Stamford, Connecticut computer market researcher Gartner Group Inc has created an on-line service tailored for the information technology executive and analyst: called @vantage, will use AT&T Corp’s Interchange on-line technology to deliver market analysis from Gartner, research from Dataquest and technology news from Individual Inc; its users will also be able to communicate with each other via bulletin boards and electronic mail.
French cable television operator Lyonnaise Communications SA plans to launch an on-line interactive service next month: the service will include video games, viewing demonstration CD-ROM disks and travel services, and will initially be made available to cable-subscribing personal computer owners in Paris’s seventh arrondisement, who will be able to access the service via a special modem card; subscribers will be charged a monthly fee of $10 for basic services, regardless of the length of time they are connected, with additional charges for access to the Internet and Gamenet.
Greeley, Colorado-based Electronic Fab Technology Corp has a commitment from Exabyte Corp for manufacture of printed circuit boards worth $7m to $9m over the next 12 months: the company will manufacture 14 boards, which will be used in a mid-level tape library system for networks, starting from July.
France Telecom is bidding for the contract to lay 500,000 telephone lines across the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra in partnership with PT Astra International, but there are 12 other bidders for it.
Minnetonka, Minnesota-based Digital Biometrics Inc reports orders of more than $1m for its Tenprinter fingerprint systems from law enforcement and private customers in several US states; its system is under extensive testing by police departments in Europe and Japan.
Sun Microsystems Inc says that 15% of all workstations that it ships now go out with more than one CPU – that means at least 30,000 to date.
Ameritech Corp expects that its offer to open its local markets in return for being allowed to offer long-distance service will be accepted, and says it plans to create a separate long distance subsidiary with its own books, which will generate positive cash flow in 1998.
Compaq Computer Corp has restructured its North America Division by creating two new business units, the Major Accounts and the Commercial Business Units – the latter is for its small business customers.
The idea that Uncle Sam wants to be able to tap all communications and the furore over the Clipper encryption chip, which is specifically designed so as to be crackable by the Feds has so infuriated people that three West Coast programmers, Bill Dorsey of Los Altos, Pat Mullarky of Bellevue, Washington and Paul Rubin of Milpitas, are publishing a program as freeware on the Internet that turns a Windows personal computer into an untappable secure telephone, the San Jose Mercury News reports: called Nautilus, it uses an encryption algorithm called triple-DES that is widely believed to be unbreakable, and the keys used by Nautilus to encrypt conversations are created by the users, so that the authorities do not have a copy of them; to use Nautilus, both participants must have a copy of the program and a personal computer with a SoundBlaster board and high-speed modem; they agree on a series of words called a pass phrase, which is used to encrypt the conversation; they run the program and type in the pass phrase; one computer is ordered to initiate the call, the other is ordered to answer; once the call is in progress, the users must press a key on their computers when they want to speak, but in contrast to using a walkie-talkie, they can interrupt each other; the system sounds sufficiently laborious that only those desperate to keep their talk private are likely to use it.
Geac Computer Corp, based in Markham, Ontario has more cash on hand than it needs for running its businesses, and says it will buy in up to 5% of its equity in the market.
Gateway 2000 Inc i
s pre-loading Microsoft Corp’s Bob and 50 other programs with a list value of $800 with every Gateway Family PC multimedia system: the Generations Software Collection includes educational programs, children’s and adults’ games, personal productivity, and reference works on everything from wine to music to family health; the machines include a quad-speed three-CD changer, and the P5-100 Family PC model includes a 17 Vivitron monitor using Sony Corp Trinitron tube technology, a 16-bit sound board, Altec-Lansing ACS-5 speakers and the Generations Software Collection for $3,000; it presumably uses a 100MHz Pentium but the company does not say how much memory or disk the price includes.
The Feltham, Middlesex-based Cisco Systems Ltd unit of Cisco Systems Inc – heading for sales of $2,000m this fiscal – has revealed a pan-European videoconferencing hot-line for its partners: the service, named VideoLink, is designed to enable Cisco customers across Europe to establish contact with Cisco personnel in London, Paris, Stockholm, Brussels and Munich by videoconference using a basic ISDN line.
Microsoft Corp’s Bob environment for technophobes has spawned a plethora of gags several of which were rounded up by the PC Week gossip column, which relates that there will be a Macintosh version called Bob for Apples and that the networking version will be Bob-O-Link (an American bird that causes havoc in rice paddies when it migrates); from this side of the water, we hear that the single-tasking version for Personal Digital Assistants is called Bob a Job; Bob’s Your Uncle is an even simpler version for the under-fives, and everyone agrees that the Windows95 version is called Bob Hope; wickedest one, suggested by the US trade is named for the lady who felt she’d be safer with a castrato round the house, Lorena Bobbitt – that will of course be the version for Unix.
