News from the Net

By Martin Moran, HPFS Editor.

Yes, Netscape Navigator went into a production, non-beta version, and was announced and released on December 16, 1996. Pick it up at the usual places. (Link to IBM's repository)

Do you all remember PMWeather? Well, it's been renamed and re released. It's now called Element.ary, and the author, Dave DuPre has made some fine improvements. It now supports Canadian and other international weather forecasts, but satallite and infrared images are still U.S. only. Currently in beta, it supports MPEG video and is speech ready. Price is as yet unknown. See http://www.cdc.net/~dupre/home.html for more information.

As announced last month, MR/2 ICE has now been upgraded to version 1.22. An increase in price to $30.00, but that now includes converters from both Eudora and Ultimail - PostRoad Mailer is next. See http://nick.secant.com/mr2ice.htm for more information.

Let's all bow our heads for a moment of silence - this was the last month of publication for OS/2 Magazine. Sigh.

Lotus is now shipping Domino Server and Client, version 4.5. For those who don't know what Domino is, it's Lotus's "Notes on the Web" software, and was featured in the IBM ad at Christmas time where Santa went snowboarding and snapped his leg. I've not tried it, but it's great by all accounts. Netscape is coming strong with an answer in Communicator (aka version 4 of Navigator), though - we'll see who wins.

For those who have been sleeping in caves for the last month, IBM and OS/2 have received a huge blow to their ego. Creative Labs is discontinuing their support of the operating system. See the editorial for more information. The full text of the announcement at http://www.creaf.com/wwwnew/tech/faqs/os2sup.html.

John W. Thompson, the General Manager of PSP and as PCWeek put it, "the caretaker of OS/2", has left this division to become the General Manager of the company's North American sales and service operation. His replacement is J. Michael Lawrie, 43, who "has been with IBM for 19 years and most recently served as general manager of industries at IBM's Asia-Pacific sales and services organization. Prior to that, he was vice president of software for IBM Asia-Pacific, where he participated in the launch events of OS/2 Warp Version 3" (IBM Press Release). We wish Mr. Lawrie well...and hope he'll bring some positive changes to PSP regarding its OS/2 strategies and promotion.

BMT Micro has now announced a special pricing program for Zap-O-Comm for both OS/2 User's Groups and Team OS/2 members. The price is $35.00 U.S., to take everyone through the end of version 3.0. Might we point out that Martin Moran is on good terms with the author, and the offer for our group is still out there. Contact Martin if you're interested.