The U.S. Postal Service has launched a test program, known as the "Electronic Commerce Services," which will postmark e-mail messages and ensure privacy. The system places time/date stamps on e-mail, providing proof they were sent and ensuring accuracy of copies. The system will also provide an archive service. The ECS is slated to be widely available next year.
--Jonathan Erickson
Over the last decade, many technologies have challenged the 3.5-inch diskette, from 20-MB "flopticals" to 600-MB opticals. Iomega might have finally succeeded in burying the venerable media. Its 100-MB "ZIP" drive is inexpensive, compact, comes in IDE, parallel, and SCSI versions, and, most importantly, has a cute name. One proof of ZIP's success is that at least two other companies are now manufacturing ZIP media. It's rapidly becoming a standard with Mac users, to the extent that Power Computing now lists "ZIP" just below "CDROM" on its system-configuration web page. It's already popular with PC users, and may soon gain even more ground--American Megatrends has announced that its AMI BIOS will soon fully support ZIP as a 100-MB replacement for the traditional A: floppy drive, including the ability to boot directly from ZIP.
--Tim Kientzle
The Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has endorsed the PNG specification for cross-platform graphics. "We are confident that PNG provides the best lossless format for web graphical design," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C director. PNG (see "PNG: The Portable Network Graphic Format," by Lee D. Crocker, DDJ, July 1995) is an extensible file format for the lossless, portable storage of single raster images. PNG can store up to 16 bits of grayscale or 48 bits of color information.
--Deirdre Blake
Microsoft has launched a multimedia production studio called "M3P," short for "Microsoft Multimedia Productions." Following the model established by television studios and independent producers, M3P will deliver independently produced entertainment ranging from animations to documentaries--to the Internet via the Microsoft Network. M3P will provide distribution and financial support for third-party offerings.
--Monica Berg
Australian doctor Philip Nitschke has made suicide as easy as formatting your hard disk, with the aid of a laptop computer and Microsoft software. The computer is attached to a container of lethal drugs, and the software, written in Microsoft Access, asks the patient three times to confirm his or her desire to die. Doctor-assisted death is currently legal in Australia thanks to the Northern Territory's controversial Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.
--Eugene Eric Kim
Therapists and computer scientists at Georgia Tech and Emory University are using virtual-reality technology to help people get a grip on phobias, such as fear of flying, acrophobia (fear of heights), and other psychological disorders. Tagged "virtual-reality exposure therapy," treatment involves exposing subjects to anxiety-producing stimuli, then allowing the anxiety to attenuate. Current research is focusing on designing a virtual-reality airplane.
So far, VRE therapy has proven to be less expensive and more confidential than traditional treatment, while providing the therapist with greater control over multiple stimulus parameters.
--Jonathan Erickson
The operative words were "Java" and "middleware" at this fall's OS/2 Warp 4.0 launch in San Francisco. Both corporate heavyweights and smaller companies gave presentations and exhibited at the event. Of the smaller companies, several, such as Bulletproof Corporation and J.Stream, were devoted solely to Java applications, rather than native Warp applications.
IBM also hyped its OpenDoc support, and speech recognition and navigation features. The speech navigation supports continuous speech, as opposed to the discrete speech required by most speech recognition systems. Less ballyhooed but no less interesting were some of Warp's system administration features, including support for the Desktop Management Integration (DMI) APIs.
--Eugene Eric Kim
After nearly two decades, the Boston Computer Society has called it quits. In its heyday, the nonprofit BCS boasted over 50,000 members worldwide. Ironically, as the number of PCs grew, BCS membership shrank to fewer than 20,000 upon dissolution. The BCS was launched in 1977 by the then 13-year old Jonathan Rotenberg as a vehicle for helping people use and understand computers.
--Jonathan Erickson
Bell Communications researchers claim to have figured out how to reprogram "smart cards"--those plastic credit card-like devices with CPUs and RAM--using microwave ovens. Theoretically, users could "add" money to debit accounts and otherwise modify data. Smart-card vendors dispute the claims.
--Jonathan Erickson
Joining the ranks of Linux, FreeBSD, 386BSD, and DR-DOS, SCO is providing free licenses for educational and non-commercial use of its SCO OpenServer Desktop and Development System. Dubbed "Free SCO OpenServer," the system can be ordered only via the Internet (http://www.sco.com/Products/; $19.00 + shipping for the media), but is delivered only on CD-ROM. What you get is a single-user version of SCO OpenServer, boot diskette, boot-time loadable drivers diskette, and some documentation. No source code is included.
--Kevin Carlson