Inprise says middleware tool eases updating of intranet, Internet apps
Inprise Corp., formerly Borland International Inc., has entered the transactional middleware market. The Scotts Valley, Calif., company's VisiBroker Integrated Transaction Service for Java and C++ clients and servers runs on top of SunSoft Solaris and Microsoft Windows NT operating systems. It is a key component of the enterprise application server that Inprise plans to deliver later this year.
Kinks in satellite communications service delay rollout to Defense
Eleven of the 12 gateways for satellite-to-network call switching are operational. Iridium LLC is delaying its new global satellite communications service by a month while it works out bugs in the wireless network that eventually will serve 120,000 Defense Department users. Iridium had planned to begin the network service early next month, but Edward F. Staiano, the Washington consortium's chief executive officer, said the new startup date will be Nov. 1.
Agencies lack funds for IT research, exec says
Stagnant federal investment in R&D threatens progress, 3Com chairman Eric Benhamou says. Federal research in information technology focuses myopically on near-term problems, said Eric Benhamou, 3Com Corp. chairman and chief executive officer. Speaking this month at the Upside Summit '98 conference in Washington, the CEO of the Santa Clara, Calif., company and a member of the President's IT Advisory Committee said privately funded research "is not picking up the slack" left by the stagnation
Tadpole to buy portable systems competitor RDI
Tadpole Technology Plc., a British manufacturer of portable servers and notebooks built with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s UltraSparc processor, is acquiring competitor RDI Computer Corp. of Carlsbad, Calif., for $6 million. Tadpole's chairman, Lars Turndal, said RDI's UltraBook products will complement Tadpole's VoyagerIIi line, which also uses the UltraSparc. He said Tadpole will continue selling RDI's PrecisionBook line of portable Unix workstations powered by Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC processors.
The Web won't wait for long
Jakob Nielsen recently left his position as a research engineer at Sun Microsystems Inc. to start his own Web consulting company, the Nielsen Norman Group of Atherton, Calif. He has written several books about usability engineering and human-computer interface design. Currently he is working with a federal laboratory on a Web project.
New copyright bill a balancing act of protecting owner, user interests
The proposed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, now undergoing reconciliation by congressional committees, would make it illegal to break the protective technologies by which software companies and other copyright holders prevent copying of their works. The bill's purpose is to lay the groundwork for the technical means to protect copyrighted material.
IRS gets vendor help to promote online tax filing
The IRS will get help from a vendor in meeting its goal of getting 80 percent of tax returns filed electronically by 2007, company officials said. Intuit Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., will offer its WebTurboTax software, a tax preparation and electronic filing program, free to individuals with incomes of less than $20,000.
Commerce site lists resources for IT training
The Commerce Department recently launched a Web site to help information technology workers, employers and educators find information on IT training programs nationwide. The Go for IT site at http://www.ta.doc.gov/go4it posts profiles of 171 systems development programs in the United States. Users can search for programs by city, state, region and subject.
Millions hit, millions miss Starr report on Web
President Clinton wasn't the only one under pressure the last week or so. Government servers were overwhelmed by the public demand for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's report on his investigation of President Clinton. Even so, millions of people still managed to get onto government Web sites to read the report during the weekend after its release Sept. 11.
Toshiba puts its 266-MHz Portege 7000CT on a diet
Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. has slimmed down its Portege 7000CT notebook computer to one-inch thickness and 4 pounds in weight. The Portege 7000CT comes standard with 266-MHz Mobile Pentium II processor, 32M of synchronous dynamic RAM, 512K of Level 2 cache, 4.3G hard drive, 56-Kbps modem, 12.1-inch active-matrix display and Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98.
Managers' choice: bandwidth now, management later
Network managers who are torn between buying more bandwidth and getting network management tools usually decide in favor of bandwidth, said speakers on a panel at the recent Gignet Conference in Boston. "Bandwidth is cheap and getting cheaper," said David Dimond of First Consulting Group of Long Beach, Calif. Throwing bandwidth at the WAN is expensive, however, and new telephony applications such as voice-over IP make it hard to keep up with the demand, he said.
Virginia and Dyncorp team up to build a spaceport at NASA site
WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.—Virginia has entered a joint venture with Dyncorp of Reston, Va., to develop and operate the $12 million Virginia Commercial Space Flight Center. Dyncorp will provide $4.5 million in operational support to the spaceport. The spaceport will include a new computer infrastructure for satellite launches. Dyncorp and Virginia will have to come up with $4.5 million more for the vertical service tower and the fueling and encapsulation facility, said Billie Reed, executive director of the
EPA will move old database to new platform
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to move a database containing information about injection wells from its National Computer Center in North Carolina to a new database management system in Atlanta. In a request for quotes last month, EPA called for a vendor to furnish the personnel, services and equipment to migrate the files to an unnamed server and develop a DBMS that can handle geographic information system applications. The vendor would also help integrate the database
EPA has a four-pronged strategy to manage systems enterprisewide
The Environmental Protection Agency is looking for a vendor to help it answer the question: "What does the agency need?" The winning vendor of the $35 million, five-year Information Infrastructure and Architectural Support Contract (IIASC) will analyze EPA's overall systems architecture and create a strategy for designing and buying new systems.
IG berates Space Command
"SPACECOM may be unable to fully execute its mission." The Defense Department's growing reliance on space-based information systems could be compromised if the U.S. Space Command doesn't get a handle on its year 2000 problem, the DOD inspector general said. SPACECOM, at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., and its component commands haven't taken steps to minimize the impact bad date code could have on their mission-critical systems, the IG said in an audit last
Bidders gradually gaining a voice in bid evaluations
With past performance a major evaluation factor in nearly every procurement, doing it right is a universal concern. Guidance comes from rewrites of the Federal Acquisition Regulation, numerous agency rules and directives, and a growing list of bid protest decisions. Because the new regulations don't answer every question, the missing pieces are usually supplied, one at a time, by case decisions—especially General Accounting Office bid protest rulings.
For those who just do not get the message, hold off on junk e-mail
Let me preface this column by noting that no GCN reader committed any of the breaches of e-mail etiquette I am about to describe. Please keep writing for advice and help, or to send me feedback about my last column. I enjoy reading your e-mail whether you agree or disagree with me. But I don't enjoy some of the e-mail that arrives from other sources. You probably don't like everything in your in box, either.
Beat the Clock
A new world order. Paul Strassmann, director of Defense information early in this decade, has put the world on notice that a threshold event in the history of computing took place Aug. 4. On that day, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a 17-page document interpreting its unprecedented year 2000 cost-reporting requirements for public companies, most of which have disclosed little about such liabilities.
Government CIOs have what it takes
Highway 1 is connected to the very-high-performance Backbone Network Service for the Next Generation Internet. The link has made Highway 1 a frequent site for briefings about the Internet follow-on. The organization also brings the Chief Information Officers Council together with industry executives and acts as a technology resource for policy-makers.
GAO finds that systems glitches lead
The Defense Department is unwittingly selling to the public surplus parts containing sensitive military technology, the General Accounting Office said recently. When DOD buys spare parts for aircraft, ships, vehicles and weapons, the department assigns a code to the parts to indicate whether they contain sensitive military technology. But Defense has a history of assigning the wrong demilitarization codes to the parts and selling them anyway, a GAO report said.
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