Jaques Law Bits 9609 (© Kevin Jaques 1996) ©(c)1996 Kevin Jaques. All rights reserved excepting that this file may be copied for non-commercial purposes, unchanged. No warranties apply. I am just a user volunteering my observations and collecting those of others. €GeoPort to reach 28.8 Kbps By Joanna Pearlstein (joanna_pearlstein@macweek.com) (9607) The GeoPort, Apple's beleaguered high-speed communications port, this fall may achieve the 28.8-Kbps speeds its users have long sought. Apple Telecom 3.0, which includes support for 28.8-Kbps connections through the GeoPort Telecom Adapter, is finished and will ship early this fall as a free download, Apple said. However, 28.8-Kbps throughput will require a Power Mac, sources said, and full 28.8-Kbps connections will be achieved only through clean phone lines. A forthcoming GeoPort Telecom Adapter II will also add Caller ID support. €Speed Doubler 1.3 Connectix has released Speed Doubler 1.3, a maintenance release containing fixes for Speed Emulator and (particularly) Speed Copy. Speed Copy now has improved overall performance, better response over slow connections (like ARA), compatibility with Asante's NetDoubler, and fixes for a number of other interface problems and bugs (such as a crash involving copying with an open control panel). Connectix recommends all Speed Doubler owners upgrade to version 1.3; updaters are available online for free, or registered users can receive the updater on a floppy for $10. Connectix -- 415/571-5195 800/950-5880 [GD] €HyperCard 2.3.5 Updater Apple has finally released an updater to version 2.3.5 of HyperCard, catching up with the previous releases of version 2.3.5 of some HyperCard stacks and the HyperCard Player. The update to HyperCard itself fixes cosmetic and performance problems, and a long-standing bug with saving some colorized stand-alone stacks. Two updaters are available: one just for HyperCard, and one for HyperCard and the updated stacks. The updated stacks and the HyperCard Player are also available separately; the following URL points to the directory where all these items can be found. [GD] €Web Paging Mark/Space Softworks released PageNOW/Web, a Web interface to alphanumeric pagers. The $695 PageNOW/Web requires a Web server and PageNOW Workgroup or Enterprise Edition, and enables anyone to visit a URL, pick a recipient, and type in a message to be sent to that recipient's pager. You probably wouldn't want to make the access page available to the world, but it's a great interface to pagers that users can access from anywhere on the Internet. €Compressing for PC Users UUencode or some kind of zip compression program is the norm. But now you can use normally stuffit because "Stuffit Expander for Windows" is availiable free at but UNSTUFF-PC does not handle password protected archives €Apple Intranet Plan Apple is proposing a new Internet standard, the Meta Content Format (MCF); database and Web site administrators will be able to describe their data--whether it's in text files, Web pages, databases, or other forms--in MCF and automatically make that data available for access through any compliant viewer. This means that Internet users won't have to use special software to access the different types of data. €QuickTime 2.5 Out Apple recently announced the availability of QuickTime 2.5 for Macintosh, the newest version of the industry multiplatform standard multimedia software. The release includes enhancements to the QuickTime Music Architecture (QTMA). In addition to playing music through the computer's built-in speaker, QuickTime 2.5 can route musical information to external MIDI devices, effects processors, and drum machines. http://quicktime.apple.com/ €Developers Promotion Opportunity Macworld magazine's new Web Explorer Virtual Expo CD, set to debut in the magazine's December 1996 issue, provides a new way to market your products. Cosponsored by Apple Developer Relations, the CD will include the Macintosh Product Registry, a Web-based list maintained by Apple Computer. http://devworld.apple.com/mkt/thirdparty.html €Apple Video­Conferencing Bundles Apple Computer said it will include Farallon's Timbuktu Pro (Macintosh version 2.0) with the next release of the QuickTime Conferencing Kit and bundle Farallon's Look@Me applet and Web browser plug-in with the next version of Apple's Internet Connection Kit. You can download the Look@Me free stand-alone applet and plug-in from Farallon's Web site: http://www.farallon.com €Motorola Offers PowerPC Performance Enhancement, Development Tools The Motorola RISC Microprocessor Division recently posted the Motorola LIBMOTO for Mac OS math library at its Web site, and you can download it for free. LIBMOTO is a highly optimized memory, string, and math library that replaces several commonly used functions provided by the standard C library. Many PowerPC processor-based Mac OS systems experience significant performance gains for some operations when using this library. Additionally, Motorola provides its own PowerPC software development kit (SDK), which features native PowerPC compilers for Metrowerks CodeWarrior, Symantec Project Manager, and MPW IDEs. http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/library/fact_sheet/libmoto.html €Checking Apple's Stock Price [presumably, you can substitute other ticker codes for AAPL] €User Reports Problems with Netscape ToolVox plugin €How to open a local HTML file in CyberDog? Under the Cyberdog menu, go to "Connect To" and enter the URL using the form: , noting the use of three slashes after the colon. Aaron D. Ruiz, from Fosh Australia, or you can order direct from Stalker Software, +1-415-383-7164, fax +1-415-383-7461, e-mail: sales@stalker.com. The US price is $499 for a site license, $149 for 10 users. Shipping to AU is $24 (EMS). LineShare, also from Stalker, purports to distinguish and route incoming calls to the appropriate program for email, voice, fax, and ARA by setting up virtual modems that direct traffic to the actual hardware when requested. This allows one phone line to be used for all. [heavily edited] For information, installation instructions and non-expiring demo, please visit our Web site: Vladimir_Butenko@stalker.com (Vladimir Butenko, Stalker Software, Inc.) There are some modems, such as Supra, that have a feature called Silent Answer which allows your modem to automactically distinguish between voice, fax and data. n addition to Silent Answer there is Silent Answer Plus (optional feature #154) and Adaptive Answer. To turn Silent Answer Plus on, give the command AT+FAE=$ for Class 1 faxes or AT+FAA=4 for Class 2 faxes. To set up Adaptive Answer for Class 1 faxes, use the command AT+FAE=1. For Class 2 faxes, use the command AT+FAA=1. To operate effectively, your modem needs to be reset with ATZ between each call. A sample initialization string might look like this: ATZ AT&F2+FAE=1 mcmeyer@tiac.net (Michael C. Meyer) >Anyone know of a software solution that will permit Mac users to access >files residing on a PC running Win95? All systems are running TCP/IP and >connected via Ethernet 10base-T. Ideally we are looking for a solution that >allows Mac users to mount the shared Win95 folders (achieving a Mac to >Win95 peer-to peer networking connection), but will entertain other less >elegant alternatives. you want a program called MACLAN connect V5.5 (i believe is the latest). This is a very good program I have seen it in use.... Joshua H. Hirschman MACnTAZ@aol.com I have used Look@Me and found it's really cool. I installed it in both Macintosh and Win95 PC, and I could see one's complete desktop from the other. When I used MS-Word on PC, the PC desktop on Macintosh was redrew almost simultaneously. It's a freeware, just try it: Wataru Kitayama E-mail: watz@tau.bekkoame.or.jp Homepage: http://www.bekkoame.or.jp/~watz €Weird, perhaps useful Keyboard idea Various users say they have hooked up multiple keyboards to a single mac. Uses might include collaboration, communication for the hearing impaired, multi­player games, etc. €Chooser Trivia (?) Whenever the Chooser is open, update packets are sent every 10 seconds. This can create really large overhead in your IP packets and a bandwidth nightmare if you're not careful. Grant Hartline granth@tahc.state.tx.us € FreePPP 2.5rf problem with verbose terminal servers including the Annex server. The verbose-ness comes from how the provider builds the menu that you see when first connecting to the terminal server using something like ZTerm. Of course you don't see this using PPP because it is an automatic processes -- but the extra characters sent out seem to confuse PPP2.5rf in executing the login script and it just hangs and then times out. This only happenes on some providers -- but it isn't their fault. There is a special Beta version later than 2.5rf that seems to fix this problem in my brief test. The best solution is to drop back to FreePPP 1.0.5 untill the new non-Beta version appears. Wayne Yarnall, W7KRB yarnall@peak.org €stand-alone PC Card reader? Newer Technology manufactures PC Card readers for the PowerBook Duo in the form of a Mini-Dock. Unknown if they have something that would connect to a desktop Mac (presumably thru SCSI). They're at http://www.newertech.com. €Ad for CPU Doubler CPU Doubler is a "software only" performance enhancement utility for the Macintosh. It will increase the performance and responsiveness of your computer by as much as 100%. This will result in a faster computer, making the computer more efficient in running all of your applications. CPU Doubler achieves this performance enhancement by properly managing the computer's throughput. Throughput is defined by the amount of time the processor spends executing process instructions. Most Macintosh computers have multiple processes running most of the time. Even if the user starts up only one process, such as a word processor, there are other hidden processes running. Even the Finder takes up CPU cycles. All these CPU cycles add up and slow down the overall performance of the computer. CPU Doubler increases the computer's throughput via a proprietary scheduling algorithm. System 7 has a fairly simple scheduling algorithm which gives equal time to each process. There is no sophisticated load management scheduling that tries to optimize system performance by adjusting the amount of time each process gets. CPU Doubler adds this feature. CPU Doubler also lets users customize performance to fit their needs. By setting individual process priorities, users can perform their own load balancing, finally giving users the ability of "job control" found in other multitasking operating systems such as UNIX and OS/2. There is even a history feature with which to set priorities of non-running applications so that future use will yield the desired result. CPU Doubler requires system 7 or higher to run, and works on either a Power PC or a 68K Macintosh, giving the same improved performance on both. It is available now from Orchard Software, Inc. for a special introductory price of $47.95, a 40% savings from its $79.95 retail price. An additional $3 shipping charge (overseas shipping is $7) must be added. MA residents must add 5% sales tax. CPU Doubler also includes with it a free copy of Cron Manager, our chronological event management utility, which retails for $26.95. For more information please contact us by email, via regular mail, or call us. To order CPU Doubler, please send a check or money order made payable to: Orchard Software, Inc. Orchard Software, Inc. P.O. Box 380814 Cambridge, MA 02238-0814 phone: (617) 876-4608 email: <102670.1653@compuserve.com> €Thunder 7's New Identity as SpellCatcher Spell Catcher The long-awaited update to former Thunder 7. This program is a spell-checker, thesaurus, glossary and work-saver in one. Spell Catcher works within all Macintosh programs, even e-mail and Netscape Navigator. (Casady & Greene) €TidBits has a Daughter, DealBits DealBITS is a twice-monthly electronic publication devoted to spreading the word about great deals on all sorts of hardware, software, books, etc. -- targeted at a general Macintosh audience. The only ads that run in DealBITS are geared directly toward Mac and Internet users. And not just anyone can get these deals. To join the subscription list, so that twice each month the new issue of DealBITS will be e-mailed to you, send e-mail to . You can receive just the current issue by sending e-mail to . You may already know TidBITS, a six-year-old, free, weekly, electronic publication that reports on the Macintosh and the Internet. DealBITS is its daughter publication, and is run and edited by the same people. To find out more about TidBITS, see its home page at: If you have any questions, or would like to find out about advertising in DealBITS, send e-mail to . €Merchant Credit Card Processing MacAuthorize, by Tellan software http://www.tellan.com €Internet Configuration Tip If you use Internet Configuration System and an email client that supports it, you can command click on the email address of the originator and a new email is addressed to the orginator. €Series of Macintosh keyboard overlays for: A-10 Attack! A-10 Weapons Load Chart Chuck Yeager's Air Combat Dogfight City Hellcats/Leyte Gulf F/A-18 Hornet 2.0 Falcon MC Flight Simulator 4.0 Flight Unlimited WarBirds WarBirds Maps available free for downloading at: http://www.fairmont.wvnet.edu/www/webteam/bob/overlays/overlays.html €EMail to Fax Services - Windows Only ) And a variant. This one grabs your faxes and shunts them to your email: The company is JFAX. You are issued a fax number in one of several major cities around the world, including London, New York, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and faxes sent to that number are redirected to your email as a TIFF MIME enclosure within minutes http://www.jfax.co.uk €Complete Conflict Compendium! The address to this Vancouver database's search form is: http://www.quillserv.com/www/c3/query.html €Netscape News Tip Netscape provides no way to change the order in which newsgroups are displayed within the program, there is still a way: edit their order in your newsrc file. I've used this method successfully in v1.1 on the Mac and v2.x on the PC. Katherine Greene kathg@netcom.com €Canadian CA's Mac Accounting Page http://www.mlink.net/~michelc/MACcounting/MACcounting.HTML> This site is still under development so any info suggestion are welcome Michel Contant chartered acountant Montreal, Quebec michelc@mlink.net €Obtaining Ethernet Address for/with Applescript There is an XCMD on the OpenTransport CD that does this (sample code), so you could use the XCMD->OSAX link from Ed Lai to run it. Leonard Rosenthol Internet: leonardr@aladdinsys.com €Open Transport conflict with PPC603-based Macs Apple has identified the problem with Open Transport on PPC603-based Macs; you can have it fixed free as part of Apple's Repair Extension Program. Thus, Open Transport 1.1.1, which will be released in a few weeks, will now run on those 'repaired' Macs as well as fix other underlying bugs Aaron Visit my web site at . €Competition for OpenDoc PCWeek has an article about Microsoft making ActiveX an open standard. "Microsoft Corp. announced today that it would turn over its ActiveX and COM technologies to an independent standards body consisting of customers, ISVs and platform vendors. [...] The technology to be turned over to the group includes Microsoft's COM (Component Object Model) and DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) architectures, which form the core of the Windows object architecture." €Applescript for Clean Desktop Rebuild set vols to list disks repeat with v in vols -- ignore errors from CDs, Mail Enclosures and more try moveFile file (v & ":Desktop DB") to v & ":Trash" moveFile file (v & ":Desktop DF") to v & ":Trash" on error end try -- kill System 6 desktop files too try moveFile file (v & ":Desktop") to v & ":Trash" on error end try end repeat if (keys pressed) contains "option" then -- if you prefer to quit (with option key) tell application "Finder" to quit else -- I prefer to restart (no option key) tell application "Finder" to restart end if €Source Code to MacApp It'll be on the web, too, (free!) starting (hopefully!) next week. Check http://www.devtools.apple.com/frameworks/macapp. Geoffrey Clapp Apple Computer, Inc. OpenDoc Engineering geoff.clapp@apple.com €Inside MacIntosh Now Available in HTML format (and how) Dan Peterson It was done with Harlequin's software "Webmaker". It converts Framemaker source to such nice HTML documents. [That is why such a big project came out all at once. See http://www.harlequin.com/ €CyberDog 1.1 Beta Just in time to fuel the OpenDoc fires at Macworld Expo next week, Apple has released a beta of CyberDog 1.1, this time for both 68K and PowerPC Macs. Apple is quick to point out that this is a beta with known problems, but the release also features AppleTalk browsing, numerous interface changes (including reverting OpenDoc's Document menu back to File), improvements to DocBuilder, and a unifying CyberDog application that launches all CyberDog documents in one session. The release weighs in at about 3.5 MB; please note CyberDog 1.1 requires OpenDoc 1.1 (which offers a number of speed improvements and weighs in at about 2.8 MB). [GD] €Let People Run Your Hypercard Stack over the Internet LiveCard is a bidirectional gateway between a HyperCard stack and a Macintosh Web server. Largely the brain-child of Eric Oesterle, a long-time HyperCard and multimedia guru, LiveCard publishes HyperCard stacks directly on the Web, using the HyperCard application as a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) - just drop the stacks into your server folder, and LiveCard does the rest. LiveCard does _not_ require a browser plug-in - realistically, all a user needs is a browser that can display HTML forms and JPEG graphics. Using HyperCard or another Mac scripting system as a CGI engine is nothing new - HyperCard, Frontier, and AppleScript users and others have been doing it since the earliest days of Mac-based Web servers. What's new about LiveCard is its ability to put HyperCard content directly on the Web without modification. http://www.heizer.com/livecard.html> €Assistants in System 8 For Mac OS 8 we are planning to deliver an interview engine that will make it possible to build assistants using AppleScript. In the meantime, you are more than welcome (and even encouraged) to build assistants using such tools as FaceSpan, or any programming language of your choice. We felt it was important for us to deliver human interface guidelines early so that a consistent user experience could be implemented, and that's why we chose to publish the article before all the tools we want to make available are ready. Arno arno@apple.com €Shortcut in Netscape 3.0 (out in Beta only) It can guess common style URLs. If you want to find Apple's web site you do not have to type in http://www.apple.com. Instead, type in "apple" and press return. €Getting List of Running Processes in Applescript "set process_list to every process" process_list will now contain a list of all running processes in the format {application "appname1", application "appname2"...} To be more specific, indicate what you want to know about the process, as follows: set signature_list to creator type of every process set process_list to name of every process If you just want to see if a particular application is running, the following will set the variable apprunning to true or false: "set appRunning to ("FileMaker Pro" is in name of processes)" €Writing Distribution Material For Windows With ProView 2.0, one simple command allows you to create a ProViewer for Windows DIRECTLY ON YOUR MACINTOSH! Robert Rosenbaum President, E-magine Visit our site at: http://www.e-magine.com €Sorry, that¹s all the time I have. This Jaques Law Bits was delivered by: Kevin Jaques, B.A. LL.B. of the Jaques Law Office #101 - 2515 Victoria Avenue Fax: 525­4173 Regina, Saskatchewan Home: 586­2234 email: jaques.law@dlcwest.com Tel: 359­3041 visit our web page at http://www.dlcwest.com/~jaques.law/