I was intrigued by your recent cover story on Intelligent Networks ("The Network with Smarts," October 1994) but worried as well. Everything you presented was in the future tense, although every type of technology you described is available by using Lotus Notes and products from Lotus's Business Partners Program.
Reexamine the dream scenario offered in the article: "If I get a fax from Toshi regarding the Kyoto project, please run it through OCR and read it into my voice-mail box, send a copy of the text to Barbara, and forward the fax image to the optical-archive mailbox in the legal department."
Okay, that's a pretty tall order, but in two weeks, I could set up such a system for you. You can create information-seeking agents using SandPoint's Hoover product; fax integration with OCR is available from Lotus and from other vendors. You can develop voice-mail
integration and phone client services using the Phone Notes client developed jointly by Simpact and Lotus. Also, imaging integration is available from a variety of vendors, including Lotus itself with LN:DI. SkyTel offers pager-integration, and voice-recognition systems from IBM fulfill the dream. These can all be found on the Notes platform today; there's nothing future tense about these technologies.
Nathan Freeman
New York, NY
freeman@mfj@notes.net
Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it
is
theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.
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