______ _ __ __ / ____/___ ____ ___ ____ __ __/ | / /___ / /____ _____ / / / __ \/ __ `__ \/ __ \/ / / / |/ / __ \/ __/ _ \/ ___/ / /___/ /_/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ / /| / /_/ / /_/ __(__ ) \____/\____/_/ /_/ /_/ .___/\__,_/_/ |_/\____/\__/\___/____/ /_/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date : December 22, 1995 |CompuNotes is a weekly publication available Issue : 29 |through email and many fine on-line networks. --------------------------|We cover the IBM computing world with CompuNotes is published |software/hardware reviews, news, hot web 4Point, Inc., |sites, cool FTP files and interviews. We also 135 W. Adams, Suite G9 |give away one software package a week to a St. Louis, MO 63122 |lucky winner for just reading our fine (314) 984-9691 voice |publication! Never dull, sometimes tardy, we (314) 984-9981 fax |are here to bring you the way it is! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Backroom Workers: |We are always looking for Patrick Grote, Managing Editor |people to write honest, (pg@supportu.com) |concise reviews for us. Send Doug Reed, Games Editor |a message to the autobot at (dreed@panda.uchc.edu) |REVIEW_LIST@supportu.com. You Judy Litt, Graphics Editor/Web Master |will receive the latest (jlitt@aol.com) |writer's guidelines and a Raymond Hines, Web Rambler |list of available software (solari@gate.net) |to review. Follow the Paul Ferrill, Languages Editor |instructions for requesting (ferrill@teas.eglin.af.mil) |software to review. Dennis MacPherson, Utilities Editor |----------------------------- (pctc@infi.net) | Go St. Louis Rams! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every issue of CompuNotes ever published can be found at the following ftp site: ftp.uu.net:/published/compunotes. Thanks to UUNET! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Our Web Site is at http://users.aol.com/CompNote/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To subscribe, send a message to majordomo@rust.net with the command subscribe compunotes your email address. Example: subscribe compunotes you@you.com To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@rust.net with the command unsubscribe compunotes your email address Example: unsubscribe compunotes you@you.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This Week's Contents: My Notes: 1) Happy Holidays, Mailing List Issues and Web Site! News: 1) Activision to Distribute More Software 2) Microrim Announces R:Web Reviews: 1) Jana Contact for Windows95 by Doug Reed (dreed@panda.uchc.edu) 2) Paparazzi by Gerry Imhoff (imhoffgj@maritz.com) Web Sites: 1) Software Publishing Association (http://www.spa.org) 2) First Virtual Holdings, Inc. (http://www.fv.com) FTP File: 1) Cenvi 2.0 for OS/2 2.X Interview: 1) Raymond Hines, Web Rambler ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Patrick's News Being The Publisher and Managing Editor Has Its Perks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Happy Holidays . . . | |---------------------- Happy Holidays to you and your families. The end of the year is special to most everyone in the world. It offers us spiritual and mental renewal and celebration. I urge each of you to go out of your way this holiday time and help someone who needs it. --------------------- |Mailing List . . . | --------------------- No word from the folks who handle the mailing list. I have no idea if new subscriptions are going through or not. More importantly, I am not sure if unsubscribes are working . . . Again, this will be sent in two parts! ----------------- |Web Site . . . | ----------------- Please consider adding our web site to your list of links on your homepage! We would love to get the exposure! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWS OF THE WEEK| This section is dedicated to verified news . . . All News (C)opyright Respective Owner - Will Only Reprint ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Activision Growing Again . . . | -------------------------------- Los Angeles, CA -- December 13, 1995 -- Underscoring its commitment to acquire high-quality games from third-party developers worldwide, Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) has signed an exclusive deal with Adeline Software International to publish Time Commando, the latest title by acclaimed multimedia producer Frederick Raynal (Alone in the Dark, Relentless/Little Big Adventure). Under the terms of the agreement, Activision will distribute the game on Windows=AE 95, MS-DOS=AE and Sony PlayStation in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. The announcement was made today by Bobby Kotick, Chairman and CEO, Activision, Inc. "This latest agreement reinforces our aim to work with some of the finest creators of interactive entertainment in bringing their products to the marketplace," explains Kotick. "We are committed to providing audiences with the most entertaining, innovative and original games available, and are very excited to be working with Frederick Raynal and his company on this extraordinary new project." A thrilling action game, Time Commando combines sophisticated 3-D gameplay with vivid animated sequences immersing the player into an explosive world of combat. Featuring nine distinct time periods, the player travels deep into the past and forward into the future. In a desperate attempt to return to his own era, the player battles over 60 enemies using 50 different types of weapons. "Activision's strong distribution network and marketing expertise makes this an excellent match," adds Paul de Senneville, CEO, Adeline Software International. "As one of the industry's premiere publishers, Activision is committed to ensuring that Time Commando will receive maximum exposure with audiences worldwide." Adeline Software International is part of the privately owned Delphine Group, headquartered in Paris with offices in Lyon. Established in 1993, Adeline is led by the widely recognized talent of Frederick Raynal. Known worldwide since the release of Alone in the Dark, Raynal and his team completed their first PC CD-ROM title, Relentless /Little Big Adenture, under the Adeline Software International brand in December 1994. Activision, Inc. is a publicly held developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software for Microsoft=AE Windows and MS-DOS=AE-compatible, Macintosh and other computers, as well as Nintendo, Sega, 3DO, and Sony PlayStation game systems. Headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in London, Tokyo and Sydney, the company sells and markets products under the Activision and Infocom trade names. -------------------------- Microrim and R:Web . . . | -------------------------- BELLEVUE, Wash.--(NetPOST)--Dec 15, 1995-- Microrim, Inc., a subsidiary of Abacus Software Group, announces the release of the first real database for the Internet. The product, called R:WEB, was partnered with SBT Internet systems and is the Internet version of Microrim's leading database management software, R:BASE. R:WEB provides companies that want to conduct business over the Internet with an affordable, powerful, and programming-free database solution. R:WEB allows companies to take orders for products or provide services directly through their "home page" on the Internet's graphically- friendly World Wide Web. It automatically links their Web page with their corporate database, whether it's an R:BASE database or any ODBC- compliant database, allowing real-time solutions to product orders and inquiries. R:WEB is designed to run on a Web server, similarly to the way the R:BASE database software runs over a local-area network server. When an Internet user accesses an R:WEB-based form on a Web site, R:WEB generates a connection to the associated database located on the company's network server. R:WEB then creates a Web document based on the form. This form appears on the customer's Internet browser, allowing him or her to input order information directly into the company's database exactly as an employee would input it into the database from an e-mail messaged order--which is currently the most prevalent option. R:WEB requires no Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Perl, or C++ programming knowledge. Internet customers can browse through real-time data such as inventory quantities, enter their own shipping and billing information, and easily request information directly from an R:BASE or ODBC-compliant database through the organization's WWW site. "The release of R:WEB opens the door to efficient and affordable Internet data processing. Imagine the power of ordering a product on- line and having the data processing completely automated. No time is lost re-entering e-mail messages from the Net into your database. R:WEB does it for you on the fly, and that saves a lot of money and time," explains Art Miller, President and CEO of Microrim. David Harris, President of SBT Internet Systems, commented: "R:WEB is ideal for companies that want an easy solution to conducting business on the Internet--whether they want to post and update their product catalog while processing orders at the same time, or have remote field sales representatives who need to enter sales orders and figures directly into their corporate database. R:WEB can reduce wide area network costs and long distance charges. Virtually every type and size of business can benefit by using the no-programming R:WEB to streamline their operations on-line." R:WEB includes the newly released R:BASE 5.5 for Windows as a free development tool. R:WEB provides on-line documentation to help users learn how to generate R:WEB-compatible forms. The price of R:WEB (including R:BASE 5.5) is $995 per Web server. It will be available directly from Microrim, through distributors and through various retail outlets. R:WEB and R:BASE 5.5 for Windows (which is required to design the forms) provide a time-tested, powerful fourth generation language (4GL) with embedded SQL and all the graphical interface design tools needed to design a truly powerful, and relatively inexpensive, Internet database solution. With R:BASE's powerful data integrity rules, constraints and password security, organizations using R:WEB forms have complete control of what information an Internet user can or cannot access. SBT Internet Systems is a subsidiary of Software Business Technologies, established in 1980 to develop software solutions for businesses. SBT develops and markets Internet and Database Applications through value added resellers and consultants. For more information about SBT products and services, contact Rich Jenkins, Internet Marketing Director at (415) 444-9967 or e-mail at rjen@sbt.com. SBT headquarters is located at 1401 Los Gamos Drive, San Rafael, California 94903. SBT's web site is http://www.sbt.com. Microrim, founded in 1981, was among the first companies to market databases for personal computers. Privately held until March 1995, Microrim is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the publicly held Abacus Software Group (ASG). ASG also owns the Edmonton-based Abacus Accounting Systems, Inc., producer of the Abacus II accounting software. The Microrim product line includes R:BASE 5.5 for Windows and OS/2 PM, R:BASE 4.5++ for DOS, R:BASE LAN Pack, R:BASE SQL Engine 2.0 for Windows, R:SCOPE, R:BASE Runtime, Westlake Imager, Zolton Graphics and R:BASE books and journals. Microrim headquarters is located at 15395 S.E. 30th Place, Bellevue, WA 98007. Microrim's web site is http://www.microrim.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ REVIEWS OF THE WEEK | Interesting software/hardware you may need . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Product: Jana95 Contact for Windows95 | Reviewed By: Doug Reed (dreed@panda.uchc.edu) | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Janna Contact 95 is a 'documentcentric' program designed to allow you to manage business contacts. Made by the upstart Canadian company Janna Systems, this is one of the first products on the market designed to take full advantage of all of Windows 95 new features. Janna Contact is a 32-bit program certified by Microsoft as fully Windows 95 and Microsoft Office compatible, fully supporting OLE 2.0, long file names, Explorer-type lists, right mouse button support, tabbed dialogs, and enhanced property sheets. Janna Contact is also designed for use over a network, fully integrating with Microsoft's Schedule+. In short, Janna Contact attempts to do it all when it comes to contact management. Installation of Janna Contact 95 from the CD is very easy; autoplay is supported, allowing the user to simply click on the setup button when the CD window pops up. Included with the software are two different tutorials, one designed for the absolute beginner and the other for more advanced users who may have used a contact program before. These tutorials are short, well done, and to the point. If I had one gripe about the tutorials, it is the rolling of the credits when you finish them; there is no way to skip this portion of the program. Accompanying the tutorials is a well done manual, which does a good job of laying out what the user can do with Janna Contact and how it can be personalized to the particular user. When launching Janna Contact 95, you immediately become aware that this truly is a 32-bit program. Because I use a 486DX250, loading and running Janna Contact was a little slow although I don't have any comparable contact management programs to judge it by. Janna Contact, however, does work very well with other applications running at the same time and appears to make good use of threads. The interface is clean and is very much smart button-oriented. It also comes with a fairly extensive help system that can show you how to do something quickly and easily. So it is easy to learn and runs okay, but what does it do? Janna is a very comprehensive contact manager. Not only does it keep track of contact's addresses and phone numbers, but it allows you to associate documents and objects with specific contacts. Objects that can be associated with contacts range from graphics files to audio files to full motion video! Contact information can be extensively customized to suit your needs. Personalized letters or memos are easily generated and can be either printed or faxed. I would think that the ability to tell Janna Contact to create a personalized letter which it would then, all by itself, take care of distribution of that letter, would be a huge plus for business users. Janna can also integrate your e-mail, providing an easy way to send and receive e-mail that can be easily associated with different contacts. Through Janna's support of OLE 2.0 and drag and drop, e-mailing documents and objects can be easily accomplished. In addition, Janna keeps track of your schedule. Presentation-wise, this is one of the nicest parts of Janna Contact. Your schedule can be shown daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. On a network, Janna Contact synchronizes with Microsoft's Schedule+ and allows for workgroup scheduling of meetings and other important occasions. One of the coolest things about Janna Contact is the alarm system. Rather than simply having text or audio alarms, Janna Contact allows for full multimedia alarms. Now you actually have a use for those multimedia movie clips you have downloaded from the Internet! For the corporate business user who has a lot of clients or other types of contacts, I think that Janna Contact 95 is a must have. Even for small businesses, I would think that Janna Contact could help ease the time and contact management burdens. I work at a university performing research, and I can see that Janna Contact would be a valuable asset even in academia. Why? Because it allows you to establish and maintain contacts with faculty from across the country, making it easier to maintain several collaborations all at the same time. I give Janna Contact 95 the highest praise: a permanent place on my hard drive! Janna Systems, Inc. 3080 Yonge St., Suite 6060 Toronto, ON M4N 3N1 (800)268-6107 http://www.janna.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Product: Paperazzi by Activision | Reviewed By: Gerry Imhoff (imhoffgj@maritz.com) | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Before you get the wrong impression, I really like Activision s recent release, "Paparazzi! Tales of Tinseltown". It was certainly a case of "good things are worth waiting for". But since I have to give my editor a reason why I was 2 days late with this review: Through no fault of the installation program, I had quite a time getting Paparazzi! up and running. Partly my fault, partly the price we pay for being in a very fast-moving industry. From the "My Fault" department: I ignored the fact that the system requirements were Windows 3.1, Win95, or something they referred to as a "Macintosh" (I m kidding, please, no letters from you Mac aficionados). Since I was already late for dinner and my PC was booted to Windows NT Workstation, I figured I d give it a shot anyway. (For those of you not paying attention, NT is not listed as a supported environment). After a 5-10 minute installation that went fine, I tried to fire up the game. Crash city. It even corrupted an NT system file called CTL3DV2.DLL that toasted my MS Office toolbar to the point I had to reinstall it. But like I said, my fault. After booting to Win95, I repeated the installation. Again, no apparent problems, although I do have one nit: After installing the program from the CD, you have to go into the QTW directory and execute Quick Time for Windows setup program as well. It would have been nice if the Paparazzi! setup triggered the QTW setup as well. Anyway, Paparazzi! and the latest version of QTW are now installed. Again, I fire up the game. Everything looks cool for the moment. Paparazzi! uses the on-screen metaphor of a hand-held "Palminator" as your window into the game. The Palminator is a multi-function device that allows you to watch TV, check your video messages, move around the city, and more. I select Channel 1 on the TV and wait in anticipation. And wait. And wait. Nothing. So I ask to see my messages and again wait in anticipation. And wait. And (you get the idea). This is getting personal. I REALLY want to play this game. After about a half hour of getting nowhere, I picked up the manual (I HATE it when that happens!) to check for troubleshooting tips. Imagine that. Page 6. "Problem: My QuickTime movies just show a line or are not appearing. Solution: You might not have the latest driver for your video card...". Not accepting defeat and now being VERY late for dinner, I head home. Leftover lasagna and 2 kids and a wife missing daddy. Played with the kids, read the bedtime stories, wife settled into watching the tube. Snuck downstairs to the home PC. Installed Paparazzi! for the 3rd time (Win95 again) and viola! Now for the good stuff. Paparazzi! is different than anything you've played before. You interact with the video on screen while it s playing. There are over two hours of live footage in the game, and a cast of over 60 actors and actresses. You select one of six personas to guide you through your 14-day journey through Tinseltown. Your goal is to capture 24 celeb s photos and complete the game without going broke or getting booted out of town. The personas range from total sleezebags to folks of fairly high integrity, which is key, as your admittance to various establishments and your payoff for various photos often depends on your persona. To locate your subjects, Paparazzi! must search through clues found on TV, messages left on your Palminator, publications like The Entertainer (weekly) and Teen Heat, and more clues throughout town. To make it more interesting, clues are accessible only at specific times on certain days. Quite a challenge. Your travels take you to Cheevers Cameras; Grand Habernet Hotel, the preferred abode of the stars; Tinseltown Municipal Court (where you re sure to catch some excited celebrities!); and various clubs, bars, parks, stores, and similar locales. Your subjects include such luminaries as tennis player Andre McConnor, Rusk Limburger, pop singer The Virgin Mary, former first lady Jackie Rae Gunn, TV talk show host Okra Salad Raffle, and other obvious and not-so-obvious take-offs of our favorite media icons. Your observation skills are of paramount importance; make sure you have enough cash to hang out at the hot spots (or "negotiate" your way in); don t hesitate to buy some folks a drink if you need a tip (but watch out for bum advice from the competition); conserve your film; and watch out for those celebrity lookalikes. And of course, be prepared the swingin swill who prefer their picture NOT be taken. All in all, a very enjoyable and engrossing game. Kind of your "King s Quest" or "Leisure Suit Larry" series on major steroids. Fun and recommended. Paparazzi! was developed by independent software creator Museworthy, Inc., and acquired/licensed by Activision. Museworthy has more stuff under development, also to be marketed by Activision. Activision 11601 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90025 310-473-9200, fax 310-479-4005 http://www.activision.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WEBSITES OF THE WEEK! | This section is devoted to cool WebSites . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ASoftware Publisher's Association| ---------------------------------- WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- In swift bipartisan fashion, the Senate today completed the congressional override of the president's scurrilous veto of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The entire software publishing industry is overjoyed with the courage of the many Senate Democrats who broke ranks with the president on this important piece of legislation. The Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 will benefit high technology companies and their investors, since it allows a freer flow of timely important information about expected future corporate performance. According to Ken Wasch, SPA president, "This new law goes a long way to ridding the high-tech competitive landscape of the blight of frivolous class action securities lawsuits." Software companies are a particular target of these types of lawsuits. A survey of publicly traded software companies showed more than half of them have been hit with a class action securities fraud suit. Wasch said, "For years, these frivolous suits have been draining millions of dollars of precious capital from our industry. Finally, Congress has shone some light on this dark side of our legal system." The software industry is especially pleased Congress included a strong safe harbor for forward-looking statements. Now, executives can make predictions about future corporate performance without fear of subjecting themselves and their companies to expensive class action litigation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend and eating up countless hours of management time. The Software Publishers Association is the principal trade association of the desktop software industry, representing the leading publishers as well as many start-up firms in the business, consumer and education markets. Its 1,200 members account for 90 percent of the sales of the U.S. packaged software industry. SPA is an international organization with offices both in the United States and Europe. SPA press releases are available through CompuServe (GO:SPAFORUM), on SPA's Web site at http://www.spa.org or through Fax-on-Demand at 800-637-6823. ------------------- Cash Online . . . | ------------------- MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Newsbytes News Network, a comprehensive source of daily telecom, computer, and interactive services news since 1983, and First Virtual Holdings Inc., are offering free one-month trial subscriptions to Newsbytes' E-Mail Subscription Service to new First Virtual account holders. Internet users who create a new account on First Virtual's Internet secure transaction system from the company's Web site at http://www.fv.com can choose a free one month gift subscription to Newsbytes News Network's award-winning newswire. The subscription service offers the complete text of Newsbytes' newswire delivered directly to a subscribers' Internet mailbox each business day. New account holders will receive twenty-four free issues under the offer. FV account holders who wish to continue receiving Newsbytes at the end of the free gift period can make their payment securely over the Internet using the First Virtual transaction system. Pierre-R. Wolff, First Virtual's director of marketing, emphasizes the security of the First Virtual Internet payment system: "Many of the solutions proposed for processing credit cards over the Net have been breached, and so reliability can only be counted on from a system such as First Virtual's." First Virtual reports tremendous growth since it first deployed its Internet payment system in October 1994. Wolff told Newsbytes, "First Virtual's consumer base has grown to over 70,000 consumers and continues to grow at approximately 10 to 12% compounded weekly." He expects that growth to continue: "First Virtual is in the process of working with some large institutions in order to provide their consumer bases with virtualPINs (FV accounts) which could bring the number of consumers much higher in a sh period of time." In addition to utilizing First Virtual's Internet payment system to conduct commerce securely over the Internet, Newsbytes uses First Virtual's InfoHaus service to distribute its newswire by e-mail. First Virtual calls the InfoHaus "the first-ever public-access information mall." Darren New, director of custom software development at FV and author of the InfoHaus software, claims the InfoHaus mailing list software used by Newsbytes is "the only for-fee mailing list manager in the world. People can subsc ribe, unsubscribe, pay, renew, get back issues, and change their addresses, all without having to contact the information provider." Newsbytes, a pioneering electronic publication offering both text and images, has provided daily coverage of the dynamic and complex computer and telecommunications industries since 1983. More than 150 media outlets, including print publications, online services, and database companies, are licensed to publish Newsbytes wire material. The wire service reports at least stories each day, filed by 19 staff correspondents worldwide. All reporting is first-hand, original, and objective. News is gathered from independent sources, trade shows, and interviews with top industry professionals. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minn., in the United States, Newsbytes News Network has bureaus in San Francisco, Denver, Washington DC, Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, Beijing, Manila, and New Delhi. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COOL FTP FILE OF THE WEEK | You may need this file . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CENVI FOR OS/2 VERSION 1.009 C-interpreter;bach/rexx-enhancer;Automator- CEnvi gives the OS/2 professional a complete C-like environment, including the standard library and kernel/DLL calls, in an easy-to- use form and all in one 150K executable. Now 'C' is as easy to use as a batch file, and can even mix with batch or REXX. Programming NOMBAS You can find this as CENVI2.ZIP on the following FTP site: ftp.crl.com/users/su/supportu/cenvi2.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK | Interesting people you should know about . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Internet Web Rambler, | Raymond Hines, (solari@gate.net)| --------------------------------- Greetings, readers. I'm Raymond Hines III, but better known as Ray or "Solari" on the net. I'm a Florida native, having been born in Daytona Beach on October 21, 1967. I currently reside in Sarasota, Florida and plan on getting hitched (married!) this coming May 18th to my fiance of 8 years! As for education, I attended several colleges, such as New College, the University of Florida, and a few community colleges to round things out. I've recently started my own company, called, "DreamStates Digi-Publishing" that publishes electronic magazines for bulletin board systems, especially those with graphical interfaces. I'm also getting into the Internet Access/Webmaster business in a few months. I guess I consider myself a "Net Vet" since I've been on the Internet since 1983, using a lovely Commodore 64 at the time as well as the school's computer printer-terminals (no CRTs!). Now, I sport a Pentium and an even lovelier Amiga computer to keep on computing. It's amazing how much the face of the Internet has changed, especially with the encroaching commercialism. It's somewhat sad to see this, but then again, it's to be expected with any "hot" medium, and it could even benefit us further in the form of free access to the Internet, etc. As for my position here as the officially designated "Web Rambler," I'll be rambling around the net looking for web sites to review as well as checking out software that's made for use with the Internet. If you've got any particularly interesting web sites for me to look at, or have some software you'd like me to review that's for the Internet, do email me at solari@gate.net. I'm looking forward to writing for COMPUNOTES and am very honored to be a part of it, thanks to Patrick Grote. --END OF ISSUE--