The Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing articles from January 1996

The Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing archives from January 1996

High-tech firms ponder lobbying. (Government Activity)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Confronted with ill-informed officials making far-reaching technology policy decisions, U.S. high-tech companies are talking about forming a broad coalition to lobby Washington for their interests. A story published this month in the San Jose...

Apple loss to hit $68 million. (Company Financial Information)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Apple Computer expects to report a loss of $68 million ($.55/share) for its first quarter, ended Dec. 29, 1995. Unit shipments and revenues increased 12% and 11%, respectively, over a year ago, but gross margins declined to approximately 15%,...

Taligent scaled back. (to become an IBM subsidiary) (Company Operations)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Taligent, the application development firm founded by Apple and IBM in 1992 (and later invested in by HP), is going to become an IBM subsidiary devoted to the development of object technology. About half of Taligent's 375 staff will be let go.

LastStep for NextStep.(Next Inc to concentrate on OpenStep development tools) (Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... InfoWorld has reported that Next is mothballing its NextStep operating system and concentrating on OpenStep, its object-based development tools that run on multiple operating systems. Next has done a lot to make object-based computing a...

R5000 chip from MIPS. (new microprocessor)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... The MIPS unit of Silicon Graphics has announced the development of its latest MIPS processor, the R5000. It is a 200-MHz, 64-bit, superscalar RISC chip with an estimated performance rating of 5.5 SPECint95 and 5.5 SPECfp95. The chip is targeted...

A CD-ROM developer's toolkit: Doug Houseman reveals what works for him. (Technology Information)
January 22, 1996... THE CD-ROM TOOL market has exploded since we summarized the authoring process and 22 authoring packages in 1993. The optical medium's multimedia and interactive potential is now being realized on a large scale, with publishers, both commercial...

Technology, prepress systems and you: January 1996 update. (Industry Trend or Event)
January 22, 1996... CNI USES the Comdex show in Las Vegas to review the core technologies it employs in building open prepress systems. In that perspective, it found some items at the show that weren't covered in the Seybold editors' report from the show (see Vol....

Next-generation CD standards put in place.(DVD standard) (Technology Information)
January 22, 1996... "DVD," the next-generation medium for CD-ROM, audio CDs and home movies, is the next technology acronymn that will reach mass proportions. At least, that's what a consortium of DVD vendors hope. On Dec. 8, 1995, the group of nine companies...

Radius sells Mac clone effort, spins off Splash. (Splash Color Server Group) (Mac clone business to be sold to Umax Technologies) (Company Operations)
January 22, 1996... Deeply enmeshed in financial difficulties, Radius is giving up two of its business units: its Color Server Group and its Macintosh clone business. It also has cut prices on its digital video products. Radius is spinning off its Splash Color...

Kodak technology aids Photo CD images on Net.(Kodak, National Center for Supercomputing Applications develop technology for zooming in on images) (Technology Information)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Kodak and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois have developed technology to enable zooming to examine small details in Photo CD images stored on the Internet. Called Kodak Digital Science, initially...

Tektronix adds Phaser 550 color laser printer.(Tektronix Inc)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Short-run printing of color business documents that might otherwise be produced on color copiers is a hot battlegrounds in the office environment. Among the contenders are heavyweights Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Xerox, plus printer specialists...

Tumbleweed scores Envoy-to-Web coup.(Tumbleweed Software) (Company Business and Marketing)
January 22, 1996... Tumbleweed Software, the developer of WordPerfect Envoy, continues to push its rivals Acrobat and Common Ground in the electronic document delivery market. In Internet connectivity, Tumbleweed has beaten Adobe to market in making its viewer a...

Swallowing Frame gives Adobe heartburn...and stock plummets. (Company Financial Information)
January 22, 1996... Adobe's management had hopes that merging with Frame would be easier than it was with Aldus, but it hasn't been that way so far. The new year opened with revelations that overruns in Frame's expenses resulted in an operating loss for the fourth...

Sony adds direct-digital camcorder to lineup. (Sony VX700)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Sony is leading the home video industry in the direction of all-digital recording. It recently began selling two video cameras that work entirely in digital mode. They record component video directly onto digital cassettes, and can transfer...

Network uses existing household AC wiring.(Elcom Technologies EZ-TV) (Company Business and Marketing)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Elcom Technologies has introduced a group of devices that send information through the AC power lines in a building. At its introduction at the CES show in Las Vegas, we were told that the technology can span distances greater than 1,000 feet...

Screen saver for advanced PCs.(Virtual Encounter)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Once upon a time, screen savers were solely for preventing phosphor burn-in on computer screens left unattended. They were tiny bits of code with minimal impact on system performance, and thus were very simple in the visual effects they could...

HP acquires ElseWare, font technology group. (Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Hewlett-Packard has acquired ElseWare, the development company that supplies font technology for use in HP's LaserJet 5 printers. The terms weren't disclosed. ElseWare, which will be set up as a software R&D unit in HP's Business LaserJet...

Bitstream adds OEM TrueDoc printer utility. (TrueDoc Font Select)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Bitstream, which has been pitching its TrueDoc font compression technology to printer makers for two years, has a font utility program for Windows. It gives manufacturers a straightforward way to package TrueDoc font collections that support...

Encad enhances network connectivity. (3400X print server)(Product Announcement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Encad has announced a family of print server products designed to ease connecting its CadJet and NovaJet wide-format printers to a network. Called the 3400X, the device plugs directly into the printer's parallel port and provides simultaneous...

Coming soon: 3D displays for PCs. (Japan Communication) (Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Print-media publishers use three-dimensional (3D) graphics applications to make designs such as logos attractive, and they don't mind paper output that represents 3D graphics as two-dimensional (2D) images. But CD-ROM publishers that design 3D...

ScanVec's Tracer challenges Streamline.(Product Announcement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... The ability to convert bitmapped artwork into compact, scalable, vector-based line art is a basic utility function just about every graphic artist needs in his or her toolkit. The benchmark product for this purpose has traditionally been...

Future Image probes royalty-free photos. (report on trend toward digitized photos being given away) (Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... One of the most controversial topics among professional photographers these days is the rise of royalty-free photos on CD-ROMs. Some photographers see new market outlets for their work; others fear the destruction of their established markets...

CD compares low-end digital cameras. (CD-ROM developed by Future Image)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Future Image has developed a CD-ROM that compares several digital cameras at the low end of the market: those priced below $1,000. Reviewed on this disc are the Apple QuickTake 150, Casio QV10, Chinon ES-3000, Dycam 10C, Fuji Fujix DS-100,...

Intel in technology deals with Phoenix and AMD. (Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Intel has engineered cooperative agreements with Phoenix Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices. In a seven-year deal with Phoenix, Intel will work with Phoenix in developing future versions of system BIOSes for desktop and server computers....

Xante RIP drives four large-format printers.(Xante Corp Accel-a-Graphix CT4)(Product Announcement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Xante Corporation has introduced the Accel-a-Graphix CT4, a dedicated color control tower that can drive up to four large-format plotters simultaneously. Based on Xante's intelligent RISC architecture and Adobe PostScript Level 2, the CT4...

Quarterdeck salvo hits Net, graphics and games.(Product Announcement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Quarterdeck continues to broaden and strengthen its product line. Its latest string of announcements includes an updated version of its InternetSuite software package, the release of the HiJaak graphics utility package for Windows 95 (obtained...

Canon in new deal to sell Fiery XJ servers. (Electronics for Imaging) (Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Under a new OEM pact, Canon will sell EFI's Fiery XJ print servers worldwide for use with its CLC printers. Canon has been marketing EFI servers since the two firms signed a letter of intent last March.

Adobe spins prepress unit off to Luminous. (Company Operations)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Adobe Systems has spun off its former prepress operation to a new company headed by a former VP of Adobe's Production Imaging Products Group. The company, called Luminous, has taken over worldwide development, marketing and distribution of the...

Chat: an E-mail novel.
January 22, 1996... Chat is a great little novel for those in-between times when you need a five-minute break. Told entirely through E-mail messages between the two characters, Bev and Max, the book can be swallowed in bits -- by the lengths of the E-mail...

Changes and updates. (News Briefs)
January 22, 1996... The following are changes or additions to entries in our Calendar of Events, 1996 and Beyond: * European Digital Printing. This event, listed for Feb. 26-29, has been canceled. * Pride in Print. The phone and fax numbers for the New...

New events. (News Briefs)
January 22, 1996... Networks for Newspapers. This IFRA symposium is being offered in Rome, Italy, Jan. 16-17, 1996. IFRA Events Dept., Washingtonplatz, D-64287 Darmstadt, Germany; phone {49} (6151) 70 05-0, fax {49} (6151) 70 05-74. Pagination and New Media....

Macromedia Graphic Studio, Shockwave due in February.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Macromedia plans to ship the Macintosh version of its new FreeHand Graphics Studio (FreeHand, XRes, Extreme 3D and Fontographer) in February. A Windows version will follow. Also coming in February will be Shockwave for FreeHand, which enables...

COPS moves to Colorocs. (Colorocs Info Tech acquires Co-Operative Printing Solutions) (Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Colorocs Info Tech, known for its color printing technologies, has acquired CoOperative Printing Solutions (COPS), a developer and marketer of tools for distributed printing, such as PostScript print spoolers and OPI servers. It is based near...

Dataware buys multimedia firm. (Dataware Technologies acquires Ledge Multimedia) (Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... CD-ROM specialist Dataware Technologies continued its expansion last month by acquiring Ledge Multimedia (Cambridge, MA), a software and content developer. The price was 110,000 shares of Dataware stock. Ledge recently introduced a "multimedia...

Yamaha cuts CD recorder price. (Yamaha Systems Technology) (Product Information)(Brief Article)
January 22, 1996... Yamaha Systems Technology has dropped the price of its quad-speed CD recorder as a result of increases in the volume of its shipments. The new retail price of the external CDE100 II is $2,145. The internal CD-R100 is $1,995.

Pinnacle offers $995 CD-R unit. (Pinnacle Micro)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
January 22, 1996... Pinnacle Micro is selling its RCD 5020 internal PC recordable-CD system for a retail price of $995, which generally means a street price of about $850. The price had been $1,295. Versions for the Macintosh and an external-PC system list for...