NeXT Nugget News Digest (vol. 2, issue 5, March 30, 1992) Hello, This is the FIFTH issue of the 1992 NeXT NUGGET NEWS DIGEST - a collection of items of interest for the NeXT User Group members. There are more than 290 NeXT User Groups in 33 countries around the world. (Several new recipients have been added to this mailing. If you do NOT wish to continue receiving future issues, please send email to user_groups@next.com.) Table of Contents i. "The Machine that Changed the World" on PBS I. NeXT Names President & COO II. Concurrence Presentation Software ships from Lighthouse Design III. Pencom Systems: NY, Wall Street and London consultants IV. Pencom Systems: Wall Street Sysadmin positions V. PixelMagician on NeXT VI. PC Week Magazine and NeXT VII. Thanks to Adamation for Special offer to NeXT User Groups! VIII. NeXT and the Olympics IX. Position: NeXTSTEP486 Developer Support Engineer Quote of the Month Conrad Geiger International NeXT User Groups Email: user_groups@next.com ___________________________________________________________________ i. "The Machine that Changed the World" on PBS PBS will broadcast a five part series beginning April 6th (check your local listings) "The Machine that Changed the World". History and impact of computers featuring among others Thomas J. Watson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Jobs, Bill Gates, and Marvin Minsky. Five programs are as follows: 1)"Giant Brains" WWII to ENICA 2)"Inventing the Future" Impact on business processing 3)"The Paperback Computer" Miniturization brings computers to ordinary people 4)"The Thinking Machine" computers vie with humans in intelligence 5)"The World at Your Fingertips" the social impacts of computing A joint venture with WGBH/NOVA and the BBC. _________________________________________________________________ I. NeXT Names President & COO NEWS: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Allison Thomas Associates Allison Thomas, (818) 981-1520 NeXT Names President & COO Jobs selects a partner to help manage NeXT's growth REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 18, 1992 - NeXT Computer, Inc. announced today that it has hired Peter van Cuylenburg for the newly created position of president and chief operating officer (COO). Van Cuylenburg will report to Steven P. Jobs, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), and will also join NeXT's Board of Directors. Van Cuylenburg will join Jobs in a newly created "office of the president." All NeXT vice presidents will report to this jointly held office, and Jobs and van Cuylenburg will share day-to-day management responsibilities. "Peter is an especially good choice to be NeXT's COO for two reasons," Jobs said. "First, Peter's last job was running half of a $6 billion corporation, so he has very strong operational experience. Second, he `discovered' object-oriented software and mission-critical custom applications independently several years ago, while working at Texas Instruments with LISP computers, so he has a deep understanding of NeXT's core strategy and technology vision." "NeXT grew fourfold last year, and we have the opportunity to become the next billion-dollar computer company. I need a partner such as Peter to help me manage NeXT's growth," Jobs said. "I am delighted to be joining NeXT," said van Cuylenburg, "because the computer industry has always been my over-riding interest. I think NeXT has a real opportunity to be one of the most successful computer companies in the 1990s, and I am excited to work with Steve Jobs to build NeXT into that company. I think Steve and I will be a great team leading a great company." Background on van Cuylenburg Van Cuylenburg, 43, joined Mercury Communications as its chief executive in December 1989. Mercury is the second licensed public telecommunications operator in the U.K. (the "MCI" of the U.K.) and a subsidiary of Cable and Wireless PLC, a $6 billion company that provides telecommunications products and services through its subsidiaries in more than 50 countries. During van Cuylenburg's tenure as chief executive of Mercury Communications, Mercury doubled its market share, more than doubled its revenues, tripled its profits and forged strong strategic alliances with cable TV and other telecommunications companies. After only six years of operating a public service, Mercury grew to $2 billion in revenues and achieved more than a 10-percent market share in its core business, long-distance telephone service to corporate customers. Mercury employs 9,000 people and supplies a wide range of communications products and services to its customers throughout the U.K. Based on his success at Mercury, van Cuylenburg was promoted in September 1991 to group director of Cable and Wireless PLC, Mercury's parent company, with responsibility for running all of Cable and Wireless' telephone companies in the 24 countries belonging to the OECD (Organization for European Cooperation and Development). Prior to joining Mercury Communications, van Cuylenburg spent 16 years at Texas Instruments, most recently as a vice president and member of the "Office of the President" of TI's Information Technology Group. In this role he was responsible for TI's worldwide computer business, including commercial UNThe Machine that Changed the World mini-computers, advanced technical workstations and advanced software development packages.His organization at TI was an early pioneer in custom applications for vertical markets, making use of the object- oriented programming capabilities of TI's LISP workstations. Van Cuylenburg, a British national, graduated from Bristol Polytechnic in 1971, where he also received the Institute of Electrical Engineers' award for "Outstanding work in the study of Electrical Engineering." In January 1992 he was invited to accept an honorary doctorate in technology from Bristol Polytechnic. NeXT Strengthens Management Van Cuylenburg's appointment further strengthens NeXT's senior management team, following January's appointment of Marcel Gani as CFO and February's promotion of Mike Slade to vice president of marketing. Gani spent 12 years at Intel serving in a number of senior financial positions, including director of internal audit for Intel's U.S. corporate headquarters and director of finance and administration for Intel Europe. Slade spent more than seven years at Microsoft, most recently as director of corporate marketing in charge of corporate strategy and marketing for system software. Slade joined NeXT in May 1991. In addition, Rich Page, a NeXT founder and formerly vice president of hardware engineering, was promoted in January to vice president and general manager of NeXT's newly formed Hardware Division. NeXT's Hardware Division combines all of NeXT's hardware engineering, manufacturing and distribution into one streamlined organization. NeXT Computer, Inc. designs, manufactures and markets professional workstations based on the revolutionary NeXTSTEP object-oriented system software. NeXT computers are used by medium and large organizations to develop and deploy mission-critical custom applications, which can run alongside a robust suite of advanced productivity applications. NeXT is headquartered at 900 Chesapeake Drive, Redwood City, California, 94063. ___________________________________________________________________ II. Concurrence Presentation Software ships from Lighthouse Design (Editor - check out the demo version of Concurrence and the sample files that are also there on the archive site: sonata.cc.purdue.edu.) Lighthouse Design Ships Concurrence Presentation Software for NeXT STEP Computers March 16, 1992-- Lighthouse Design, Ltd., the creators of Diagram!, today began shipping Concurrence, the first integrated outlining and presentation software available for the NeXT platform. Concurrence takes full advantage of NeXT's multimedia capabilities and allows users to create high-quality on-screen presentations complete with sound recordings and file links, or output to any PostScript output device, from printers to 35mm slide makers. With a built-in outliner that goes feature-for-feature with most word processors, Concurrence is made for creating and maintaining structure, from documents such as legal briefs and discussion agendas, down to simple to-do lists. Rearranging topics is a simple as picking them up and dragging them around the screen. In addition, Concurrence's outliner features rapid collapse and expand topics, auto-labelling, level formatting, and EMACS key bindings. Using the audio capabilities built into every NeXT computer, Concurrence supports the desktop-based creation of on-screen presentations with voice and sound accompaniment. In addition, Concurrence supports the "drag and drop" incorporation of any encapsulated PostScript (EPS) or tagged image file format (TIFF) image. For screen-based presentations, Concurrence features a wide variety of PostScript slide transitions such as dissolves, wipes and scrolls. Slide sorting can be done on a slide-by-slide basis, or entire modules of slides may be moved together for more rapid sorting than conventional "light table"-type sorters allow. Applying styles to large presentations is simplified by using master slides for each presentation view. Users may create an unlimited number of master slides. Concurrence easily maintains multiple presentations and outlines as views within the same document so that changes made to one presentation or outline are automatically propagated to all other views of the document. Concurrence's "Prepare for Mail" feature allows users to assemble self-contained presentations and distribute them via NeXT Mail to NeXT users running Concurrence anywhere in the world. In addition, users can create auto-repeating on-screen presentations for applications such as conferences and information centers. Availability: Concurrence is currently shipping and available. For price information contact NeXT Connection at (800)800-NEXT or +1-603-446-3383. Concurrence requires NeXTSTEP 2.0 or later. Academic discounts are available to qualified individuals and institutions. Companies and institutions interested in site licenses should contact Lighthouse Design directly at +1-301-907-4621. ___________________________________________________________________ III. Pencom Systems: NY, Wall Street and London consultants Pencom Systems Inc, the leader in NeXT software development and support (developers of co-Xist for NeXT) has full time and consulting positions available in the New York metropolitan area and London. Please email,fax or mail your resume to: Larry Cohen Pencom Systems Inc 150 Broadway, Suite 600 New York, N.Y. 10038 Phone - 212-513-7777 Fax - 212-227-1854 Email address: uunet!pencom!larry or pencom!larry@uunet.uu.net ___________________________________________________________________ IV. Pencom Systems: Wall Street Sysadmin positions SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR OPENINGS ON WALL ST. Skills needed include: * UNIX operating system: SunOS (4.x), NeXTStep, AIX, or System V. * Networking/communication: TCP/IP, NIS (YP), NFS, Ethernet * Shell scripting, light C programming. Job tasks include: End-user support/administration, disk/file system maintenance, backup and recovery, system performance tuning, configuration of the network, installation of software, installation of workstations and network devices, and testing and troubleshooting of software and hardware. Must be able to work in a very intense, dynamic environment, working on the trading floor with the traders. Send resumes to: PENCOM SYSTEMS INC. 150 Broadway, Suite 600 New York, NY 10038 Attn: Sharon Fox Tina Leifer Fax - 212-227-1854 email: uunet!pencom!tina uunet!pencom!sharon ___________________________________________________________________ V. PixelMagician on NeXT Introducing PixelMagician - a universal picture file viewer and translator for NeXT computers. Pixel Magician lets you view graphic files in other formats, import them and treat them as if they were created on your NeXT. Or export pictures created on NeXT to other platforms in the appropriate file format, color map and bit depth. Use the convert window to quickly browse or preview any picture. Convert entire directories by simply dragging and dropping. The Image Inspector allows you to control the Color-Space, Palette options, bit depth and dithering method for any image. With the Scaling Inspector you can precisely control the dimensions of each image. Support for industry standard formats such as TIFF, TARGA, GIF and PICT. Works through the NeXT Services menu to bring non-native file formats directly into your page layout, word processing, drawing, painting and imaging applications. Features: Multiple image conversion Precise Scaling: Percents, Pixels, inches, cm, points, picas Rotate in single degree increments Duplicate Error Diffusion Dithering Grayscale support Screen grabbing Image quantization Alpha channel support Drag/Drop Miniwindow thumbnails File extension aliases Works through NeXT services. File Formats: TIFF ( B&W, Grayscale, Paletted, RGB ) EPS/PS BMP PICT ( Raster Only ) Targa PCX PNM,PBM,PGM,PPM PXM Windows BMP Sun Raster GIF IFF Macp XBM XWD Release date: March 30th, Currently shipping beta versions. Current version: V1.00.X08 Latest Demo version of PixelMagician available on archive server: sonata.cc.purdue.edu ( 128.210.15.30 ) Location: /pub/next/2.0-release/demos For more information and pricing please contact: Bacchus, Inc. 2210 Wilshire Blvd. #330 Santa Monica, CA 90403 Voice: 310 820-9145 Fax: 310 820-5930 E-mail info@bacchus.com or bacchus!info@uu2.psi.com ___________________________________________________________________ VI. PC Week Magazine and NeXT (retrieved from the net) There is a small but quite effective article that once again legitmizes the NeXT Computer (NeXTSTEP) advantage in the March 2, 1992 PC Week magazine. Headline reads: "Taligent Board Suits Up for PINK OS Campaign" by Beth Freedman Excerpt: "Pink, which will comprise of hundreds of object subclasses that are processor-independent, is best compared to NeXT, Inc.'s NeXTSTEP operating system, the sources said. Like NeXTSTEP, Pink can be easily extended or adapted by modifying existing object classes or by adding custom objects for specific requirements such as networking or multimedia, they explained". ___________________________________________________________________ VII. Thanks to Adamation for Special offer to NeXT User Groups! Thanks go to Mark Richards of Adamation for making his 96% and 98% off offers to NeXT user groups for one copy of "Who's Calling" and "LiveWire" software products for the NeXT. A reminder - this offer is valid until April 30, 1992 for each NeXT user group. Here is Mark's contact information: Mark Richards Vice President Sales 1435 Center St. Oakland, CA 94607 Phone: 510-452-5252 FAX: 510-452-5033 Email: mark@adamation.com ___________________________________________________________________ VIII. NeXT and the Olympics >From Geoffrey Knauth with the Boston NeXT group: From: gsk@world.std.com (Geoffrey S Knauth) Subject: another notch up for NeXT in sports USRowing has been using my NeXT machine to compute speed order and national team trial race results for a year, but they've been unsure about Olympic trials, citing a commitment to existing PC and Mac approaches. Well, today, they changed their minds, and a NeXT computer will help at Olympic Trials, May 1-3 in Princeton. Geoffrey S. Knauth, Marble Associates, Inc. gsk@marble.com, (617) 891-5555 work, (617) 547-5247 home (Editor: Improv is one of the apps that is used to provide almost instant results information and analysis to the judges, crowd and competitors.) ___________________________________________________________________ IX. Position: NeXTSTEP486 Developer Support Engineer NeXT Computer, Inc. currently has a full time position opening with the Developer Support Team in the Redwood City, CA office. Please read on if you are interested in helping engineers port their software or write drivers for NeXTSTEP486. Overall Description: Provide timely and accurate technical development support to external developers so they can quickly write drivers for their boards or port their applications to NeXTSTEP486. Deliverables: In general: * Answer technical questions about writing drivers for boards to use on NeXTSTEP486 systems. * Answer technical questions about porting to NeXTSTEP486 from NeXTSTEP and other UNIX platforms. * Prepare technical papers and other proactive materials that will help developers port and write drivers. Before first release of the system: * Create at least one template driver as an example for external developers. * Author technical paper on how to do driver development for NeXTSTEP486. * Author technical paper discussing the main porting issues. * Learn tools and system by answering questions about porting to NeXTSTEP from other UNIX platforms. Skills Required: * Experience writing drivers and/or doing system programming on 4.3BSD UNIX systems specifically on Intel platforms. (Mach programming ability is a plus as well). * Demonstrable ability to learn new areas of an Operating System quickly. * Excellent problem solving skills - able to answer questions in areas which they do not have expertise by doing research. - able to deduce the root of a problem from a phone or email interaction. * Excellent ability to communicate with software and hardware developers who ask technical questions by email and phone - able to determine the context of the question so that the right question is answered, not simply the one that is asked. - able to write or verbalize the answer at the technical level of the person asking the question. - able to log the history of the interaction so that others on the team can learn from it too. * Ability to work independently in a dynamic environment. Ability to juggle multiple tasks. Please email, FAX or send your resume and cover letter to: Kate_Smith@next.com FAX: 415-780-3933 Kate Smith Manager, Developer Support Team NeXT Computer, Inc. 900 Chesapeake Drive Redwood City, CA. 94063 ___________________________________________________________________ end of vol. ii, issue v This issue's quote was found by jchin@wcraft.wimsey.bc.ca (Joseph Chin): "The best analogy I can think of is that UNIX remains a bunch of bricks without any mortar at all. It's a nice wall, but it sure doesn't make a good building to live within .... NeXTSTEP offers the mortar that's missing in X/Open windows... using the NeXT computer offers a computing experience -- a seamless computing experience"--SunWorld vol. 53, March 1992.