Columbus: The World's First Intranet Desktop

Designed specifically for the Intranet, Columbus tames the anarchy of the Internet and makes its power manageable on your internal network, transforming chaos into the disciplined power of an Intranet. Its powerful, seamlessly-integrated environment enables users to easily access, manage, and share Intranet and Internet resources and information. With its Common Ground DigitalPaper™ technology, organizations can easily archive, manage, and distribute both legacy and newly-created documents, while users can collaboratively author documents in a natural and efficient manner. Network administrators can use Columbus' shared installation and centralized controls to manage access to the Intranet and Internet throughout the organization, minimizing the impact of user activities on valuable network bandwith.

Highlights
Sail through operations with Columbus
Information retriaval made easy
Automating and scheduling Intranet activities
Publishing, managing and distributing information with DigitalPaper™
Columbus provides for collaboration and information sharing
Columbus controls the Intranet desktop
Functionality:
System Requirements
Sales enquiries welcome

Highlights

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Sail Through Operations With Columbus

Columbus has been carefully designed to offer maximum performance and ease of use, so both the power worker and the casual user can quickly become proficient and productive when accessing the organizational Intranet or the external Internet. All Intranet/Internet information services - Web/Gopher browser, FTP, Telnet, MIME e-mail, News and more - are easily accessed through a seamless interface: you never have to think about protocols to use, or how to access information, just point and click. The Columbus NetBook organized Intranet resources in a natural fashion - URLs, e-mail addresses, and hosts - and you can combine and organize resources in as many different groups as you like. An MDI-compliant interface - familiar to all Windows users - means that you can open as many windows as you want, so you can use it just like you do a paper desktop. And the unique multithreaded, timeslicing architecture of Columbus delivers true multitasking under Windows for uninterrupted operation - you'll virtually never see the hourglass!

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Information Retrieval Made Easy With Columbus' Intelligent Gather and Search

Columbus' Gather tool automates the tedious task of Web research, so you can spend more time using Web information and less time finding and saving it. Gather automatically retrieves Web pages and any corresponding links, then fully indexes them and stores them on your hard disk - as HTML or text - for off-line access. The integrated Verity™ Search engine lets you find Gathered information with Boolean, proximity, fuzzy, and other complex search methods. You control depth of access (number of links), size of retrieved files, type of retrieved files, maximum Gather time, and number of attempts; and Gather can even automatically update previously accessed pages.

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Automating and Scheduling Intranet Activities

The Activity Manager and Scheduler lets you automate virtually any task, freeing you for more productive work while Columbus keeps your Intranet activities on course. Any activity can be executed at specified times or at regular intervals, deferred for later execution, or performed only during desktop idle time. Now your computer can help you do your job after hours, unattended! Since any activity can be cancelled or deferred at any time, a server failure never freezes your desktop. And, since many activities are persistent between sessions, your Columbus desktop always comes up ready for work, just as you left it.

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Publishing, Managing, and Distributing Information with DigitalPaper™

HTML is great for casual surfing, but organizations need more: effective document management is a must for an Intranet. Columbus integrates DigitalPaper™, a revolutionary, platform-independent protable electronic document format developed by Common Ground™, a Hummingbird Company. DigitalPaper™ is a powerful platform for Web document management that maintains the advantages of simplicity and ease of access offered by lightweight, easily-deployed Internet technologies. DigitalPaper™ maintains the exact appearance of the original document, regardless of fonts or applications present on the viewing desktop. With the DigitalPaper™ print driver you can use any Windows application to create DigitalPaper™ documents that link freely to and from HTML documents or other URL-accessible resources and can be sent via disk, e-mailed, or published on Web servers with no server support necessary.

To preserve network bandwidth and to save time, the network-friendly DigitalPaper™ ProViewer allows you to view DigitalPaper™ documents with the industry's first "Page On-Demand" viewing technology, or you may follow links, without downloading the entire document.

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Columbus Provides For Collaboration and Information Sharing

Columbus' Personal Web Server lets you share any directories, files, or documents (DigitalPaper™, text or HTML) throughout your Intranet without requiring any knowledge of HTTP or HTML. You can even create multiple password-protected Web servers to point to different collections of information. The Personal Web Server works with any remote access solution for easy off-site access to directories, files, and documents; and you can use the export capabilities of the NetBook to create and maintain shared hotlists. Best of all, the read-only nature of HTTP means you can share files and information without degrading network security!

The highlighting, hyperlinking, and annotation capabilities built into the DigitalPaper™ ProViewer promote simple, natural, dynamic collaboration via e-mail. Multiple layers of annotation enable you to keep track of everyone's contributions. And the ProViewer can even be embedded in DigitalPaper™ documents to include collaborators not equipped with Columbus desktop; it requires no system-strangling DLLs for font support and no installation on the recipient's computer, just a simple double-click. The DigitalPaper™ MiniViewer can also be embedded in DigitalPaper™ documents for read-only access to portable electronic document. Furthermore, Columbus' advanced, web-friendly e-mail enables you to exchange files, images and live URLs; you can share useful resources without network impact just by pointing to them, and the drag-and-drop file inclusion greatly simplifies collaboration.

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Columbus Controls the Intranet Desktop

A network administrator's time is a valuable organizational resource, so Columbus offers installation from a central file server to automate desktop configuration. And because, unlike the relatively unstructured Internet, an Intranet must be organized to support organizational goals, Columbus offers a powerful set of tools and capabilities that enable a network administrator to focus users' activities and access capabilities in the right direction. User Restriction Files (URFs) resident on the server control time, priority, and type of user activities, reducing network impact and removing the temptation of non-organizatinal activities. User Database (UDB) templates on the server let administrators automatically configure desktop NetBook and user profiles, formalizing organizational information needs and helping users to become productive immediately by giving them a complete starting list of useful URLs, e-mail addresses, and servers.

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Functionality

Communication Applications

Browser
  • HTML 2.0 compliant, with Netscape™ extensions such as tables, background images etc.
  • Access WWW and Gopher sites
  • Supports GIF, JPEG, DIB, and XBMP inline images formats
  • Images fetched after text is retrieved
  • Web pages may be viewed and edited in HTML source format
  • Preview and print documents
  • View multiple pages simultaneously
  • Inline image viewing can be turned off for faster access

E-mail
  • Supports SMTP and POP3
  • MIME support for file attachment
  • UUencode/UUdecode handled automatically: attachments appear like MIME attachments within the body of the message
  • Drag and drop file insertion
  • Web-friendly: Support for live URL links
  • Maintains multiple Intranet/Internet accounts
  • Hierchical message storage
  • Three mail-handling options: download and leave messages on server, download and delete from server, download and delete from server only when deleted from client

Network News Reader
  • Threaded architecture lets users open multiple newsgroups simultaneously
  • Filtering and reading options included
  • All messages can be downloaded into message folders, printed, or mailed to other users
  • News articles can be indexed and searched
  • Gather activity can be fully controlled by user (run, pause, stop), and if interrupted, will resume automatically at next session
  • Re-Gather and refresh Gather permits update of the previously gathered files
  • Powerful text Search and collections on multiple documents

FTP
  • Graphical drag-and-drop file transfer and directory management
  • Supports both passive and active connections automatically
  • Connects to both anonymous and password accounts
  • Firewall and proxy support

Terminal
  • Supports both telnet and rlogin sessions
  • VT52 and VT100 terminal emulation
  • Multiple simultaneous sessions
  • Copy and paste, local printing

TCP/IP Support
  • Integrates Hummingbird's Windows low-memory-impact VxD-based TCP/IP
  • Winsock 1.1 compliant
  • SLIP and PPP with integrated dialer
  • Finger, Whois, Echo, and other network information functionality included

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Desktop Information, Retrieval, Management, and Distribution

Gather and Search
  • Retrieve Web pages and all corresponding links automatically
  • Store on local hard drive with all links intact for off-line access
  • Fully indexes retrieved pages for copmlex searches
  • Integrated Verity Search engine supports Boolean, proximity, fuzzy, and other search types
  • Can maintain multiple search indexes
  • User-definable conditions: depth of search (number of links), number of pages, size of file, exclude/include images, maximum Gather time, maximum number of tries
  • Store Gathered pages as text and HTML
  • Gather sessions resume automatically at start-up if interrupted
  • Refresh Gather automates updating of previously Gathered pages
  • Activity Manager and Scheduler
  • Pause, defer, schedule, or cancel any activity at any time
  • Activity Manager can be invoked by a double click at any time
  • Schedule activities for pre-determined time or regular intervals
  • Schedule activities for operation only during desktop idle time

Netbook
  • Stores URLs, e-mail addresses, and servers
  • Any resource can appear in any number of user-defined groups
  • E-mail address book maintains real name, e-mail address, and description

Terminal
  • Allows Telnet and Rlogin sessions
  • Supports VT100
  • Multiple simultaneous sessions
  • Copy and paste, local printing, and text attribute color mapping
  • Contents of NetBook can be imported/exported

Personal Web Server
  • Optional activation
  • Password protection
  • Distribute directories, files, and HTML or DigitalPaper™ documents with complete security
  • Multiple web servers may be activated pointing to different information sets
  • Works with remote access solutions for off-site access to information
  • Logs number of files served out, number of accesses, and IP addresses of hosts that have accessed the server

System Monitor
  • Monitor network transmissions
  • Examines WinSock-related information

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Collaborative Authoring and Document Management

DigitalPaper™ Portable Electronic Document Technology
  • Platform-independent
  • Maintains exact appearance of document regardless of applications or fonts installed on viewing desktop
  • No system-strangling DLL needed for font support
  • TrueDoc font technology embeds dynamically-scaled font outlines for exact replication
  • Driver generates hyperlinked, colloborative documents from any Windows applications
  • DigitalPaper™ documents links freely to and from any HTML document or other URL-accessible resource
  • JPEG and text compression reduces file size
  • PixelGrade anti-aliasing for sharp on-screen viewing at any screen size or resolution
  • Embeddable viewers require no installation, activate with double click
  • Documents may be sent via disk, e-mail, or posted on Web servers with no server support necessary

ProViewer
  • Delivers simple, natural, dynamic collaboration via e-mail
  • Built-in annotation, hyperlinking, highlighting, "sticky notes"
  • Multiple layer annotation tracks individual contributions
  • Embeddable viewer includes non-Columbus desktops anywhere in the world in collaborative authoring efforts
  • Available for PC and Macintosh for cross-platform collaboration

MiniViewer
  • Small (250KB) size reduces network impact of embedded viewer
  • Read-only operation
  • Allows viewing, printing and navigation

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Administrative Functions

  • Shared server installation automates desktop setup, reduces cost of ownership
  • User Restriction Files (URFs) resident on server, control time, priority, and type of user access and activities
  • User Database File (UDB) templates automate set-up of NetBook and user profiles
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System Requirements

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Sales enquiries welcome:

Hummingbird Sales at (416) 496-2200 or sales@hummingbird.com

Copyright © 1996, Hummingbird Communications Ltd. - All rights reserved.