SPRING INTERNET WORLD 96
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SURFS SPRING INTERNET WORLD 96 |
Monday, May 20, 1996 - Volume 02, Issue 01
Spring Internet World - the gabfest of Netters: time to leave the mellow glow of our monitors and the comforts of cyberspace to pound the steamy asphalt of San Jose, Calif., in a record heat wave. A world with its own logic where asphalt met astroturf disguised as asphalt, where computer industry leaders and supposed visionaries pranced across the keynote stage hawking applications programs, and where 400 or so exhibitors, 40,000 plus attendees, and miles of wires overflowed the local Convention Center and oozed into the Civic Auditorium, the Tech Museum of Innovation, and a billowing tent/sauna on the sidewalk,
OVERLOAD!
Being intrepid net pioneers, however, the Netsurfer gang ploughed our way through an infinity of booths, demos, literature and press food so that you, dear reader, can just sit back and enjoy the highlights.
Just have a minute? Acquire some choice bon mots to drop at the next party before consigning this issue to the bit bucket. These ten are guaranteed a swarm of interest:
Internet telephony ... web mapping ... NC (or network computer if you please) ... virtual private network ... business objects ... traffic analysis ... digital IDs ... immersive hypermedia ... collaborative computing ... SET compliant commerceware
And then there are the meaningless hypewords that came even thicker and faster at the show. You can pave many a yellow brick road without getting anywhere with these. The top ten for your fuzz filter for any show.
...premier ... complete solution ... innovative ... award-winning ... next level ... set the standard ... easy to use ... unique powerful ... revolutionary ...
While Netscape is determined to squeeze the world into the browser, Microsoft is morphing the browser into the the Windows environment. Between them, the digitized world is available on your desktop. Scuttling around the feet of the clashing titans this year are some useful little productivity pearls that makes net exploration easier. But check them out now - they could be gobbled up by the giants by showtime next year.
The stakes keep getting higher in the web content game. Twelve months ago we were experimenting with text pages with a few GIFs and imagemaps thrown in. How many used server push? Now we have all manner of animation and multimedia flashing, tumbling, and transforming their way across our screen. You don't make it if nothing on your page moves. (Guess we don't make it, guys... -Ed. ) What-you-see-is-what-you-get and drag-and-drop insertion of multimedia elements are de rigueur for authoring software. Of course there are tools to create VRML, animations, and all, and 'nuff's been said about Java. Here's some of the latest cool stuff from the show.
Besides chewing through
the usual tags and multimedia support, Mac-only PageMill
converts standard PC file formats, and
includes a special "geektionary" of techie terms for its
spellchecker.
Cookies and Apple support make tasty desserts.
Step up to SiteMill and your link managements troubles are
taken care of as well.
Windows users will have to wait till late summer for both.
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill/main.html
Point and click forms construction,
a library of templates and customizable Java and Shockwave aplets and
the xRes SE imaging editor add sizzle to Macromedia's WYSIWYG package.
For the site designer, the Backstage Studio products will provide
site management and built-in objects that provide connectivity
to desktop databases, forms,
threaded discussion groups, automated email, and other features.
http://www-1.macromedia.com/Tools/Backstage/index.html
So far, bit-mapped graphics have ruled the web.
Yet streaming, vector-based
images and animations can be small and fast to compete.
CelAnimator from Future Wave
creates graphics scaleable
to any size and color depth without blowing up the file size.
It can also
incorporate interactive buttons linked to a URL. A plug-in
viewer is required, though.
http://www.futurewave.com/tindex.html
The only 3D animation package that dares claim to run on a 486 PC with 8 mb of RAM! Neo Visuals has geared their products for ease of use. A kids' version of the animator is available, presumably for the under-8 set, since by that age most kids are more computer-savvy than dear old dad. Their ADL file format is small enough to send through e-mail, but again, an ADL player is also required. http://www.neovisuals.com/
Ever feel that you just didn't "get it" about VRML worlds?
Well it's time to take another look now that version 2 (aka Moving Worlds) is
real real. Build scalable, dynamic worlds with interactive objects, 3D sound,
embedded audio and video clips for a rich, immersive environment. SGI's Cosmo
suite can do it all with its VRML browser, authoring tools,
java development environment, and
media management system. Cosmo Player, the browser, made the heat
in the show tent bearable, and the good news is that it will even do
Windows.
http://webspace.sgi.com/cosmo/
If you don't have that Unix workstation
and just want something that is easy to use, Virtual Home Space Builder
from Paragraph or Virtus 3D Website Builder might just do the trick.
http://www.paragraph.com/vhsb/product/
http://www.virtus.com/3dwbmain.html
If you like to liven things up with Java,
check out Dimension X's Liquid Reality toolkit. It helps
you create and view Java-enhanced VRML worlds that support
sound, motion, and interaction. And if you want some help
creating Java animations without being a real programmer, their Liquid
Motion software may be just your cup of tea.
Liquid Reality -
http://www.dimensionx.com/products/lr/index.html
Liquid Motion -
http://www.dimensionx.com/products/lm/freetea/freetea.html
The Internet has won its place in the telecommunications mainstream. Web-browsing and e-mail, the sung and unsung Internet killer-apps, have been joined on the wire (and wireless) by applications from the other communications media. Internet telephony is getting a lot of attention this year, but radio and television are following close behind. After all, once you have the connectivity and the bandwidth, almost anything is fair game.
The IRC standard is showing its age and here comes the next generation. 3D worlds are the cool new places to meet. WorldChat led the way with 3D chat and customizable avatars. Their latest creation, the spiffy new Alphaworld, allows you to homestead the cyberfrontier: chat, build houses, and even engage in commerce. OZ bridges work and play with a VRML browser/server combination that lets you set up your own virtual world. Use it for virtual conferencing with text, audio, and video, voting, file sharing, and other group activities. Their virtual worlds are filled with lush graphics and 3D sound and animation. To cap it all off, OZ provides a 3D helper angel that talks to you by text-to-speech conversion.
America Online sticks to 2D in Virtual Places with avatars equipped with gestures. (Goodbye, smileys?) Keeping it flat has its rewards - a phone line works well and you can easily throw a party at your own URL. But hurry, the spring social calendar is filling up fast. Other participants in the chat game include ichat, and ChatPlus, both help you set up your own chat servers on the Web.
Move aside, innovators. You know the playground of the geeks is changing when big iron like IBM S/390 mainframes becomes web servers. From Federal Express to buying tickets for the Olympics on the web, Net Biz is now serious Big Biz.
After a few dalliances and reconciliations, Mastercard and Visa finally got together and proposed a unified protocol to secure online credit card transactions in February. Though Netscape's SSL enabled the early transactions on the net, the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol put the stamp of respectability on online commerce, and software vendors are rushing to support it by the end of the summer.
On another front, information, long freely exchanged on the Net, can now be doled out at a price. Cryptolopes sound like shy ungulates on the digital savannah, but they are really digital envelopes that bill you when you open them. And the tick-ticking you hear is not the return of the Unibomber, it's simply the meter running inside the new digital content. News, books, multimedia, or software, they are all ready to meter your usage, ane send you a bill. If you prefer the advertising-funded model used in radio and television for collecting your silver, there are organizations to help you from ad creation, media placement, and to site visitor traffic analysis and audit.
Consumers: come on down!
You've seen it on the front cover of major business and computer magazines. A simple, consistent interface to all of an organization's data and applications. The Intranet is the hottest trend to hit MIS, and may even bail out a few failed client-server projects. The goldrush is on and the shovel- and pick- sellers are out in droves. Enabling software for the corporate environment blurs in a muddle of buzzwords and hyperbolic press-release speak. Now what does package XYZ do again and how is it different from FGH and PQR? Here are a few that actually made it through the haze.
The connectivity providers were out in force. There were hardware vendors for modems wired and wireless, routers and switches, and even uninterruptible power supplies. ISDN seems to have shed its "I Still Don't kNow" rags to become a choice option for super-surfers ready to ditch 28.8 kbps for the satisfaction of 112 kbps from two bonded B channels (sounds racy!).
And as if fast isn't enough, the roads are also getting safer on the digital frontier through new products combining authentication and content encryption. Be the center of your own (virtual) private network using the Internet and any old Internet service provider. Or double-wrap your inter-office communications in kevlar and send'em out.
With the notable exception of Excite, they were actually all there at the show, each touting its own strengths: in supporting different national languages, indexing images, distributed searching, etc. Almost matching the search engines in representation was a flock of directory providers. Nothing truly new and exciting, just lots of them. We lost count at 17 engines/spiders and 10 directories. In the name of bandwidth conservation we're just naming a few of the new, intriguing, or vaporous.
While everyone is eagerly batting bits across the web, paper is not disappearing anytime soon. Publishers were also out in full force at the show with their gazillions of Internet titles. Here are a few distinguishable new entries that made us info-resource-hounds happy.
Not Your Dad's PC Award:
It's a screensaver, it's television, it's your personal
newspaper. PointCast delivers a customized electronic billboard
of news, weather, stock quotes,
sports, entertainment, and more
while your computer idles. All for free thanks to MTV-style
animated advertising flashing across the screen. Another good reason not to
touch that keyboard.
http://pioneer.pointcast.com/product_fact.html
Rube Goldberg-Star Trek Award:
Lean back, put your feet on the table, point, and click.
Couch potato, meet the web, courtesy of Gyropoint, the flying mouse.
Roll it around on the mouse
pad and it works exactly as expected. Once airborne, the mouse
ball locks in, a tiny of gyroscope inside take over, and you continue
to zoom over the screen. A tailless version connecting via radio
is also available.
This baby will win more awards.
http://www.gyration.com
Vive la Difference Award:
English is the lingua franca of the Net in the
great globalization wave.
A positive step in the opposite direction is a browser that
supports content in other languages. Here are two of them.
http://www.accentsoft.com
http://www.alis.com
Man Behind the Curtain Award:
A friendly face in the booth of news service DBC Online that
spotted the red badge of friendliness (aka press pass) and
offered a weary Netsurfer respite from the hustle and bustle
by showing him some impressive personal home pages.
Scott Wamsley - http://www.wamzle.com
DBC OnLine - http://www.dbc.com
Wardrobe Award:
The scanty jungle outfits worn by young women promoting Zooworks suited the steamy tent that passed for a convention hall. Auto-show cheescake meets Net Biz: a great statement on the maturity of the Internet market. You won't find the ladies at the Zooworks home page, though, so there's no URL for this one.
Mirror, mirror, on the Net
On what trends and technologies shall we bet?
Mirror, mirror, crystal ball,
Who's the best prognosticator of us all?
Can't make the Internet World schedule? Or
is there an advantage to making your announcements
away from the maddening crowd?
What did Adobe have in mind when they laid out their strategy for
bringing more visual communication to the web (by driving Internet standards
based on Adobe technologies) the week after Internet World?
Armed with an alliance with Javasoft for Adobe's
new 2D image model, Microsoft for Universal Font Format, and AT&T (probably
for AT&T's bandwidth), the plan is to slam and jam all those Adobe
desktop publishing products into Net authoring. Slow is beautiful.
http://www.adobe.com/events/netexpect/
And speaking of the NC, Lucent Technologies, Ma Bell's newest orphan,
announced in that same post-show week that they will be marketing
Inferno, their network operating system for anything from high-end
workstations to consumer electronics. Positioned as the "glue to hold
the network infrastructure together", it's aimed where quite a few
big players have been gunning for a while.
And unlike their previous success such as
Unix, C, and C++, this one won't be free.
Making history again? Or just marketing it?
http://www.lucent.com says "Website coming soon."
Well, we can't be absolutely sure there were 400 booths. In fact, a couple of the sites we've named here might not even have exhibited in the show. But they were kind enough to provide some interesting press kits or briefings for us weary show-surfers, and so we included them anyway. For the authoritative listing of exhibitors, check out
http://events.iworld.com/spring96/iw/exhibitors.html"
Can you be sure we gave it our most honest shot if someone paid us to do this? Okay, okay, we ate at a few press conferences, but they were handing out chocolate bars to everyone at the show, honest!
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Publisher: S. M. Lieu
Contributors: Arthur Bebak, Lawrence Nyveen
Production Manager: Bill Woodcock
Netsurfer Communications, Inc.,
President: Arthur Bebak
Vice President: S. M. Lieu
"Surfin' U.S.A.", - Chuck Berry/Brian Wilson uncredited lyricist.
Full lyrics at
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~mwheeler/lyrics/surfin_usa.html#1