The French and the Germans are stomping the world trying to drum up international interest in their viewdatabases, and Cambridgebased Owl Micro Communications Ltd is meeting them halfway with an upgrade to its viewdata software for MS-DOS personal computers with the release of Owl Editex version 3.4. Versions 1 and 3.0 were compatible only with Prestel terminals, but over the past 18 months, the company has been developing the software to make it compatible with French Minitel and German Bildschrmtext systems. Editex version 3.4 can update the ICL Bulletin and Abacus UniVision host systems, and it also has a bulk update host capability. This enables Editel users to transmit to each other as well as the host systems. Editel is currently used by several tourist information centres in Devon and Somerset, and by British Telecommunications Plc’s travel information service. The tourist centres circulate news of local events and communicate by asynchronous dialup links, and British Telecommunications packages travel information and sends it to Prestel via a local area network. The standalone Editex version 3.4 costs UKP850, and a local area network licence sells for UKP1,950.
