Wireless Communications Starting to Come On

At the recent Technologic Partners’ Pen Computing conference, Reese Jones of Farallon Computing commented that the problem with wireless communication is a software problem — the necessary tools just aren’t yet available. Addressing this problem, software tool vendors are jumping on the wireless bandwagon with a variety of announced packages.

Motorola Mobile Data (Richmond, British Columbia), for instance, will ship this fall a DOS-based C library that adds RF communications to software packages. The toolkit is designed to provide software support for Motorola’s 400i portable RF modem which is built into the NCR 3125 pen-based computer.

Likewise, NCR Corp. (Dayton, OH) and Persoft Inc. (Madison, WI) have signed an alliance whereby NCR will resell Persoft’s Intersect Concentrator communication software that connects NCR’s Wave-LAN wireless networks to existing Ethernet networks. NCR’s Wave-LAN is the transport for spread spectrum radio frequency for indoor wireless local area networks. The Intersect Concentrator will be available this month.

Traveling Software (Bothell, WA) will also release this fall its Blackbird communications technology that’s designed to accomodate drivers for RF, cellular, and other transports. (See related story in this issue.)

Wireless communication is an area we’ll be covering in greater detail in future issues.