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News You Can Cruise: Stuff and Trends Webside
from the premiere issue of ZD Internet Life


ZD Internet Life is your Webside source for the most up-to-date Internet news, reviews and trends. To get you into the swing of things, we give you a taste of what's happening here and in the magazine. For more information, join us online!

Snappy Video Snapshot

One of the joys of putting up your own Web page is building in graphics, including photographs. One of the hassles is shooting the photos with a traditional camera, then scanning them onto our hard drive. The Snappy Video Snapshot is a wonderful device for PC or Macintosh that plugs into your parallel port and makes your camcorder or VCR a high-resolution input device. Instead of taking pictures, just roll tape. When you find a frame you like, Snappy turns it into a remarkably sharp image, good enough for the most demanding online applications.

The Snappy module is about the size of a deck of cards, with a plug that goes into your parallel port on one end and a pair of video connectors on the side. That's it. All the adjustments are in the Snappy software program, which lets you control resolution, color, contrast, picture size, and much more. The control screens are fanciful renderings of control panels, replete with knobs and dials. They work just the way you'd expect them to, and you can either save the settings or reset everything to factory specs. The manual borders on the irreverent, but despite its jokey approach to capturing video, it communicates everything clearly.

Between the screens and the manual, you might get the impression that Snappy doesn't take its job seriously. It's all business, however, when it comes to making clean images from a variety of sources. Modern Hi-8 camcorders give the best results because of their higher-resolution CCD sensors. Their lenses, along with Snappy's software, let you do some neat tricks. For instance, you can put a color negative on a light table and use a macro setting to focus on it. Snappy will invert the colors and give you an nicely saturated image. Of course, it'll do the same thing with 35mm slides.

We shot a number of test images using stills, live action, and tape, in a variety of resolutions. Once we got the color balance right (our unit saw too much red), image captures became trivial: point and click. You can preview your image captures on your screen and watch as Snappy builds higher and higher resolution in a series of passes through its video memory and some complicated algorithms.

If reality is too boring or you have too much time on your hands, play with the bundled morphing and image manipulation software. Gryphon's Morph program is somewhat difficult to use, but it's up to the task. The image software is a subset of the full Matisse product, but it certainly does the job, and you can't beat the price. Even if you never do a Web page, you can still put Snappy to work putting snap into your presentations, building a computer-based slide show of scenes from your vacation, or even creating your own computer wallpaper.

Snappy Video Snapshot, $199
Play, Incorporated
2890 Kilgore Road
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670-6133
916-851-0800

Practical Peripherals ProClass PC288LCD

If you're one of those people who can never get enough information, this is the modem for you. The PC288's dominant feature is a backlit, three-line liquid crystal display that tells you the time of day, connect speed, line protocol, compression status, average transmission speed, and average receive speed. The connectors for your serial port, the telephone line, and the power are concealed in the base, making for a very neat desktop installation. Front-panel buttons allow you to select different operating modes and options, and a full array of LEDs tells you your connection status.

In operation, the PC288 is simple and trouble-free. It implements the full V.34 spec, which means that it goes as fast as you possibly can on an ordinary analog telephone line. V.34 is sensitive to the quality of the connection you get. A scrolling message on the display tells you whether the line quality is high, medium, or low, and you see the results in your connect speed to the host computer. High-quality lines almost always connect at a full 28.8 kilobits per second, while medium- and low-quality lines drive the speed down into the mid-20's or even into the high teens. If you're cruising the Web or intending to download a big piece of software, it makes sense to redial a couple of times until you get a clean line. If you need to change options for any reason, the menu system lets you do most of what you want from the modem's front panel, although you always have recourse to the modem's command set through a communications program. You can even put your own messages up on the display.

V.34 modems also support on-the-fly compression and decompression, so if you're talking to another V.34 modem and compression is turned on, you could be receiving data at several times the indicated 28.8 kbps. Such data rates may exceed the ability of your hardware or Windows 3.1 to keep up, so you'll probably want to make sure your machine has the right kind of chip for the serial port (a 16550) and fast driver software, such as Turbocom. Surprisingly, the manual barely touches on these topics. Your best bet is to call tech support or check out the PPI forum on CompuServe -- fine if you have an account there, not fine if you don't.

ProClass 288LCD, $459
Practical Peripherals, Inc.
375 Conejo Ridge Ave.
Thousand Oaks, CA 91361
805-497-4774

Ecco Pro 3.0

Right now, you should be asking yourself why you're reading a review of a personal information manager in an Internet-oriented magazine. But read on: Ecco Pro is a highly regarded PIM that features a hierarchical, outline-oriented way of storing information. Some time back, however, Ecco was acquired by NetManage, the company that produces the Chameleon line of Internet dialers, utilities, and browsers. It's only natural, then, that Ecco would pick up some Internet-related tricks in this, its newest release.

The whole purpose of a PIM is to capture information and make it easy for you to find things when you need them. Increasingly, the information you need is on-line in traditional information services or on the World-Wide Web. You don't necessarily want to store the information, since it changes so rapidly, but you do want to store its location so you can revisit it easily. Ecco Pro 3.0 includes an Internet Address Book. It comes preloaded with 2,000 entries, which should be enough for even the most intrepid datanaut. You can add your own, of course.

Ecco did a nice job of implementing the feature, relying on some traditional Ecco strengths and adding some new features. One of Ecco's nifty features has always been the "Shooter," a clipboard-like function that lets you highlight any information and send it to Ecco or to any other Windows application. This works from your Web browser, but is additionally enhanced so that it recognizes HTTP addresses and stores them as Internet addresses. When you shoot data into Ecco, it looks for words that you've set up as phrases of interest and auto-assigns the data into the appropriate folders.

You can launch most popular Web browsers from Ecco by simply clicking on the Web address in the Internet Address Book or by clicking on embedded Web addresses in any Ecco item. Next thing you know, you're there, looking at the site. It sure beats cutting and pasting.

Ecco has a wealth of other features that put it at the head of the PIM class, and it's vastly improved and expanded over Version 2.0. It includes all the usual PIM stuff, such as a calendar, notepads, folders, phone book, and data retrieval, but goes beyond with the Shooter, automatic assignment to folders, extensive customization, forms, and filters. Ecco Pro can make even the most meticulously tended hotlists look clunky and disorganized by comparison.

Ecco Pro 3.0, $180
NetManage
2340 130th Ave N.E.
Bellevue, WA 98005-1754
206-885-4272

GyroPoint Desk

How would you like a mouse that you could use on or off the desk, where the cursor tracks wherever your arm points? That's GyroPoint Desk, an ordinary-looking mouse, until you pick it up, turn it 90 degrees, and squeeze a button on its side. You glide your hand in a lazy arc. The cursor on the screen tracks it perfectly. You move, it moves. It's an eerie feeling at first, but you quickly grow used to it. Gyration, the parent company, engineered GyroPoint for presenters who wanted to control their cursors while standing, where using a mouse would be impractical. Some presenters use trackballs, but your thumb on a ball can't produce the same smooth horizontal and vertical motion that a mouse can. GyroPoint's motion-sensing mechanism responds the way a mouse would.

GyroPoint's creators didn't have the World-Wide Web in mind, but it seems ideal to us for navigating 3-D Web sites such as Worlds and the new VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)-based sites. With it, you can sit back in your chair and go wherever you please simply by moving your arm left and right, up and down. If you get tired of maneuvering at arm's length, just flop it down on the desk and it's a mouse again.

GyroPoint Desk, $149
Gyration, Inc.
12930 Saratoga Avenue, Building C
Saratoga, CA 95070
408-973-7808

Delrina CommSuite 95

It's not quite true that the Internet is only as good as the software you use to get at it, but heaven knows it doesn't hurt to use the best tools possible. If you're a PC user and you've already made the jump to Windows 95, Delrina is ready for you with a port of their excellent Windows communications suite. CommSuite 7.0 (the abrupt jump in version number -- from 4.0 to 7.0 -- signals their commitment to upgrading their Win 3.1 product) adds CyberJack, an Internet browser, to their strong WinFax/WinComm bundle.

CyberJack is clearly being groomed for stardom; the company is emphasizing this part of the software more than they are their stalwart WinComm. CyberJack uses a nifty Guidebook system to organize Web, FTP, Usenet, gopher, telnet and other sites -- more or less anything you'd ever use the Internet to reach. It offers newer users the option of finding what they want through Microsoft-like wizards that guide novices online; it also comes bundled with access to an international Internet service provider, and it promises to smooth the sometimes thorny process of setting up Microsoft's TCP/IP underpinnings for Net access. (Reports that it helps little old ladies across the street and rescues kittens stuck in trees are unconfirmed at press time.) The only thing it doesn't currently do is handle e-mail. Delrina has high hopes for getting this browser a healthy share of the browser market currently dominated by Netscape; at press time, the company was mulling over plans to make at least a small version of the browser available for free on the Net.

This is real 32-bit code. That phrase is nearly meaningless with the avalanche of Win95 products claiming to be 32-bit, but in this case it means that your modem activities don't pig out on system resources the way they used to. Everything -- fax, Net connection, even telephony (phone answering and message-taking) -- happens unobtrusively. In fact, the system-monitoring CommBar was occasionally the only notice we had that the machine was bringing in a fax while we worked in our other applications. Other Win95 advantages, such as OLE 2.0 support, are also present.) It's high time WinFax in particular showed a little system consideration; though we know that Win95's charms are mainly to be credited here, we're glad to have such a powerful, easy-to-use software collection available for the operating system we expect to be seeing a lot more of as time goes by.

Delrina CommSuite 95, $179
Delrina Corp.
6320 San Ignacio Avenue
San Jose, CA 95119-1209
408-363-2345

Panasonic PanaMedia 17

The Web is getting to be a multimedia kind of place. Sites bristle with RealAudio icons, audio players, and MIDI files. You can use the Net as a telephone, placing international calls for a fraction of the usual cost. As a result, your desktop is strewn with speakers and microphones, entangling your mouse and everything else.

Panasonic's PanaMedia 17 monitor looks so simple, you'd have thought someone would have done it years ago. Stereo speaker grilles are right in the monitor's bezel, which is no wider than that of the typical 17-inch monitor. A tiny opening on the monitor's chin hides a microphone. The sound, far from being tinny, is robust: surprising, considering that the grilles are so tall and narrow. The secret is that the speakers aren't behind the grilles at all, but down deep in the monitor's innards, where there's room for larger, better-fidelity speakers. Complex ducts bring the sound forward to you, improving and enriching it along the way.

Ever notice how no two sound files are ever recorded at the same level, how they go from a blare to a whisper and back again? The PanaMedia has level controls (and muting) right there on the front panel. No digging around the back of your machine for the volume control or mousing around for your mixer control panel. All the PanaMedia's connectors are on the back of the monitor, but if you want to use headphones or an auxiliary microphone, the jacks are conveniently located right up front. Oh, and by the way, it's got a great-looking screen, too.

PanaMedia 17, $999
Panasonic Monitor Division
Two Panasonic Way
Secaucus, NJ 07094
201-392-4500

Java: Web Stimulant of Choice

Java is cool. HotJava is cooler. Java is an object-oriented programming language created by Sun Microsystems, and HotJava is a World-Wide Web browser that embodies the language. At press time, both were in their infancy, alpha-level "technology releases" that showcase the potential of the language and its applications. Sun wrote the language as a replacement for C++, "minus the knives, guns, and mace," according to chief technology officer Eric Schmidt. Originally intended for sophisticated consumer devices such as PDAs, Java is now looking like it will become the language of choice for high-end Internet applications.

HotJava is cool because it contains an interpreter that can execute Java programs. The programs are downloaded to it from servers and executed locally. Thus you can interact more fully with a Web site, and have, in essence, a custom browser attuned to every Java-equipped Web site you visit. The typical Web site today is static, read-only. Tomorrow's sites will be far more interesting, interactive, and capable.

Of course, Java is only interesting if it's portable across multiple platforms, and it is. Although Sun says it currently runs only on Sparc and Windows NT, IBM is successfully running it under OS/2 with PMX extensions. Java applications compile to an intermediate code that can be read by all Java interpreters, regardless of platform, so all that's required is to write a Java interpreter for each platform or, as IBM did, provide an API that will run it.

By now, you may be worried about the idea of running browsers that can go anywhere and execute code from any server. The Mom in us says, "Get that out of your mouth! You don't know where it's been!" The Moms (and Dads) at Sun have thought about this, too. Java has two levels of protection built into it. First, the interpreter checks downloaded Java programs for integrity, so that they cannot be a vector for spreading viruses. Second, the language itself is devoid of critical read, write, and file creation and deletion functions that would enable unscrupulous programmers to create viruses or destructive programs. Hackers will doubtless test this claim, but it's critical to Java's wide acceptance.

Other vendors are confident that the approach will succeed. Netscape will include a Java interpreter in an upcoming version of Navigator. Netscape's adoption of Java is especially significant because Navigator is the most popular Web browser and to date has been the bellwether for future directions on the Web.

Java is designed to be extensible. Sun has defined a core set of APIs that will be present in each implementation of the interpreter. Beyond the core, developers are free to add platform-specific APIs. Also, browsers are not the only place where Java can work. Any program that goes out onto the Internet for its data can make use of Java.

Meanwhile, some developers remain puzzled by Java's mission. They understand the desirability of downloadable, platform-independent applications, but not why they would want interactivity in a Web application. Sun's Web site has a variety of applets that demonstrate various Java capabilities, and they're worth a look. You have to download the HotJava browser in order to run them, and of course, you need one of the supported platforms.

Java allows real-time interaction among multiple users, which will bring a whole new dimension to the Web. Some of Java's capabilities, such as animation and fancy text manipulation, may be useless for most business applications, but they're ideal for kiosk apps, where the goal is to attract attention. It'll take a couple of years for interface designers to figure out how to deliver useful 3-D business applications, and even longer for users to get used to them. But Java is ready now, which will be good news to interactive game designers and the avant garde of the Web page designers.

Internet Books: Read All About It

If you're still bewildered by cyberspace but eager to create your own Web page or market your products on-line, you can find plenty of free help and information on-line. But if you prefer the traditional method, a visit to your local bookstore will also leave you swimming in data. Here are some new releases from ZD Press and other outfits we think you may find useful.

Those who want to roll up their sleeves and get to work may want to look at Instant HTML Web Pages (Wayne Ause, $24.95), which will teach you the lingua franca of the World-Wide Web and give you templates for different types of pages. Once you're comfortable and just need an occasional reminder about what goes where, buy, beg or borrow Specialized Systems Consultants' indispensable fold-up HTML Reference Card. Only $4.50, it might as well come printed with a big red "DON'T PANIC" message on the front. And if you're ready for serious Web mastery, The Web Server Book (Ventana Press, $49.95) is an excellent and thorough tome that doubles as a small footstool.

Non-technical professionals who want to establish an on-line presence should look at Web Site Essentials for Success (Maggie Wells and Rob Rustad, $24.95) describes common marketing blunders and helps you plan your on-line debut, from initial planning to site maintenance. Cybermarketing Essentials for Success (Craig Settles, $24.95) explicates the dynamics of the on-line world and explains the essential differences between traditional print advertising and on-line advertising. In that vein, Marcia Yudkin's Marketing Online (Plume Books, $12.95) gives plenty of anecdotal information about netiquette dos and don'ts for entrepeneurs ready to vault online.

True beginners looking for guidance should start with How to Use the Internet, Second Edition, a plain-English step-by-step guide. Guide to Netscape Navigator will introduce you to the world's most popular Web browser.


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Copyright (c) 1995 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. Internet Life and the Internet Life logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.

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Internet Life Vol.1 No.1 Winter 1995