Mar 98 - NewsBits
Volume Number: 14
Issue Number: 3
Column Tag: Newsbits
Mar 98 - Newsbits
by Jessica Courtney
Nisus Software and Casady & Greene form Strategic
Alliance
Nisus Software and Casady & Green software developers announced that they have
formed a Strategic Alliance and will begin to cross market and bundle selected
products. Nisus has its offices in the San Diego Community of Solana Beach, California,
and Casady & Greene has its offices in the Silicon Valley community of Salinas,
California.
Nisus Writer is still the only solution on the Macintosh for multilingual needs and will
now be available with Casady & Greene's Spreadsheet 2000 program. Look for Nisus
Software's announcements about MathHelp and other new cross platform products.
http://www.nisus.com/
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Tabasoft SendGraphic: On The Fly Web Graphics
Builder
Tabasoft SendGraphic 1.0 is a tool that allows macintosh webmasters to build on the fly
(and send on the web) dynamic graphics from data embedded in HTML.
Usually graphics are static images in your web site linked as "![]()
Suppose that your graphics comes from dynamic data and that this data changes every
day (or more). If you have static graphics you have to manually rebuild your graphics
every day. With SendGraphic you can avoid this. In fact it builds graphics in real time
so that they always match your data. Also, with static data, SendGraphic can be very
useful when you have to build many graphics and you don't want to do it manually.
SendGraphic can be used in very different situations. You may want to use SendGraphic
as a WSAPI HTTP Server plug-in or as an HTTP Server ACGI. SendGraphic requires a
Power Macintosh, system 7 or later with QuickTime.
A full version of SendGraphic is now available for download at
http://tabasoft.ancitel.it/TABASOFT/SendGraphic.html.
http://tabasoft.ancitel.it
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Roundabout Logic, Inc. is the New Publisher of
Nodester and Widgetizer, QuickTime VR Tools
Roundabout Logic, Inc. announced that it is now the official publisher of the
well-known QuickTime VR tools, Nodester and Widgetizer. Both these Macintosh-only
applications, formerly published by Panimation, Inc., are available from Roundabout
Logic, Inc. of Winter Springs, Florida, as of February 1, 1998.
By March 1, 1998, Roundabout Logic will ship the latest updates of Nodester and
Widgetizer on CD with an entirely new look to the packaging. And for the first time, the
product line will be available from resellers worldwide (previously they were sold
direct only).
Nodester, the renowned rapid panoramic editor for QuickTime VR, first got national
attention when it was included in Guy Kawasaki's address during the keynotes at
Macworld Expo Boston in August of 1997 as one of his picks for the ten most exciting
new Macintosh applications for 1997. Since then it has gained notoriety from most of
the world's Macintosh press and has been deemed outstanding in many comparative
product reviews as well.
Widgetizer is the innovative rapid object editor for QuickTime VR (QTVR). With
features such as definable hot spots, custom backgrounds, frame-based animation and
sound integration, Widgetizer provides the most comprehensive object creation toolset
on the market. Both Nodester and Widgetizer export QuickTime VR 1.0 and 2.0.
Apple Computer, Inc. developed QuickTime VR and has vigorously supported its
adoption as an industry standard. With Apple's recent beta release of QuickTime 3.0,
QuickTime VR v2.1 and streaming QuickTime Plug-In v2.0, that standard has been
achieved. QuickTime VR is an extension of Apple's basic QuickTime technology and
supports two different types of views, QTVR panorama movies and QTVR object movies.
Panoramic editors, like Nodester, produce movies which look out from a center or
nodal point, allowing the viewer to to simulate turning and viewing 360 degrees
around a panoramic scene. Widgetizer, a rapid object editor, generates object movies
which look in at a center point or plane, simulating the effect of holding an object in
the hand and turning it around to see all sides, top and bottom. QuickTime VR is an
innovative enabling technology for electronic commerce. Usually implemented as a
photo-realistic or 3D rendered virtual reality, QTVR is finding its way into markets
such as product catalogs, real estate, automobiles, museums, education, travel
industry, etc.
http://www.roundaboutlogic.com
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Metrowerks Ships New CodeWarrior Tools for 3Com
PalmPilot Organizer and IBM WorkPad PC Companion
Metrowerks Inc. announced that they have begun shipping Release 4 of CodeWarrior
for Palm OS, the latest version of the company's popular set of development tools for
building Palm Computing platform applications for the 3Com PalmPilot Organizer,
IBM WorkPad PC Companion, and Franklin Day Planner The Palm Computing platform
is an open architecture consisting of the reference hardware design, Palm OS, HotSync
conduit data synchronization technology, platform component tools, and software
interface capabilities to support hardware add-ons.
CodeWarrior for Palm OS is a tightly integrated development environment complete
with editor, project manager, C/C++ compiler, source- and assembly-level
debugger, direct-to-device debugger, stand-alone assembler, GUI layout tools, and
linker. It allows developers to take advantage of the enhanced TCP/IP support in the
Palm OS 2.0 and design new applications to quickly and easily synchronize Palm OS
data over corporate intranets and in-house networks.
http://www.metrowerks.com
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Berkeley Software Design Inc. Licenses Java
Application Environment, Brings Java to Popular
Internet Service Provider Platform
Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDI), has licensed the Java Application Environment
(JAE) from Sun Microsystems to include in upcoming releases of BSDI Internet
Server and e/BSD, the embedded systems technology for developers of network
appliances.
Specifics of the Agreement
BSDI joins a large number of Java technology licensees in embracing the JAE. With
this license, BSDI has access to JavaSoft's complete application execution
environment, including the Java Virtual Machine and all required class libraries.
By virtue of the licensing arrangement with Sun, BSDI will provide its users and
development partners a high degree of technical support, and plans to register their
products in the Java Solutions Guide, as well as support Sun's Java Select Program for
developers.
The Appeal of the Java Platform The Java platform is important to open computing, and
as such it has become a popular environment for developing network management
utilities, Web pages, and other object-oriented applications. Developers are adopting
the Java language because they can reuse software components across applications to
economically get their products to more markets faster. Availability and Pricing Java
will be included in an upcoming BSDI Internet Server release in summer 1998. It will
be available to network appliance developers using e/BSD technology in the same time
frame.
http://www.bsdi.com
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Glucose Declares War on Infoglut with Release of
Data Hammer 1.5
Glucose Development Corporation today announced the immediate availability of Data
Hammer 1.5, a major upgrade of its automatic text summarization device for the
Macintosh.
A powerful new text summarization engine, visual query execution, and round-trip
web publishing top the list of features in this release.
In addition to the newspaper-style headlines that version 1.0 generated, Data Hammer
1.5 uses a new summarization engine to extract a bulleted list of major topics from
each section of a document.
Users can also search for words or phrases and see a colored map of where they occur
throughout a document.
In addition, round-trip web publishing means that any web page can now be fetched,
summarized, and saved as HTML all from within Data Hammer.
http://www.glu.com
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New EtherPeek v.3.5 for Macintosh
The AG Group, Inc. shipped the new version 3.5 of EtherPeek for Macintosh, an
upgrade to its popular 3.1 version. The award-winning Ethernet network and protocol
analyzer adds a new Summary Statistics window for baselining and monitoring key
traffic statistics to its rich set of capabilities. Key features of the software include
real-time and post-capture packet filtering, Plug-ins for expert packet analysis,
powerful decoding with support for all major protocol suites (including IP, AppleTalk,
Netware IPX/SPX, NetBEUI, NetBIOS, DECnet, SMB, OSI TARP and more), ProtoSpecs?
technology for fine delineation of packet type, simple "Make Filter" command for
address, protocol and offset filtering creation/modification, real-time utilization
statistics for node, protocol, and filtered packet monitoring, HTML traffic statistics
output, enhanced protocol definitions, and more.
http://www.aggroup.com/
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Tangent Systems Announces BuildSim 2.0 is Now
Shipping and Ready for Download
Tangent Systems announced that it is now shipping BuildSim 2.0 for the Power
Macintosh and Macintosh Computers. BuildSim 2.0 represents a major technical
upgrade. Besides the productivity tools, increased simulation speed and more capable
simulation building blocks, is the code base is now setup for a port to Windows 95. The
company is also examining the option of jumping directly to a pure Java version of the
application.
BuildSim 2.0 Provides an Integrated Development Environment for Simulation and
Control System Development :
Developers will enjoy how easily systems can be modeled, simulated and tested. With
the integrated automatic code generator in the Platinum Edition, BuildSim Projects can
be synthesized in C++ or Java for embedded system control, leveraging the growing
internet infrastructure for simulation and distributed process control. With
BuildSim, Tangent Systems is one of the early entrants into the field of internet
enabled distributed process control and monitoring systems. The Java code generator
tool will allow the synthesis of robo-controllers that can then be compiled and
deployed using tools already in the field. Complex dynamic models and control systems
can simulated and data collected and plotted. BuildSim has been designed to make
"tinkering" in the modeling/simulation world easy. On top of that, several
productivity tools have been carefully designed to make it a truly unique and powerful
application for developing and deploying simulations and process control systems.
http://www.tangentsys.com