Computer-output microfilm firms beware – Sony Corp and Fuji Photo Film Co will soon start taking orders for a personal computer-based corporate database system that the companies hope will replace microfilm. The system takes advantage of the large data-storage capacity of recordable compact disks and uses a database software developed by the two companies, they said. One recordable CD can store a few hundred thousand pages of documents, such as invoices and financial statements, usually stored on microfilm. The new system, which runs under Windows95, offers almost instantaneous search and retrieval, the firms are claiming. The database software costs about $1,360.
Pacific Telesys Group Inc and SBC Communications Inc, in process of merging, each named Sprint Corp as preferred long distance carrier.
Cynics look at the business model at Yahoo! Inc, and cruelly wonder if the Yahoos will ever make a profit. The company puts its increased loss for the second quarter because it ramped up spending during the quarter as part of its effort to distinguish itself from more than a dozen hungry rivals. Sales and marketing costs jumped to $3.3m from $60,000 a year earlier.
The Internet is poised effectively to replace the current telephone system within a decade and become a general communications network, Netscape Communications Corp chairman Jim Clark said. He said the Internet was changing with the introduction of features such as two-way voice communication and video and will evolve into a two-way, real-time communications system for data. If this happened the ordinary telephone system would become in some sense replaced by the Internet, he said. Bandwidth will go up significantly with cable television companies in the US offering 10Mbps to the home which will transform what can be offered. The intranet is where everything is today; technologies developed for it would then arrive on the Internet.
