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Show 9 The Daily Herald Saturday, May 14, 1994 Controversy over code vs. content Okay. So maybe Utah has one of the lowest percentages for beer consumption in the U.S. That doesn't mean that you're ignoring the beer ads, does it? Of course not. If you're like me, you've been bfown away by the current ad for Miller Genuine Draft. In the commercial, which "broke" during the Super Bowl broadcast, the viewer is shown a hot, sweltering day in New York City with no apparent relief from the heat in sight. Suddenly the Chrysler Building comes to life, bending over at its "waist" as.it reaches with its tower for an oversized beer bottle attached to a billboard. With the bottle grasped by its neck, the cap is flipped off, Microsoft to no longer use 'suggested prices' By JAMES COATES Admitting that the suggested retail price being quoted by stores for computer software has almost nothing to do with the actual price Microsoft Corp. announced Monday that it will scrap the fiction starting July of incessant price cuts, upgrades and rapid obsolescence, suggested retail prices for computer software titles have e become something like airline tickets, a price hardly anyIn an era low-co- st mm "SRPs (suggested retail prices) were originally intended to provide a guideline to customers about the , day. for Monday's Microsoft officials announcement, said, was that the suggested-retail-pric- e strategy was developed for selling software to corporate accounts and not to home buyers, A major reason FtW-?!- - ".. ? f , : t then negotiated lower prices to in stall the same software on many of the company's desktop computers. But, as executives for several software resellers noted Monday, those corporate prices were never level charged at the retail-stor- e even though they were the stated retail price from software publishers. who have become an important new income source. A recent study by the Software Publishers Association, which represents Microsoft and its competitors, found that 27 percent of all American homes have a personal computer in them. Microsoft has conducted several studies of those home users and found that the suggested retail "Microsoft's prices it publishes had discouraged many from buying titles when they actually could have found the product for far lower prices than those cited, the company said. The pricing strategy dates back to the era when software profits were pegged to selling programs to large corporate accounts that paid a premium for the software and ...., . I! H if I . t ,. - OREM WordPerfect Corp. has formed an alliance with Dragon Systems Inc. to produce speech recognition applications. Using Dragon Systems' speech tid technology, WordPerfect Corp. d will make its applications and provide other develvoice-enable- Wasatch Tech Watch opers with access to the jointly developed technology. Dragon Systems is an industry leader in command and control, and large vocabulary speech rec- prompting an instantaneous snow flurry. The connection between relief from the heat and cool refreshment is obvious. All in all, good ad, great graphics. No comment on the beer, however. Oh, by the way. Did I mention that the animation in the MGD commercial was made possible by firm? Yep. an Orem-base- d Corp. is integrating Dragon Systems' speech technology into its Windows products through a jointly defined applications programming interface (API). This strategic alliance will benefit users by providing a greater 1 Pi T"1-- " war- i AP Photo Byte into this store up to a terabyte of data in just 17 square feet. A terabyte is one trillion characters and is equal to forty thousand filing cabinets filled with pages. The new Symmetrix 5500-- 9 storage subsystem, held by Craig Norman of mainframe product management at EMC Corporations, in Hopokin-ton- , Mass., uses the nine gigabyte drive to type-writte- to plunge into the distinctly trade of selling multimedia software. Baker & Taylor Software of Simi Valley, Calif., one of the big- By MIKE LANGBERG untrad-ition- al CD-RO- Newspapers Knight-Ridd- IndependSAN JOSE, Calif. ent bookstores sell themselves as islands of tranquillity quiet places to buy a cup of espresso and unhurriedly browse through volumes of text printed on paper. But bookstore owners, unwillbehind in the rush toward new technology, are about ing to be left distributors, drew CD-RO- gest 100 Bay Area bookstore owners to y seminar last week to an learn about stocking and selling all-da- CD-ROM- Most of the bookish crowd at the Clarion Hotel near San Francisco Dayna announces new mobile access server - LAS VEGAS DaynaLINK, a modular and expandable network access server platform that provides access to local area network services for remote and mobile computer users through the innovative use of PCMCIA dataFAX modem cards has been released by Dayna Communications Inc. Patents are pending on both hardware and software portions of the product. PCMCIA Forms Basis of Hardware Platform. The DaynaLINK hardware WordPerfect Corporation's wo'.! '' processors, said Jim Baker, cl executive officer of Dragon S i i ! CD-RO- Ms deal Analysts said the gives new weight to the notion that the coming world of interactive services, such as home shopping, will reach consumers through their personal computers before it finds them through their televisions. past its larger rivals Prodigy and CompuServe. "America Online gets a bis jumpstart with this," said Rick J. Martin of The Chicago Corp., a brokerage. "America Online h i leapfrogged Prodigy, and CompuServe is nowhere to be seen." sup- high-spee- d ry, and network media. The International Airport on Tuesday ' said they will put at least a few titles in their stores by the end of the year. "The book is evolving into a new format," said Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler's Books & Magazines in Menlo Park. "We'll always be selling books in the traditional format. But in the future, maybe the near future, we could be CD-RO- sellincthem in electronic form." M Redgate, a Florida-base- d priof- vate company with a fice in Cambridge, Mass., could help America Online solve several problems that now face the electronic media industry, boosting it America Online said it would issue 444,184 shares to exchange for Redgate shares and would ie serve 103,383 shares for Redga'c employee options. Martin valued the deal at between $33 million and $35 million, depending on price of the options. A bank of indicator lights on the front indicate send and receive accondik tivity, and on or off-hoo- tions for each modem. Manufacturers ports up to eight PCMCIA Type II dataFAX modems. Another PCMCIA Type III slot on the front panel supports Type III or Type II ROM cards which can be used to install additional services, protocols, memo- Spring Sales Event All items reduced 15 and More le enclosure measures 17.5" x 2.6" x 8" and includes BNC, AUI, and Ethernet ports. auto-sensi- 10BASE-- T FOREIGN CAR & TRUCK SPECIALS 1973-8- 6 CHEVY FULL SIZE TRUCK (Installed) 1984-8- 8 TOYOTA TRUCK OR 1986-9- 3 NISSAN HARDBODY 1989-9- TOYOTA TRUCK OR 3 (Installed) NO ANT. (Installed) PCIK-U- (Installed) $89 $99 $129 $149 COUPOI USE THIS COUPON FOR UP TO OFF YOUR INSURANCE QUALITY CLASS Mountain Pine Furniture We custom furnish to suit almost any need. Choose from the many beds, barstools, end tables, dining sets, and one of a kinds items for hundreds less than retail. Complete furnishings line and custom design. DEDUCTIBLE 'nmmtrictiont apply 'Call for detailt kmtxmcr has benefitted users of gram various PC applications, especialK HI 'E BILL OUT MOST INSURANCE T?XEV ;; years ago, our DragonDictate personal computer dictation pro all-sto- L THE VOICE OF HOPE n Bookstore owners plug into VALUABLE and let us help you. BOSTON (KRT) Promising online computer services with more "pizazz," a new type of shopping catalog and a new use for America Online Inc. said Wednesday that it would acquire Redgate Communications Corp., a small but prominent electronic media company. CD-ROM- s, TOLL-FRE- E Grab tha line By integrating speech technology into its Windows products. WordPerfect will provide applications that are actively aware of run ural language input. These int grated applications will offer . whole new functionality, and sup port features and interactions tint can be done more easily by voice than by keyboard. America Online to buy small electronic media j r OUR LIFELINE IS product. terns. al 1 level of capability in a fully "Since its introduction four ognition products. WordPerfect Utah's hottest content maker al of speech applicatio , r J Viewpoint DataLabs International, Inc. (formerly Viewpoint Animation) is fast becoming recognized as one of the world leaders in creating images for use in multiple media. With 75 people on its staff, most of whom are computer artists, Viewpoint creates what it calls "datasets" for use by software programmers, animators, film makers and ad agencies. These datasets are in essence 3D grid drawings, which form a framework outlining the details of a given thing, such as a car or a human skeleton. The datasets are created either on a computer by an animator, or by manually plotting hundreds to thousands of points on an object. The results look much like an electronic wireframe outline, which details provides of the desired object. The details of a dataset can deal with just the outer layer of an object, such as the clothes on a cowboy. (A real dataset, I might add.) Or, may be available in multiple layers, down to the bones in the cowboy's hand. Datasets can also come in various levels of complexity or detail . For example, Turtle L in the latest Viewpoint catalog is made up of roughly 100 polygons, while Turtle R is comprised of more than ,000 polygons. Content building blocks For a film maker or software programmer, Viewpoint's datasets become the building blocks for quickly and economically creating detailed 3D graphics or realistic animation. And when a single day of shooting fora movie can run upwards of $100,000, it's important that creators make the best use of their time and money. In addition, the use of Datasets allow s producers to do the previously undoable, such as animating the Chrysler Building. And although there may not be a lot of socially redeeming value in a beer commercial, Viewpoint President, John Wright foresees the day when Viewpoint datasets will be used to unalterably transform the face of training and education. ; Someday soon, he says, creators will use datasets to visually explain ideas and processes as never before done in training films, educational software and multimedia CDs. The result will be an explosion of new content, which in turn may lead to another software giant in Utah. elimination SRPs supports the reseller market place, which has been moving l" cost-plu- s pricing for its customers," said Steven Weiner, senior vendor manager at Corporate Software Inc. He added that he expects Micro soft competitors like Lotus Development Corp. and Borland International Inc. to soon follow suit. WP, Dragon unite o ""l' , ,.. t hurt business, said spokesmen for Microsoft and several retail sales operations Mon- 1 vw8!rw,tl ' ' m ultimately and the Excel spreadsheet, are near $300, a large amount of today's sales are for less than $ 00 to "upgrade" the programs to more modern versions. body pays. HiII David $100 in many retail stores. Likewise, though suggested ren tail prices for the company's applications, including the Microsoft Word word processor er well-know- full-far- tlml Since the company is not changing the actual cost to retailers, it doesn't believe that scrapping suggested retail prices will have an impact on what consumers pay, Appe said. Stating a high suggested retail price and then offering the product for much less provided sellers a sales gimmick. But it also created confusion among consumers that end-us- Chicago Tribune of the merchandise, price of a product," said Mike Appe, vice president of sales at Microsoft. "But the discrepancy between SRPs and actual retail prices is such that SRPs no longer serve this purpose at all. " For example, while Microsoft set the suggested retail price for its highly popular encyclopedia Encarta at nearly $400, the title sells for around INSURANCE COMPANY APPROVED Brothers Brothers 590 S. 400 W. PROVO f80IJ 37J-758- 8 e |