Web '97 brings new deals
Marimba's Kim Polese is only one of the rich and famous to show off at the conference tomorrow.
No details of the announcement were revealed, but it will be one of the highlights of Miller Freeman's Web Design & Development Conference, where Java evangelists and push-technology prophets alike will gather in San Francisco, beginning tomorrow, to share their blueprints for the future of the Internet.
A "hybrid" application for the Net could combine video, Internet phone technology, and graphics. A example of this can be found in Intercast--named as a hybrid of Internet and broadcast--a technology created by Intel.
Intercast combines television programming with Internet text and graphics and enables people to view television programs from broadcasters, like PBS, in one window on their monitor while browsing content created to supplement the show.
Last month, Intel admitted it was hitting some roadblocks in spreading its Intercast technology but said there were more manufacturers and new content providers on the horizon for 1997. Intel said today that the announcement had nothing do with Intercast but with a separate project. (Intel is an investor in CNET: The Computer Network.)
Polese, whose company developed the Castanet system for distributing software and content over the Net, will also speak at Web '97 about the next generation of Internet tools and how companies can use them. Also on the agenda is a talk on Java's role in the future of the Net by JavaSoft President Alan Baratz. Bud Colligan, chairman of Macromedia (who is on CNET's board), will speak about how companies can use multimedia to increase productivity, make profits, and build communities through networks.
In addition to panels on maintaining and building Web sites with upcoming technologies, the conference is also slated to host the following new product demonstrations:
- Accrue Insight, by Accrue Software, allows those hosting Web sites to monitor and analyze online user responses to content, network, and server delivery factors.
- InstallFromTheWeb, by InstallShield Software, allows any Windows 95 application to be implemented over the Web.
- JClass Chart, by KL Group, allows charts and graphs to be incorporated into Java applications.
- WebPlexer, by Language Automation, is a site management tool for creating and maintaining multilingual Web sites.
- Web Integrity, by Mortice Kern Systems, is a Java-based Web-object management system for intranet managers.
- NetMC Multimedia Authoring Tool, by NEC Systems Laboratory, is a Web production tool that allows synchronized playback for audio, video, graphic images, animation, and logic.
- Atomic3D, by Nucleus Interactive, is a production tool that incorporates 3D animated characters into Web sites that talk and move in real time on the Net.
- POET Universal Object Server, by POET Software, is a database offering direct, transparent access to all objects from either Java, C++, or Visual Basic applications.
- Web Publisher 2.0, by SkiSoft Publishing Corporation, allows specified directories on a local network to be monitored, hundreds of documents to be converted to HTML, and updates to be linked automatically.
- LiveStation, by Vxtreme, is software that provides full synchronization between video, Java, and HTML.
- NetObjects will ship Fusion 2.0, a new version of its Web site design tool. Users of Fusion 1.0 will be able to upgrade for free to the new version of the product, which includes the ability to import existing Web sites into the tool, and additional Web site templates. NetObjects will also announce that Ingram Micro will distribute Fusion 2.0.