Palo Alto, California-based Wollongong Group Inc has launched Emissary, which it claims is the first Windows package to provide transparent Internet access. The product will enable Internet users to surf the Net, read news, send and receive electronic mail, and do everything they’d like to do on the Internet from a single Windows file manager-like user interface. It is built on an object-oriented architecture, the heart of which is the company’s Client Object Linking Technology. This, said the company, is the mechanism that enables the offering to deal with multiple underlying protocols and file formats such as UUEncode, the basic Internet file encryption protocol; the more thorough Multi-purpose Internet Mail Exchange, MIME, which enables users to send various binary audio, image and text files embedded in mail messages; JPEG, the standard to send bit-mapped images and compressed video data; and GIF graphics files, which give users point and click operations. The interface enables new components to be sna pped in to take advantage of the package’s existing shared services, claimed the company. These include file format viewing, protocol handling, Web browsing and Telnet support. Wollongong will publish the application programming interface for free, in a bid to woo developers. The first two products in the family, Emissary and Desktop Emissary, both provide Internet access facilities that include Web browsing, mail, file management, news reading and interactive access from Windows. The difference between the two is that Desktop also contains the company’s TCP/IP stack, said to be fully compliant with the Winsock interface, and is intended for those that already use TCP/IP protocols. Emissary lists for ú100, with Desktop costing ú200; both are out in July. The company said that PathWay intranet legacy access data would still be available up until there was robust legacy data access implemented in the Emissary line.
