------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jan 94 20:58:18 PST From: David.Batterson@F290.N105.Z1.FIDONET.ORG(David Batterson) Subject: File 5--Pit Stops Along The Info Turnpike Pit Stops Along The Info Turnpike by David Batterson Following are some thoughts gathered about the [and I'm getting sick of hearing the term] Information Superhighway, and some products that hope to catch some of the road travel business. AT&T is obviously bullish on the future, and not only because it offers long distance phone service. It now owns EO, Inc. (which makes the EO Personal Communicator, the expensive cousin to Apple's Newton), as well as Pensoft Corp., which makes EO's Perspective information management software. The EO Personal Communicator hasn't exactly taken the world by storm, but then again, the Newton hasn't either. John Sculley puffed his chest and crowed how the Newton was going to take off like a rocket; then Sculley shot off the launch pad instead. I've been trying to get an EO review unit since last summer, and still no luck yet. I could go buy one at one of 351 Office Depot superstores if I had the spare change, but I don't. 8^/ The CEO of EO is Alain Rossmann, who helped found C-Cube, Inc. (a market leader in digital still image and digital video compression technologies), and he was also a co-founder of Radius, Inc. Besides having an MBA, Rossmann has Masters degrees in civil engineering, math and physics. Rossmann said that "Pensoft has developed a breakthrough product with Perspective, and simultaneously created a data environment that allows customers with AT&T EO Personal Communicators to retrieve, store and manage a rich fabric of information from stock quotes and airline schedules to multimedia data." He adds that "Pensoft's data architecture, combined with EO's wireless access to the nation's information superhighway [whoop, there it is again!] is a powerful enabler for content publishing." Even though EO user get a free subscription to AT&T Mail, nowhere in the EO presskit is there any e-mail address for the company. Ironically, the EO spec sheet is headlined: "Always in Touch." Yeah, but I guess it's a carefully guarded secret how to reach them online. Wouldn't want to bother them with questions or anything, would we? Joel Silberman, Marketing Manager, Wireless Networking Group at National Semiconductor Corp., continues the line of thinking about PDAs. "The next generation of PDAs, hand-held terminals, subnotebooks are clearly on track to providing end users good tools on which to conveniently work," Silberman told me recently. "Wireless solutions such as WLAN cards, messaging/paging cards, and Personal Wireless Systems (like National Semiconductor's AirShare radio modules used with Traveling Software's new LapLink Wireless) are enabling technologies which when coupled with user-friendly software applications (such as LapLink) provide end users unparalleled convenience in accessing and sharing information on our new PDAs," he said. Silberman added that "new applications will allow for more reliable data collection and tracking, more productive doctors and nurses, and customer service and convenience that will drive the adoption of computers becoming consumer products." He thinks that "AirShare is significant because it brings the concept of personal, cordless wireless systems on the scene." and it will "set the stage for a host of products" that permit "a reliable way of sharing data in a local area while remaining mobile." Silberman likes the idea that "the information comes to me instead of me going to the data." If you want to send Silberman information, try: tjossc@tevm2.nsc.com. Mark Eppley, CEO of Traveling Software, isn't shy about expressing an opinion either. He e-mailed me that "basically, in terms of true consumer wireless on and off ramps to this much publicized info hwy, we are NOT there yet. I like using the auto industry to help explain where wireless technology is today." "There were two primary inventions that had a dramatic impact on making the automobile a widely used consumer product," Eppley said. "The first was the electric starter which became common place around 1921. We are now seeing the equivalent of 'electric starters' in the new crop of PDAs and portables with PCMCIA wireless card options." Eppley said "the second event that expanded the acceptance of the auto, was the automatic transmission in 1942. This is exactly what we need for the wireless data industry to take off. LapLink Wireless is really the first such automatic transmission. It's the first product that will automatically accomplish data communications by the mere fact of walking within range of the radio transceivers," he said. Right now, even though many of us--including journalists--get a lot of data via our fax machines and fax modems, how do we extract it for further use? I sure don't like retyping anything if I can help it. And until more PR agencies and in-house departments get up-to-speed on e-mail, then we'll just have to use fax software with OCR capability. I've been testing FaxWorks Pro 3.0 for several months now, and find it serves my faxing needs quite well. Its OCR feature converts text to all the popular word processing formats or to plain ASCII text. Below is the exact text read by the FaxWorks OCR module, from a fax of CuD information: Computer underground Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Sub5cription5 are available free via e-mail from tkOjut2@mv5.c5o.niu.edu. The editor5 ma!j be contacted b!j voice (815-753-0303), FAX (815-753-G302) or 5nailmail at: Jim Thoma5, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115. As you'll see, the FaxWorks OCR got everything right, except reading some of the "s" characters as a "5" instead, and a "y" character came out as "!j" for some reason. But with a quick search and replace, you can fix those misreads easily. That's what good data management today requires: quickness! FaxWorks Pro is from SofNet, Inc. in Atlanta, no Internet address was provided. Big surprise. In spite of the media frenzy, the "data thoroughfare" is still a long way off for most of us. Meanwhile most users are still dealing with the Windows 3.1 communication bottleneck, which limits reliable asynchronous data transfers above 19.2K bps. Pacific CommWare has now released TurboCom/2, an update of its drop-in replacement for the native Windows comm driver. It now takes advantage of the 16550 UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) chip used in the better 14.4K bps (and faster) internal modems. [Your newer PC may also have 16550 UART serial ports installed If not, you can upgrade.] What does this mean? You can then have up to 115.2K bps speeds, and support up to four high-speed serial ports simultaneously. And TurboCom/2 Plus allows you to use up to NINE serial ports. Will Windows 4.0 (aka the Chicago project) have new comm drivers making it unnecessary to buy add-ons like TurboCom/2? Quite possibly. Pam Edstrom, VP at Waggener Edstrom--Microsoft's PR firm--told me the other day that the next Windows will have a "Vcom.36, 32-bit communications driver, written as a virtual device" and it's "being developed internally." Pacific CommWare puts its e-mail addresses on its letterhead, so I'll give them to you: 3445374@mcimail.com, or 71521.760@compuserve.com. And last we look at another significant part of the Communique Interstate: BBBs and the massive amount of messaging going on there. The only way that users can deal with the glut of e-mail, public mail and files is with offline mail readers. I've tested and used a number of them including OffLine eXpress (OLX), Blue Wave and VbReader. My current reader of choice is Silver Xpress Off-Line Mail Reader, Ver. 4.0. It's not a Windows program, although "a Windows version is coming this year," Andrea Santos at Santronics Software told me. Silver Xpress--a shareware program that's widely available on BBSs--has many unique features not found in other mail readers. Many more are in development, Santos told me, and the new product will be called Gold Xpress. Silver Xpress has "in excess of 5,000 registrations," Santos said, "and we guess about 2-5% of users are registering." Santronics did list their BBS number (305-248-7815) but they didn't list an Internet address, but luckily I had it already: andrea.santos@f42.n105.z1.fidonet.org. So there you have it: some very different companies and their attempts to steer their way onto the %you know what], and extract a few dollars from your digital bank account. Happy trails, travelers. ### David Batterson has written for various computer publications, and weekly newspapers, including WIRED, PC TODAY, ComputorEdge (San Diego), WILLAMETTE WEEK (Portland), The Weekly News (Miami), and Bay Area Reporter (S.F.). This article may be freely distributed for noncommercial usage, but may not be published without permission. Thank you in advance for your proper use. * Evaluation copy of Silver Xpress. Day # 55 --- via Silver Xpress V4.00 [NR] -- uucp: uunet!m2xenix!puddle!290!David.Batterson Internet: David.Batterson@f290.n105.z1.fidonet.org =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ + END THIS FILE + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+===+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=