No Eudora Pro 4.0 for Macintosh Overseas -- Qualcomm has confirmed that Eudora Pro 4.0 for Macintosh may never be made available outside of North America
Open Transport 1.3 -- Mac OS 8.1 includes Open Transport 1.3, an update to Apple's networking software. OT 1.3 offers general performance improvements, better recognition of serial ports - particularly in conjunction with PC Card modems - and numerous tweaks and bug fixes
Apple has released Mac OS 8.1, and the Macintosh community is buzzing with talk about the new components and trying to figure out the new (and optional) disk format, Macintosh Extended Format, also known as HFS Plus
The most talked-about but least understood feature of Mac OS 8.1 is an optional new file system known as Macintosh Extended Format (formerly known as HFS Plus)
Qualcomm has confirmed that Eudora Pro 4.0 for Macintosh may never be made available outside of North America. The problem is that in those markets, Qualcomm is signing up local "re-publishers" who will be responsible for localization, sales, marketing, and distribution
In a move aimed at stemming the gains Microsoft Internet Explorer has made in the Web browser market, Netscape Communications announced today that it is making Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator Standard Edition free (Netscape Communicator Professional Edition costs $29)
In a Tech Info Library article, Apple has acknowledged that the Mac OS 8.1 Update installs some system extensions that may appear to be corrupted or damaged when scanned by certain utility software
Free Netscape -- In a move aimed at stemming the gains Microsoft Internet Explorer has made in the Web browser market, Netscape Communications announced today that it is making Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator Standard Edition free (Netscape Communicator Professional Edition costs $29)
And Who's Paying for This? The other big news this week was the confirmed, but not yet announced plan from Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft, along with GTE and four of the five regional telephone companies (all except Bell Atlantic, which may yet join) to develop technology that would provide Internet access for consumers at throughputs up to 1.5 Mbps, much greater than today's 56 Kbps modems
Long File Names -- In the last few issues, we've been talking about long file names in Windows 95, and how these names are truncated to an alternate 11-character (8-dot-3) version in many cases, including when transferring files to a floppy and then reading them on a Macintosh.
David Kilzer wrote in to alert us that Apple is now offering better support for long file names on floppy disks and other media via PC Exchange 2.2, part of the just-released Mac OS 8.1, a free update to Mac OS 8.0
[This article originally ran in TidBITS-367 and TidBITS-368. We feel that the points it makes are important enough to present again, in an updated form, to NetBITS readers.]
Years ago David Cheriton at Stanford University taught me something that seemed obvious at the time - if you have a network link with low bandwidth then it's easy to put several in parallel to make a combined link with higher bandwidth, but if you have a network link with bad latency then no amount of money can turn any number of parallel links into a combined link with good latency
Question: How can I get multiple email addresses? Paul Travis writes: "I was about to change online services when my daughter discovered that she could have her own screen name and email box within our account at AOL
Question: What's a Webring? Dave Sacher asks, "I keep seeing references to 'Webrings' - what are they?"
Answer: Webrings are actually the common name for a fascinating new form of fungus (Conocybe packetea; see a picture of the closely related Conocybe lactea at the URL below) that springs up, seemingly overnight, on related Web pages.
Seriously, Webrings are a way for groups of Web sites with related content to link to one another in a circle, or ring, simplifying navigation and providing some locational context within the abstractness of the Web
JavaScript Yourself Anonymous -- In response to letters on hiding your email address on a Web page to avoid spammers sucking it down, Joseph McLean wrote us with a nifty JavaScript-based solution, which he offers for free:
Brandon Munday mentioned how he removed all "clickable" mailto links from his Web site to thwart the evil address-collecting spiders
Acrobatics -- Davide Guarisco offered some addenda to Mike Lee's article on Acrobat in NetBITS-014:
First, with the newest Macintosh LaserWriter software from Apple (8.5.1) it's even easier to create PDF documents