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May 29, 1999
News
- Mac users and households with combinations of Macs and PCs have a lot to look forward to
now that Farallon has released their HomeLine home networking product. The $139 starter
kit includes two PCI cards and all the software you need to connect either two Macs or a
Mac and PC in a simple home network using your existing phone lines. Like other PC-only
products that have been announced from other vendors, the Farallon HomeLine products
conform to the Home PhoneLine Networking Association standard and provide a 1 MBps
connection over regular phone lines. All you do is install the cross-platform cards into
any Mac or PC with an open PCI slot, plug it into the phone line, plug any phones or faxes
into the pass-through port, and then install the necessary software from the single,
cross-platform CD. Once you do, you’ll have a simple home network without the hassles
of laying wire, using hubs and so on. And once the network is created, you can share a
single Internet connection—whether it be through a 56K analog modem, ISDN, DSL line
or a cable modem connection—through both computers. You can even use both a Mac and a
PC simultaneously. In addition to the software necessary to share either a cross-platform,
or two-Mac or two-PC connection to the Internet, Farallon also bundles demo copies of
Miramar’s MacLan Connect, which lets you share files and printers across platforms,
as well as their own Timbuktu, which lets you remotely control a Mac from a PC or vice
versa. All together, this gives you just about everything you need to take full advantage
of your simple, cross-platform network. If you want to add either more PCs or Macs, you
can do so via $79 Single packs, which include a single PCI card and the necessary
software. Also, because HomeLine conforms to the HPNA standard, it should also work with
other HPNA-compliant products, such as Intel’s recently introduced AnyPoint.
- Here’s an interesting one that’s bound to stir up a lot of controversy. A new
start-up company called Third Voice introduced similarly named web browser add-on that
lets you add post-it note-style commentaries to any page on the web. In order to see (or
post) the notes, you need to download this free add-on, which in its current beta state
only works with IE 4.0 under Windows, although the company has also announced support for
Netscape 4.x and IE 5.0. Basically what this add-on does is keeps a record of any text
comments that users of this software create and then stores them on special servers that
Third Voice maintains. Then, when you visit a particular site with this software turned
on, it checks these servers and inserts small markers within your browser’s display
of the page to indicate where any comments have been made. The software does not, I
repeat, does not, let you change the layout or add these marks to the web sites
themselves. The concept the company is promoting is they want anyone to be able to comment
on any web site and let others see their comments. It’s actually a very clever idea
because, of course, most people who have web sites will also want to download the software
to see what anyone has said about their site. Once the comments are posted they cannot be
edited, but they are time-limited so they will eventually be archived. Also, any time the
content on a page changes, the notes will get "detached", although users will
still be able to access them under an Other category. While I think the idea of this
product is interesting, I think it’s going to lead to a real uproar because my bet is
there’s going to be a lot of trashing of sites and real misuse of the product.
- AMD this week unveiled a new mobile version of their K6-III processor, called the
K6-III-P (for portable) at speeds of up to 380 MHz, which gives them the crown as the
fastest current mobile processor available (the Pentium II and Celerons currently top out
at 366 MHz). The K6-III P, which Compaq will be using in a new line of Presario notebooks,
includes 256K of onboard L2 cache that runs at the full speed of the processor and also
supports up to 1 MB of Level 3 cache via a 100 MHz system bus connection. Bottom line is
that this chip should be very fast and early benchmarks I saw showed that it was very
similar to the performance of the current top-of-the-line PII mobile chip.
- Speaking of the K6, that’s the processor you’ll find at the heart of HP’s
newest PC, the $599 Pavillion 4320. The 4320 features a 333 MHz K6-2 processor, 32 MB of
SDRAM, 4 GB hard drive, 32X CD-ROM, 56K modem and more. It’s also bundled with
Windows 98 and Microsoft Works.
- Microsoft has a new web authoring type application called Vizact 2000 that’s part
Microsoft Word, part PowerPoint, part FrontPage and part LiquidMotion. Basically, the $149
Vizact 2000, a preview version of which is currently available for free at
Microsoft’s web site, provides a Word-type interface, but lets you create
interactive, animated documents that can be used on web sites and for company Intranets.
Vizact 2000 includes a timeline that lets you determine when certain elements of a page
get displayed, such as showing bullet points one at a time, or when a sound or video item
should start playing and so on. In addition, you can use the timeline to synchronize
elements so that, for example, a sound file plays as a particular bullet point hits the
screen. Vizact can also do things like automatically create rollover button effects,
interactive outline, tables that automatically adjust their layout as you move a mouse
over them and more. Despite some of these relatively sophisticated applications, Microsoft
is touting this new program more at the Word user than, say, the FrontPage user. One big
downside of all these cool effects is that they can only be seen by people using IE 5.0,
which limits the total possible audience. Again, if you want to check it out for free, you
can download a version (for Windows only) from the Microsoft site.
- Are you looking for a product that can keep your kids (or other peering eyes) from
getting at your computer? You might want to check out PC Nanny, a new application from the
same company that does the Net Nanny Internet filtering software. PC Nanny provides
encryption and other basic security features that can make sure no one but you can get to
your most important files.
- Finally, 3COM this week announced their entry into the USB video camera market with the
debut of the $149 HomeConnect USB Video Camera, a Windows-only product. The camera can be
used both to digitize moving images and to take snapshots with its one-button capture
feature. 3COM bundles with the device software that enables you to capture and edit moving
video, send video e-mail, make video pone calls over the Internet and even create a web
cam feature on a web site. Find out more from the link I provide on my This Week’s
Links page.
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