February 1994 / News & Views

Just Like Magic?	It will likely take years, but General Magic and its partners want to create a ubiquitous communications infrastructure - by Tom R. Halfhill and Andy Reinhardt
Agents On The Loose Telescript in the Electronic Marketplace	Telescript, General Magic's communications-oriented programming language, lets developers write tools that permit casual users who know nothing about programming to create intelligent applications that seek out and retrieve important information. - by Tom R. Halfhill and Andy Reinhardt
Best of Comdex Awards	At last fall's Comdex, BYTE editors worked morning, noon, and night in picking the best products and technologies exhibited at the sh ow. - by Dave Andrews
ScreenCam, Lotus's On-Screen "Tape Recorder"	Too much technobabble and too heavy a reliance on video: Steve Barlow, the product manager for multimedia at Lotus Development (Cambridge, MA), believes that these two obstacles have contributed to the perception by business that m ultimedia doesn't make you productive and isn't worth the cost. - by D. A.
Simon Says: Communicate	IBM and partner BellSouth have introduced a personal communication device that combines a cellular phone, fax, E-mail, cellular paging, and several personal productivity applications in a system that w eighs just 18 ounces. - by D. A.
High-Performance 3-D Coming to PCs	Applications like 3-D model animation, stock-market visualization, and other high-end programs usually found only on expensive workstations should start appearing this year on less expensive 80x86-based PCs. - by Dave Andrews and Dom Pancucci
Liquid-Cooled PCs: The Next Hot Thing?	With chips like the Pentium and DEC's Alpha, the power of the mainframe has indeed arrived on the desktop, but you probably didn't expect the mainframe's cooling system to come along for the ride. - by Nicholas Baran
Superservers Everywhere	Companies like ALR, AST, Compaq, and Dell, along with IBM, NetFrame, Sequent, and Tricord, are all selling superservers, machines that often differ widely in terms of supported operating systems and maximum number of CPUs. - by Anne Fischer Lent
Dolch Announces Liquid-Cooled Pentium Portable	Dolch Computer Systems' (Milpitas, CA) PAC-586, a Pentium-based portable, uses a liquid-cooling technique to eliminate the need for large cooling fans and big heat sinks. - by D. A.
Screen Savers Ad Nauseum	Screen savers, those neat little utility programs that pop up flying toasters, sea horses, and bespectacled cows, have become big business for software companies. - by D. A.
Developers Announce PowerPC Mac Applications Companies developing native Mac applications for the PowerPC.	Apple has distributed kits for developers who want to write applications for System 7 on the PowerPC. - by D. A.
Cellular Data Market Segmentation	The first CDPD cellular-data networks were slated to begin operating in select cities early this year, and CDPD cellular carriers are currently negotiating agreements that will let users transparently roam from one area to another without dropping their connection.
Wireless Data over the GSM Voice Channel	For many users in Europe, mobile wireless modems are still a thing of the future. - by Bernhard M. Bradatsch
You're Getting Warm if You're Thinking Cool	You won't be working at a cryogenic workstation this year or next. - by Janet J. Barron
Geek Of The Week On Tape	Ever listen to one of those 5-minute-long news pieces being broadcast on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and wish they were doing an in-depth story on new technology? - by D. A.

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