA who was responsible for setting up the European Arm of W3C. Abramatic has apparently garnered support from the W3C's fractious Advisory Council (OR issue 3) who like his commercial savvy. Before he joined INRIA in 1992 he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of an X-Windows start-up. www.w3.org
Meanwhile the W3C, recently under fire from its own Advisory Council for having no process making standards is said to be working on a "calendar of events" from which it is hoped a disciplined process will emerge.
The Apache project, home of the eponymous free Web server, has released version 1.1.1. Apache claims to be the world's favourite Web server with 36% of all Web servers. So no surprise that Netscape recently sent out "questionnaires" to Apache server admins. Apache 1.1.1 is essentially a big-fix release. www.apache.org
The Internet Industry Association of Australia is holding a closed meeting next week to try and sort out the assignment of domain names. Currently .au domains are issued by an ad hoc team headed by Robert Elz, systems administrator at Melbourne University. The industry association is looking for a more commercially structured and "efficient" approach. It is likely that an annual fee of Aus$20 to Aus$50 will be levied under the new regime.
Fortune magazine, in an article on RealAudio authors, Progressive Networks, reports that the atmosphere at the company is so intense that "local job seekers know the firm as 'Oppressive Networks'".
Hong Kong Telecom says it has launched an on-line shopping service on the Internet, in partnership with supermarket chain Wellcome Co. More than 3,000 products are supposed to go up on the service, the idea being that Wellcome will deliver the goods within a day to people's homes.
Sema Group Plc has a strategic partnership with BroadVision Inc to deliver personalised Internet and intranet applications.
BCE Inc unit Bell Canada has signed with Netscape to offer the latter's intranet and Internet-based kit to the former's customers in Ontario and Quebec. Bell is also using Netscape servers to build its own intranet.
The second beta version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has slipped a smidgen and is now expected sometime late this week, originally it was expected on July 8th.
Meanwhile, those few souls who have yet to be subjected to a preview of Explorer 4.0 and its Web-desktop integration can find screen shots of the Alpha at www.teamgates.com/newsstand/ienews.htm
Russell Siegelman, the Microsoft VP responsible for the launch of MSN last year is reportedly on the move; he's off to high-tech venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield and Buyers. Since MSN was refocussed on the Internet, he hasn't looked quite so central to Redmond's online strategies. The venture company was Netscape's original sole backer.
Microsoft Explorer might not have been the Explorer we know were it not for a slow Redmond wallet two years ago. A Business Week article says that Microsoft in spring 1994 had tried to buy BookLink, a browser owned by CMG Information Services, to form the core of its Internet client. It blinked, however, and while negotiations dragged on: AOL nabbed the browser for $30 million. Microsoft of course went on to build Explorer on top of Spyglass Mosaic, while AOL has essentially relegated its browser to the trash heap in favor of Explorer.
WebTV and its allies (page 1) are only the latest entrants to the Internet TV space. Thomson Consumer Electronics and Gateway 2000 are working on implementations, while Zenith will build them based on Diba Inc, the company led by the former head of Oracle's NC initiative.
Will Taligent ride again in a Java incarnation, sitting atop a JavaOS-type microkernel? It would be a nice idea wouldn't it? "There is an interesting potential there" agrees a wistful-sounding Mike Potel, VP and chief technology officer for the IBM-owned operation. However there are no plans in that area. Taligent is being kept to programing tools.
The WebBook Company, a Birmingham Michican start-up, is seeking full patent protection for the Java-based sub-notebook it's bringing to market. It had previously filed for a provisional patent. The portable WebBook loosely follows the design of the Network Computer, since data is stored on the server. The company says it will license the design since it's not capable of volume production itself.
China will have 120,000 Internet users by the end of 1996, up from around 1,700 at the end of 1993, the Xinhua news agency believes. That suggests greatly increased interest in Unicode character-set support.
Novell has released GroupWise WebAccess, which lets users of the groupware access their client - a "universal in-box" from any Web browser.
The US presidential race is being run on the Internet as well as the airwaves, with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole setting up rival Web sites. The Dole campaign claims it's signed up more than 6,500 of its 30,000 volunters through the Internet. www.cg96.org, www.dole96.com
Business Week reports that when Microsoft was still clueless about the Internet, Benjamin Slivka - now the Internet Explorer project leader - said that Microsoft should give away software on the Net as Netscape was doing.
Bill Gates, he said, "called me a communist." That from a comrade who now gives away both Internet client and server to get market share.
Connect! Corporation has released for download it's Quick Client, which compresses Java applets for 2-3 times faster download. Adding a Quick Server to the configuration increases performance even more. The client runs on Netscape Navigator on Windows 95 and NT and is being ported to Mac and Unix as well as browsers like Microsoft Explorer as Java support becomes firmer.
Winning our Rapid-Fire Name Change award is Business@Web, the Internet commerce startup that snared former SAP America president Klaus Besier as its CEO. Originally called Object Power, Business@Web has now jumped to, OneWave. Must be a fortune in business cards alone.
(c) 1996 May not be copied
online REPORTER, a sister publication of Unigram.X and ClieNT Server News, is published weekly in Europe by:
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