There will be many fascinating products to look for at the A/E/C Systems show, coming up this June in Philadelphia PA USA. Here are some that we have already heard about:
Autodesk's third-party developers will get their first look at Release 14 at a special developer's-only conference in San Raphael CA USA at the end of this month.
As Hollywood, the record industry, and software vendors know too well, the drawback to digital-based content is that it can be perfectly copied, altered, and passed off as someone else's intellectual property. The same goes for a digital newsletter, like upFront.eZine. The words originally written in this email newsletter are easily and untraceably altered. That happened earlier this month. Our article that questioned the number of Autodesk registered developers was subtly changed; this week, the altered version made its way back to us. To get an idea of what happened, here are the first four lines of our original story:
And here are the first four lines of the altered version:
The remainder of the text was not altered, giving the false impression that the content was not generated by that "competitor." With the help of the whistle-blower, we are tracking down the lowbrow source of the adulterated material. Don't mutilate upFront.eZine, please.
Investors were happy about Autodesk's VMI fine being reduced from US$25.5 million to $7.8 million (plus interest) that shares immediately rose over 30 for the first time since late June, 1996. Since Autodesk had already set aside the $25.5 million, the difference will appear as profit for Autodesk's fourth quarter. As of late Monday, shares dipped slightly to 29-3/8.
The CADalog Web Site at http://www.cadalog.com has over 2,200 CAD-oriented shareware files, including public domain, freeware, shareware, demo code, source code, utilities, and applications.
Gary Rohrabaugh <gary@softsource.com> reports that you can buy cheap hardware online at: http://www.arztec.com/index.html When we checked it out, it seemed to consist mainly of desktop computers, lots of network cards, some modems, printers, etc. No notebook equipment.
"C Y C O N N E C T" is the name of CYCO Software's monthly online newsletter. It contains tech Info at the Cyco Web Site, press releases, Cyco case studies, info on product updates, tips & tricks. To subscribe, send email to Arjan.Timmermans@cyco.nl. More info at http://www.cyco.com
ADDA: American Design Drafting Association 38th Annual Technical Conference, May 7 - 9, 1997, in Braintree MA USA. More info at national@adda.org.
Bentley Systems: US Federal Court finds for Bentley over Baystate. Users of CadKey free to convert models and drawings to MicroStation with special migration package.
Bentley Systems: New version of MicroStation Modeler is first solid modeler with 'continuous improvement.' Mechanical design users will get stream of user-driven functionality improvements.
Bentley Systems: Bentley wins Industry Week award with new Internet product. '25 Technologies of the Year' award goes to Bentley for its MicroStation Link Internet technology. More info at http://www.bentley.com/news/
Fit: Cadvance version 7.0 ships with productivity and performance features; price is increased to US$1,990.00. More info at http://www.cadvance.com
BM demonstrated a disk drive component that writes and reads data at a density of 5Gbit -- five billion bits per square inch, three times the density of today's densest disk drives. According to Newsbytes, "This technology could lead to 3.5-inch nine-disk drive units that store as much as 55GB of data, as well as to compact 2.5-inch drives for subnotebook computers that hold more than 6GB.
MCI is the first long distance carrier to transmit at 40 gigabits per second; the new high-speed link is on a 275- mile route between Chicago IL USA and St. Louis MO USA.
John Dunkelberg <johndunk@baystate.com> of Baystate Technologies (the new owners of CadKey software) notes that Delmar Publisher's new 'The Complete Cadkey Version 8 for DOS and Windows' is "of interest to me, particularly, since there is no such beast as CADKEY 8." The current shipping version of CadKey is 7.5.