This week we bring you news on PSI’s purchase of Mac developers InterCon and Software Ventures, and follow-ups to previous articles on the PowerTalk Key Chain and AOL’s recent purchases. We also have news of Netscape integrating Macromedia Director playback technology, plus news on StyleWriter drivers and cartridges, and, finally, the first part of a three-part essay by Luciano Floridi on the Internet’s potential impact on how we think about knowledge.
IBM's Been Taking Notes -- Lotus Development Corporation announced Sunday that it will let itself be acquired by IBM at a price of $64 a share, with the total deal working out to about $3.5 billion (see TidBITS-280)
Brent Bossom writes:
Apple Japan has announced the latest (and perhaps last) in the 68K PowerBook 500 series; however this one will only be available in Japan
Netscape Finds Director -- Netscape Communications Corp. announced last week that it plans to integrate Shockwave into future versions its Netscape Navigator Web client
Eric Garneau recently directed our attention to Everything Macintosh, an excellent Web page that brings together a huge number of links to Macintosh-related resources
Cartridge Confusion? In April, Apple replaced its previous StyleWriter and StyleWriter II ink cartridge (M8041G/B) with a new StyleWriter Ink Cartridge (M8041G/C)
New StyleWriter 1200 Drivers -- Owners of the StyleWriter 1200 as well as the original StyleWriter and StyleWriter II might be interested in version 2.0 of the StyleWriter 1200 printer driver
After last week's move by AOL to purchase GNN and WebCrawler, Internet access provider PSI decided to show its hand and purchase Mac developers Software Ventures and InterCon
A few people with more financial knowledge than I have set me straight on the fact that when one company acquires another by paying in stock, it doesn't hurt the purchasing company particularly at all, especially if the companies being bought have no liabilities
A number of people wrote in about my editorial in TidBITS-279 that proposed that Web browsers support the PowerTalk Key Chain (or at least something akin to it) to deal with the many authenticated Web sites springing up.
Andrew Anker , president of HotWired Ventures wrote to defend HotWired's use of authentication:
We actually offer a number of sophisticated features that result from our use of authentication
[Note: we thank Professor Floridi for kind permission to reprint this material, which is a shortened version of a paper he gave at a UNESCO Conference in Paris, March 14-17, 1995.]
Part One: Understanding The Internet
The Internet: a population of several million people, interacting by means of a global network