Microsoft Corp has accepted that Windows is not really very easy to use, and is now working on specifications for what it calls iative called The Simply Interactive PC for 1997, Electrical Engineering Times reports: the aim is to turn the personal computer into the best platform for entertainment, Internet access and communications and to make it really easy to use.
Sun Microsystems Inc has put its Java programming language into a new business unit, JavaSoft, and put Alan Baratz in charge: Baratz is the 41-year-old former chief executive of News Corp Ltd’s Delphi Internet Services Corp, and will be charged with transforming Java from a programming language into a standard for writing Internet software.
Power Computing Corp says it could ship as many 56,000 Macintosh clones – worth $110m – in its fiscal year ending May 31: it told Reuters that the manufacturing facility in Round Rock, Texas has the capacity to make 50,000 units per month, but is not likely to reach that capacity for one or two years.
Eastman Kodak Co has added to its digital camera line with a zoom lens model priced at under $1,000: the DC50 stores pictures on PC Cards, and includes a 300% magnification zoom lens with automatic focus and exposure control; there is 1Mb permanent memory inside the camera, and the cards can be removed at any time to access pictures.
Acer Group Ltd tallied turnover of $5,530m in 1995, a rise of 77.5% from the preceding year on robust sales of personal computers and memory chips, the group said: according to preliminary results, core members of the group, including Acer Inc, Acer Peripherals Inc, Texas Instruments-Acer Inc, Acer America Corp and Amsterdam-based Acer Computer BV, posted year-on-year growth of between 55% and 95% in 1995; the group predicts total turnover will reach $7,320m this year, and will double that by 2000.
Airtouch International Inc joined forces with Czech consortium Cekom Plus AS to tender for a 49% stake in a digital cellular licence: the winner of the tender, to be announced in March, should become a partner in a 49%-51% joint venture with Czech state-controlled transmission agency Ceske Radiokomunikace AS to run the network; a licence will also then go to the Eurotel SRO venture of Czech SPT Telecom AS, Bell Atlantic Corp and US West Inc.
IBM Corp has a long-standing policy of offering people it doesn’t really want to keep transfers to plants the other end of the country – the most cynical in recent years was the offer to employees in sunny Florida a transfer to a base in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, a place we are assured turns out to be just like it sounds – but the ploy has failed this time: the Miami Herald reports that faced with a choice of being jobless in Florida or following their jobs to Austin, Texas nearly two-thirds – 699 – of IBM’s 976 programming employees in Boca Raton will trek cross-country with the OS/2 software arm.
Brazil hopes to start auctioning concessions in the telecommunications sector early this year, if Congress lives up to a promise to approve laws allowing private competition, the telecommunications minister said: he said laws opening up satellite communications, radio bands and a new cellular telephone band were on the agenda of a special session of Congress, starting this week, and he was hopeful that they would be passed; the package of measures are part of a $77,000m eight-year investment plan the government announced for the sector last November; the aim is to triple the number of telephone users, increase cellular phones by 800% and boost access to cable television by 2,200% by the year 2003 by allowing private competition; the minister said that by the end of 1996, he hoped to have completed all the necessary studies to prepare state-owned telephone company Telebras for free market competition and to legislate for opening up all other communications areas.
San Jose, California-based Netcom On-Line Communication Services Incsaid its subscriber count grew by 32% in the fourth quarter
and 324% in the year, giving it a total 307,500 accounts: the Internet service provider said 74,700 subscribers signed up in the latest quarter – and that figure excludes all complimentary or trial accounts.
Richardson, Texas-based Micrografx Inc said it expects to see profit growth for the fourth quarter of 100% and turnover growth 20% above results in the same period a year ago: the graphics software developer said the heightened expectations stem from revenue gains on its new products, including Micrografx ABC Graphics Suite, Windows Draw 4.0 and Crayola Art Studio 2.
To call the petty posturing over the budget in Washington a crisis is wilfully to misuse words, but the battle of bloated egos is creating a crisis for employees at Federal contractors: although enough cash has been voted through to enable some federal employees to return to work – if they are able to get in through the aftermath of the blizzards, work remains suspended on most federal contracts – and if the contractors don’t get paid, neither do those that do the work.
Hyundai Electronics America Inc has completed its $6.70-a-share cash tender offer for the balance of shares in its Maxtor Corp affiliate and now holds 93.8% of the total, giving it the right to convert the balance of shares into rights to receive $6.70 cash for each share.
IBM Corp is not happy with the performance it’s getting from early versions of its ImagePlus VisualInfo Library Server for AIX and has put off an announcement date while it tries to speed the thing up.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB has won an order worth $68m for exchanges and radio base stations from Japan’s Tokyo Digital Phone: the new equipment will be used to increase the number of radio channels in Tokyo Digital’s existing network, which saw record subscriber growth in the final quarter of 1995; coverage will also be extended in the Kanto region, which includes Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics; installation will begin during the spring of this year, Ericsson said.
US Robotics has launched a telephone business unit with seven new products to take advantage of its signal processing experience: the products, a conference speakerphone and six desktop digital phones, were unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas; they are designed for home-based and small office professionals, it noted.
Jackson, Missisippi-based telecommunications services reseller WorldCom Inc acquired a 30% stake in TCL Telecom, a Dublin-based company that specialises in providing international telecommunications services to Irish companies; terms were not given; WorldCom said the transaction enables it to route all its global traffic into Ireland through TCL Telecom; TCL Telecom said the alliance provides it with lower international rates for its customers, and superior call quality; it expects to increase its customer base to 1,000 and expand its workforce to 50 from 20 in 1996.
Sobering, isn’t it, that everything that can be said to be unique to man – speech, text, artistic representations, music and song, video, is reducible to zeros and ones.
