Short Cuts: Roaming Around the Mobile Computing Industry

Solectek Extends Wireless Campus Networks

Traditional Campus Area Networking (CAN) has concentrated on linking together networks residing in buildings located relatively close to each other—generally under three miles apart. San Diego-based Solectek is effectively redefining the term CAN by offering a new wireless LAN bridge that is capable of transmitting data over a distance of 25 miles.

Dubbed the AIRLAN/Bridge Ultra, the four channel bridge uses the 2.4 GHz radio frequency range and can be configured to operate in point-to-point or multipoint communication. Achieving the maximum distance requires the use of proprietary line-of-sight directional antennas in point-to-point mode, however, multiple buildings can be interconnected within a radius of six miles using a central omni-directional antenna.

Solectek describes the AIRLAN/Bridge Ultra as a viable solution for linking networks and offices spanning an entire city without having to resort to costly T1 or microwave links. In addition, by using the 2.4 GHz ISM band, the system does not require a license to operate. Solectek suggests that the new bridge is an ideal complement for its existing AIRLAN in-building solution for roaming devices. These products, which include AIRLAN/Access, AIRLAN/PCMCIA and Parallel, operates in the 902-928 MHz frequency band, thereby removing the chance of interference with the 2.4 GHz inter-building links.

AIRLAN/Bridge Ultra is available in both Ethernet and Token-Ring versions, with each of the device’s four channels offering data rates of 2 Mbps. List prices range from $4,999 (Ethernet) to $5,999 (Token-Ring) and will be available beginning in May, 1995. For more information, contact Bruce L. Sanguinetti of Solectek at (619) 450-1220, (619) 457-2681 (fax).

McCaw Searching For His Next Tel?

Ripe with cash and stock from the recent sale of McCaw Cellular Communications to the giant AT&T, founder and visionary Craig McCaw may be looking for his next telephone company. Judging by his recent agreement to invest up to $1.1 billion to purchase stock in Nextel Communications, Inc., he just may have found it.

In practical terms, however, telephone services are probably not what McCaw has foremost in his mind. In reference to services such as cellular, PCS, and paging, McCaw stated: “I have been there, done that, and it is not my intent to do what I’ve already done.” Instead, McCaw seems more interested in establishing a set of wireless workgroup communication services for business users. To accomplish this, he intends to leverage Nextel’s existing enhanced two-way radio dispatch infrastructure and services.

McCaw is building on his vision of combined wireless services packaged into a single device, encompassing the range of activities related to dispatching, messaging, data communications, and telephone interconnection. Under the terms of the recently announced agreement, McCaw and other family members may invest up to $1.1 billion in Nextel stock over a six year period, purchasing shares from both Nextel and Motorola.

McCaw will become a member of Nextel’s board of directors with control over a newly established operations committee.

Nestor Improves Recognition in Important Market

With much of the spotlight focusing on dynamic handwriting recognition, the potentially larger market of converting the billions of hand printed forms and documents into machine readable form has seemingly failed to capture the imagination in the same way. However, technology critical to this market is advancing at a steady rate.

The most recent development has come from Nestor Inc., which announced that it has significantly improved the speed and recognition accuracy of its forms processing software. Nestor claims that the new versions, NestorReader 3.0 and OMNItools 2.0 Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) engines, offer three times faster processing speed with a 30 percent increase in accuracy.

Nestor attributes this increase to enhanced alignment, improved de-skew and form removal, and extra data validation. In addition, the company now offers a software accelerator that takes improved advantage of the power of new high-performance Pentium processors.

According to Nestor, the new systems are capable of extracting and interpreting information from both scanned and faxed documents, and can recognize both hand-printed and machine-printed data. The system is also designed to handle both clean and degraded images.

NestorReader 3.0 and OMNItools 2.0 will be available in May and are priced at $5,000. Current users can upgrade for $2,000. For more information, please contact Peter Atwood of Nestor at (401) 331-9640.

CIC Faces Some Challenges

Looking at Communication Intelligence Corporation’s recently released fourth quarter and 1994 fiscal results, what emerges is a company that has weathered some tough times and faces the classic challenge of a high-tech research company moving to becoming more sales and marketing oriented.

The company reported that fourth quarter revenues, ending December 31, 1994, were $635,000, down from $658,000 from the same quarter in the prior year. While fourth quarter revenues were up 15% from the previous quarter, the company suffered a net loss of $2.3 million for the quarter compared with $3.2 million in the corresponding quarter in the previous year.

CIC also reported that revenues for 1994 were $3.6 million, up from $2.6 million in 1993. The company attributed the increase to improved sales of CIC’s desktop-based handwriting products, including Handwriter for Windows and MacHandwriter. CIC also reported that its total operating cost and expenses increased by $3.3 million to $14.5 million reflecting the additional staffing and marketing required by the above mentioned products.

Most notably, the company publicly restated its need for a cash infusion during 1995, noting that the company is actively seeking to retain an investment bank to locate sources of capital, including the possibility of equity financing, joint ventures, or other alliances. In addition, CIC is searching for a new president and chief operating officer to help it make the transition to being a sales-oriented company.

Through it all, CIC states its intention to continue important new product development including a Chinese language recognition system. For more information, please contact Beverly Scott of CIC at (415) 802-7888.

Fujitsu AccessCard

When Fujitsu Personal Systems introduced its powerful Stylistic 500 pen-based tablet last fall, a new world of opportunity became available to ISVs, systems integrators, and corporate developers. With the February introduction of the Stylistic RF, this world was extended using Proxim’s 2.4 GHz RangeLAN2 adapter, reaching out to mobile workers and professionals within the range of a wireless local area network.

Fujitsu has now taken the next step by providing a solution to workers that require a high-performance system, but operate within a wider area by announcing that its Stylistic 500 computer is fully compatible with the AccessCard from Wireless Access, Inc.

The AccessCard is a Type II PCMCIA card that is capable of receiving data over paging networks employing the 900 MHz frequency band. Following the design of the Stylistic RF, which encases the RangeLAN2 adapter into the computer’s housing, the AccessCard is fully-enclosed in the Stylistic 500 resulting in a smoother and more robust design.

The AccessCard incorporates a patented omni-directional internal antenna and is compatible with a number of carrier services enabling workers to have access to a range of information including text and graphics. For example, a mobile sales force could receive up-to-the-minute inventory data while at a customer’s site.

Wireless Access offers an software developer’s kit (SDK) with libraries enabling developers to incorporate wireless features into existing Windows and DOS-based applications. For more information, please contact Susan Wald of Fujitsu Personal Systems at (408) 982-9500 or Derek Weeks of Wireless Access, Inc. at (408) 653-2217.