EvangeList Digest Wednesday, October 7 1998 Volume 01 : Number 1290
In this issue:
PR - XLR8'S New G3 333 and 400 MHZ Cards Tidbit - Latest Macintosh News Delivered To You Daily !! - Why Did You Get A Mac PR - An Inexpensive Environment For Mac Java Development Tidbit: NT Unsolved Mysteries !! - Mac Poll For Middle-Earth Game Tidbit - High Quality Compressed Music For the Mac From AT&T Research PR - Morphile 1.5 PR - PowerStitch - Pay As You Go Tidbit - G3 Upgrades and the RC5 -- DES Client ?? - Ear Training Software
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:34 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: PR - XLR8'S New G3 333 and 400 MHZ Cards
This announcement is from:
Lori A. Vierthaler, <LAV@interexinc.com>
XLR8 by Interex today announced the immediate shipping of its new MACh Speed G3 333 and 400 MHz cards, the fastest performance upgrade cards now available for Power Mac(tm) systems. Customers can call XLR8 today and have cards in their hands within 24 to 48 hours, via express delivery.
With a MacBench 4.0 processor score of 1399 the MACh Speed G3 400 MHz features 1MB of high-performance, backside cache with the bus running at 200 MHz (2 :1 ratio). The MACh Speed G3 333 MHz features 1MB of high-performance, backside cache with the bus running at 166 MHz (2:1 ratio); receiving a MacBench 4.0 processor score of 1154.
XLR8 has been careful to tangibly market and distribute quality accelerator cards that can be delivered to customers by the dates promised.
As with all XLR8's G3 upgrades, the MACh Speed G3 provides an extremely flexible and stable design. Unlike other cards with fixed bus speeds and ratios, the MACh Speed's exclusive MVP(tm) (Multiple Variable Processing) feature allows users complete control over the bus speed. This provides the total flexibility needed to maximize compatibility across all machines and models, including the 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500, 9600, Power Computing, PowerWave, Power Center, PowerTower XLR8's G3 333 and 400 MHz Cards - 2 and UMAX SuperMac S900 and J700. In addition to maximized compatibility, and because faster is always better, the new MACh Speed G3 is great for processor-intensive tasks such as graphics rendering, redrawing and filtering, video editing, games and more.
These features, combined with a highly competitive price and dependable availability, make XLR8's MACh Speed G3 cards a logical choice in the world of Mac upgrades. Street pricing for the MACh Speed G3 400 MHz card is $1,899 and the 333 MHz card is $1,299. The next card on the launching pad, the MACh Speed G3 366 MHz, has a scheduled availability date of mid to late October, with more details to be released later.
For more information, contact XLR8 by phone at 316-636-5544, via fax at 316-636-4616, or visit the company's website at:
<http://www.XLR8.com>
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:40 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: Tidbit - Latest Macintosh News Delivered To You Daily
This tidbit is from:
Markin Abras, <Markin@macdirectory.com>
MacDirectory, the industry leader in Macintosh product information has introduced eMac Daily - a daily new news service to the Macintosh community. MacDirectory is providing late-breaking industry news including new product announcements, new software, updates, and special deals.
Macintosh users are invited to subscribe to eMac Daily absolutely free of charge by simply sending an email to <mailto:eMac-Daily@macdirectory.com> and in the subject of the message type:SUBSCRIBE
One more thing, if you are worried about your privacy, your email address WILL NOT be shared with any other company, it will be used only to distribute our daily newsletter, eMac Daily.
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:34 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: !! - Why Did You Get A Mac
This action item is from:
Chris Marshall, <chris-marshall@cfm.ndirect.co.uk>
Hello fellow Mac users...
I am pleased to announce a new(ish) Web site by the name of NEW Direction, part of which (Why Mac?) will become dedicated to promoting the wonderful world of Mac. In this section Mac users are invited to add their reasons for buying a Mac, in return you could have a link to your Web site with a brief discription, not much I know but it is all I can offer at the time of writing.
The main reason I am writing now is to get a few of the Evangelists to spend a little time filling in the Why Mac? form. At the moment the Why Mac? section is nearly empty and after a recent 'review' of NEW Direction, by a fellow britstuff.com member, I really need some support from the Mac community. This 'review' was by a Wintel user who used the opportunity to rant about Macs being expensive and unpopular. He obviously did not go past the Home Page as there are other sections that do not contain Mac related items. I feel that he may have damaged my chances of gaining good reviews in the future as the Mac hating Wintel members of the britstuff.com will review my site purely to voice their ill-informed opinions.
If you have a good reason for buying a Mac (I'm sure you all do) then please pay a visit to NEW Direction <http://www.cfm.ndirect.co.uk> and visit the Why Mac? section.
Thanks for your time... Chris Marshall - NEW Direction
btw - the aforementioned 'review' can be read at <http://www.britstuff.com> under the North-West section.
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:39 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: PR - An Inexpensive Environment For Mac Java Development
This announcement is from:
<Wes.Butler@genieworks.com>
GenieWorks would like to announce SpotCheck 1.1.2. Finally, there is a java editor with a REAL difference. This is not just about color-coded syntax and code indentation... this is much more. Are you interested in setting up an inexpensive environment for Java development on the Mac? Check out SpotCheck, <http://www.genieworks.com>. It's not an IDE... just a VERY smart editor with automatic integration with the MRJ tools. And now it only costs $20.
SpotCheck is designed to help a Java programmer produce correct code without relying on confusing and untimely feedback from a compiler.
Specifically, SpotCheck identifies syntax errors and semantic errors (undefined names, type mismatches, etc.) -- those errors normally returned by a compiler. This analysis is performed after each edit, giving the programmer immediate feedback on errors. Now, you only need to compile to produce executable code.
What's new in v1.1.2?
* interface for compiling with Symantec's Visual Cafe * Metrowerks' CodeWarrior Pro 4 (IDE version 3.2) is supported * added checks for Typecast expressions * The checking code has been optimized significantly
As always:
* full support for the Java1.1.x language and APIs
For more information, or to download a free, fully-functional demo of SpotCheck 1.1.2, visit <http://www.genieworks.com/>.
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:36 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: Tidbit: NT Unsolved Mysteries
<ZMac1@aol.com>
People who work with NT Server and Macs run into bugs and problems. Many of the problems have solutions, but there are some that have no known solution, and in some cases, no known cause.
I've started collecting these on a page called the MacWindows NT Unsolved Mysteries:
<http://www.macwindows.com/NTunsolv.html>
These are not problems that one person is having, but problems that multiple readers have written to me about. For instance, Microsoft's fix to the "jumping icon" problem caused a new "jumping alias" bug, which currently has no fix. The page lists reports from readers and their experiences with the problems.
If you think you've discovered a new NT unsolved mystery, check out the page and let us know. Or if you think you can solve one of the NT unsolved mysteries, you'll get the credit for moving the problem to the MacWindows Server Tips page, which lists bugs that have solutions. Your experience could help other users.
John Rizzo Editor MacWindows, the Web Site for Macintosh-Windows Integration <http://www.macwindows.com/>
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:37 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: !! - Mac Poll For Middle-Earth Game
This action item is from:
Rodrigo Izurieta, <rodizurieta@impsat.net.ec>
Yosemite Entertainment is creating a massively multi-player online game called Middle-earth, based on the classic works of Professor J. R. R. Tolkien. Development is now underway, and Beta is anticipated in 1999.
You may check the site at:
<http://www.middle-earth.com>
You may post your opinions about this game's development at:
<http://www.vaultnetwork.com/boards/medev/>
As you may have guessed, they are excluding Macs from development and are conducting a poll to see if they should include Mac's. The poll is not doing very well for Mac's (as of the time I write this only 9% for Mac's).
So, please, if any Evangelistas are interested, please direct your browser to:
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:43 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: Tidbit - High Quality Compressed Music For the Mac From AT&T Research
This tidbit is from:
Steve Crandall, <esc@cnj.digex.net>
Our digitalphono site is now out of password protection and will be advertised in the very near future. The Mac player is much more stable than earlier versions (current version is 1.00b2) and it is wise to replace any old player.
We don't have a wide variety of PPCs at work, but our friends at Oberlin tell us it works well on 120MHz 604s and above. It works with some problems on 8100s (90MHz 601s) and I wouldn't try it on anything with less horsepower. It is very nice on an iMac.
I'll include a form letter I've been sending to friendly parties. Beating up on the Mac player would be useful! The user interface and functionality on the players needs a lot of work and we would be pleased to hear comments from clued in folks. Interest in this player from Mac users is being used as an indicator for Mac projects within AT&T Labs.
___
A few of us at AT&T Research have put up a digital music site and are looking for friendly beta users.
For decades people in our organization have been fascinated with sound and music (AT&T Research represents about 1/4 of the research part of Bell Laboratories after the AT&T/Lucent split). In the past decade and a half serious work has been done on the perceptual modeling of music, sonic field restoration, crypto, ecommerce and numerous supporting Internet ideas. Some of these ideas were commercialized as something called a2bmusic, but we decided that we needed a test bed to work on what is next.
Digitalphono is that testbed. We have invited (and continue to invite) musicians to let us host their music. Currently we offer clips and tracks at the highest qualities measured for compressed digital audio (serious tests at the Canadian Research Council and Oberlin College) - much higher than mp3 and other schemes.
Other neat stuff is in the pipeline, but for the moment musicians can show their wares (and sell them in the near future -- we aren't allowed to make money, but a third party will conduct the transactions) and the user can enjoy a growing body of 'net delivered music.
The site still has some rough edges -- we're not artists and our html leaves much to be desired -- but we will be improving it over the next few weeks. We currently have about 250 tracks from about 15 artists up, but this should dramatically increase in the near future with classical content from Harmonia-Mundi.
Our music is played at 128kbits/s -- about four times the speed of the average phoneline based modem link. This means that a 30 second clip will take about two minutes to download if you use such a modem. Cablemodem and LAN users will see much better performance and this is one of the reasons why we feel this work is important.
We and many others (including the Crandall family ferrets) enjoy the quality of the music. There are several other features that you can read about on our site -- the crypto schemes are particularly cool and mostly transparent to the user.
We are passionate about supporting multiple platforms. Currently players exist for Win95/98, NT3.51/4.0 Pentiums and Mac OS 8.0 and above PPCs. Linux should be supported in the next few months.
Give it a try at:
<http://www.digitalphono.com>
If you have problems, send messages to the help listed on the page. Comments and discussions can go to me ..
Steve Crandall
<esc@research.att.com>
For discussions I set up a chat group in the yahoo clubs section. People generally don't get involved in such things, but feel free to read, react and add comments.
<http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/compressedmusic>
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:38 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: PR - Morphile 1.5
This announcement is from:
Kevin Harris, <kevharris@pop.mindspring.com>
Software Perspectives today announced an update to its popular file creator and type editing utility for Mac OS. Morphile, version 1.5, provides improvements and is PowerPC native.
Morphile was released in May 1993 and has not been updated since that time. In an effort to provide future enhancements, Software Perspectives has rewritten much of the code from the ground up to produce this new version. It is now native for PowerPC and contains significant improvements to the overall software. Software Perspectives today also announced they would be providing a beefier, richly enhanced, version of the software sometime in early or mid 1999. As for now, the goal of the company was to update the code base to allow feature additions and scalability of the software, while at the same time, preserving stability and reliability.
Morphile is a drag and drop file creator and type editor with text file translation capabilities. Users can drag and drop a file or a large number of files onto Morphile and alter the creator and type codes for those files. This is useful when moving files to, and especially from, UNIX or Microsoft Windows based computers. Morphile's text translation capabilities provide a quick and easy method to removing unwanted control characters from text files.
Morphile will be available for $10 on October 5th. Registered users of Morphile 1.0 will be able to upgrade to version 1.5 at no charge, they will simply have to download it from the company's web site and use a serial number provided by Software Perspectives. For more information, visit the Software Perspectives web site at <http://www.sperspect.com>. If you are currently a Morphile 1.0 customer and would like information about upgrading to version 1.5, send e-mail to <techsupport@sperspect.com>.
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:42 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: PR - PowerStitch - Pay As You Go
This announcement is from:
marksteinberg, <marksteinberg@textiletech.com>
Textile Technologies LLC is pleased to announce the availability of PowerStitch "Pay As You Go" software for embroidery design. PowerStitch is the industry leading embroidery design software for the Macintosh only. We have been around since the original 128k Mac and are currently working on a Rhapsody/Mac OS X server product.
PowerStitch is a CAD program that allows you to take graphic files and convert them into instructions to run a commercial embroidery machine. Everyone has probably seen embroidery on garments but may not understand how it is created. Software such as ours is used to designate where the stitches should be placed and the embroidery machines follow these instructions. There are probably many embroidery shops in your local area. With our software you can design your own logos and take them to these shops to be put on shirts, hats, jackets, bags, etc. Embroidery is normally very expensive because of all the specialized work that it takes to create the designs. Embroidery design software generally sells for thousands of dollars. For example, PowerStitch sells for $12,995. This makes it prohibitive for the regular computer user to try their hand at designing.
PowerStitch "Pay As You Go" changes all that. Simply visit our web site at <http://www.textiletech.com> Download PowerStitch and you're ready to go. Training videos are also on our web site. All features are fully functional except for the ability to export in embroidery machine format. To export your designs simply call us to obtain a access code. You will only be charged for the stitches that you export.
We are looking to completely revolutionize our industry with this new and original concept. Help us get the Macintosh noticed in our industry.
For more information visit our site : <http://www.textiletech.com> or email us at: <mailto://sales@textiletech.com>
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Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:06:44 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: Tidbit - G3 Upgrades and the RC5 -- DES Client
This tidbit is from:
Jon & Janelle Gardner, <jgardner@kairosnet.com>
In case you aren't already aware of this:
Many older PowerPC-based Macintosh and Macintosh-compatible computers are upgradable to the new G3 (PPC 750) CPU via hardware offerings from several vendors. Once a 601-based Mac (such as the 61/71/81xx series) has been upgraded, the RC5/DES client will probaby continue to detect the original processor, and so may not run at optimal speed. The client should be forced to use the 603/604/750 core (click the "Processor" button in the preferences window), which will result in a 25-40% keyrate increase.
To give you some idea of the difference this can make: I just upgraded a 6116CD with a NewerTech G3 PDS card. After the upgrade, the RC5/DES client was churning keys at around 400 kkeys/s. Once I forced the client to use the 603/604/750 core, the keyrate jumped to over 500 kkeys/s.
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Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 08:06:53 -0700 From: John Halbig <john@garage.com> Subject: ?? - Ear Training Software
This request is from:
Scott MacKenzie, <scottm@b022.aone.net.au>
A friend of mine (a music teacher) is considering buying a computer to run some music education software called Auralia <http://www.rising.com.au/auralia2/> which is apparently quite a comprehensive ear training program with the capability for a music teacher to set exercises and tests and record results for all of the students. Unfortunately, it's only for Win 95/NT.
Anyone know of a similar program for Macintosh and if such a program is available in Australia?
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End of EvangeList Digest V1 #1290 *********************************
