General Magic Inc, Mountain View, California duly showed off its Magic Cap operating system for handheld organisers, and noted that Sony Corp, Philips Electronics NV and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co’s Panasonic division, and Motorola Inc are developing hand-held devices using it, with Sony and Motorola looking to ship personal intelligent communicators this summer. The Magic Cap operating system was designed by much of the same team that built the look and feel of the Macintosh System, including the leaders of the Mac effort, Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson. According to the Wall Street Journal, Magic Cap is almost entirely graphical, so that if a user wants to send a message to a colleague, he taps a postcard laying on the desk. That brings up the postcard, plus a directory of names with phone, facsimile or electronic mail numbers; once scribbled, the message is sent wirelessly with the Motorola device, or by modem in the Sony. The company also showed off its Telescript and is shipping it to its investors – which also include Apple Computer Inc and AT&T Co, which have decided to sit Magic Cap out for their communicators. Telescript is designed to make it easy for users to send electronic agents out on computer networks to find and filter information, performing tasks such as shopping and retrieving news. The instructions, in the form of the agent, are sent directly to service providers such as travel agents, airlines, news services and banks, or to a host network such as AT&T’s planned PersonaLink, designed as a central electronic meeting place for buyers and sellers.
