EvangeList Digest Saturday, April 4 1998 Volume 01 : Number 1144
In this issue:
Tidbit - The New WinHEC Spec Job - Programmer and Artist Needed (Austin TX) ;-) - April Fools Evangelism at SU PR - DaemonCron Lite 1.0, a 20k Cron Daemon (freeware) Tidbit - MacOS Buyer's Guide PR - FAXstf Home Edition PR - MooVer QT Movie Maker Updated PR--National Instruments Data Acq. and Motion Control Products
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Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 02:11:47 -0000 From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com> Subject: Tidbit - The New WinHEC Spec
Keyword: Advocacy, Why Macs Are Better
This tidbit is from:
Jon L. Gardner, Network Administrator <mailto:jon@ci.bryan.tx.us>
In case anyone was wondering, Wintel PCs don't work right. Bill Gates says so. Network World ran an article in the March 30 issue about Microsoft's announcement at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 98 (WinHEC 98). From the article:
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"Microsoft Corp. last week told 3,000 hardware engineers how to build PCs the Microsoft way, a plan that could make just about all the desktop machines in your shop obsolete. If the engineers accept the PC design guidelines handed out by Microsoft here at the [WinHEC 98], PCs will be dramatically different in a few years."
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Hardware designers must adhere to the new Microsoft guidelines in order to be able to affix the coveted Microsoft logo decal to their systems. What will this bring to your Wintel desktop? See if anything in this list sounds familiar:
* DVD support * Swappable device bay * Universal Serial Bus * 64Mb RAM (!) * TV cable * Full stereo sound * Multiple monitors * Integrated network card
It seems that Gates & Co. are tired of having to deal with the inherent limitations of standard PC hardware. The new standard will eliminate the ISA bus and MS-DOS (but I thought Windows 95 did that already...). Microsoft is also going to converge their operating systems...after Windows 98, everything will be Windows NT, and they suggest that everyone should upgrade to a minimum of 64Mb of RAM, and preferably 128Mb. For a standard, no-frills system, mind you.
Wintel may dominate the market share, but this new WinHEC spec, produced by none other than Microsoft, is yet another clear proof that Apple and its technologies are the dominant driving force in the PC industry. I seem to recall someone having said, "To see tomorrow's PC, look at today's Macintosh."
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Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 02:10:51 -0000 From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com> Subject: Job - Programmer and Artist Needed (Austin TX)
This job announcement is from:
J Harrison, <zzzaphod@worldnet.att.net>
Slave Labor Needed!!
Okay, It's not really that bad. But it might seem that way to someone with no ambition. I am the president of a fairly new corporation in the Austin area called 23 Skidoo, Inc. We are in the process of getting a fairly large (75-100 employees when it's fully running), full service, multi-media company off the ground. Presently, we are in need of a programmer and someone with the artistic ability and computer knowledge to help with web site development. If you can be depended on and are blessed with some leadership abilities; these positions can lead to departmental head positions. We cannot afford to pay for someone to relocate to Austin at this time so we are only looking for persons living in or on the verge of moving to the Greater Austin area. We have been trying to stay very diversified; doing everything from web sites and Tutorial CD's to music videos and games. If this sounds like something that might be of interest to you; please drop me an email so we can develop a correspondence.
Jeffrey M. Harrison President/23 Skidoo, Inc. <email:zzzaphod@worldnet.att.net>
P.S.-We are "Mac Only", and I intend to do my best to keep this company that way!
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Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 02:11:55 -0000 From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com> Subject: ;-) - April Fools Evangelism at SU
This tidbit is from:
David Dwiggins, <dmdwiggi@mailbox.syr.edu>
The Syracuse Record is the weekly publication put out by Syracuse University's publications department. Usually it is full of alumni news, coverage of academic research, on campus events, job openings, etc. For the last few years, they have published an April Fools edition for the week encompassing April 1. Re-christened the "Syracuse Retort," the first few pages of the paper satrize the university and its surroundings.
This year's bogus stories include information about a divine appearance by Dick Vitale on the roof of the school's domed stadium, an article covering a new snow sheild developed from left-over SDI technology, and other similar news.
The lead story boldly proclaims "SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY SOLD" and goes on to explain that the university has been bought by a Seattle computer billionaire and will now be known as Ralph University. Norton G. Ralph, a neighbor of Bill Gates, made his fortune in the computer industry as the head of Compucord International. "When desktop technology became the rage," the article states, "Ralph Filled an important niche by manufacturing power cords for Macintosh computers."
The article goes on to state that a quarter of the purchase money will be used to "replace all campus IBM-compatible computers with Macs."
Some people at SU raised quite a fuss last year when the department of Computing and Media Services announced a long term plan to phase out Macs in public computer clusters. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the publications office plans to hold on to their favorite platform for quite a while! ;)
MacOS Buyer's Guide has once again released a large update, this time with brand new features and pages.
The URL is <http://www.enproindia.com/macguide>
Changes/Additions
1) Everything has been updated to the latest prices.
2) A BRAND NEW guide to G3 upgrades has been added. Basically, you can: a) view all upgrade cards by price seperately for each manufacturer b) view ALL G3 upgrade cards (for desktops) by price .. this is very convenient c) for each upgrade card, the price, model, cache amount, cache speed, and compatible with computers is listed
3) Smaller updates have taken place throughout the whole Mac OS Buyer's Guide to improve ease and usability
FAXstf Home Edition is the ideal faxing system for the home. FAXstf Home Edition supports over 400 different modems, is faster than other fax software packages and was designed to utilize the power of PowerPC's. It allows you to fax from any application using a NEW Browser interface. This brand NEW interface is unique in its simplicity and intuitiveness, yet is powerful and robust. This FaxBrowser interface allows you to manage faxing from one window. Features include: Quicknote, Smart Dialing, Custom Cover pages, Fax scheduling, superior gray scale of 256 shades of gray and detailed log file showing verification of transmission. FAXstf has been selected as the best Macintosh fax software for the last three years by the American Facsimile Association.
FAXstf Home Edition is not an upgrade to Full Feature FAXstf but rather a new easier to use version. Home Edition sports our new browser interface and is the format for our Pro Edition that will be released in July.
This product has an introductory price of $39.00. Many Evangelists are already registered FAXstf 3.2 users, and for you the price is $29.00 and you get FAXstf 5.0 Pro for FREE + shipping when it is released.
To order FAXstf Home Edition contact STF at 1-800-700-1299 and identify yourself as an Evangelist or visit our web site at www.stfinc.com
esp Software has just announced the release of version 1.6 of their Macintosh QuickTime movie-building utility software, MooVer, now in English, German and Japanese languages. MooVer was awarded 5 mice on MacUser's Software Central site <http://www.hotfiles.com/swbrowse/MC10/4/0/mac-MC10404.html>!> MooVer is a $10 USA shareware Macintosh utility that creates a QuickTime movie from a sequence of image and sound files dropped onto it. It is perfect for creating computer animations, slide shows, or batch-converting images or sounds into QuickTime movie format. MooVer's goal is to let you create QuickTime movies quickly and easily. It is not intended to be a large full-featured movie editing program, but is instead a simple, easy-to-use movie builder.
MooVer works on any 68020 or better Macintosh, and is accelerated for PowerPC, and requires MacOS 7.1 or newer, and QuickTime 2.0 or newer.
Version 1.6 adds flexible scaling/cropping options, appearance manager support, & handles 8/16 bit mono/stereo sound files up to 44KBPS.
MooVer can read the following kinds of files as input: Macintosh Pict files, PICS animation files, Targa files, and System 7 sound files. MooVer will combine and compress all of the the image and sound files into a single QuickTime movie file, which can then be played back on any Macintosh-compatible or "Wintel"-compatible computer using QuickTime and a movie-player application. MooVer has some additional features that make it useful for special purpose projects: + A folder full of image files can be dropped onto MooVer for large-scale batch processing. + It has a "Quiet Mode" where it will use previously chosen settings for any new movies, without prompting for settings each time. + It can be driven by simple AppleScript commands for automated movie making. + It can add each file name or user-defined strings as subtitles under each frame. + Movies can be saved in Mac OS-QuickTime or cross-platform-QuickTime (flattened) format. + It will pass any alpha channel information through to the movie for transparent or "blue-screen" effects.
MooVer is fully functional shareware, so all of its features are enabled for you to try. It costs $10 USA for a single user, for individual or commercial use. Discounts for school use, and discounts for multi-user and site license packs are available, and you can now easily register via cash or check with esp Software, credit card or check with the Kagi shareware company, on-line from the web page, or with credit via CompuServe.
There is a web page for MooVer at esp Software, where you can always get the latest version and information: <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/espsw/moover.html> It can also be found on CompuServe (GO MACMULT or POVRAY), or on the internet at any Info-Mac mirror site at these partial paths: English: <info-mac/gst/mov/moover-16-us.hqx> German: <info-mac/gst/mov/moover-16-de.hqx> Japanese: <info-mac/gst/mov/moover-16-jp.hqx>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 14:02:21 -0800 From: Guy Kawasaki <Kawasaki@garage.com> Subject: PR--National Instruments Data Acq. and Motion Control Products
This announcement is from:
dudley.baker@natinst.com
National Instruments Extends Scientific/Engineering Solutions for the Macintosh with New Products for Data Acquisition and Motion Control
Austin, Texas. National Instruments announces the availability of 11 new PCI and PCMCIA plug-in data acquisition (DAQ) boards for Apple's Power Macintosh and PowerBook computers. The new boards, which include both high-performance and low-cost products, are suitable for a wide variety of Macintosh-based instrumentation applications used for measuring and controlling electrical signals such as voltage, current, and power and physical phenomena such as temperature, pressure, speed, and vibration. In addition to extending the line of DAQ boards available to Macintosh users, National Instruments has also announced six new PCI plug-in motion control boards. The new line of motion control boards can be used in a diverse number of factory control applications ranging from robotics control to assembly automation. All of the new boards are compatible with the company's LabVIEW graphical instrumentation software and come complete with driver software. Macintosh users can now choose from more than 30 National Instruments boards for data acquisition, image acquisition, motion control, GPIB instrument control, and VXI/VME instrument control when building Macintosh-based instrumentation solutions.
"Apple is delighted that National Instruments has expanded it's commitment to the Macintosh platform," said Creighton Nolte, Marketing Manager at Apple Computer. "More than doubling their product line sends a strong message to scientists and engineers that the Macintosh remains a leading platform for measurement and automation applications."
"We've worked closely with Apple over the years to develop compatible products for the Macintosh operating system," said Tim Dehne, Vice President of Marketing at National Instruments "When Apple announced the Macintosh II in 1987, we announced the first NuBus plug-in DAQ boards at the same time. We also worked closely with Apple during the development of the Power Macintosh to develop native versions of our LabVIEW software. Now, with our new PCI plug-in boards, scientists and engineers can extend the power of Macintosh for an unmatched level of performance and throughput in their applications."
About National Instruments National Instruments, the leading supplier of Macintosh-based measurement and automation products, was founded in 1976. The company manufactures hundreds of software and hardware products which, combined with the Macintosh, are used to replace and/or communicate with traditional instrumentation to acquire, analyze, and display data and to monitor and control processes. These Macintosh-based instrumentation systems are used by scientists and engineers worldwide for measurement and automation applications.
National Instruments stock is traded on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol NATI. Investment information may be obtained from the company's Investor Relations Department at (512) 349-5090 or by sending e-mail to <nati@natinst.com>.
Availability and for More Information The new DAQ and motion control boards for Macintosh are available immediately. For more information, contact National Instruments, 6504 Bridge Point Parkway, Austin, TX 78730-5039, (512) 258-7022. Or call toll free in the U.S. and Canada at (800) 433-3488, fax (512) 794-8411, e-mail <info@natinst.com>. Readers can also access general information through the company's web site at <www.natinst.com>
See Macintosh product information at <www.natinst.com/mac>
Product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.
___________________
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End of EvangeList Digest V1 #1144 *********************************
