The online REPORTER
WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
June 24 - June 28 1996 Issue No 4
ORACLE'S INTEROFFICE TAKES ON LOTUS, EXCHANGE & ORION
Oracle last week lit out after Lotus and Microsoft Exchange and tried to bar the door of the enterprise to Netscape's promised Orion kit, the next-generation SuiteSpot servers whose pieces are six to 18 months out, with InterOffice, the groupware once code named Pegasus.
InterOffice is part of Oracle's rival to BackOffice, the erstwhile InterOffice suite, now renamed the Universal Server Suite to avoid confusion. In the Universal Server Suite it is meant to be part of a total turnkey solution for smaller companies, an Oracle spokeswoman said. Unleashed, it is bound for the enterprise. Oracle will say that unlike competitors such as Lotus, InterOffice is built from the ground for the Web.
As might be expected, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who hosted the Thursday announcement, made much of InterOffice's $125-per-user annual price which is paltry compared to the "thousands of dollars" per user per year he claimed it took to run a Notes set-up. Borrowing from his signature anti-Microsoft verbiage he also claimed InterOffice harbored no client-side administration costs and no training costs because its interface is Navigator, the Web browser that, as he noted, "40 million people already know how to use." It is the self-same interface, he taunted, that's on his now-historic Network Computer. InterOffice was shown last week on both a Windows PC and an NC and is said to be equally accessible from Macs and Unix workstations or any client device.
InterOffice, which won't be out for another 60 days, is based on Oracle's all-purpose Universal Server database, mating Internet and database standards. According to Ellison, all data derived from any source and created by any tool - including fonts, images, audio and video - is stored in the database in Web libraries and automatically rendered in HTML. In other words Internet-enabled, making it possible for companies to share, exchange and manage information from any network including the Web. It is supposed to provide an integration of collaborative and operational data including messages, documents, OLAP and workflow and an integration of collaborative functions with existing apps.
MASTERCARD/VISA SUFFERS SET-BACK, BUT VERIPHONE HAS 1ST VERSION
More than 3,000 comments to Mastercard/Visa's joint Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) proposals have knocked the standardisation process off track. Originally the two organisations had hoped to have conformance testing of software implementations ready by April or May, yet this week they are expected to issue another draft version of the protocol.
Neither has yet announced how various SET implementations will be checked for conformance to the spec. However a Mastercard spokesperson said that there would be a number of announcements "over the coming weeks and months" covering the setting up of the "SET infrastructure" including conformance testing and the establishment of Certification Authorities (CA) who will issue end users with their digital signatures.
Despite the fluid nature of the specifications, Veriphone Inc, a leading transaction automation provider, announced the first SET implementation, though it will not begin shipping until the beginning of the third quarter. Even then, the company will not be offering a complete solution: SET requires a 'digital wallet' for the end user, handling both encryption and digital identity certificates. Veriphone's two initial products, vPOS and vGATE, will sit on the merchant's and the bank's machines respectively and users will continue to send credit card details using the conventional SSL encrypted links offered by Netscape and Microsoft browsers.
Both Veriphone and other SET workers say the main hold-up on the digital wallet side is the lack of Certification Authorities. "The CA infrastructure will take some time to develop", said Roger Bertman, Veriphone general manager and VP of Internet commerce. Moreover developing that infrastructure "is not something that we are going to get involved in".
NOTES EMERGES AS CENTER OF IBM'S INTRANET STRATEGY
Lotus Notes is now the centrepiece of an IBM intranet strategy designed to rival that of Microsoft and Netscape. Last week the company fleshed out plans for a Web-enabled Notes release and a server line that will expose the Notes services to the Web.
It announced the Domino II server line, a fully Web-enabled follow-on to its recently announced Domino HTTP server, and Notes 4.5, which will support Java applets and Netscape plug-ins.
Although the announcement ostensibly positioned Domino II as the key to Lotus's intranet hopes, IBM VP, Internet technologies John Patrick explained that what Lotus outlined is not a subset of IBM's intranet strategy - "This is the intranet strategy." IBM software boss John M Thompson said Domino won't replace products like IBM's Software Servers, which are aimed at a different market than the intranet buyers. Gartner Group Internet guru David Smith described Domino as the first bit of substance in Lotus's pretensions to being an intranet platform - the equation of groupware or collaboration with the Internet being "one of the ten great Internet myths" that currently exist, he said.
Noting that Netscape's Orion servers promise Notes-like functionality in releases coming 18 months from now, Lotus COO Jeff Papows claimed Netscape's "vision of their product looks a lot like the product we're delivering today." He anticipates that companies seeking a solid groupware product will not wait a year and a half for an equivalent solution from Netscape.
Lotus says Domino will transform Notes into an intranet Web applications server, exposing the object services behind Notes to developers through the Corba Internet InterOrb Protocol (IIOP) and launching an application line called Net.Apps. The first Domino II Server will ship in early '97 and feature a Notes-based object store that stores and retrieves HTML pages, Java and Lotuscript applets, forms, views and other objects through Corba. Other servers for mail and directory services will follow.
NETSCAPE ISN'T SCARED OF MICROSOFT
Netscape executives acknowledged that Bill Gates' high-profile intranet push two weeks ago has at least temporarily grasped the public mind, but said Microsoft's insurgence won't knock Netscape out of contention over the intranet.
Bob Lisbonne, Netscape VP of client marketing, said that the company's ability to execute its products on time with the features they should have is its biggest challenge, not market dynamics or pressure from Microsoft and other competitors. While the rash of bugs that often accompany Netscape products suggest that the company's probably wise to think this way, Microsoft's intranet strategy announcement, made two weeks ago to a ballroom packed with corporate decision makers, mounts a viable threat to Netscape's perceived Internet dominance.
While in the past it's dismissed Microsoft's Internet push with flippant remarks like "Microsoft's plans are just vapor right now," Netscape executives at PC Expo last week spoke more candidly. They conceded that Microsoft may have won a temporary public relations victory with the dazzling intranet briefing, but point to the chequered history of Microsoft Exchange. The hype won't stand up to the scrutiny of decision makers whose jobs depend on setting up the right kind of intranet, they say.
Netscape VP of server marketing Srivats Sampath said that the Netscape intranet strategy has an inherent advantage because it's open, while the BackOffice-based Microsoft plan puts a "veneer of openness on a proprietary base." Lisbonne said Netscape's Internet standards base means companies won't have to rely on a "bubblegum-baling-wire-gateway thing" to connect to the outside.
Netscape claims that oddly enough it's seen in some quarters as a safer bet for the intranet than Microsoft because it's a "pure play" on the Internet and doesn't have to cater to the Windows installed base. Microsoft's flip-flops over the past six months - jettisoning Blackbird, abandoning MSN as a proprietary network and converting its directory services to DNS - have shaken customer confidence in Microsoft and has "lots of people asking questions like 'When does Exchange get tossed off?'" Netscape hinted that Microsoft may lose some of its installed base in the move to the Internet, but it's not clear that those customers would move to Netscape. The Microsoft "embrace and extend" policy, Netscape contends, means that Redmond devotes needless energy to resolving tension between its two constituencies: for example, supporting both ActiveX and Java.
Netscape, which claims 92 of the Fortune 100 have standardized on its products, is pushing its success stories - companies ranging from John Deere to Federal Express - so that risk-averse MIS people realize that when they move to Netscape they're in the middle of the pack, not the bleeding edge.
The firm claims it will ultimately win the intranet battle because Microsoft won't be able to corral the Internet the way it has the desktop.
Microsoft "has never met something bigger than Windows," Lisbonne said, "and the Internet is that thing. It will continue to vex them."
GENERAL MAGIC REGROUPS, HOPES THE NET TURNS THE TRICK
Apple spin-off General Magic Inc, the six-year-old handheld software company with $100 million in the bank yet little of the glory it hoped to have by now, is reorganizing to catch the Internet wave.
It's unbundling its Magic Cap and Telescript products so it can build separate brand identities and persue separate market segments. It's abandoning its sole reliance on up-front licensing fees and annuity streams from exclusive partners to strike out for OEMs, VARs, ISVs and integrators, in addition to the big shots it's attracted over the years, and will eventually go direct to corporates, web operators and service providers. And it's obviously also embracing Web standards.
During its run, General Magic, which once had Apple's hyperlink wizard on board, has picked up a brillant collection of 16 partners including Sony, AT&T, Motorola, NTT, Fujitsu, Toshiba, France Telecom, Philips, Matsushita, Sanyo, Oki, Northern Telecom, Mitsubishi, Cable & Wireless and the Dutch PTT. Half of them now own 50% of the 200-man Sunnyvale, California company which went public last year and does about $14 million in revenues.
Still, back in April it was forced to disclosed that Sony had suspended plans to make another handheld device using the Magic Cap operating system and things didn't look good for AT&T's continued use of its Telescript agent software. As it has for so many firms, the Internet beckoned with its promise of a new lease on life.
General Magic's new Active Internet Products Division has taken its Telescript technology, an object-oriented server-based communications language, and turned it into a product line called Tabriz. It says it can transform passive networks into active secure and persistent business vehicles with its new Tabriz AgentWare and Agent Tools. They are intended for intranets and the Internet at large. The stuff ships on Unix in two weeks and on NT this fall for a one-time fee of $5,000 a server. However, following a popular Internet convention, it will be free for the first 90 days with free support for 30 days to get ISVs to sit up and notice. Tabriz is also expected to sign-up some partners beginning with Tandem this week.
AgentWare is meant to execute and manage agent-based applications; Agent Tools to create agent-based apps that are deployed at Tabriz Web sites. In its first iteration AgentWare will be Java-enabled. ActiveX comes down the road.
General Magic calls Tabriz the "third strategic component of a new class of distributed application," the others being Netscape and Microsoft Explorer and Java and ActiveX.
The Web right now, it says, is a large disorganized mass of information with only poor tools to collect, compile and use its data. It's also passive and has to be driven by the online user. Web performance and traffic is unpredictable. Sites can be overwhelmed at peak periods, idle at others. Web sites don't know preferences and previous actions and they don't learn. Passivity is particularly bad because buyers and sellers can't interact in real-time. Tabriz is supposed to fix all that.
It's said to be able to go multiple places, hide complexity, enable interaction, decouple the user from the task, store instructions, state and data while providing a secure environment that includes two-way authentication, access control and resource allocation. Essentially the Tabriz agent manages the Web-based processes while the Java applet manages the user experience. It's supposed to eliminate the boundaries between physically co-resident but logically distributed information, geographically dispersed data and disparate enterprise legacy systems. It can draw content from non-Telescripted sites.
Tabriz sees its development and deployment engines as being NT and the big Unix systems, Sun, HP, SGI. In Tabriz's first phase, it has to incorporate database and search engine support. General Magic then hopes to branch out into standard payment schema and transaction-based services along with international distribution.
Meanwhile, the company's new Communications Products Division, responsible for the engaging Magic Cap software, also has new Presto!Links and Presto!Mail products under its wing. They offer Magic Cap-based communicators such as Sony's Magic Link and Moto's Envoy PDAs Web access, Internet e-mail and corporate intranet connectivity. Presto!Links is a full-featured Web browser; Presto!Mail is consonant with the array of open standards protocols like PPP, POP3 and SMTP. The two together are $50 and derive from technology imported from Active Paper Inc.
Otherwise, it has taken Magic Cap and come up with Magic Cap for Windows - that's Magic Cap plus Windows-specific features - hoping to stir interest in PDAs. The first commercial version isn't due until later this year. The unit is also responsible for General Magic's new C-based SoftModem software which requires no special signal processor and can share a single CPU with client applications. It will be OEM'd for Mips, Pentium MMX and Philip's PDA chips as well as others.
InterNIC phones swamped as 25,000 domains face axe
As you read this, about 25,000 Internet domains are expected to have been cut off according to InterNIC estimates. Monday 24th June is the day that Network Solutions Inc intends to cut off those domain-holders, registered since September 14th 1995, who have yet to cough up their $100 domain maintenance fee. NSI handles InterNIC domain name registration on behalf of the US National Science Foundation.
Some posters to Usenet newsgroups accuse NSI of being lax in issuing invoices. A typical posting, from Ron Schnell, owner of driveraces.com who says: "It took me until 4am to get a fax to them last week, and I have no way of knowing if they got it or not. I also never received the bills, e-mails, and faxes that they claim to have sent, and only got a final notice".
David Graves, NSI Internet business manager denies the charge that earlier notifications weren't sent and sets out the policy whereby billing, administration and technical contacts are first e-mailed with payment reminders, and finally company presidents, are sent mail through the post. Any domain name holders who only got the final bills should quiz their network providers to find out why the technical and administrative contacts did not pass on the bills, he says. Schnell acknowledges that this is what happened to him.
Graves does admit, however that "after we sent out the letter notices to the presidents our telephone system was overwhelmed", meaning that people couldn't actually make payments if they wanted to. A week ago the InterNIC "completely revamped our phone system to cope and we are now answering the phones from 7am to 9pm and from 8am 'til 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays".
One result of this overload, he says, is that the original cut-off date was put back by a week. Domains that aren't paid up will go on hold for 60 days, during which time they will not be contactable. After that, they will be up for grabs again. Owners of names registered before September 14th 1995 will be due to pay their initial payments on the anniversary of their site's registration. These bills started going out last month. NSI currently registers around 425,000 names. It has not given figures on whether the domain registry business is a profitable one for it.
Seattle-based iCat Corporation, the folks with the six-week-old shrink-wrapped Electronic Commerce Suite for creating catalogues on the 'net, has gotten $6 million in funding from Trans Cosmos International in Tokyo, which owns Asahi net, the largest Japanese Internet provider, as well as VCs at the EnCompass Group, Bay Partners and JF Shea and private investors.
Netscape won't be using CIFS - WebNFS looks better
Just because Netscape hasn't officially endorsed Sun Microsystems' WebNFS as a high-performance alternative to HTTP, don't expect it to fall in line behind Common Internet File System (CIFS), Microsoft's response to the Sun protocol.
Netscape executives at PC Expo derided Redmond's CIFS as "LAN Man for the Internet" and said it was a "half-baked approach" unsuitable for broad Internet use. When WebNFS was announced, however, Netscape was conspicuously absent from its list of supporters. SunSoft said the announcement was delayed for Netscape's benefit, but it pulled out at the last minute. Bob Lisbonne, VP of Marketing at Netscape's Client Division, said Netscape needed to "kick the tires" first. While it's holding off on an endorsement, it said it has no plans to build a similar protocol and WebNFS looks good so far.
CIFS is an enhanced version of the Server Message Block distributed file sharing system found in Windows, Windows 95, Windows NT and OS/2. It enables PCs to access network information over TCP/IP nets. WebNFS and CIFS allow users to share files directly on the Internet without requiring they be downloaded or copied to a local machine first. Microsoft has taken the spec off for consideration as an Internet standard.
Oracle, Spyglass Inc and predictably, JavaSoft will be putting WebNFS in their browsers. And IBM and Sequent Computer Systems Inc will get it as part of their deals for ONC+ 2.0. Auspex Systems Inc is currently leaning towards doing its own WebNFS implementation, which could be ready by year-end for inclusion in its Internet-intranet data servers. Sun Microsystems will also add WebNFS to its Internet servers.
JAVA GETS ITS SPEECH APIS
The delay in Java speech recognition APIs (OR issue 1) turns out to be due to the need to get an existing speech API group on board. The Speech Recognition Application Programming Interface (SRAPI) group have decided to add Java to version 2.0, of its API.
The committee is chaired by Novell Inc chairs with IBM Corp, Intel Corp, Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence Inc, Philips Electronics NV and Dragon Systems Inc as core members. The support will mean that Java developers can add speech interaction to their applets and documents. SRAPI 1.0 currently supports Windows95 and NT and Java will be added before the year-end. Also in the pipeline is support for OS/2, Unix, NetWare and OpenDoc, but these are not likely until next year, according to committee chairman Bruce
nology. At the start, the Speech Recognition Programming Interface just covered dictation, but has since expanded to include command and control systems and the committee is meeting this week to mull over speaker verification systems as well. Armstrong said the interface is "much easier" than Novell's own Telephony Services Application Programming Interface, TSAPI in that it has an object-oriented C++ front end, while Microsoft Corp's Telephony Application Programming Interface, TAPI is sticking to Windows systems. Speech Recognition Programming Interface supporters include Voice Pilot Technologies Inc, Kolvox Inc, Interactive Products Inc, Voice Processing Corp and Speech Technology Laboratories, part of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co's Panasonic Group. The body will add telephony support that will be compliant with the Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum in the future.
MICROSOFT LAUNCHES FRONTPAGE
After announcing that its FrontPage Web site authoring and management tool will be embedded into NT 4.0 as part of its Internet strategy, Microsoft unveiled version 1.1 of the product. FrontPage, inherited from its acquisition of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Vermeer Technologies Inc in January, is pitched at would-be Web site authors with no programming skills.
FrontPage 1.1 has been redesigned to be integrated into the Microsoft Office suite, sharing features such as the spell checker. The Web site, pages and Web-bound documents can be created or edited in Office applications - either by an individual, or in collaboration with others across the corporate network or Internet - tested on the desktop and then, using FrontPage's 'CopyWeb' function, transferred on to the Web. A two-tier graphical view of the Web site being developed is provided by a Web site manager component called FrontPage Explorer.
ActiveX is included in 1.1, enabling authors to embed graphics and animated sequences generated in Powerpoint, for example, straight into HTML pages. In addition, FrontPage uses wizards and smart objects called Webots that initiate text searches and construct threaded discussion groups and surveys without writing CGI scripts. It's available for Windows NT and Windows 95 clients. FrontPage 1.1 is priced at $149 with a possible rebate of $49 for Microsoft Office users.
Ouch: Netcom On-Line Communication Services Inc's central Internet backbone went down for 13 hours on Tuesday/Wednesday, cutting off its 400,00 users and spreading ripples across the Net. The US's biggest dedicated Internet access provider saw its share price drop by $4.50 to finish at $28.75.
INTERNIC DOMAIN NAME POLICY HIT BY FOURTH LAW SUIT
The strategy adopted by Network Solutions Inc to avoid getting dragged into litigation over domain name and trademark infringements is looking wobbly. Under the current rules, anyone holding a .com or other InterNIC (which NSI runs) administered domain name can lose it if anyone complains to the InterNIC and shows that they hold the domain name as a trademark. To avoid automatically losing the the domain, the holder has to show that they too have it as a trademark and agree to post an unlimited bond to cover NSI's legal expenses. Unfortunately the complainant doesn't have to show prior use of the trademark, which means it is possible for a malicious complainant to get a trademark registered in an obscure African state, write a letter to the InterNIC - et voila.
So far NSI has become embroiled in four court cases as trademark and domain holders fight it out. The first and most famous is that between Roadrunner Computer Systems (owner of roadrunner.com) and Time Warner entertainment, owner of the (beep beep) cartoon character. The case was expected to come to court as we went to press. The second involves a tussle between Data Concepts and Digital Consulting for the ownership of dci.com. The third involves ty.com, a domain registered by Philip Giacalone and disputed by TY Inc. The latest involves Clue Computing, which this week will serve a preliminary injunction on NSI to stop it from putting its clue.com domain on hold. The domain is being sought by toy giant Hasbro which makes the eponymous board game.
David Graves, NSI Internet business manager, says he is happy with the current arrangements, but adds that they are constantly under review. Furthermore, he says that changes to the policy cannot be made without reference to (a) NSI's own "army of attorneys" and (b) the National Science Foundation itself.
HAL SPINS OUT SOFTWARE ARM TO DO INTRANET ADMIN TOOLS
Perennially late HaL Computer Systems, the 64-bit Sparc cloner that brought new meaning to the expression "computerless computer company," has spun out its software unit, renamed it Chisholm Technologies Inc and set it to doing administration tools for the intranet market. It's financed by Fujitsu Ltd which had to rescue its investment in HaL and take it over.
The 30-strong start-up, based in Austin, Texas, originally set up there to poach IBM personnel, is being run by president and CEO Michael Machutt, who was program director at IBM's Personal Software Product (PSP) Development Services, a handmaiden of OS/2. He had been responsible for IBM's first implementation of DCE, the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment, on AIX and OS/2, back in 1991.
The five-year-old HaL unit, the erstwhile HaL Software Systems, has been doing multi-platform administration products for the DCE market for the last two years and claims to have been the first to come up with graphical tools for DCE, a thing called DCE Cell Manager. It apparently intends to leverage this experience together with its OLIAS technology, an SGML documentation browsing and document delivery system, to elbow its way onto the intranet with a new set of GUI-based gadgetry.
The new game plan has been in the works some six to nine months but Chisholm is still unready to define its new product line or its strategy. It will focus on large corporates and government agencies with a direct sales force and use distributors internationally. It hopes to OEM its stuff to other vendors and to be making money by the end of the year.
NETSCAPE CLAIMS 38M USERS - NO WORD ON HOW MANY PIRATES
Netscape claimed last week that, with 38 million users, its Navigator browser is bigger than even Microsoft's Word for Windows. Has everyone stopped typing and gone surfing, then? Probably not: in pitching Navigator as the "most popular PC application", Netscape treats Word and Microsoft Office independently. True, the separate figures - 21 million and 22 million respectively - are Microsoft's own so Redmond could expect no mercy.
Maybe Netscape is genuinely unaware that Word is the most widely used part of Office. More seriously, Netscape refuses to disclose how many of those copies have been paid for - and how many of the 38 million are effectively pirated copies. Add all the pirated copies of Word together and we suspect that Microsoft might be able to present significantly better figures too.
XEROX SPIN-OFF TO HAVE INTERNET WORKFLOW APPLICATIONS
InConcert Inc, the company spun off by Xerox Corp's XSoft division last month, will announce a complete Internet development environment and specialist front-end tools for Web-enabling InConcert workflow management software in the coming months.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company will also announce technology partnerships with firms involved in imaging, document management, modelling, forms packages and reporting tools to integrate into InConcert. It will also add support for Object Linking & Embedding. The company boasts 100 InConcert customers and 25 systems integrators such as Electronic Data Systems and Anderson Consulting peddling its software - but that's apparently not enough, because it is about to launch a campaign to win more partners in the verticals and the regions. XSoft has spawned two companies - InConcert and Astoria Inc - both of them wholly-owned subsidiaries of Xerox New Enterprises. InConcert has no permanent president and could not say when it would post its first results as a separate entity from XSoft. Xerox says it orphaned InConcert in order to boost recognition of the company its products'.
XEROX WORKS ON WEB PRINTING
Xerox, the company that invented the PC revolution and never profited from it, announced last week that it will introduce a series of Web software products to simplify and expand access to printing services. It says the stuff will use existing networks to move virtually any Web file to a network printer.
It will use Java to build a set of interactive applications, such as animated representation of job and device status, by the time it's finished - which it's not.
WYSE WINTERM USERS WILL BE ABLE TO RENT APPS
Wyse, whose WinTerm terminal fit the definition of a Network Computer even before the NC was defined, has managed to sign up two Internet service providers to deliver"software on demand." Our sister publication ClieNT Server News indicated Wyse was working on this scheme three months ago.
Little-known Woodinville, Washington-based Moose Logic Technologies Inc and First Internet Franchise Corporation of San Clemente, California, will rent software by the hour to WinTerm users. Customers can either buy the $500 terminal, or rent the entire surfing-software-hardware package for about $40 a month, with an additional $1 per hour fee for using software that is stored remotely on a server and run on the client via a Citrix WinFrame server.The concept depends on Internet service providers persuading major ISVs to license their applications for rental by many people simultaneously.
IBM says it's working with at least one utility company on embedding Java applets in devices like electrical meters. The company's server would send out a monthly message for the applets in the meters to switch on and report the meter readings, eliminating the need for meter readers to climb fences and evade vicious dogs - eliminating the need for meter readers, for that matter.
Lotus commissioned a study from the Business Research Group called "Notes/Intranets: Cost of Ownership Study" and wouldn't you know it it found that it takes less time and money to go with Notes than Netscape, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Oracle, FTP, O'Reilly, DEC or public domain sources. They interviewed a 100 IT managers, half of whom were using Notes and found that overall implementation of intranet applications with Notes and InterNotes Web Publisher took 53 days versus 87 using other folks gear. The most common intranet apps are: document publishing (86%), e-mail (73%), database access (43%), discussion databases (39%), workflow (30%) and TP (18%). Based on the number of hours spent deploying and maintaining these apps, Notes was reckoned to be 40% more efficient.
Internet service provider Digex Inc, which focuses exclusively on business, government and other institutions, has filed to go public. It's looking to raise $55 million. It just introduced a new high-speed Internet access product for telecommuters that reportedly offers 400 kb/sec, 10-15 times the speed of standard dial-up connections. It's a combination of Digex' wireless Internet access and Hughes Network Systems' DirecPC satellite delivery.
What companies setting up intranets want, says Zona Research, are ways to integrate Windows and mainframe legacy data. They want a single user interface metaphor and interoperability infrastructure.
CompuServe named Henry Frigon interim chairman replacing Richard Brown, chairman and CEO of H&R Block, who's resigning so he can be CEO of Cable & Wireless plc.
Netscape says its Internet site gets more than 80 million hits a day, representing several million daily visitors. It's had10 billion hits since it was started two years ago. Netscape claims it's the most visited site on the 'net.
ichat Inc, makers of real-time chat software like the Rooms chat server, has $4.5 million in second-round VC money from Ziff Brothers Investments and Onset Ventures Inc.
Adobe Illustrator isn't the first vector-based graphics program to support GIF89a says Xara, the UK-based author of the CorelXARA package, which has supported it since last year. Version 1.2, about to be released, will add support for animated GIFs' and provide direct support for Netscape and Internet Explorer palettes. www.xara.com
IN BRIEF
IBM'S HURSLEY PORTING JAVA TO EVERYTHING THAT MOVES
Much of the work going on at IBM's Center for Java Technology isn't showing up in IBM corporate plans yet. With the pace of change, developments have fallen between IBM's traditional planning cycles says Simon Phipps, the Center's program manager. Or alternatively, as an enthusiastic colleague puts it, "we do try to do cool things at IBM, but usually we get stopped. Here things are moving so fast that we can keep ahead of the stoppers".
Given Java's West Coast proclivities, you might expect IBM's coffee-grinding operation to be sited somewhere in the Bay area. Instead it's in rural Hampshire in England, at Hursley the long-time home of CICS. It's there as a pure accident, derived from the fact that in mid-95 resident IBM Fellow Mike Cowlishaw was looking for a virtual machine to make the REXX language platform. He stumbled across the Java VM and a Java Center was born. The fruits of that original search were made available for download last week as the hybrid language 'NetRexx' from www2.hursley.ibm.com/netrexx.
The Hursley policy can be summed up as "porting Java to anything that moves - and quite a few things that don't", says Phipps. After that, it will be a question of getting IBM middleware to add Java hooks.
Phipps is so open about IBM's Java plans that it is worth noting the things he doesn't want, or can't talk about. One is the size of the team dedicated to doing the Java work: "a mid-range two digit figure", is as close as he will estimate. Another taboo subject is JavaOS: IBM doesn't yet have an official policy on whether this is A Good or A Bad Thing. Neither can he say much about what IBM is doing with Java in the telecommunications arena, which is a shame since Hursley also plays host to the CallPath group; its computer integrated telephony offering.
Publicly, the status of work at Hursley is that:
l An alpha version of the IBM port of Java for Windows 3.1 should be made available for download by the end of the month. It won't be particularly fast, Phipps warns, since it isn't optimized, moreover it is based on Win32s. Still, it should let Win 3.1 users run HotJava alright according to Phipps. The team isn't sure how it's going to make money from the implementation yet, the most likely option is to charge for support.
l The next Java implementation to arrive will be for the AS/400. Formally this won't be launched until year end, but will be available for download from Hursley well before that.mally ready mid 97 but will be ready well before that for download from the Web site. Phipps says he likes "the idea of mainframe guys downloading shareware stuff from a Web site".
In terms of the larger, strategic picture, Java would seem to offer IBM one of its so-far unobtainable holy grails: a way of rationalising system software components across its disparate hardware platforms. IBM history is littered with the wreckage of attempts to minimize the differences between its various systems: Workplace OS and Systems Application Architecture were the latest incarnations. If the Java virtual machines perform as advertise, and are ported across multiple platforms, could they succeed where other attempts have failed? While not dismissive of the idea, Phipps says that Java has still got to prove itself before such grandiose plans are even considered by management. "They've seen too many virtual machines come and go," he comments.
TAZZA JAVA COMPONENT TOOL COULD SUPPLEMENT VISUALAGE
A somewhat mysterious IBM team has been working on a dynamic component assembly tool written in Java which, although a free standing Java application, could end up as part of the VisualAge toolset.
The tool, codenamed Tazza is a part of IBM's Arabica component prototype, launched in support of Java Component Initiative at JavaOne a few weeks back (OR 1). A demo was supposedly shown around PC Expo last week.
Tazzo allows developers to construct programs by dragging and dropping Java applets, and connecting them. It looks on the system for Java class hierarchies, or packages, discovers them, opens the class files, looks at what the objects and methods are, and makes them available.to the programmer for visual program design. The latest beta is supposed to be able to display the innards of inished Java programs too.
But some confusion may be caused by similar facilities already a part of VisualAge. Last week IBM said that VisualAge for Java, including editor, debugger, browser and a Java class library, would begin beta testing early in the second half of this year, with general availability by year-end. One of its features will be a Data Access Builder, for visually constructing data access through Java Database Connection (JDBC). The builder interrogates table and automatically generates classes.
Version 4 of VisualAge C++ for Win32, OS/2 and Unix, due in beta before year-end, will also include the Data Access Builder, and will provide the option of generating Java, as well as C++ and IDL.
WEBMATE HAS FOUNDATION WEB SITE BUILDER FOR $95
WebMate Technologies Inc is the latest in a long line of companies with tools aimed at web site developers. The Canton, Massachusetts-based company was formed in 1994, and until now has concentrated on building Web sites for customers such as Boston's WCVB-TV and the New England journal of Medicine. Last week it launched WebMate Foundation, which it describes as a 4GL Web Application Environment.
The server-side development and deployment tool includes a web-tailored database to store all the HTML, images, scripts, content and security messages, along with tags to invoke WebMate elements such as simplified HTML programming, form generation, dynamic content display and script invocation. There is a scripting language, email and browser interfaces, and tools for access to legacy databases and files. It's aimed at non-technical staff, and works with HTTP servers on most Windows, NT and Unix platforms. The performance "matches or exceeds custom CGI scripts", we are assured.
A trial version is available for downloading free for 60 days, after which it costs $95. After September 3rd the price will rise to $495. WebMate built its own site using the tool, which neatly demonstrates its automatic support for multiple browsers through "just-in-time" HTML. www.webmate.com
ARACHNID TOOLS SPIN WEBS
Arachnid Software Inc, a Menlo Park, California start-up, is about to send a Web authoring and content tool to beta that will build CGI-based applications and extend HTML editing capabilities. Its WebPower HTML authoring suite runs on an Oracle database and includes an authoring engine for interacting with authoring clients and an HTML generator.
While some editors understand HTML 2.0 tagging and have menu items and palettes to enable tagged documents, Arachnid argues that its editor goes further. With WebPower, says Arachnid, an author connects to WebPower's authoring server which recognizes the user and user details such as e-mail, telephone and facsimile. These values are attached to all directories and documents owned by that user. Authors are able to add attributes including variables to documents.
Once the HTTP server requests a document, the Mark-up Language generator compiles the document, replacing variables with appropriate values, then sends it on its way. As many substitution variables as needed can be created, claims Arachnid, with variables inherited down the document hierarchy. The server knows what documents are owned by whom and are checked as they come in and go out. WebPower extensions to the Mark-up Language are only visible to the authoring side and replaced by the appropriate text during the document compilation process. WebPower is compatible on all browsers and supports most Unixes, NT, Mac OS and OpenVMS.
GNN'S $1M SWEEPSTAKE THE LATEST WAY TO ATTRACT BROWSERS
America Online's Global Network Navigator Inc operation and Yoyodyne Entertainment Inc have come up with the idea of a $1,000,000 sweepstake to promote visits to sponsors' web sites. Users enter the sweepstake by visiting a sponsor's sites and filling in an online entry form. A user can only make one entry per site, but is encouraged to make multiple entries by visiting as many of the sponsors' sites as possible.
Sponsors are paying $30,000 apiece to have their sites included in the game, according to Seth Godin, president of Irvington, New York-based Yoyodyne. GNN, which is running the game, claims sponsoring sites will receive between 150,000 to 200,000 unduplicated visitors during the course of the game which runs until September 16th. However no doubt it won't be long until people write automated Web crawlers to visit the sites and enter automatically. Privately held Yoyodyne, which has around 30 employees, makes its living by designing online prize-based games and selling them on. The companies say that the e-mail addresses that they collect in the course of running the game will not be give out to the sponsors or sold on. http://million10.dollar.gnn.com
HACKERS BLOCK ADS ON WEB
A group of self-described hackers on leave from their senior year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are building a program that could block ads and undermine the Internet's delicate financial underpinnings.
The kids, who have incorporated themselves as PrivNet Inc, have written a program dubbed Internet Fast Forward that can block Web site advertising from being downloaded. The program addresses the annoyance of downloading massive graphics ads and may also appeal to corporations that do not want their employees shopping on company time or schools that think students should use the Internet for more serious purposes.
It uses a proprietary set of algorithms to spot the digital "signatures" used by Internet advertisers, according to PrivNet chief executive James Howard, an erstwhile drama major. The Internet Fast Forward algorithm works with a small 5kB-6kB database of advertising signatures, not with the ads' file names or the ads themselves.
Howard says the firm is playing with the idea of an annual fee of $10-$15, or whatever the market will bear, for database updates. It plans to post them every two days, a reflection of the speed at which Internet advertising is moving. Besides blocking ads, Internet Fast Forward can be used to block server cookies. That means a server can't query a surfer's browser to pry into his surfing habits. No news on how the product will be advertised.
Informix and Netscape team on workgroup package
Informix Software Inc got together with Netscape Communications last week to launch a packaged workgroup database system aimed at both client/server and intranet users. The Informix Workgroup Solution comes in two versions: OnLine Workgroup Server for LANs, and, OnLine Workstation for small branch offices and remote sites.
The product combines Informix's Dynamic Scalable Architecture and Command Center database management toolset with Netscape's FastTrack server software and Navigator Gold browser and authoring tool. Informix will work with its third party suppliers to make sure its most important applications and tools are tightly integrated.
The package runs on Windows NT, but Informix says it is also finishing off a Unix version of the Server product for later this year. Informix launched its SuiteSpot integrated suite of Web servers in conjunction with Netscape earlier this year. Price is $295 per user for Workgroup Server with a five user minimum. OnLine Workstation costs $499.
OE'S MAMBO CONNECTS WEBS TO LEGACY DATABASES
Open Environment Corp of Boston is going after the integrating-Internet and-Enterprise market with Mambo, a Web application development tool aimed at MIS managers with lots of legacy data. Essentially a series of gateways, Mambo comes as one component that sits on the Web server and handles information passing between legacy systems and the Web pages.
Other modular components are designed to sit on the legacy hosts themselves. The basic package, which costs $249, includes the components to talk to Oracle, Sybase, SQLServer and DB2. Additional 'PowerPacks' giving access to things like old heirarchical databases and TP monitors cost $500 a-piece.
The Web-server based element does its stuff by automatically generating CGI executables and HTML template forms.
NET IN THE FAMILY FOR SIMPLY INTERACTIVE
It might have been harder for twenty-something brothers Robert Jr and Dean Rositano to set up Simply Interactive, launched last week at PC Expo in New York to sell Web training CDs to novice users, if their father wasn't Robert Rositano, founding partner of Internet giant Netcom.
The San Jose, California start-up has raised $11 million in private funding and promises to raise another $15 million in the next few months. The Rositano family invested about $4 million in the company and none came from venture capitalists.
Following the path of Netcom, which was the first major publicly traded Internet company, Simply Interactive may file an IPO before the end of the year. Its first product, Internet the City, is an interactive CD-ROM with chatty guides to help Web newcomers wind their way through the Internet, represented by a virtual city.
Simply Interactive says it wants to follow a marketing strategy similar to America Online's where users are overwhelmed with free disks and CDs, and will give away a lot of "lite" versions to tempt users to purchase the real thing. It has yet to announce an Internet access provider to enable its full version, but Daddy's old company, Netcom, would be an obvious choice. Intranets announcements are expected in a few weeks.
MICROSOFT 'BROWSER KILLER' WILL HELP SELL BROWSERS - NETSCAPE
Netscape says in what perhaps is a flight of fancy that the Nashville interface, which combines Windows 95 and NT's interfaces with Internet Explorer, may make it easier to sell Navigator.
Netscape says the rewriting of the desktop shell is essentially a "PlusPack 2," which will mean Navigator integrates better with Windows and will remove the HTML training costs of Windows users. Netscape VP of client marketing Bob Lisbonne said he welcomes the inclusion of things like Java and TCP in the operating system as well because it frees Netscape's resources for things more useful than "parsing Java byte codes." But Netscape doubts Redmond's coders will be able to pull off a decent implementation.
Lisbonne claimed Netscape isn't daunted by the prospect of a free Microsoft browser:"we've been selling against free from day one" against Mosaic and the like. He said that at $50 Navigator isn't too far from free and MIS will pay more for better products and a lower cost of ownership because "a free product that's the wrong choice can be very expensive."
Lotus Notes is now the centrepiece of an IBM intranet strategy designed to rival that of Microsoft and Netscape. Last week the company fleshed out plans for a Web-enabled Notes release and a server line that will expose the Notes services to the Web.
It announced the Domino II server line, a fully Web-enabled follow-on to its recently announced Domino HTTP server, and Notes 4.5, which will support Java applets and Netscape plug-ins.
Although the announcement ostensibly positioned Domino II as the key to Lotus's intranet hopes, IBM VP, Internet technologies John Patrick explained that what Lotus outlined is not a subset of IBM's intranet strategy - "This is the intranet strategy." IBM software boss John M Thompson said Domino won't replace products like IBM's Software Servers, which are aimed at a different market than the intranet buyers. Gartner Group Internet guru David Smith described Domino as the first bit of substance in Lotus's pretensions to being an intranet platform - the equation of groupware or collaboration with the Internet being "one of the ten great Internet myths" that currently exist, he said.
Noting that Netscape's Orion servers promise Notes-like functionality in releases coming 18 months from now, Lotus COO Jeff Papows claimed Netscape's "vision of their product looks a lot like the product we're delivering today." He anticipates that companies seeking a solid groupware product will not wait a year and a half for an equivalent solution from Netscape.
Lotus says Domino will transform Notes into an intranet Web applications server, exposing the object services behind Notes to developers through the Corba Internet InterOrb Protocol (IIOP) and launching an application line called Net.Apps. The first Domino II Server will ship in early '97 and feature a Notes-based object store that stores and retrieves HTML pages, Java and
The biggest promise Oracle seems to have made last week was that InterOffice can manage the information overload created by the Web and actually find what it is you're looking for among the glut. The magician supposedly doing this trick, Ellison said, is an AI component in InterOffice called ConText that he described as being capable of reading English, understanding themes, automatically summarizing its findings and indexing documents. A tall order that goes along with InterOffice's document management capabilities such as version control and check-in/check-out.
InterOffice includes a scalable messaging server said to support thousands of users on a single server and provide integrated messaging, calendaring and directory services. It is compliant with MAPI, POP3, LDAP and IMAP4. It can act as a development platform for other message-driven application such as routing.
It also includes a workflow component that supports ad hoc and transactional workflow and integrates with InterOffice's messaging capabilities.
The InterOffice messaging server is $95 per mailbox; the InterOffice document management server is $395 per concurrent user. They'll be sold as options to Universal Server.
Oracle came to the party with a bunch of friends including SkyTel.
InterOffice includes access to its wireless messaging network. Cornerstone Imaging Inc is provide InterOffice's document imaging capabilities. Oracle and Philips Home Service are testing what was touted as America's first consumer e-mail system in Garden City, New York where they've installed screen phones equipped with InterOffice e-mail. Control Data Corporation is supporting it with its Mail*Hub software as is Adobe with Acrobat. And CompuServe said it would offer its corporate customers an InterOffice-based application hosting service next quarter.
DOT
It's arrived: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser now has Java support - downloadable as a separate component from http://microsoft.com/ie. It still doesn't include the Just In Time compiler though. Support for Java in the Windows 3.1 version is now being promised this Autumn and the Macintosh, "later this year".
NTT Electronics Technology Corp is hammering another nail into the coffin of US cryptography export policy. Not content with developing 1024-bit key RSA chips, it intends to implement strong encryption in software, NTT is initially working on Privacy Enhanced Mail and secure MIME products.
What with IBM, Novell, Apple, HP, Hitachi, SGI, SCO, Tandem, Microsoft and SunSoft all embedding Java in their operating systems, the Gartner Group frets that Java will go the way of Unix and fragment. Since licensees are encouraged to innovate and since JavaSoft may or may not make the innovations part of the base platform, Gartner says "this sounds suspiciously like the arrangements that have plagued Unix since its inception" and warns of proprietary extensions that diminish its interoperability. "In the long term," it says, "Java will not create any more of a standardized environment than Unix." Gartner has also recently cautioned its clients to expect incompatible Internet server API enhancements from the various vendors. It figures Netscape's inconsistent API strategies like plug-ins, Java, NSAPI and JavaScript "will create dead-end development paths."
VeriFone is "very optimistic" it will get an export licence for its SET products (page 1). Roger Bertman, VeriFone general manager and VP of Internet commerce, says the company has already received initial approvals and that the US State Department is being reasonable about the export of SET strong encryption.
Netscape says that it has a software implementation of the June SET draft ready to be plugged into its LivePayment merchant framework. However Andres Espineira, director of product marketing for commercial applications, can't say when the company will release it to its customers. "Before the end of the year" is all we could get out of him. The current code is being used internally to test LivePayment's modular architecture.
The landmark court hearing on electronic commerce between E-Data and CompuServe (OR issue 1) has been delayed. The duo were set to appear before the judge as we went to press on Friday.
Faced with the problems over Java security, JavaSoft has pulled in a team of outside experts to produce a formal security model of the Java Virtual Machine.
IBM's Java Just In Time compiler for AIX turned out to be broken when it runs on SP2 systems. A new version is available from http://ncc.hursley.ibm.com/javainfo/
NCD Software plans to propose its Web-enabled X technology to the industry as a means of integrating X applications with the Web. Its PC-XWare 4.0 will reportedly be the first X server to run X applications over the Web, giving PC users the ability to use X applications with a Web browser interface.
America Online confirms that it has been called in for a chat about its business practices by the attorneys general of several US states. At issue appears to be the rounding up to the nearest minute of per-minute rates.
Here's another take on the reason that JavaSoft's launch of Java Beans was so hurried - originally we heard that it was simply a question of keeping the architecture secret from Microsoft, but an alternative rumor suggests that JSoft was forced to launch early by whispers that Microsoft was poised to announce Java/COM integration, and was going to propose COM as an open standard.
Besides goodies for Web page layout like font selection and multiple columns, Galileo, the future Netscape Navigator 4.0, will have "3D layered frames." We're not sure what that is, but we know they won't make frame-haters happy. Microsoft has "floating frames".
Microsoft says it's had over 3,000 requests for VJ++ betas since the JavaOne conference, which attracted about 5,000 developers. Visual Java++ is Redmond's Java development platform, a piece of its Jakarta program.
If Netscape has bought two more of Sequent's Internet Accelerator boxes as we reported last week, it doesn't know it yet: it says it has two of the machines - one purchased, one a gift from Sequent - with no immediate plans to buy more.
Someplace between the copy desk and publication, one of the front page stories in last week's issue lost some of the points it was trying to make. Among them was that if this newly conceived Process Committee set up to bring some disciplines to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) doesn't make quick progress and remedy what is seen as lacking, then, by George, its Advisory Committee might well set up a counter-consortium.
Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison is promising the names of international telecoms companies that will provide phone links for his NCs in 45 to 60 days. They will buy Oracle's server data management software. Oracle already has BT Plc, France Telecom, Bell Atlantic Corp and NTT Corp interested and the eventual group will "sell, rent or give away" NCs to subscribers in "millions of units," Ellison predicted.
Microsoft's 'Slate' Web magazine, edited by Michael Kinsley is due to go live at noon Pacific time Monday at www.slate.com
Although suspicions remain that there have been talks, Lotus denies it is trying to license its replication technology to Netscape or other companies, saying the only technology it's opening up is what it's exposing through IIOP as well its Internet Calendaring Access Protocol (ICAP).
JavaSoft says it's on target for the July betas of Java Beans, Hot Java and the APIs it promised at JavaOne. A consultation period should have them finished by year-end.
Sun is sounding a bit like Microsoft these days with its legal staff sending letters warning companies using Java in domain names and elsewhere to abandon the tag. The letters sparked a minor furor on the Web from people, drawing parallels to Microsoft's battle over Windows, who were indignant at Sun's attempt to trademark a common word like Java. Sun stepped over the line when it sent a letter to Javanco, a computer hardware and software dealer named in the early 80s for its owner Javan Keith. Sun's JavaSoft publicly apologized for the Javanco letter, but the legal squad continues to hound other offenders. http://java.sun.com/trademarks.html
Looks like IBM and Netscape are gonna cuddle up this week. They'll announce new Internet-bound AIX-based RS/6000s fitted out with Netscape Server applications on June 25.
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WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
June 24 - June 28 1996 Issue No 4
ORACLE'S INTEROFFICE TAKES ON LOTUS, EXCHANGE & ORION
Oracle last week lit out after Lotus and Microsoft Exchange and tried to bar the door of the enterprise to Netscape's promised Orion kit, the next-generation SuiteSpot servers whose pieces are six to 18 months out, with InterOffice, the groupware once code named Pegasus.
InterOffice is part of Oracle's rival to BackOffice, the erstwhile InterOffice suite, now renamed the Universal Server Suite to avoid confusion. In the Universal Server Suite it is meant to be part of a total turnkey solution for smaller companies, an Oracle spokeswoman said. Unleashed, it is bound for the enterprise. Oracle will say that unlike competitors such as Lotus, InterOffice is built from the ground for the Web.
As might be expected, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who hosted the Thursday announcement, made much of InterOffice's $125-per-user annual price which is paltry compared to the "thousands of dollars" per user per year he claimed it took to run a Notes set-up. Borrowing from his signature anti-Microsoft verbiage he also claimed InterOffice harbored no client-side administration costs and no training costs because its interface is Navigator, the Web browser that, as he noted, "40 million people already know how to use." It is the self-same interface, he taunted, that's on his now-historic Network Computer. InterOffice was shown last week on both a Windows PC and an NC and is said to be equally accessible from Macs and Unix workstations or any client device.
InterOffice, which won't be out for another 60 days, is based on Oracle's all-purpose Universal Server database, mating Internet and database standards. According to Ellison, all data derived from any source and created by any tool - including fonts, images, audio and video - is stored in the database in Web libraries and automatically rendered in HTML. In other words Internet-enabled, making it possible for companies to share, exchange and manage information from any network including the Web. It is supposed to provide an integration of collaborative and operational data including messages, documents, OLAP and workflow and an integration of collaborative functions with existing apps.
MASTERCARD/VISA SUFFERS SET-BACK, BUT VERIPHONE HAS 1ST VERSION
More than 3,000 comments to Mastercard/Visa's joint Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) proposals have knocked the standardisation process off track. Originally the two organisations had hoped to have conformance testing of software implementations ready by April or May, yet this week they are expected to issue another draft version of the protocol.
Neither has yet announced how various SET implementations will be checked for conformance to the spec. However a Mastercard spokesperson said that there would be a number of announcements "over the coming weeks and months" covering the setting up of the "SET infrastructure" including conformance testing and the establishment of Certification Authorities (CA) who will issue end users with their digital signatures.
Despite the fluid nature of the specifications, Veriphone Inc, a leading transaction automation provider, announced the first SET implementation, though it will not begin shipping until the beginning of the third quarter. Even then, the company will not be offering a complete solution: SET requires a 'digital wallet' for the end user, handling both encryption and digital identity certificates. Veriphone's two initial products, vPOS and vGATE, will sit on the merchant's and the bank's machines respectively and users will continue to send credit card details using the conventional SSL encrypted links offered by Netscape and Microsoft browsers.
Both Veriphone and other SET workers say the main hold-up on the digital wallet side is the lack of Certification Authorities. "The CA infrastructure will take some time to develop", said Roger Bertman, Veriphone general manager and VP of Internet commerce. Moreover developing that infrastructure "is not something that we are going to get involved in".
NOTES EMERGES AS CENTER OF IBM'S INTRANET STRATEGY
Lotus Notes is now the centrepiece of an IBM intranet strategy designed to rival that of Microsoft and Netscape. Last week the company fleshed out plans for a Web-enabled Notes release and a server line that will expose the Notes services to the Web.
It announced the Domino II server line, a fully Web-enabled follow-on to its recently announced Domino HTTP server, and Notes 4.5, which will support Java applets and Netscape plug-ins.
Although the announcement ostensibly positioned Domino II as the key to Lotus's intranet hopes, IBM VP, Internet technologies John Patrick explained that what Lotus outlined is not a subset of IBM's intranet strategy - "This is the intranet strategy." IBM software boss John M Thompson said Domino won't replace products like IBM's Software Servers, which are aimed at a different market than the intranet buyers. Gartner Group Internet guru David Smith described Domino as the first bit of substance in Lotus's pretensions to being an intranet platform - the equation of groupware or collaboration with the Internet being "one of the ten great Internet myths" that currently exist, he said.
Noting that Netscape's Orion servers promise Notes-like functionality in releases coming 18 months from now, Lotus COO Jeff Papows claimed Netscape's "vision of their product looks a lot like the product we're delivering today." He anticipates that companies seeking a solid groupware product will not wait a year and a half for an equivalent solution from Netscape.
Lotus says Domino will transform Notes into an intranet Web applications server, exposing the object services behind Notes to developers through the Corba Internet InterOrb Protocol (IIOP) and launching an application line called Net.Apps. The first Domino II Server will ship in early '97 and feature a Notes-based object store that stores and retrieves HTML pages, Java and Lotuscript applets, forms, views and other objects through Corba. Other servers for mail and directory services will follow.
NETSCAPE ISN'T SCARED OF MICROSOFT
Netscape executives acknowledged that Bill Gates' high-profile intranet push two weeks ago has at least temporarily grasped the public mind, but said Microsoft's insurgence won't knock Netscape out of contention over the intranet.
Bob Lisbonne, Netscape VP of client marketing, said that the company's ability to execute its products on time with the features they should have is its biggest challenge, not market dynamics or pressure from Microsoft and other competitors. While the rash of bugs that often accompany Netscape products suggest that the company's probably wise to think this way, Microsoft's intranet strategy announcement, made two weeks ago to a ballroom packed with corporate decision makers, mounts a viable threat to Netscape's perceived Internet dominance.
While in the past it's dismissed Microsoft's Internet push with flippant remarks like "Microsoft's plans are just vapor right now," Netscape executives at PC Expo last week spoke more candidly. They conceded that Microsoft may have won a temporary public relations victory with the dazzling intranet briefing, but point to the chequered history of Microsoft Exchange. The hype won't stand up to the scrutiny of decision makers whose jobs depend on setting up the right kind of intranet, they say.
Netscape VP of server marketing Srivats Sampath said that the Netscape intranet strategy has an inherent advantage because it's open, while the BackOffice-based Microsoft plan puts a "veneer of openness on a proprietary base." Lisbonne said Netscape's Internet standards base means companies won't have to rely on a "bubblegum-baling-wire-gateway thing" to connect to the outside.
Netscape claims that oddly enough it's seen in some quarters as a safer bet for the intranet than Microsoft because it's a "pure play" on the Internet and doesn't have to cater to the Windows installed base. Microsoft's flip-flops over the past six months - jettisoning Blackbird, abandoning MSN as a proprietary network and converting its directory services to DNS - have shaken customer confidence in Microsoft and has "lots of people asking questions like 'When does Exchange get tossed off?'" Netscape hinted that Microsoft may lose some of its installed base in the move to the Internet, but it's not clear that those customers would move to Netscape. The Microsoft "embrace and extend" policy, Netscape contends, means that Redmond devotes needless energy to resolving tension between its two constituencies: for example, supporting both ActiveX and Java.
Netscape, which claims 92 of the Fortune 100 have standardized on its products, is pushing its success stories - companies ranging from John Deere to Federal Express - so that risk-averse MIS people realize that when they move to Netscape they're in the middle of the pack, not the bleeding edge.
The firm claims it will ultimately win the intranet battle because Microsoft won't be able to corral the Internet the way it has the desktop.
Microsoft "has never met something bigger than Windows," Lisbonne said, "and the Internet is that thing. It will continue to vex them."
GENERAL MAGIC REGROUPS, HOPES THE NET TURNS THE TRICK
Apple spin-off General Magic Inc, the six-year-old handheld software company with $100 million in the bank yet little of the glory it hoped to have by now, is reorganizing to catch the Internet wave.
It's unbundling its Magic Cap and Telescript products so it can build separate brand identities and persue separate market segments. It's abandoning its sole reliance on up-front licensing fees and annuity streams from exclusive partners to strike out for OEMs, VARs, ISVs and integrators, in addition to the big shots it's attracted over the years, and will eventually go direct to corporates, web operators and service providers. And it's obviously also embracing Web standards.
During its run, General Magic, which once had Apple's hyperlink wizard on board, has picked up a brillant collection of 16 partners including Sony, AT&T, Motorola, NTT, Fujitsu, Toshiba, France Telecom, Philips, Matsushita, Sanyo, Oki, Northern Telecom, Mitsubishi, Cable & Wireless and the Dutch PTT. Half of them now own 50% of the 200-man Sunnyvale, California company which went public last year and does about $14 million in revenues.
Still, back in April it was forced to disclosed that Sony had suspended plans to make another handheld device using the Magic Cap operating system and things didn't look good for AT&T's continued use of its Telescript agent software. As it has for so many firms, the Internet beckoned with its promise of a new lease on life.
General Magic's new Active Internet Products Division has taken its Telescript technology, an object-oriented server-based communications language, and turned it into a product line called Tabriz. It says it can transform passive networks into active secure and persistent business vehicles with its new Tabriz AgentWare and Agent Tools. They are intended for intranets and the Internet at large. The stuff ships on Unix in two weeks and on NT this fall for a one-time fee of $5,000 a server. However, following a popular Internet convention, it will be free for the first 90 days with free support for 30 days to get ISVs to sit up and notice. Tabriz is also expected to sign-up some partners beginning with Tandem this week.
AgentWare is meant to execute and manage agent-based applications; Agent Tools to create agent-based apps that are deployed at Tabriz Web sites. In its first iteration AgentWare will be Java-enabled. ActiveX comes down the road.
General Magic calls Tabriz the "third strategic component of a new class of distributed application," the others being Netscape and Microsoft Explorer and Java and ActiveX.
The Web right now, it says, is a large disorganized mass of information with only poor tools to collect, compile and use its data. It's also passive and has to be driven by the online user. Web performance and traffic is unpredictable. Sites can be overwhelmed at peak periods, idle at others. Web sites don't know preferences and previous actions and they don't learn. Passivity is particularly bad because buyers and sellers can't interact in real-time. Tabriz is supposed to fix all that.
It's said to be able to go multiple places, hide complexity, enable interaction, decouple the user from the task, store instructions, state and data while providing a secure environment that includes two-way authentication, access control and resource allocation. Essentially the Tabriz agent manages the Web-based processes while the Java applet manages the user experience. It's supposed to eliminate the boundaries between physically co-resident but logically distributed information, geographically dispersed data and disparate enterprise legacy systems. It can draw content from non-Telescripted sites.
Tabriz sees its development and deployment engines as being NT and the big Unix systems, Sun, HP, SGI. In Tabriz's first phase, it has to incorporate database and search engine support. General Magic then hopes to branch out into standard payment schema and transaction-based services along with international distribution.
Meanwhile, the company's new Communications Products Division, responsible for the engaging Magic Cap software, also has new Presto!Links and Presto!Mail products under its wing. They offer Magic Cap-based communicators such as Sony's Magic Link and Moto's Envoy PDAs Web access, Internet e-mail and corporate intranet connectivity. Presto!Links is a full-featured Web browser; Presto!Mail is consonant with the array of open standards protocols like PPP, POP3 and SMTP. The two together are $50 and derive from technology imported from Active Paper Inc.
Otherwise, it has taken Magic Cap and come up with Magic Cap for Windows - that's Magic Cap plus Windows-specific features - hoping to stir interest in PDAs. The first commercial version isn't due until later this year. The unit is also responsible for General Magic's new C-based SoftModem software which requires no special signal processor and can share a single CPU with client applications. It will be OEM'd for Mips, Pentium MMX and Philip's PDA chips as well as others.
InterNIC phones swamped as 25,000 domains face axe
As you read this, about 25,000 Internet domains are expected to have been cut off according to InterNIC estimates. Monday 24th June is the day that Network Solutions Inc intends to cut off those domain-holders, registered since September 14th 1995, who have yet to cough up their $100 domain maintenance fee. NSI handles InterNIC domain name registration on behalf of the US National Science Foundation.
Some posters to Usenet newsgroups accuse NSI of being lax in issuing invoices. A typical posting, from Ron Schnell, owner of driveraces.com who says: "It took me until 4am to get a fax to them last week, and I have no way of knowing if they got it or not. I also never received the bills, e-mails, and faxes that they claim to have sent, and only got a final notice".
David Graves, NSI Internet business manager denies the charge that earlier notifications weren't sent and sets out the policy whereby billing, administration and technical contacts are first e-mailed with payment reminders, and finally company presidents, are sent mail through the post. Any domain name holders who only got the final bills should quiz their network providers to find out why the technical and administrative contacts did not pass on the bills, he says. Schnell acknowledges that this is what happened to him.
Graves does admit, however that "after we sent out the letter notices to the presidents our telephone system was overwhelmed", meaning that people couldn't actually make payments if they wanted to. A week ago the InterNIC "completely revamped our phone system to cope and we are now answering the phones from 7am to 9pm and from 8am 'til 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays".
One result of this overload, he says, is that the original cut-off date was put back by a week. Domains that aren't paid up will go on hold for 60 days, during which time they will not be contactable. After that, they will be up for grabs again. Owners of names registered before September 14th 1995 will be due to pay their initial payments on the anniversary of their site's registration. These bills started going out last month. NSI currently registers around 425,000 names. It has not given figures on whether the domain registry business is a profitable one for it.
Seattle-based iCat Corporation, the folks with the six-week-old shrink-wrapped Electronic Commerce Suite for creating catalogues on the 'net, has gotten $6 million in funding from Trans Cosmos International in Tokyo, which owns Asahi net, the largest Japanese Internet provider, as well as VCs at the EnCompass Group, Bay Partners and JF Shea and private investors.
Netscape won't be using CIFS - WebNFS looks better
Just because Netscape hasn't officially endorsed Sun Microsystems' WebNFS as a high-performance alternative to HTTP, don't expect it to fall in line behind Common Internet File System (CIFS), Microsoft's response to the Sun protocol.
Netscape executives at PC Expo derided Redmond's CIFS as "LAN Man for the Internet" and said it was a "half-baked approach" unsuitable for broad Internet use. When WebNFS was announced, however, Netscape was conspicuously absent from its list of supporters. SunSoft said the announcement was delayed for Netscape's benefit, but it pulled out at the last minute. Bob Lisbonne, VP of Marketing at Netscape's Client Division, said Netscape needed to "kick the tires" first. While it's holding off on an endorsement, it said it has no plans to build a similar protocol and WebNFS looks good so far.
CIFS is an enhanced version of the Server Message Block distributed file sharing system found in Windows, Windows 95, Windows NT and OS/2. It enables PCs to access network information over TCP/IP nets. WebNFS and CIFS allow users to share files directly on the Internet without requiring they be downloaded or copied to a local machine first. Microsoft has taken the spec off for consideration as an Internet standard.
Oracle, Spyglass Inc and predictably, JavaSoft will be putting WebNFS in their browsers. And IBM and Sequent Computer Systems Inc will get it as part of their deals for ONC+ 2.0. Auspex Systems Inc is currently leaning towards doing its own WebNFS implementation, which could be ready by year-end for inclusion in its Internet-intranet data servers. Sun Microsystems will also add WebNFS to its Internet servers.
JAVA GETS ITS SPEECH APIS
The delay in Java speech recognition APIs (OR issue 1) turns out to be due to the need to get an existing speech API group on board. The Speech Recognition Application Programming Interface (SRAPI) group have decided to add Java to version 2.0, of its API.
The committee is chaired by Novell Inc chairs with IBM Corp, Intel Corp, Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence Inc, Philips Electronics NV and Dragon Systems Inc as core members. The support will mean that Java developers can add speech interaction to their applets and documents. SRAPI 1.0 currently supports Windows95 and NT and Java will be added before the year-end. Also in the pipeline is support for OS/2, Unix, NetWare and OpenDoc, but these are not likely until next year, according to committee chairman Bruce
nology. At the start, the Speech Recognition Programming Interface just covered dictation, but has since expanded to include command and control systems and the committee is meeting this week to mull over speaker verification systems as well. Armstrong said the interface is "much easier" than Novell's own Telephony Services Application Programming Interface, TSAPI in that it has an object-oriented C++ front end, while Microsoft Corp's Telephony Application Programming Interface, TAPI is sticking to Windows systems. Speech Recognition Programming Interface supporters include Voice Pilot Technologies Inc, Kolvox Inc, Interactive Products Inc, Voice Processing Corp and Speech Technology Laboratories, part of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co's Panasonic Group. The body will add telephony support that will be compliant with the Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum in the future.
MICROSOFT LAUNCHES FRONTPAGE
After announcing that its FrontPage Web site authoring and management tool will be embedded into NT 4.0 as part of its Internet strategy, Microsoft unveiled version 1.1 of the product. FrontPage, inherited from its acquisition of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Vermeer Technologies Inc in January, is pitched at would-be Web site authors with no programming skills.
FrontPage 1.1 has been redesigned to be integrated into the Microsoft Office suite, sharing features such as the spell checker. The Web site, pages and Web-bound documents can be created or edited in Office applications - either by an individual, or in collaboration with others across the corporate network or Internet - tested on the desktop and then, using FrontPage's 'CopyWeb' function, transferred on to the Web. A two-tier graphical view of the Web site being developed is provided by a Web site manager component called FrontPage Explorer.
ActiveX is included in 1.1, enabling authors to embed graphics and animated sequences generated in Powerpoint, for example, straight into HTML pages. In addition, FrontPage uses wizards and smart objects called Webots that initiate text searches and construct threaded discussion groups and surveys without writing CGI scripts. It's available for Windows NT and Windows 95 clients. FrontPage 1.1 is priced at $149 with a possible rebate of $49 for Microsoft Office users.
Ouch: Netcom On-Line Communication Services Inc's central Internet backbone went down for 13 hours on Tuesday/Wednesday, cutting off its 400,00 users and spreading ripples across the Net. The US's biggest dedicated Internet access provider saw its share price drop by $4.50 to finish at $28.75.
INTERNIC DOMAIN NAME POLICY HIT BY FOURTH LAW SUIT
The strategy adopted by Network Solutions Inc to avoid getting dragged into litigation over domain name and trademark infringements is looking wobbly. Under the current rules, anyone holding a .com or other InterNIC (which NSI runs) administered domain name can lose it if anyone complains to the InterNIC and shows that they hold the domain name as a trademark. To avoid automatically losing the the domain, the holder has to show that they too have it as a trademark and agree to post an unlimited bond to cover NSI's legal expenses. Unfortunately the complainant doesn't have to show prior use of the trademark, which means it is possible for a malicious complainant to get a trademark registered in an obscure African state, write a letter to the InterNIC - et voila.
So far NSI has become embroiled in four court cases as trademark and domain holders fight it out. The first and most famous is that between Roadrunner Computer Systems (owner of roadrunner.com) and Time Warner entertainment, owner of the (beep beep) cartoon character. The case was expected to come to court as we went to press. The second involves a tussle between Data Concepts and Digital Consulting for the ownership of dci.com. The third involves ty.com, a domain registered by Philip Giacalone and disputed by TY Inc. The latest involves Clue Computing, which this week will serve a preliminary injunction on NSI to stop it from putting its clue.com domain on hold. The domain is being sought by toy giant Hasbro which makes the eponymous board game.
David Graves, NSI Internet business manager, says he is happy with the current arrangements, but adds that they are constantly under review. Furthermore, he says that changes to the policy cannot be made without reference to (a) NSI's own "army of attorneys" and (b) the National Science Foundation itself.
HAL SPINS OUT SOFTWARE ARM TO DO INTRANET ADMIN TOOLS
Perennially late HaL Computer Systems, the 64-bit Sparc cloner that brought new meaning to the expression "computerless computer company," has spun out its software unit, renamed it Chisholm Technologies Inc and set it to doing administration tools for the intranet market. It's financed by Fujitsu Ltd which had to rescue its investment in HaL and take it over.
The 30-strong start-up, based in Austin, Texas, originally set up there to poach IBM personnel, is being run by president and CEO Michael Machutt, who was program director at IBM's Personal Software Product (PSP) Development Services, a handmaiden of OS/2. He had been responsible for IBM's first implementation of DCE, the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment, on AIX and OS/2, back in 1991.
The five-year-old HaL unit, the erstwhile HaL Software Systems, has been doing multi-platform administration products for the DCE market for the last two years and claims to have been the first to come up with graphical tools for DCE, a thing called DCE Cell Manager. It apparently intends to leverage this experience together with its OLIAS technology, an SGML documentation browsing and document delivery system, to elbow its way onto the intranet with a new set of GUI-based gadgetry.
The new game plan has been in the works some six to nine months but Chisholm is still unready to define its new product line or its strategy. It will focus on large corporates and government agencies with a direct sales force and use distributors internationally. It hopes to OEM its stuff to other vendors and to be making money by the end of the year.
NETSCAPE CLAIMS 38M USERS - NO WORD ON HOW MANY PIRATES
Netscape claimed last week that, with 38 million users, its Navigator browser is bigger than even Microsoft's Word for Windows. Has everyone stopped typing and gone surfing, then? Probably not: in pitching Navigator as the "most popular PC application", Netscape treats Word and Microsoft Office independently. True, the separate figures - 21 million and 22 million respectively - are Microsoft's own so Redmond could expect no mercy.
Maybe Netscape is genuinely unaware that Word is the most widely used part of Office. More seriously, Netscape refuses to disclose how many of those copies have been paid for - and how many of the 38 million are effectively pirated copies. Add all the pirated copies of Word together and we suspect that Microsoft might be able to present significantly better figures too.
XEROX SPIN-OFF TO HAVE INTERNET WORKFLOW APPLICATIONS
InConcert Inc, the company spun off by Xerox Corp's XSoft division last month, will announce a complete Internet development environment and specialist front-end tools for Web-enabling InConcert workflow management software in the coming months.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company will also announce technology partnerships with firms involved in imaging, document management, modelling, forms packages and reporting tools to integrate into InConcert. It will also add support for Object Linking & Embedding. The company boasts 100 InConcert customers and 25 systems integrators such as Electronic Data Systems and Anderson Consulting peddling its software - but that's apparently not enough, because it is about to launch a campaign to win more partners in the verticals and the regions. XSoft has spawned two companies - InConcert and Astoria Inc - both of them wholly-owned subsidiaries of Xerox New Enterprises. InConcert has no permanent president and could not say when it would post its first results as a separate entity from XSoft. Xerox says it orphaned InConcert in order to boost recognition of the company its products'.
XEROX WORKS ON WEB PRINTING
Xerox, the company that invented the PC revolution and never profited from it, announced last week that it will introduce a series of Web software products to simplify and expand access to printing services. It says the stuff will use existing networks to move virtually any Web file to a network printer.
It will use Java to build a set of interactive applications, such as animated representation of job and device status, by the time it's finished - which it's not.
WYSE WINTERM USERS WILL BE ABLE TO RENT APPS
Wyse, whose WinTerm terminal fit the definition of a Network Computer even before the NC was defined, has managed to sign up two Internet service providers to deliver"software on demand." Our sister publication ClieNT Server News indicated Wyse was working on this scheme three months ago.
Little-known Woodinville, Washington-based Moose Logic Technologies Inc and First Internet Franchise Corporation of San Clemente, California, will rent software by the hour to WinTerm users. Customers can either buy the $500 terminal, or rent the entire surfing-software-hardware package for about $40 a month, with an additional $1 per hour fee for using software that is stored remotely on a server and run on the client via a Citrix WinFrame server.The concept depends on Internet service providers persuading major ISVs to license their applications for rental by many people simultaneously.
IBM says it's working with at least one utility company on embedding Java applets in devices like electrical meters. The company's server would send out a monthly message for the applets in the meters to switch on and report the meter readings, eliminating the need for meter readers to climb fences and evade vicious dogs - eliminating the need for meter readers, for that matter.
Lotus commissioned a study from the Business Research Group called "Notes/Intranets: Cost of Ownership Study" and wouldn't you know it it found that it takes less time and money to go with Notes than Netscape, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Oracle, FTP, O'Reilly, DEC or public domain sources. They interviewed a 100 IT managers, half of whom were using Notes and found that overall implementation of intranet applications with Notes and InterNotes Web Publisher took 53 days versus 87 using other folks gear. The most common intranet apps are: document publishing (86%), e-mail (73%), database access (43%), discussion databases (39%), workflow (30%) and TP (18%). Based on the number of hours spent deploying and maintaining these apps, Notes was reckoned to be 40% more efficient.
Internet service provider Digex Inc, which focuses exclusively on business, government and other institutions, has filed to go public. It's looking to raise $55 million. It just introduced a new high-speed Internet access product for telecommuters that reportedly offers 400 kb/sec, 10-15 times the speed of standard dial-up connections. It's a combination of Digex' wireless Internet access and Hughes Network Systems' DirecPC satellite delivery.
What companies setting up intranets want, says Zona Research, are ways to integrate Windows and mainframe legacy data. They want a single user interface metaphor and interoperability infrastructure.
CompuServe named Henry Frigon interim chairman replacing Richard Brown, chairman and CEO of H&R Block, who's resigning so he can be CEO of Cable & Wireless plc.
Netscape says its Internet site gets more than 80 million hits a day, representing several million daily visitors. It's had10 billion hits since it was started two years ago. Netscape claims it's the most visited site on the 'net.
ichat Inc, makers of real-time chat software like the Rooms chat server, has $4.5 million in second-round VC money from Ziff Brothers Investments and Onset Ventures Inc.
Adobe Illustrator isn't the first vector-based graphics program to support GIF89a says Xara, the UK-based author of the CorelXARA package, which has supported it since last year. Version 1.2, about to be released, will add support for animated GIFs' and provide direct support for Netscape and Internet Explorer palettes. www.xara.com
IN BRIEF
IBM'S HURSLEY PORTING JAVA TO EVERYTHING THAT MOVES
Much of the work going on at IBM's Center for Java Technology isn't showing up in IBM corporate plans yet. With the pace of change, developments have fallen between IBM's traditional planning cycles says Simon Phipps, the Center's program manager. Or alternatively, as an enthusiastic colleague puts it, "we do try to do cool things at IBM, but usually we get stopped. Here things are moving so fast that we can keep ahead of the stoppers".
Given Java's West Coast proclivities, you might expect IBM's coffee-grinding operation to be sited somewhere in the Bay area. Instead it's in rural Hampshire in England, at Hursley the long-time home of CICS. It's there as a pure accident, derived from the fact that in mid-95 resident IBM Fellow Mike Cowlishaw was looking for a virtual machine to make the REXX language platform. He stumbled across the Java VM and a Java Center was born. The fruits of that original search were made available for download last week as the hybrid language 'NetRexx' from www2.hursley.ibm.com/netrexx.
The Hursley policy can be summed up as "porting Java to anything that moves - and quite a few things that don't", says Phipps. After that, it will be a question of getting IBM middleware to add Java hooks.
Phipps is so open about IBM's Java plans that it is worth noting the things he doesn't want, or can't talk about. One is the size of the team dedicated to doing the Java work: "a mid-range two digit figure", is as close as he will estimate. Another taboo subject is JavaOS: IBM doesn't yet have an official policy on whether this is A Good or A Bad Thing. Neither can he say much about what IBM is doing with Java in the telecommunications arena, which is a shame since Hursley also plays host to the CallPath group; its computer integrated telephony offering.
Publicly, the status of work at Hursley is that:
l An alpha version of the IBM port of Java for Windows 3.1 should be made available for download by the end of the month. It won't be particularly fast, Phipps warns, since it isn't optimized, moreover it is based on Win32s. Still, it should let Win 3.1 users run HotJava alright according to Phipps. The team isn't sure how it's going to make money from the implementation yet, the most likely option is to charge for support.
l The next Java implementation to arrive will be for the AS/400. Formally this won't be launched until year end, but will be available for download from Hursley well before that.mally ready mid 97 but will be ready well before that for download from the Web site. Phipps says he likes "the idea of mainframe guys downloading shareware stuff from a Web site".
In terms of the larger, strategic picture, Java would seem to offer IBM one of its so-far unobtainable holy grails: a way of rationalising system software components across its disparate hardware platforms. IBM history is littered with the wreckage of attempts to minimize the differences between its various systems: Workplace OS and Systems Application Architecture were the latest incarnations. If the Java virtual machines perform as advertise, and are ported across multiple platforms, could they succeed where other attempts have failed? While not dismissive of the idea, Phipps says that Java has still got to prove itself before such grandiose plans are even considered by management. "They've seen too many virtual machines come and go," he comments.
TAZZA JAVA COMPONENT TOOL COULD SUPPLEMENT VISUALAGE
A somewhat mysterious IBM team has been working on a dynamic component assembly tool written in Java which, although a free standing Java application, could end up as part of the VisualAge toolset.
The tool, codenamed Tazza is a part of IBM's Arabica component prototype, launched in support of Java Component Initiative at JavaOne a few weeks back (OR 1). A demo was supposedly shown around PC Expo last week.
Tazzo allows developers to construct programs by dragging and dropping Java applets, and connecting them. It looks on the system for Java class hierarchies, or packages, discovers them, opens the class files, looks at what the objects and methods are, and makes them available.to the programmer for visual program design. The latest beta is supposed to be able to display the innards of inished Java programs too.
But some confusion may be caused by similar facilities already a part of VisualAge. Last week IBM said that VisualAge for Java, including editor, debugger, browser and a Java class library, would begin beta testing early in the second half of this year, with general availability by year-end. One of its features will be a Data Access Builder, for visually constructing data access through Java Database Connection (JDBC). The builder interrogates table and automatically generates classes.
Version 4 of VisualAge C++ for Win32, OS/2 and Unix, due in beta before year-end, will also include the Data Access Builder, and will provide the option of generating Java, as well as C++ and IDL.
WEBMATE HAS FOUNDATION WEB SITE BUILDER FOR $95
WebMate Technologies Inc is the latest in a long line of companies with tools aimed at web site developers. The Canton, Massachusetts-based company was formed in 1994, and until now has concentrated on building Web sites for customers such as Boston's WCVB-TV and the New England journal of Medicine. Last week it launched WebMate Foundation, which it describes as a 4GL Web Application Environment.
The server-side development and deployment tool includes a web-tailored database to store all the HTML, images, scripts, content and security messages, along with tags to invoke WebMate elements such as simplified HTML programming, form generation, dynamic content display and script invocation. There is a scripting language, email and browser interfaces, and tools for access to legacy databases and files. It's aimed at non-technical staff, and works with HTTP servers on most Windows, NT and Unix platforms. The performance "matches or exceeds custom CGI scripts", we are assured.
A trial version is available for downloading free for 60 days, after which it costs $95. After September 3rd the price will rise to $495. WebMate built its own site using the tool, which neatly demonstrates its automatic support for multiple browsers through "just-in-time" HTML. www.webmate.com
ARACHNID TOOLS SPIN WEBS
Arachnid Software Inc, a Menlo Park, California start-up, is about to send a Web authoring and content tool to beta that will build CGI-based applications and extend HTML editing capabilities. Its WebPower HTML authoring suite runs on an Oracle database and includes an authoring engine for interacting with authoring clients and an HTML generator.
While some editors understand HTML 2.0 tagging and have menu items and palettes to enable tagged documents, Arachnid argues that its editor goes further. With WebPower, says Arachnid, an author connects to WebPower's authoring server which recognizes the user and user details such as e-mail, telephone and facsimile. These values are attached to all directories and documents owned by that user. Authors are able to add attributes including variables to documents.
Once the HTTP server requests a document, the Mark-up Language generator compiles the document, replacing variables with appropriate values, then sends it on its way. As many substitution variables as needed can be created, claims Arachnid, with variables inherited down the document hierarchy. The server knows what documents are owned by whom and are checked as they come in and go out. WebPower extensions to the Mark-up Language are only visible to the authoring side and replaced by the appropriate text during the document compilation process. WebPower is compatible on all browsers and supports most Unixes, NT, Mac OS and OpenVMS.
GNN'S $1M SWEEPSTAKE THE LATEST WAY TO ATTRACT BROWSERS
America Online's Global Network Navigator Inc operation and Yoyodyne Entertainment Inc have come up with the idea of a $1,000,000 sweepstake to promote visits to sponsors' web sites. Users enter the sweepstake by visiting a sponsor's sites and filling in an online entry form. A user can only make one entry per site, but is encouraged to make multiple entries by visiting as many of the sponsors' sites as possible.
Sponsors are paying $30,000 apiece to have their sites included in the game, according to Seth Godin, president of Irvington, New York-based Yoyodyne. GNN, which is running the game, claims sponsoring sites will receive between 150,000 to 200,000 unduplicated visitors during the course of the game which runs until September 16th. However no doubt it won't be long until people write automated Web crawlers to visit the sites and enter automatically. Privately held Yoyodyne, which has around 30 employees, makes its living by designing online prize-based games and selling them on. The companies say that the e-mail addresses that they collect in the course of running the game will not be give out to the sponsors or sold on. http://million10.dollar.gnn.com
HACKERS BLOCK ADS ON WEB
A group of self-described hackers on leave from their senior year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are building a program that could block ads and undermine the Internet's delicate financial underpinnings.
The kids, who have incorporated themselves as PrivNet Inc, have written a program dubbed Internet Fast Forward that can block Web site advertising from being downloaded. The program addresses the annoyance of downloading massive graphics ads and may also appeal to corporations that do not want their employees shopping on company time or schools that think students should use the Internet for more serious purposes.
It uses a proprietary set of algorithms to spot the digital "signatures" used by Internet advertisers, according to PrivNet chief executive James Howard, an erstwhile drama major. The Internet Fast Forward algorithm works with a small 5kB-6kB database of advertising signatures, not with the ads' file names or the ads themselves.
Howard says the firm is playing with the idea of an annual fee of $10-$15, or whatever the market will bear, for database updates. It plans to post them every two days, a reflection of the speed at which Internet advertising is moving. Besides blocking ads, Internet Fast Forward can be used to block server cookies. That means a server can't query a surfer's browser to pry into his surfing habits. No news on how the product will be advertised.
Informix and Netscape team on workgroup package
Informix Software Inc got together with Netscape Communications last week to launch a packaged workgroup database system aimed at both client/server and intranet users. The Informix Workgroup Solution comes in two versions: OnLine Workgroup Server for LANs, and, OnLine Workstation for small branch offices and remote sites.
The product combines Informix's Dynamic Scalable Architecture and Command Center database management toolset with Netscape's FastTrack server software and Navigator Gold browser and authoring tool. Informix will work with its third party suppliers to make sure its most important applications and tools are tightly integrated.
The package runs on Windows NT, but Informix says it is also finishing off a Unix version of the Server product for later this year. Informix launched its SuiteSpot integrated suite of Web servers in conjunction with Netscape earlier this year. Price is $295 per user for Workgroup Server with a five user minimum. OnLine Workstation costs $499.
OE'S MAMBO CONNECTS WEBS TO LEGACY DATABASES
Open Environment Corp of Boston is going after the integrating-Internet and-Enterprise market with Mambo, a Web application development tool aimed at MIS managers with lots of legacy data. Essentially a series of gateways, Mambo comes as one component that sits on the Web server and handles information passing between legacy systems and the Web pages.
Other modular components are designed to sit on the legacy hosts themselves. The basic package, which costs $249, includes the components to talk to Oracle, Sybase, SQLServer and DB2. Additional 'PowerPacks' giving access to things like old heirarchical databases and TP monitors cost $500 a-piece.
The Web-server based element does its stuff by automatically generating CGI executables and HTML template forms.
NET IN THE FAMILY FOR SIMPLY INTERACTIVE
It might have been harder for twenty-something brothers Robert Jr and Dean Rositano to set up Simply Interactive, launched last week at PC Expo in New York to sell Web training CDs to novice users, if their father wasn't Robert Rositano, founding partner of Internet giant Netcom.
The San Jose, California start-up has raised $11 million in private funding and promises to raise another $15 million in the next few months. The Rositano family invested about $4 million in the company and none came from venture capitalists.
Following the path of Netcom, which was the first major publicly traded Internet company, Simply Interactive may file an IPO before the end of the year. Its first product, Internet the City, is an interactive CD-ROM with chatty guides to help Web newcomers wind their way through the Internet, represented by a virtual city.
Simply Interactive says it wants to follow a marketing strategy similar to America Online's where users are overwhelmed with free disks and CDs, and will give away a lot of "lite" versions to tempt users to purchase the real thing. It has yet to announce an Internet access provider to enable its full version, but Daddy's old company, Netcom, would be an obvious choice. Intranets announcements are expected in a few weeks.
MICROSOFT 'BROWSER KILLER' WILL HELP SELL BROWSERS - NETSCAPE
Netscape says in what perhaps is a flight of fancy that the Nashville interface, which combines Windows 95 and NT's interfaces with Internet Explorer, may make it easier to sell Navigator.
Netscape says the rewriting of the desktop shell is essentially a "PlusPack 2," which will mean Navigator integrates better with Windows and will remove the HTML training costs of Windows users. Netscape VP of client marketing Bob Lisbonne said he welcomes the inclusion of things like Java and TCP in the operating system as well because it frees Netscape's resources for things more useful than "parsing Java byte codes." But Netscape doubts Redmond's coders will be able to pull off a decent implementation.
Lisbonne claimed Netscape isn't daunted by the prospect of a free Microsoft browser:"we've been selling against free from day one" against Mosaic and the like. He said that at $50 Navigator isn't too far from free and MIS will pay more for better products and a lower cost of ownership because "a free product that's the wrong choice can be very expensive."
Lotus Notes is now the centrepiece of an IBM intranet strategy designed to rival that of Microsoft and Netscape. Last week the company fleshed out plans for a Web-enabled Notes release and a server line that will expose the Notes services to the Web.
It announced the Domino II server line, a fully Web-enabled follow-on to its recently announced Domino HTTP server, and Notes 4.5, which will support Java applets and Netscape plug-ins.
Although the announcement ostensibly positioned Domino II as the key to Lotus's intranet hopes, IBM VP, Internet technologies John Patrick explained that what Lotus outlined is not a subset of IBM's intranet strategy - "This is the intranet strategy." IBM software boss John M Thompson said Domino won't replace products like IBM's Software Servers, which are aimed at a different market than the intranet buyers. Gartner Group Internet guru David Smith described Domino as the first bit of substance in Lotus's pretensions to being an intranet platform - the equation of groupware or collaboration with the Internet being "one of the ten great Internet myths" that currently exist, he said.
Noting that Netscape's Orion servers promise Notes-like functionality in releases coming 18 months from now, Lotus COO Jeff Papows claimed Netscape's "vision of their product looks a lot like the product we're delivering today." He anticipates that companies seeking a solid groupware product will not wait a year and a half for an equivalent solution from Netscape.
Lotus says Domino will transform Notes into an intranet Web applications server, exposing the object services behind Notes to developers through the Corba Internet InterOrb Protocol (IIOP) and launching an application line called Net.Apps. The first Domino II Server will ship in early '97 and feature a Notes-based object store that stores and retrieves HTML pages, Java and
The biggest promise Oracle seems to have made last week was that InterOffice can manage the information overload created by the Web and actually find what it is you're looking for among the glut. The magician supposedly doing this trick, Ellison said, is an AI component in InterOffice called ConText that he described as being capable of reading English, understanding themes, automatically summarizing its findings and indexing documents. A tall order that goes along with InterOffice's document management capabilities such as version control and check-in/check-out.
InterOffice includes a scalable messaging server said to support thousands of users on a single server and provide integrated messaging, calendaring and directory services. It is compliant with MAPI, POP3, LDAP and IMAP4. It can act as a development platform for other message-driven application such as routing.
It also includes a workflow component that supports ad hoc and transactional workflow and integrates with InterOffice's messaging capabilities.
The InterOffice messaging server is $95 per mailbox; the InterOffice document management server is $395 per concurrent user. They'll be sold as options to Universal Server.
Oracle came to the party with a bunch of friends including SkyTel.
InterOffice includes access to its wireless messaging network. Cornerstone Imaging Inc is provide InterOffice's document imaging capabilities. Oracle and Philips Home Service are testing what was touted as America's first consumer e-mail system in Garden City, New York where they've installed screen phones equipped with InterOffice e-mail. Control Data Corporation is supporting it with its Mail*Hub software as is Adobe with Acrobat. And CompuServe said it would offer its corporate customers an InterOffice-based application hosting service next quarter.
DOT
It's arrived: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser now has Java support - downloadable as a separate component from http://microsoft.com/ie. It still doesn't include the Just In Time compiler though. Support for Java in the Windows 3.1 version is now being promised this Autumn and the Macintosh, "later this year".
NTT Electronics Technology Corp is hammering another nail into the coffin of US cryptography export policy. Not content with developing 1024-bit key RSA chips, it intends to implement strong encryption in software, NTT is initially working on Privacy Enhanced Mail and secure MIME products.
What with IBM, Novell, Apple, HP, Hitachi, SGI, SCO, Tandem, Microsoft and SunSoft all embedding Java in their operating systems, the Gartner Group frets that Java will go the way of Unix and fragment. Since licensees are encouraged to innovate and since JavaSoft may or may not make the innovations part of the base platform, Gartner says "this sounds suspiciously like the arrangements that have plagued Unix since its inception" and warns of proprietary extensions that diminish its interoperability. "In the long term," it says, "Java will not create any more of a standardized environment than Unix." Gartner has also recently cautioned its clients to expect incompatible Internet server API enhancements from the various vendors. It figures Netscape's inconsistent API strategies like plug-ins, Java, NSAPI and JavaScript "will create dead-end development paths."
VeriFone is "very optimistic" it will get an export licence for its SET products (page 1). Roger Bertman, VeriFone general manager and VP of Internet commerce, says the company has already received initial approvals and that the US State Department is being reasonable about the export of SET strong encryption.
Netscape says that it has a software implementation of the June SET draft ready to be plugged into its LivePayment merchant framework. However Andres Espineira, director of product marketing for commercial applications, can't say when the company will release it to its customers. "Before the end of the year" is all we could get out of him. The current code is being used internally to test LivePayment's modular architecture.
The landmark court hearing on electronic commerce between E-Data and CompuServe (OR issue 1) has been delayed. The duo were set to appear before the judge as we went to press on Friday.
Faced with the problems over Java security, JavaSoft has pulled in a team of outside experts to produce a formal security model of the Java Virtual Machine.
IBM's Java Just In Time compiler for AIX turned out to be broken when it runs on SP2 systems. A new version is available from http://ncc.hursley.ibm.com/javainfo/
NCD Software plans to propose its Web-enabled X technology to the industry as a means of integrating X applications with the Web. Its PC-XWare 4.0 will reportedly be the first X server to run X applications over the Web, giving PC users the ability to use X applications with a Web browser interface.
America Online confirms that it has been called in for a chat about its business practices by the attorneys general of several US states. At issue appears to be the rounding up to the nearest minute of per-minute rates.
Here's another take on the reason that JavaSoft's launch of Java Beans was so hurried - originally we heard that it was simply a question of keeping the architecture secret from Microsoft, but an alternative rumor suggests that JSoft was forced to launch early by whispers that Microsoft was poised to announce Java/COM integration, and was going to propose COM as an open standard.
Besides goodies for Web page layout like font selection and multiple columns, Galileo, the future Netscape Navigator 4.0, will have "3D layered frames." We're not sure what that is, but we know they won't make frame-haters happy. Microsoft has "floating frames".
Microsoft says it's had over 3,000 requests for VJ++ betas since the JavaOne conference, which attracted about 5,000 developers. Visual Java++ is Redmond's Java development platform, a piece of its Jakarta program.
If Netscape has bought two more of Sequent's Internet Accelerator boxes as we reported last week, it doesn't know it yet: it says it has two of the machines - one purchased, one a gift from Sequent - with no immediate plans to buy more.
Someplace between the copy desk and publication, one of the front page stories in last week's issue lost some of the points it was trying to make. Among them was that if this newly conceived Process Committee set up to bring some disciplines to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) doesn't make quick progress and remedy what is seen as lacking, then, by George, its Advisory Committee might well set up a counter-consortium.
Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison is promising the names of international telecoms companies that will provide phone links for his NCs in 45 to 60 days. They will buy Oracle's server data management software. Oracle already has BT Plc, France Telecom, Bell Atlantic Corp and NTT Corp interested and the eventual group will "sell, rent or give away" NCs to subscribers in "millions of units," Ellison predicted.
Microsoft's 'Slate' Web magazine, edited by Michael Kinsley is due to go live at noon Pacific time Monday at www.slate.com
Although suspicions remain that there have been talks, Lotus denies it is trying to license its replication technology to Netscape or other companies, saying the only technology it's opening up is what it's exposing through IIOP as well its Internet Calendaring Access Protocol (ICAP).
JavaSoft says it's on target for the July betas of Java Beans, Hot Java and the APIs it promised at JavaOne. A consultation period should have them finished by year-end.
Sun is sounding a bit like Microsoft these days with its legal staff sending letters warning companies using Java in domain names and elsewhere to abandon the tag. The letters sparked a minor furor on the Web from people, drawing parallels to Microsoft's battle over Windows, who were indignant at Sun's attempt to trademark a common word like Java. Sun stepped over the line when it sent a letter to Javanco, a computer hardware and software dealer named in the early 80s for its owner Javan Keith. Sun's JavaSoft publicly apologized for the Javanco letter, but the legal squad continues to hound other offenders. http://java.sun.com/trademarks.html
Looks like IBM and Netscape are gonna cuddle up this week. They'll announce new Internet-bound AIX-based RS/6000s fitted out with Netscape Server applications on June 25.
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