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55% January 1996 / What's New / Communications For OS/2

Summary: Communications For OS/2. HyperAccess for OS/2 ($129) offers telnet access to the Internet and comes with thousands of ready-to-call BBSes, Internet service providers, and other on-line systems. The program supports data transfer rates of up to 57.6 Kbps on COM1-COM4 through standard OS/2 communications drivers, or rates of up to 115.2 Kbps through the included SIO. SYS shareware communications driver. You can also connect through TCP/IP and shared modems on OS/2 networks.

Summary: Book Review: Practical Help for the Disabled. Rick Cook Adapting PCs for Disabilities by Joseph J. Lazzaro; Addison-Wesley Publishing; ISBN 0-201-48354-8; $39.95 The personal computer is a powerful tool for opening the world to people with disabilities. How to make it happen is less obvious -- and the subject of this book. The focus and tone are relentlessly practical. Joseph J. Lazzaro (an occasional contributor to BYTE) is less concerned with theory than with what you can buy and use today.

Summary: Complement the Splash, Reinforce the Ad. Developers evaluating the latest tools for adding flashy advertising and multimedia capabilities to their Web sites may want to consider this sobering statistic: About 20 percent of users surf without graphics. That means you may want to complement an ad campaign that incorporates splashy banners with text that communicates your message. A recent study made by Jumbo (http://www. jumbo.

Summary: Advancing Communications. Today's telecommunications software offers high speed, scripting, and even ease of use. Howard Eglowstein Modern data communications software does lots more than just read E-mail messages. If your current communications package is more than a few years old, you're missing out on all the fun. Today's advanced communications programs promise speed, features, ease of use, and programmability.

Summary: Agents On The Loose. Tom R. Halfhill and Andy Reinhardt Telescript, General Magic's communications-oriented programming language, lets developers write tools that permit casual users who know nothing about programming to create intelligent applications that seek out and retrieve important information. What kinds of applications does Telescript enable? Think how PostScript made it easy for nonprogrammers to enrich documents with new data types--such as graphics, color, fonts, and photos--and then reproduce those documents on a wide variety of output devices without writing--or even seeing--any PostScript code. Telescript hopes to do the same thing for communications.

Summary: Software via Digital Staellite TV. Digital satellite TV brings broadband software services to Europe's homes. Adele Hars PC users in France are the first in Europe to receive commercially available high-speed data services from digital TV satellites. Europe's biggest pay TV provider, Canal+ in Paris, launched direct-to-home software-downloading services earlier this year. On its C: channel, a program that focuses on computer news and reports, the company offers its C:Direct service.

Summary: Underground Upgrades for Windows 95. Freeware, shareware, and low-cost utilities make Windows 95 what it should have been in the first place. Stanford Diehl Welcome to Windows 95.1. You cannot find it on store shelves or in a Microsoft brochure; it's spread out on BBSes, on-line services, and World Wide Web sites around the world. It comprises small, focused utilities that add key functionality to the Win 95 user interface (UI).

Summary: How Java Can Pay the Rent. Robert L. Hummel Developers eyeing Java development as a modern-day gold rush need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of marketing their wares. The anticipated avalanche of download-on-demand Java applets may or may not revolutionize software development and distribution, depending on whom you listen to. But answers are emerging about how applet-based applications will be best marketed so that Java developers can make money. Applications development might be the first part of the industry to be transformed by the Java model.

Summary: A Hot Night at the Opera. A heat wave and disk errors plague Chaos Manor, causing Jerry to reach out for the Panic box. Jerry Pournelle The good news, at least for me, is that my new writing schedule is working just fine. In the last month, I've produced a thousand words a day on my novel Starswarm, and it's only three scenes from being done. The bad news is that I've had less time to play with computer stuff, meaning that it's short-shrift time at Chaos Manor.

Summary: Data Compression on the Macintosh. Macintosh users have thus far escaped most of the controversy over disk compression that haunts PC users. For one thing, disk compression isn't a standard feature of the Mac operating system as it is with the latest versions of DOS. It's like the PC world before DoubleSpace: You have to buy a third-party product to get compression, so it tends to attract users who are more aware of the trade-offs. Also, for various reasons, Mac software doesn't require as much disk space as Windows software.

Summary: Dial 1-800-Internet. With new software, you can talk business over the Net and avoid long-distance charges. Nathan Muller If you really want to save money on long-distance calls, you might want to check out a new telephone giant that's offering communication services worldwide. It already has about 30 million subscribers. Some experts predict it will have more than 200 million by the end of the decade, making it the fastest-growing network of all time.

Summary: Build A Firewall. Is your Internet connection putting your networks at risk? Establish a firewall and sleep easier. John Bryan The Internet is on fire. But as traffic increases dramatically, so, too, do the risks that your company's data may be sabotaged or stolen.

Summary: On-Line Componentware. I use AltaVista to build BYTe's Metasearch application and realize that every Web site is a software component. Jon Udell Software components can turn up in the unlikeliest places. In our May 1994 cover story ("Componentware," http://www. byte.

Summary: Let's Talk. We add conferencing to The BYTE Site, and explore the merits of NNTP, the Usenet's protocol. Jon Udell Join the Web Project conference. news://dev4. byte.

Summary: How to Build an Internet App. A little Visual Basic code, a connection to the Internet, and you've got your own weather channel. Brett Glass Have you been thinking about writing software for the Internet? Perhaps you're worried that the conventions and protocols would require years to master. As it turns out, programming for the Internet is quite simple.

Summary: Multimedia Masterpieces. Hollywood talent and programmers create today's hot games. Tom R. Halfhill Gone are the days when a lone programmer would create a hit game while toiling in a corner of his bedroom. Except for a few shareware authors, the creators of commercial games in the 1990s are teams of writers, artists, musicians, actors, directors, video-graphers, and programmers who often work with multimillion-dollar budgets and Hollywood production values. Ironically, programmers rank relatively low in this hierarchy.

Summary: An Upgrade for Mrs. Pournelle. Big Cheetah's departure casts a pall over Chaos Manor--but the show goes on--and Roberta gets a Win 95 machine. Jerry Pournelle The legend says the cobbler's children go barefoot. In our case, it's Mrs.

Summary: Orchids and Onions Are Blooming. Jerry surveys the chaos and presents the year's User's Choice Awards. Jerry Pournelle I'm writing this in mid-January. The issue will be dated April, but most of you will get it in March. What this means is that since I stubbornly insist that a year ends in December rather than in time for the January issue, it's time for the 1996 Chaos Manor User's Choice Awards and the annual Orchid and Onion parade.

Summary: Net-Surfing with Notes. Put Notes and the World Wide Web together to overcome each technology's weaknesses. Robert L. Hummel Lotus Notes advocates were the Young Turks of the early 1990s, unleashing the then-new technology of document-oriented groupware to deliver real benefits to business. Now the Younger Turks of the Internet have raised the question of whether Notes is a needlessly expensive and proprietary way of doing what the World Wide Web already does. Developers would do well to recognize the strengths of both approaches and to learn how to make them work together to maximum effect.

Summary: On-Line Service on the Cheap. Mustang Software beefs up its Wildcat BBS with a 32-fold increase in conference capacity, a programming language, and a robust suite of administration utilities. Bill Esposito Along with the growing popularity of on-line services comes increased interest in low-cost alternatives. BBSs are perhaps the most affordable way to get customers and in-house people exchanging files and messages. Put the BBS host computer on a LAN, and you've got an instant groupware conferencing system.