***Seybold San Francisco
by John Latta

Publishing is just another industry struggling to cope with the impact of the
Internet. Seybold San Francisco was expanded to include Internet Publishing.
There were sessions on the Internet which discussed the Pipe, Platform and
Place followed by Microsoft, Netscape and Java days. It is clear that
everyone is having similar problems coping with the Internet. A sample of the
issues are: is there a business model?, does advertising have a long term
role in the Internet?, when will cable modems come?, how will the local
telephone companies respond to the increasing load on the telephone network
due to Internet usage? and will the backbone collapse? As these issues have
been hashed over many times before we did not find much new in the ongoing
Internet debates. Trying to understand the Internet at Seybold was like
riding a high speed boat through the early morning San Francisco fog - going
fast but without a sense of direction.

A main opening session entitled Visions included both Marc Andreessen of
Netscape and Brad Chase of Microsoft. Marc Andreessen would not participate
in a combined Q&A session moderated by Jonathan Seybold that was to include
Brad Chase. During its demo Microsoft showed IE4 which brings a whole new
meaning to Internet access and the desktop. IE4 is the new desktop for
Windows. There is seamless integration of HTML, files and Internet sites.
Microsoft is moving to leverage its position in operating systems to pass
Netscape with Internet integration which Netscape will have difficulty
duplicating. Also shown by Microsoft was the new browser for Macintosh. There
were four windows open at the same time and included were Shockwave,
QuickTime VR and QuickTime. Very good integration of multimedia.

One of the hottest products of the show was NetObjects Fusion. It claims to
be the first tool for constructing Web sites as opposed to Web pages. No HTML
coding is required and the process is completely visual making heavy use of
drag and drop. Some of the features include: Site Editor, Page Draw Editor,
Site Styles Editor, Automated Navigation and Linking, Data Publishing and
ODBC and SQL connectivity. The street price is $499 and a 30 day trial
version is available.

Strata was showing Version 2.0 of Strata Studio Pro on the Mac. This is due
to ship in October and is a complete rewrite in C. The long awaited NT
version is due Q1 1997 (First announced at SIGGRAPH 1995.) The Mac version
will support OpenDoc and the Windows ActiveX. The pricing for both versions
is $1495. (As an aside there have been rumors of a restructuring at Strata.
This took place in June with the loss of approximately 10 people out of 110
and these were only in administrative functions. Strata claims that the
company is doing well financially and that this action is not reflective of
long term conditions.)

Contact: http://www.netobjects.com

www.strata3d.com



Wave Issue 9608 9/13/96 Article 6-01