The best thing about writing this column is you get to take your pick of the most exciting gadgets, gizmos, controversies and computer programs that roll by each week on the binary beat.
The worst thing about writing this column is you are forced to take your pick of the most exciting gadgets, gizmos, controversies and computer programs that roll by each week on the binary beat.
In taking each week’s pick, I must ignore enormous amounts of stuff that pours in that I know would be interesting and valuable to readers.
Full phalanxes of faxes are force-folded into wads of high-tech origami in a mailbox already jammed with the daily double dozen press releases in envelopes.
Fleets of fat Manila folders along with flights of Federal Express boxes labeled “Extremely Urgent” totter atop unopened boxes from UPS filled with software and hardware sent for evaluation.
The phone rings so often that some days I can’t get through my voice mail because while I’m listening to the incoming stuff the thing keeps on ringing with new calls.
The result is predictable and, I think, kind of sad. People calling with boffo ideas never get called back. Brilliantly crafted press kits and news of great new products get deep-sixed along with the dross.
So today, to illustrate that point, a bunch of brief bows to a fraction of what the last week or so has brought in.
CompuServe lite? The new chief executive at H&R Block Inc., Ameritech veteran Richard Brown, held a conference call with reporters last Tuesday to disclose plans for an all-out drive by the world’s biggest on-line service, H&R’s CompuServe unit, to confront current competitors, America Online and Prodigy, and the looming Microsoft Network.
The game plan includes a $70 million advertising campaign, steep cuts in charges to CompuServe customers and the creation of a dumbed-down version of CompuServe, maybe called WOW!, complete with nice big, fat simple icons to match archrival Prodigy’s simple structure. Likely cost to subscribers? Maybe six bucks per month for the lite version. CompuServe’s regular version will cost $9.95 per month.
Is Compuserve on the H&R block? When I asked outgoing CEO Thomas Block and Brown, who was named H&R’s CEO last week, whether this meant the company has stopped widely reported plans to explore whether to sell its on-line CompuServe gold mine and stick to the H&R Block tax-preparation end of the business, Brown said, “We’re not ruling out anything.”
Mr. Block, who is retiring and presumably cashing in his chips, said nada.
You better love producing software because it isn’t going to make you rich anymore: The Chicago Software Association released a study by accounting giant Coopers & Lybrand of salaries for bosses and drones in the Chicago area’s 41 largest software companies and found the average software CEO knocks down a mere $131,000 in base pay.
For chief technology officer, the 41 area software houses paid a lousy $80,000, and the heads of human resources departments earned $47,000 base pay. I know, I know, $131K ain’t exactly hay, but Bill Gates probably spills that much opening Dom Perignon every time another Windows 95 deal goes through.
Lord of the token-rings: Andrew Corp., the thriving Orland Park-based computer hardware and electronics company, has expanded its presence in the lucrative Local Area Network business of linking personal computers with a line of NetLynx Token-Ring adapter cards for as low as $350 apiece.
Andrew CEO Floyd L. English was paid $1,565,839 last year, a strong indication the software crowd should give some thought to crossing over to the hardware side of the binary beat.
Coping with Copland: Apple Computer Inc.’s marketing gurus dropped by the interactive on-line, multimedia sweatshop here on Michigan Avenue to give me a preview of the company’s project code-named Copland, the new Mac-operating system on tap to replace the current System 7.5
To get briefed on July 24, I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement in effect until the official debut at the big MacWorld computer show in Boston Monday, but nothing I signed keeps me from reporting that the demo confirmed widespread coverage in the Mac-oriented trade press that Copland, or System 8.0, will bring stunning changes to the Macintosh desktop just as Windows 95 has to the PC.
In fact, many of the changes are clearly aimed at giving Macintosh some of the more striking graphical whiz-bangs that Microsoft added to Windows 95 in Microsoft’s own effort to make Windows 95 something of a clone of the Mac only with added features.
For example, Copland lets you reduce each program you have running to what Apple calls a “tab” that appears at the bottom of the screen and can be clicked to restore the running program to a full window.
With these new bottom-of-the-screen tabs, Copland copies the new toolbar feature on Windows 95 that does the same thing to let users see at a glance what programs they are running at any given time.
Asked pointedly if Apple copied ideas from Microsoft in this case, Apple software exec Adam Samuels said, “Of course we look at what our competitors are doing.”
I should hope so. Microsoft has swiped about every idea Apple ever had, short of putting a piece of fruit on the outside of the box.
Gold mine on-line: The New York investment banking firm of Veronis, Suhler & Associates had great news for Internet entrepreneurs and bad news for the on-line Big Three of CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy July 27 when it released its 9th annual Communications Industry Forecast showing the Internet is, indeed, the hula hoop of the I-way.
The banking firm interviewed 1,000 corporate experts and concluded that by 1999 people will have moved from the Big Three in favor of Internet access via the World Wide Web. Spending for this sort of Internet access will leap from $50 million in 1994 to $3.5 billion by 1999, a compound annual growth rate of 135.8 percent, as the bankers’ study put it.
The survey, which also follows everything from newspapers to television to magazines and radio, predicted that a whopping 22.5 million computer and modem-equipped households will be subscribing to an on-line service or Internet provider by 1999, up hugely from the current 8.5 million.
Get a life, Hollywood: The people at Rolling Meadows-based Information Systems Audit and Control Association, which specializes in Internet security, called on July 31 complaining that “The Net,” the new Sandra Bullock cyberthriller, “inaccurately fans public fear of computer communication” by overstating the power of crazed hackers to reach out on-line and use government databases to destroy people they don’t like.
As the group’s president, Jon Singleton, put it, ” . . . characters in this movie were far more adept at linking government sources than the government is.”
Oh what a Web we weave: This week’s additions on the World Wide Web include Reuters New Media Inc. adding its news wires to the popular Yahoo Internet guide.
Point your browser to http://www.yahoo.com and choose “headlines” from the icons at the top of the page. The advertising-supported service is free to anybody with a browser and includes the global wire service’s instant news bulletins as well as hot links to longer stories.
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Tribune computer writer James Coates can be reached via the Internet at jcoates@aol.com
