4/01/95 CyberNews, Mini Edition, #3 Issue #3 Patrick Grote, Publisher CyberNews is a monthly publication available in ASCII, Windows and ReadRoom editions. We feature reviews, interviews and commentary concerning the PC industry. To subscribe, send a message to subscribe@supportu.com with subscribe in body. To unsubscribe, send a message to patrick.grote@supportu.com with unsubscribe in body. CyberNews Changes: We will no longer be printing a monthly version in ReadRoom or Windows edition. The ASCII version will only be a compilation of our weekly versions. These will be available via FTP. The Windows version will be released on a semi-regular basis. For more information, contact Roger Klein at roger.klein@supportu.com. Consequently, the weekly ASCII version is going to go from 10k-16k to 20k-30k. We hope you appreciate the addition of more reviews and news! If you are receiving this via email you are already a subscriber and don't have to worry about anything . . . Thanks -- Patrick Grote ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWS OF THE WEEK| This section is dedicated to verified news . . . All News (C) Respective Owner - Will Only Reprint ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -=> Sun Plays April Fools Joke <=- PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuter) - Sun Microsystems Inc., where employees typically wear T-shirts and blue jeans, has instituted a ``Dress Up'' policy -- at least that was the April Fools' edict passed down from the top executive. Those who didn't immediately catch on to the prank may have wondered why Sun had decided to buck the ``dress down'' trend, which even International Business Machines Corp. has adopted. Sun, like many Silicon Valley high-tech companies, has had no dress code -- until now. When Sun's 13,000 employees worldwide logged on to their computer e-mail system, they found this message from Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive officer-turned-prankster, ``Are blue jeans and Hawaiian shirts really appropriate for representives of a $5 billion company?'' After reading the somber message, employees of the Mountain View, Calif.-based computer company were asked to click on an electronic image of the new dress code. The image on the screen showed McNealy donning a full tuxedo. ``No more grunge look,'' he tells employees from their speaker-equipped computers. ``We're taking our competition to the cleaners, so we might as well have something to drop off!'' Sun is renowned for its April Fools' antics, but in years past its has typically been employees pulling pranks on executives. ``This was Scott's way to turn on employees. Now he's a marked man for next year,'' a spokesman said. In 1988, some employees turned McNealy's and another executive's offices into a golf course with a sand trap and water hazard. McNealy is an avid golfer. REUTER -=> Hi-Tech Meets Rock <=- VENTURA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 1995--In an evolutionary leap for the high-tech marketplace, trade show management firm, Kathleen Kaiser & Associates (KKA) has joined forces with The William Morris Agency and Lollapalooza co-producer, Marc Geiger to create INTERSECTION 95, the world's first traveling alternative music festival and technology exhibit. The INTERSECTION 95 road tour is scheduled to hit seven cities in seven weeks in the fall of 1995. INTERSECTION 95 will have an atmosphere unlike any other technology event ever staged. Each leg of the tour will be a two-day concert and new media festival featuring live performances by major recording artists and multimedia innovators. Products and services will be showcased in futuristic, pod-like hands-on terminals and demonstration theaters. Many products and services will be available for sale, often at substantially discounted prices. An expected 20,000 concert goers at each event can experience firsthand the best in games, virtual reality, multimedia, CD-ROMs, 3-D animation, hardware and software. INTERSECTION 95 will feature unique exhibit areas such as "Surf City" with the hottest on-ramps to the Internet, the latest on-line services and the hippest World Wide Web sites. A "Pinball-Wizard" style video game tournament will run throughout each event. "INTERSECTION 95 is truly the consumer event of the future," explained Kathleen Kaiser, president of KKA. "The time for this evolution in the marketplace is now, while the links between entertainment and technology have never been stronger." This fall, INTERSECTION 95 will travel to Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Admission is a very low $15. The joint venture marks the first time the three parties have worked together. William Morris Agency is the world's largest talent agency and will work directly with venues, sponsors, promoters and book artists. Geiger, co-producer of Lollapalooza, will work with promoters, book artists and handle event promotion. KKA is a trade show management company with its roots in technology with clients such as CES Mexico, Documation, Time-Warner Interactive and former involvement in the ground breaking Digital World event. KKA will handle all aspects of the technology exhibits and attractions. For information on INTERSECTION 95, contact Kurt Kochman at KKA: 877 S. Victoria No. 212, Ventura, Calif. 93003, 805/639-2280 or fax: 805/658-2882. CONTACT: Beth Sadler, 808/874-8875 808/874-6234 (Fax) Email: BethSa(at-sign)aol.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WEBSITE OF THE WEEK! | This section is devoted to a cool WebSite . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -=> Banyan Systems Makes it Onto the Web! <=- WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 1995--Banyan Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:BNYN) today announced the opening of the company's home page on the world wide web created to supply Internet users with up-to-date information on the latest in enterprise network services. Banyan on-line is an evolving information base, generating two-way communications between Banyan and Internet users. Banyan's home page can be reached at http://www.banyan.com. Information and services featured on the Banyan home page include: Company Information Internet users can learn about Banyan and its technology in the Company Information directory. Banyan customers and industry experts tell how Banyan's products are shaping the world of enterprise networking. Company Information includes Who Banyan Is, Banyan's Mission and Core Technologies, Company Facts, Customer Solutions, Market Wisdom, and Hot-Links to other Banyan-related sites. Marketing Notices and Press Releases Banyan on-line services provide the latest product and company news as it breaks from Banyan. Press releases announce company directions and the products that support them. Upon product release, Marketing Notices will be available to provide technical briefs, features and benefits, part numbers, and list pricing for all Banyan products. Education and Support Services Banyan provides current technical notes as well as training information in the Education Services and Support Services directories. Guests are able to access technical bulletins and emergency support services from Support Services; Education Services contains information on certified Banyan training, including course schedules and locations of Banyan's Certified Education Centers. Production Information and Demonstrations The Banyan Home Page also furnishes Internet users with White Papers and Product Briefs on all of Banyan's enterprise networking products, including Banyan's VINES Network Operating System, Enterprise Network Services (ENS) Platforms, BeyondMail, and Management Applications. Web browsers are also able to access demos of Banyan products including, BeyondMail, Banyan's rules-based e-mail solution and OutLook, the company's newest network management application. -0- About Banyan Systems Inc. Banyan Systems (NASDAQ:BNYN) is a pioneer and leader in enterprise network services. These products make it easy for customers to find, share and manage information and resources within enterprise networks. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Westboro, Mass., the company markets products worldwide through authorized network integrators, resellers and international distributors. Banyan can be reached on the World Wide Web at http://www.banyan.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COOL FTP FILE OF THE WEEK | You may need this file . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ {COMMO} 6.42 - High-performance terminal program for DOS, also excellent in Windows and OS/2. {COMMO} is the smallest, fastest, most reliable and most configurable terminal program available. The easy, comprehensive macro programming language addresses any communications need. New features include INTERNAL ZMODEM, external editor hook and many more enhancements and improvements. Shareware. You can find {COMMO} as COMMO642.ZIP on the following FTP site: WUARCHIVE.WUSTL.EDU:/pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS/commo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ REVIEWS OF THE WEEK | Interesting software/hardware you may need . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Microsoft Mouse Reviewed by Patrick Grote Say what you will about Microsoft products. According to the hard-core techno geeks that hang out in the places like ALT.COMP.OSWAR or other dank places on the Internet, Microsoft has never put out a good product. Give me a break! Not only has Windows conquered the world, but it is easier to use than DOS. Of course, that is a very subjective comment. What is more objective is the feeling you will get from using Microsoft's Mouse. A longtime leader and proponent of the mouse market, Microsoft has revolutionized the way people use mice. In the beginning stages of mousehood, mice were clunky, almost square devices with three buttons. Microsoft changed the design and feel of the mouse. Soon Microsoft became known for producing the Cadillac of mice. If you had a Microsoft Mouse you were something special. Not only were Microsoft mice sleeker than other mice, they were heavier. They felt expensive. Warp ahead five or so years to today and you'll notice that the latest generations of Microsoft Mice are revolutionary. Ergonomically crafted to graft to your hand, the mice actually feel like an extension of your hand. Rather than being boxy, the new mice are egg shaped with a small curve for the inside of your hand. At first the mouse may feel awkward, but as you start using it you will not even notice it. The revolutionary part of this is that for the first time in the mouse industry, someone has cared enough to worry about users and their fatigued wrists and arms. Microsoft redesigned the mouse with users in mind and it has worked well. Of course, the design is not perfect. There is still drag on the cord, which can lead to excess fatigue, but you will realize benefits from day one with the mouse. The benefits are not limited to physical at all. Microsoft includes IntelliPoint software with the mouse. This software allows you to control over 15 different functions of the mouse. My remote does not even have that many choices! The choices you can make not only affect the mouse performance when in use (like double click speed, etc.), but it even includes a power monitor for laptops and the ability to enlarge an area of the screen where the mouse pointer is located! Did someone say pointer? You can choose from over 50 different pointers to replace standard Windows pointers. I am using the finger pointer right now. In addition, you can change other standard mouse pointers as well. Amazing! The software also allows you to automatically select a Windows by moving the mouse over it or even allow your mouse to move from the left side of the screen to the right without moving across the screen. If you use your mouse routinely, you need to look into purchasing the Microsoft Mouse. If you do not purchase it for the physical benefits you will need it for the software functionality It adds to your system! FoxPro Professional for Windows Version 2.6a Reviewed by Jim Hanoian Saying that FoxPro for Windows is a database engine is something like saying that an Indy race car is a form of transportation. I have played with databases, worked professionally with databases, and written quite a few database applications. Folks, this is one of the slickest products I have had the pleasure to use. FoxPro Professional is a very robust relational database management system and it is available for MS-DOS, Windows and Apple Macintosh. The Windows version (the one I actually tested) requires a minimum of a 386SX processor, MS-DOS 3.1, Windows 3.0 in 386 enhanced mode, 4MB of RAM, mouse and VGA. It will support networks operating Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT Advanced Server, Microsoft LAN Manager, Novell, LANtastic, and other NetBIOS-compatible networks. It ran quite nicely on my 386DX40 with 8 MB of RAM, and even ran with no glitches or tweaking under OS/2 Warp. The basic version comes on seven 3«" high density disks and consumes about eleven megs of hard disk drive space. Included in the Professional version are the Distribution Kit (three disks), the Library Construction Kit (one disk), the Connectivity Kit (two disks), and the Workgroup Extensions Kit (one disk). Normal installation was easy but did not specifically prompt for these additional disks. Each of the kits installs individually, so you can select the exact modules you need. Further, each kit allows choices internally and indicates the hard drive space required for each option. Full installation boosts the hard drive requirement to a total of about twenty-one megs. Since the Distribution Kit modifies the actual FoxPro executable, it needed to locate that file. I had changed the default subdirectory for FoxPro itself (from \fpw26 to \windows\foxpro) and the Kits wanted to use the default instead of seeking out the FOXPROW.EXE file. It would have been easier if this was auto but this was a rather minor, one-time inconvenience. On-line, context sensitive help is always immediately available. The help system is extensive and meaningful, with related topics and information that offer good support. There is one item on the Help pull-down menu that aided this old dBase user: "dBase Help". Under this option there were hypertext links to topics such as Converting dBase files, dBase compatibility, running dBase programs, supported (and unsupported) dBase commands, SQL differences, and FoxPro enhancements to xBase languages. The most important one covered, in depth, the differences between FoxPro for Windows and dBase IV with tips and examples to ease the transition. Each of the Kits has an independent Help file that covers that module in detail. The on-line help is so good, that until I began writing this review, I had not looked at the printed documentation. The written documentation for FoxPro is impressive. Microsoft has made finding information easy. FoxPro comes with several books and guides, each serving a particular purpose. Especially useful were the Quick Reference which listed all of the commands alphabetically with syntax and switches, the Language Reference, a huge book that includes plenty of expanded practical information and examples on each command, and a Getting Started guide. The Master Index, a 60-page manual pointed to the exact guide and page number for almost any topic or keyword. Without this guide, you would have to check the index of each manual individually until you found the item of interest. There is a separate User's Guide for each of the Kits, as well as a Help Compiler Guide and a Developer's Guide that covers the overall concepts with strategic advice about applications design, development, distribution and support. Experienced users will welcome the capability to distribute compiled, executable versions of applications they develop. Distribution EXEs are royalty-free and can be run by people who do not have a copy of FoxPro. Although this is important for a developer who wants to sell the program, it is also a consideration in situations where a company's computer department has produced an application they want to distribute internally. In this example, only the developer needs FoxPro with the Distribution Kit. The users need only the compact EXE produced by FoxPro for Windows and a function library (which is provided in the Kit for royalty-free distribution). This differs from FoxPro for MS-DOS, which produces a true stand-alone EXE. I am an old DOS user from way back, and I have thought about giving users something that is easy, intuitive and pretty all at the same time. Doing this quickly in a DOS environment is close to impossible, and could take months of work depending on the complexity of the project. In a matter of minutes I was able to take my floppy disk catalog (in dBase DBF format) and create a "screen" by using one of the FoxPro Wizards. The Wizard lets you select/deselect database fields, screen appearance, and pushbutton style. This turned out to be very easy and produced a formatted view with pushbuttons for next record, previous record, locate, print, add, edit, and quit. I preferred the appearance of the icon pushbuttons, but you can select text pushbuttons (which carry the words instead of pictures on the button). You can choose shadows, bevels and other enhancements to the visual image. After a bit, I decided to modify the screen to eliminate some of the unnecessary fields (that I should have suppressed while in the Wizard) and dragged/sized others around to present groupings that were more visually pleasing. I reshaped the multi-line COMMENT field, and discovered that text automatically word wraps and scrolls within the selected line length. Next, I decided that the CATEGORY field of the database would be a perfect candidate for a pull-down picklist. Ordinarily, files are added to the database, and then I have to go back in and assign them to appropriate categories such as UTIL, ARC, DIAG, and so on. I am forever forgetting the valid categories or if graphics is supposed to be GFX or GRFX. I used the screen designer to place the picklist, and then it had me define the allowable selections. No problem and no effort. It came out just like I wanted it (well, maybe on the second time through). This has turned into a very nice mini-application and with a few additions (such as append, import and export) could turn into my very own full-fledged application. The automatic screen generation is not perfect. The only un-intuitive point I ran into was that the automatically generated LOCATE icon pulled up a table view of the database, very much like a spreadsheet or the standard BROWSE command. This does not actually locate anything but only permits scrolling or paging the database. I had to go up to the main FoxPro menu (instead of my app's icons) to activate a FIND command where I could type a search string and have the program locate a match. I am sure with a little reading, I will be able to make that icon pull up the FIND function just like I want. I would like to emphasize that I have got perhaps an hour dedicated to this screen, and I have not touched a line of program code yet. I have no idea how long it would take me to develop the current screen/system manually under a competing database system. For the die-hards among us, FoxPro provides a Command Window where standard database commands can be issued. The window is mouseable (as is the entire FoxPro interface) and you can easily re-issue commands by backscrolling, highlighting the command, editing if necessary, and then sending it off again. The system can be configured to come up to the Command Window but I preferred the Catalog Manager, where you could select and launch screens, programs or reports. An interesting feature available while in the Command Window is an option to convert dBase IV screen, report and FMT files to FoxPro equivalents. FoxPro does just about everything possible to make converts out of non-users. It could not be much easier unless someone held your hand and led you through the steps. All in all, the FoxPro package has made databasing fun and easy. I have been able to produce a quite professional product with very little effort. Although it is very intuitive, FoxPro comes with quite a few Wizards, each stepping in to help automate tasks such as the Report Wizard and the Graph Wizard. The getting started tutorial is a great way to get introduced to the wide range of functions and features at your disposal. Pick this package up and give it a try! You will be surprised at how fast it will boost your database productivity. Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, VA 98052-6399 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK | Interesting people you should know about . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred Brucker is the author of {COMMO}, the best shareware terminal program in existence for DOS! It is resource sensitive and will easily find a home on your laptop or desktop machine! The latest version of {COMMO} is our FTP pick of the week! We recently interviewed Fred via email . . . PG: How did the idea for a terminal program come about? FB: In 1988 I bought a new computer. My old machine didn't have a hard drive, so I wanted to link the two machines together with a null modem cable. As an exercise, I wrote a tiny program in assembly language to send and receive files. That program eventually became {COMMO}. PG: Why did you name the program {COMMO}, especially the braces? FB: I saw the words "commo port" in the IBM PC BIOS source code listing. That's how they referred to the serial port. So I called my little program "Commo." Later I added the curly braces since they were so prevalent in the setup and macro files. PG: How successful has {COMMO} been? Dollar amount? If not, how about giving us a "enough to live on" estimate or so. FB: It's been enough for a frugal person to live on (luckily, I'm one of those). PG: What is your day job? If it is {COMMO} what was it before? FB: It's been {COMMO} for a few years now. Previously I worked for a number of companies doing assembly language programming. PG: Describe your home PC for the audience . . FB: My work machine is a clone 486 SX 25 mHz. It has 8 megs of RAM, a 125 meg hard drive and 6 serial ports. I run DOS 5.0 -- no GUI's. PG: What is in the future for {COMMO}? OS/2 version? Windows95 version? FB: I have no current plans for other operating systems, although I may consider an OS/2 text-mode version. I'd like to add FOSSIL support and enhance some existing features. PG: What's your favorite meal and why? FB: I like pasta because it's high in carbohydrates and low in fat. PG: If you could only have five programs on your Pc, excluding operating system/environment, what would they be? FB: TSE (The Semware Editor), A86 (assembler program), SLMR (mail reader), WordPerfect and {COMMO}, of course. Actually, those are the only programs I use. PG: What is the wackiest support message/call you have received? FB: {COMMO} users are very thoughtful and intelligent, so I can't say I've received many wacky support calls. Probably the weirdest are people trying to weasel free registrations (they don't get them). PG: Where do you think the future of BBSing is going? FB: There's a lot of competition from big online services, Internet providers, etc. Plus it seems to be getting more expensive and more complex to run a hobbyist board. So right now I'd say the future is a little murky. But I think there will always be some people who like to "push the envelope," testing the newest modems and software. --- END INTERVIEW This issue was brought to you by Readables, the publishing house that understands you! +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tired of pumping money into your BBS? | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |THE BBS CASH MACHINE is a book written by a sysop who has experience | |running a profitable BBS. With over 10 years sysoping experience, | |you'll gain the knowledge and know-how to attract .- ~ ~ -. | |and keep paying customers to your BBS! .~ ~. | | / \ | |Even if all you want is for your BBS to break | .o~o~o~o. | | |even, the author shows you how! 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