If it passes the joint committee, this year the US Dept. of Education will get $500K for an Office of Educational Technology (starting 10/1/93). Another $5M will go the the states for educational technology planning. [D. Bybee, ISTE. Connie Stout ([email protected]), net-hap, 9/29/93.] (Good news for CAI? Or just for networking?)

The Int. Assoc. for the Promotion of Cooperation with Scientists from the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union is calling for declarations of intent for joint scientific research and networking projects. Member nations of the association include most of Europe but not the US. Proposals should involve at least two European states, with one as project coordinator; funding will support scientists from the FSU. Contact Secretariat of the IAPCSISFSU, Square de Meeus, 8, 1040 Bruxelles, Belgium, +32-2-296 33 08 Fax, by 10/15/93. [Elena Biryukova ([email protected]), BIOMCH-L. RESEARCH, 10/6/93.]

An announcement for the 22nd Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop caught my eye. This is to be October 13-15 in Washington, DC. (DC conferences draw participants from government funding agencies.) Congresswoman Jane Harmon will speak on "Defense Reinvestment." Fundable problems are in environment and global change; medical and biotechnology; security and law enforcement; document image understanding; object and target recognition; and intelligent highways. Contact Joan Lurie, (310) 814-8690, or J. Michael Selander ([email protected]). [Laurel Harmon ([email protected]), Neuron Digest, 9/29/93.] (If the vision problems are ever solved, markets will open up for AI reasoning. Now might be a good time to start collaborations.)

(Speaking of law enforcement, the FBI is offering a $1M reward for information leading to the capture of the "university bomber(s)". The phrases "Nathan R." and "F.C." have been associated with several bombs. [NOW Magazine, NBC, 10/6/93.])

House/Senate conferees have agreed to increase NSF's research support by 7%, splitting the difference between House and Senate bills. They have also rejected the Senate's directions to NSF that would have asked for a new focus on strategic/applied research. George Brown (D-CA) has suggested that the President could require agencies to ignore earmarks in appropriations reports. Brown managed to amend the House Defense Appropriations Bill to require that funds be awarded competitively, thus freeing their Technology Reinvestment Project of $123M (23%) in earmarks. [Robert L. Park ([email protected]), WHAT'S NEW, 10/1/93.]

NSF will award $1.2M this spring in the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) pilot program, a new federal program that links entrepreneurs to the academic research community. NIH, NASA, DOE, and DOD are also participating. NSF is focusing initially on analytical chemical instrumentation. Winning projects will receive up to $100K in the first year to explore feasibility, with subsequent awards of up to $350K over two years for design and development. Small businesses must submit the proposals in collaboration with universities or nonprofit institutions. NSF's Div. of Industrial Innovation Interface has scheduled conferences about its SBIR and STTR programs for Arlington (10/13-15), Seattle (11/15-17), and Houston (4/26-28). [STIS file pr9375. Arthur R. McGee ([email protected]), DEVEL-L, 10/5/93. net-hap.]

NSF, ARPA, and NASA have announced an initiative in Research on Digital Libraries, including capture and digitization, segmentation and image analysis, OCR and pattern recognition, NL understanding, clustering and thesaurus construction, classification and indexing, merging and hyper-linking, heterogeneous distributed storage, abstracting and summarization, language generation, alerting, browsing and searching, data visualization and multiscale display, query languages, query optimization and learning, robust matching and intelligent retrieval, knowbots and agents, personalized interactive news, economic and social studies, network security and privacy, data compression, protocol design, digital publishing, intellectual property rights, and impact on science. NSF expects to award six grants of up to $1.2M/year for four years to develop significant commercial digital library resources in distributed environments. 25% cost sharing is required. Proposals are due by 2/4/94. Request brochure NSF 93-141 and announcements from Gwendolyn Barber ([email protected]), Room 310, NSF, 1800 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20550. Direct technical questions to Laurence C. Rosenberg ([email protected]), (202) 357-9592, (202) 357-0320 Fax. [Paul Evan Peters ([email protected]), net-hap, 9/22/93.]

NSF's new head of Advanced Scientific Computing will be Robert R. Borchers, assistant to the director for the University Relations Office at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. [HPC Select, 10/1/93.]

One of our members asked me about ARPA's request for "technology transfer" plans: "a description of the results, products, transferable technology, and expected technology transfer path." That's a bit hard to document when your products are software and research papers.

Questions about proposal solicitations are best taken to the relevant program director; he or she has an interest in teaching scientists the kind of work that ARPA needs. My understanding is that they want collaboration with industry rather than just [6.1] basic research and publication of results. ARPA's survival depends on getting bang for the buck: fielded military systems from ARPA-sponsored research. The agency works with defense contractors who can move research into practice under separate 6.2 and 6.3 funding.

The US military is being pushed toward dual-use technologies and less 6.3 funding. No good method of tech transfer has ever been found other than through a customer who needs and guides your research. (Researchers themselves can transfer to industry, but that takes creative people away from research.) ARPA doesn't have a magic answer for how to transfer all technologies -- they are depending on you to solve that problem for your own particular proposal.

NSF is much less concerned with such matters because their most influential constituency is scientists themselves. An NSF proposal need only show benefit to other scientists in order to win funding. Implementation of good ideas can be delayed by many years if professors and their students are so well funded that they needn't coordinate with industry. SBIR and STTR grants are the closest thing that NSF has to ARPA-style competitions.

(I'm not sure where NIST grants fit into this spectrum, but NIST has been concerned mainly with manufacturing rather than computer science.)

One use for the Library of Congress Information System (LOCIS) is to look up addresses in the Congressional Directory. Telnet to locis.loc.gov (140.147.254.3). [Sue Fawcett ([email protected]), PACS-L, 9/9/93.]

Grants under NIST's Advanced Technology Program are announced on TECHSERV. Send a "sub techserv your name" message to mailserv @nist.gov. ATP awards can also be FTP'd from the TECHSERV directory on enh.nist.gov. [Michael Baum ([email protected]), CARR-L, 9/23/93.]

The NTIS FedWorld gateway is now available via 16 Internet lines. Telnet to fedworld.gov to connect to more than 100 government bulletin boards. (Over 1,300 calls per day are being received.) NTIS ads and products will soon be available. [Robert Bunge ([email protected]), net-hap, 9/15/93.]

The EPA has opened a gopher server (at an implementation cost of less than $1K). WAIS and WWW servers are planned, plus interactive conferences. [Dave Rejeski (rejeski.dave @epamail.epa.gov), net-hap, 9/17/93.]

John Doyle has a list of government and military gopher servers. Some of the included labs are at NRL, Brookhaven, LANL, NASA sites, NIH, NLM, NIST, NSF, Oak Ridge, and USGS. Job listings at LANL are on gopher.lanl.gov 52262. [doylej @liberty.uc.wlu.edu, comp.infosystems.gopher, 9/21/93. net-hap.]

Blake Gumprecht has compiled a list of government information sources available on the Internet: AIDS, genetic data, health and mortality, ADA, NII, NSF, NASA, NOAA, UN, NATO, NAFTA, FDA, NTIS, PTO, GAO reports, budget, Congressional and Executive directories, committee assignments, election data, agricultural extension services, economic development, educational resources, fellowships, federal jobs, Federal Register, Navy news, historical documents, Canadian documents, census data, chemical substances, material safety data, earth science data, earthquakes, geographic atlas, weather, cancer, copyright, credit reporting, Freedom of Information Act, public opinion polls, speeches, travel advisories, treaties, Supreme Court decisions, regulations, statistics, standards, ZIP codes, etc. The list will be updated frequently. Contact [email protected], (215) 204-3187. [net-hap, 9/27/93.]

The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance lists more than 1,000 government assistance programs from 50 agencies. Search the gopher at marvel.loc.gov for Federal Government Information/Federal Information Resources/Information by Agency/General Information Resources. [Blake Gumprecht ([email protected]), 9/27/93.]

The National Referral Center Master File is a directory of 12K organizations able to answer questions in science and technology: telnet locis.loc.gov / organizations. [Blake Gumprecht ([email protected]), 9/27/93.]

The Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) contains descriptions of 1800 Earth and space science data holdings available from NASA, NOAA, NCAR, USGS, DOE (CDIAC), EPA, NSF and other US and international agencies, universities, and research centers. You can also LINK to over 70 other systems for data browsing and data ordering. Telnet to 128.183.36.23 (username NSSDC) or contact [email protected]. Access in Europe is via 192.106.252.160 (ESAPID); Japan, 133.56.72.1 (NASDADIR); Canada, 132.156.47.218 (GCNET). Questions may be sent to John Scialdone ([email protected]), (301) 513-1678, (301) 513-1608 Fax. [ci.geo.meteorology, 9/21/93. net-hap.]

"Resources for Economists on the Internet" is a lengthy document from Bill Goffe ([email protected]), archived as econ-resources-faq in news.answers. Resources include Economic Bulletin Board (EBB); EconData; New England Electronic Economic Data Center (NEEEDc); Luxembourg Income Study (LIS); National Archives Center for Electronic Records; Social Security Administration (OSS-IS); NetEc (BibEc & WoPEc); Working Paper Archive (Wash. Univ., St. Louis); Economics Gopher at Sam Houston State University; Computational Economics Gopher; ClioNet (Cliometric Society); National Bureau of Economic Research Gopher; Academe This Week (Chronicle of Higher Education); library catalogs; Netlib; Statlib; Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Statistical Library; Iowa Electronic Markets; and newsgroups and mailing lists. [bgo[email protected], sci.econ.research, 9/22/93. net-hap.]

DIMUND is a gopher server and mailing list for document- understanding resources: announcements, bibliographies, code, reports, etc. Also archives of Document-List Digest. Gopher or telnet to dimund.umd.edu, port 70. You can also FTP files, or retrieve them by email from [email protected]. Join the discussion with a "sub documents your name" message to the document-server. [David Doermann (doc-ow[email protected]), comp.infosystems.gopher, 10/5/93. net-hap.]

Project Gutenberg's public-domain literature files are now on CD ROM. $39.95 + $5 S&H (+ CA sales tax) from Walnut Creek CDROM ([email protected]), (800) 786-9907, (510) 674-0783, (510) 674-0821 Fax. $24.95 each by semiannual subscription (if at least 100 people subscribe). Write to [email protected] for info on Project Gutenberg. [Robert A. Bruce ([email protected]), comp.newprod, 8/16/93.]

The Internet text-file archive, etext.archive.umich.edu, now supports FTP and gopher protocols. Gopher browsing is probably easier, as the archive includes many book reviews, works of fiction, Latin texts, religious texts, CPSR files, and a complete record of many political digests, newsletters, and zines. 150MB have been added in the past few weeks. Paul Southworth ([email protected]). [Michael S. Hart ([email protected]), GUTNBERG, 9/26/93. net-hap.]

Editors on the VPIEJ-L list have been discussing ways of letting authors make proof corrections in electronic-format manuscripts. Copy editing on paper still works best, although the redlining feature of XyWrite III+ (for PCs) can be used to record insertions and deletions. [Michael R. Boudreau ([email protected]), 9/29/93.] DocuComp can track changes in Word-format files. Only professional copy editors should touch the disks, though; sending them to authors is "a BIG BIG mistake" as changes by authors can undermine formatting and editing efforts. [Jane-Ellen Long ([email protected]).] If you and your colleagues have Next workstations, you can collaborate or critique using voice notes that attach to text. Professors are using this technique when grading term papers, and lawyers use it to amend drafts of their briefs. [Rich Wiggins ([email protected]), ibid, 10/4/93.] (FullWrite has a change-bar capability, but requires a fast Mac with at least 2MB of memory. FullWrite is great for newsletters and simple desktop publishing - - I used it for the Communique for two years -- but never gained enough market share to compete with MS Word, WriteNow, and various outlining and layout programs.)

An RTF-to-HTML converter is available from Chris Hector ([email protected]). FTP src/cjh/RTF from ftp.cray.com. A copy of Paul Dubois' RTF-1.07a2.tar.Z package is also stored there. [comp.infosystems.www, 7/30/93.]

Neither Zylab nor Isys has yet produced a Mac version of their text-indexing software. Zylab sells Zyindex in Unix, DOS, and Windows, but just hasn't gotten around to the Mac. Likewise Isys is not ready to commit $50K-$100K for a port to the small Macintosh market. [Ernest Perez ([email protected]), PACS-L, 7/30/93.] (Sounds like a good project for someone. If they won't pay salary for a port, perhaps they will pay a royalty.)

Ken Lunde's "Electronic Handling of Japanese Text, Version 1.2 (1992)" shows how you can use kana and kanji in email and electronic documents. Send a "get japan inf" message to [email protected]. Send "get japan f13" for Lunde's review of his forthcoming book "Understanding Japanese Information Processing." [JAPAN, 9/5/93.]

UNorth Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) Dept. of Mathematics has a tenure-track opening in CS, especially AI, SE, programming languages, and systems. J.E. Vaughan, Greensboro, NC 27412. [Jie Wang ([email protected]), comp.ai, 9/30/93.]

USouth Carolina has tenure-track CS openings. [email protected]. [forsythe, 9/30/93. Dan Corkill ([email protected]).]

Oregon State University needs a 1-year postdoc in parallel- computing tools for programmers. Apply to Cherri M. Pancake ([email protected]) by 10/11/93. [forsythe, 9/29/93. Dan Corkill.]

UMaryland Baltimore County has several tenure-track CS openings, esp. in architecture, networks, SE, GUI, OS, DB, parallel and distributed processing, and scientific computation. CS Faculty Search, Baltimore, MD 21228-5398; (410) 455-3000, (410) 455-3969 Fax. [forsythe, 9/30/93. Dan Corkill.]

Duke University has three tenure-track CS openings, esp. in experimental systems (parallel architectures, compilers, multimedia) and scientific computing. Apply by 2/15/94 to Jeff Vitter ([email protected]). Duke also needs an assistant professor of CS. Apply by 2/15/94 to Owen L. Astrachan, Durham, NC 27708- 0129. [forsythe, 10/1/93. Dan Corkill.]

Arizona State University invites nominations for Chair of the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering. [email protected]. [[email protected], forsythe, 10/1/93. Dan Corkill.]

St. Cloud State University (St. Cloud, MN) has two tenure-track CS openings. Apply by 2/15/94 to csdept @eeyore.stcloud.msus.edu. [m.j.o, 10/4/93.]

UMinnesota is seeking CS faculty, esp. in computer architecture, SE, multimedia and distributed systems, and geometric and symbolic computing. Apply by 1/14/94 to Chair, Faculty Recruiting Committee, Depart. of CS, 4-192 EE/CS Building, UMN, 200 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455. [forsythe, 10/4/93. Dan Corkill.]

UFlorida (Gainesville), CIS Dept., has tenure-track openings in SE, programming languages, parallel processing, and related areas. Sartaj Sahni ([email protected]), (904) 392-1211. [forsythe, 10/4/93. Dan Corkill.]

SUNY Stony Brook is seeking CS and CIS faculty, esp. in graphics, UI, visualization, parallel computing, networks, OS, computer architecture, and information systems. I.V. Ramakrishnan ([email protected]), (516) 632-8451/8471. [forsythe, 10/4/93. Dan Corkill.]

UAlberta's Laboratory for Database Systems Research has a postdoc opening in object-oriented multimedia data management. M. Tamer Ozsu ([email protected]), +403-492-1071 Fax. [bworld, 9/29/93.]

Imperial College (London), Signal Processing Section, needs a 3-year research assistant in speaker-independent speech recognition. Unix/C, linear algebra, statistics. Mike Brookes ([email protected]). [Ewan Klein (ewan @cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk), ELSNET, 10/1/93.]

ULeeds (England), AI Div., Centre for Computer Analysis of Language And Speech (CCALAS), needs a 3-year PhD research fellow in computational linguistics to map between the syntactic annotation schemes of different ragged and parsed corpora. Apply by 11/1 to Eric S. Atwell ([email protected]), 0532 335468 Fax. [ELSNET, 10/4/93.]

UEdinburgh Dept. of AI needs an MS/PhD researcher in computer vision and robotics to study use of range data for extracting grasp points. 18 months, 13K-15K pounds/year. Robert Fisher ([email protected]), (44)-31-225-9370 Fax. [comp.robotics, 10/4/93.]

USussex, CS and AI Group, has an immediate need for a researcher to build a stochastic-optimizing parser for natural English. Geoffrey Sampson ([email protected]). [Richard Coates ([email protected]), LINGUIST, 10/5/93.]

The Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics (Berkeley, CA), needs several graduate research assistants to write intelligent code and interfaces for scheduling, telescope monitoring, data collection, and analysis. Also needed is software for proposal submission, processing, and acceptance over the Internet. Andrew Mayer ([email protected]), Heuristicrats Research Inc., (510) 845-5810 x629, (510) 845-4405 Fax. [ucb.jobs. Bill Park, 10/5/93.]

Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, IL) needs a full-time BS software engineer for C/C++ development. Expertise desired in AI, modeling and simulation, OOP and OODB, GIS and remote sensing, applied mathematics and numerical analysis, or physical, earth, and life sciences. John Christiansen ([email protected]). [Kathy Simunich ([email protected]), comp.ai.neural-nets, 10/5/93.]

A Los Angeles-area client needs an experienced US MS/PhD intelligent-systems engineer to develop Unix/Mac C/C++/Lisp/OSPS-5 applications in decision support for situation assessment, data fusion, and tactical planning. Lynne Freedman ([email protected]), (818) 905-9895 Fax. [[email protected], m.j.o, 9/27/93.]

Sign up now for Navigating the Internet: Let's go Gopherin', a free email course on Internet Gopher use. Richard J. Smith ([email protected]) and Jim Gerland (gerland @ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu) will be teaching it from 10/18/93 through early 11/93. Send a "sub gophern your name" message to [email protected] to register. [PACS-L, 9/22/93.]

Gopher Jewels is a list of gopher sites by subject category. FTP the current list as gopher-jewels.txt in /pub on ftp.einet.net. A hypertext version is available as gopher-jewels.html. [David Riggins ([email protected]), net-hap, 9/28/93.]

Hebrew University of Jerusalem has an experimental server for information on Israeli R&D projects. Telnet to vms.huji.ac.il and log in as "mop". Contact Dov Wiener ([email protected]) or Jacob Bar ([email protected]) to receive Dr. Shay Cahana's "Advanced Technologies from Israel," a hardcopy or electronic newsletter tracking Israeli R&D projects. It's from the Israeli Industry Center for Research and Development (MATIMOP), Tel Aviv. [net-hap, 9/8/93.] (Wiener also maintains JEWISHNET, a list of special-interest lists available on the Ben Gurion University Gopher. [Dana Noonan (no[email protected]), [email protected], 6/23/93. net-hap.])

The CINFOLINK Directory of Information Services in China (1993-1994) is a guide to databases and networks in Hong Kong and the PRC. Some of the 325 information sources are available on CD ROM or diskette. The 120-page English edition is $50 + $2.50 postage ($6 outside NA) from Espial Production Ltd. ([email protected]), 85 Roe Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5M 2H6, Canada. [Kerry Hu ([email protected]), 9/24/93. net-hap.]

MIT Media Lab's ACCESS Service lists projects, sponsors, publications, and theses. FTP files from the access directory on media-lab.media.mit.edu. You can also contact online-world- [email protected] to join a discussion of e-publishing and the future of newspapers. The volume is low. An archive may soon be available. [Gilberte Houbart ([email protected]), CARR-L, 8/23/93.]

The Concurrent Engineering Research Center (CERC) at West Virginia University has a gopher server for abstracts, technical reports, and back issues of the discontinued journal Concurrent Engineering Research in Review. Connect to gopher.cerc.wvu.edu, or FTP tech reports from pub/techReports on babcock.cerc.wvu.edu. [Mary Carriger ([email protected]), comp.ai, 9/2/93.]

An NSF-funded Mathematics Archives for university-level mathematics teachers has moved to UTennessee on archives.math.utk.edu. FTP and gopher access. [Larry Husch ([email protected]), [email protected], 9/23/93. EDTECH, net-hap.]

To build maps, you need coordinates. Brygg Ullmer makes maps of the Internet by extracting domains from host names, using the whois server to get city and state descriptors, and then querying the martini Geography server for latitude and longitude. The latter can be reached by telnet to martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000. [hughf@csis.dit.csiro.au, alt.cyberpunk.tech. Bill Park, 9/21/93.]

UCork has an email-based Acronym Server. Send a "help" message to [email protected]. [Dana Noonan (noonan @msus1.bitnet), [email protected], 6/23/93. net-hap.] (NNEWS is an online newsletter for librarians.)

TMA Associates is soliciting information on European speech- processing projects for its 1994 "Trends in Speech Recognition" marketing research report. Contact Colin Brace (colinb @paramount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl), +31 20 6854300 Fax, of LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR to add your work to the listing. The report may also be purchased from William Meisel of TMA, +1 818 708 0962, +1 818 345 2980 Fax. [ELSNET, 9/25/93.]

Is it hard to turn a phonetic transcription into English text? Cheetah Systems (Fremont, CA) sells a turnkey transcription system for $10K. Cheetah began in 1987 as "the 11th company in a 10- company industry," but now follows only Quixote Corp. and Xscribe. Their $15K package for television captioning is #1 with a 60% share. Phonetic codes are produced on 22-key chord units that can record 250 wpm. (Four to six keys are depressed simultaneously, and more than 20K abbreviations are in common use. Court reporters train for 4-5 years, then earn $50K-$100K per year.) A PC running 1M lines of C and assembly code can process 200 pages of stenographic code in 14 seconds. Professionals still do the hard part in recording the codes: sorting out multiple voices, distinguishing homonyms, capturing nods or communicative actions, and understanding heavy accents, speech impediments, and whispers. [Joseph R. Garber, Forbes, 8/2/93.]

Celso Alvarez-Caccamo has been collecting opinions about speech recording on SONY's new $700 digital mini-disc players. Current models clip high volumes and frequencies above 15kHz, but work about as well as digital audio tape. You can record 128MB (almost 600MB compressed 4:1, 60-74 minutes) on each disc and each battery pack. A 10-second buffer prevents skips due to physical shocks. Playback by tracks has obvious advantages over tape editing, but current models don't let you vary the speed. The discs resist damage, but any damage at all might prevent an entire disc from being read. Future availability of players is also a serious concern. [[email protected], LINGUIST, 9/21/93.]

DSP sound cards for PCs, Amiga, and Mac allow you to record and edit either 2-channel stereo or up to 16 channels with 256 tracks per channel. $20K processing systems may include compression, notchband filters, rocking, equalizers, MPX, Dolby, etc, with sliding and matching of tracks. Minimal systems require a $1,500 DSP card and a 300MB hard drive. One hour of 16-channel sound may require four 1.2GB SCSI II wideband hard drives. After editing, the audio may be recorded on CDs, digital audio tape (DAT), Sony MiniDiscs, or Philips' digital compact cassettes (DCC). CDs can be written to in multiple sessions, but you need a $4K CD ROM writer. DAT players use helical scan that makes tape-to-tape editing difficult. MiniDisc and DCC compression algorithms lose some of the high frequencies. MiniDisc, DCC, and DAT systems in the US also have analog filters to degrade multigeneration copies. DCC is often the best choice at present, as it has slightly better fidelity than MiniDisc and the players are compatible with standard compact cassettes. [Eric James Adolphson ([email protected]) and David Powers ([email protected]), LINGUIST, 10/2/93.]

Desktop CD recorders are discussed in John M. Hartigan's "Compact Disc Recording: A Technical Overview," CD-ROM Professional (9/93), pp. 102-106. [Teri Rinne, Current Cites, PACS-L, 9/27/93.]

Philips is a $31B company with 40 lines of business. It's famous for research, but was having trouble getting products to market on time and at a low price. Research was languishing in the labs, software and military electronics divisions had been sold off, and -- after 70K layoffs, including 30% of research staff -- employees weren't willing to take risks. Then Philips hired Frank Carrubba, director of HP's research labs, to restructure its entire research and production cycle. Carrubba has introduced high-level screening of product ideas, long-term product plans, cross-divisional task forces, concurrent engineering, strategic milestones, and other HP-inspired innovations. R&D contracts with universities (including MIT) will reduce the need for research staff. [Jonathan B. Levine, BW, 9/6/93.]

Tandem's 10,000 employees have always enjoyed perks such as egalitarian management, profit sharing, beer blasts, retreats in Maui, seminars, sabbaticals, and a company pool. Their loyalty and hard work pushed Tandem to revenues of $1.9B in 1990, but now Stratus, Sequoia, and Digital are taking the market for open, fault-tolerant computers. Tandem has cut 1,800 employees, reduced pay by 5%, and ended its generous employee stock ownership program. There's nothing wrong with treating employees well, but "you shouldn't regard the trappings of success as the cause of success." [Dyan Machan, Forbes, 9/27/93.]

Borland is getting Wall Street flack for building a magnificent new campus. Many formerly frugal companies that succumb to "the Versailles syndrome" -- e.g., Trilogy, TeleVideo, Next -- are soon suffering losses. Construction takes attention away from business. [Julie Pitta, Forbes, 7/19/93.]

Albert Eisenstat's job at Apple has been restructured out of existence, and he is suing for a better severance deal than Apple offered. he has been earning $749K, plus bonuses totalling $760K in 1990-92. Eisenstat has been a board member since 1985 and EVP since 1987. He joined Apple in 1980 as general counsel and corporate secretary. [Linda Rohrbough, Newsbytes. Bill Park, 9/27/93.]

Quark XPress, an $895 desktop publishing program, is probably the third best-selling program for the Macintosh -- even though it's seldom advertised. The real money, though, is in networked software for publishers of newspapers, magazines, books, catalogs, and brochures. Quark Publishing System sells for up to $100K, or about $4K per seat. Publishers are eager to convert from Atex systems that start at $15K. Quark claims a pretax profit margin of 60% and has over $50M in cash. Founder Tim Gill likes to program, so he lets Farhad Fred Ebrahimi run the company. Ebrahimi's 1986 investment of $100K is now worth at least $250M. [Jeffrey Young, Forbes, 7/19/93.]

Kevin Fjelsted ([email protected]) has just joined us. He has been developing business software and managing projects for 19 years, including a score of projects in databases, communications, and operating systems. He also created a 15-member software engineering department for McGraw-Hill and managed the development of an interactive authoring system and other commercial products. Kevin's current interests are in object-oriented technology for business information systems.

-- Ken