CREATIVE Technology has announced its Sound Blaster 16 SCSI-2 audio board will be used in Compaq Computer's new Presario MT (mini-tower) and Prolinea MT series of multimedia PCs. Michael Norris, vice-president of consumer products for Compaq, said Compaq chose Creative's blaster because it offered high-quality, 16-bit audio and compatibility with hundreds of software titles for PCs. This deal adds to Creative's strategic alliances with many industry leaders, including Intel, IBM, Dell, Digital Equipment Corp, Borland, Microsoft, Gateway 2000, and AST Research. Creative develops, makes and markets a family of sound and video multimedia products for IBM-compatibles. Its Sound Blaster sound platform enables IBM-compatibles to produce high-quality audio for entertainment, educational, music and productivity applications. MOTOROLA'S Paging Products Group demonstrated its growing family of NewsCard and NewsStream Advanced Information Receivers and several new alliances with manufacturers and paging service providers at Comdex. Motorola's Advanced Information Receivers are credit card-sized wireless receivers that enable users to receive messages, E-mail, information services, database updates, and data from paging and wireless messaging networks on portable computers and personal communications devices. Motorola is making wireless messaging more practical and more available through new products and service alliances, among which are: Newton Messaging Card: a custom NewsCard designed and made by Motorola as an OEM product for Apple. It is available to people who use Newton MessagePad through Apple's authorised representatives. It operates on the Apple Wireless Messaging Service, a paging network provided by MobileComm, a subsidiary of BellSouth Corp. EMBARC Motorola NewsCard: can be used with the Casio Z-7000, the Tandy Z-PDA and the GRiD 2390 personal digital assistants. It operates on Motorola's EMBARC wireless messaging network and enables users to receive personal messages, business files and information services, including general, financial, weather, sports and industry specific news updates. OEM NewsCard: this is available as an OEM product to computer makers and paging service providers. The applications software can be carried onboard and automatically uploaded to the portable computer when the card is plugged in. LOTUS Development and IBM have broadened their worldwide marketing, sales and development relationship to further their efforts to deliver OS/2-based desktop and client-server solutions. Under terms of the expanded relationship, IBM will support and sell Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2. It will also continue to sell and provide a full range of services to support Lotus' Notes and cc:Mail communications products. Lotus Ami Pro 3.0 for OS/2 and SmartSuite for OS/2 will be available in US retail stores within the next few weeks. The SmartSuite comprises 32-bit versions of Ami Pro, 1-2-3, Freelance Graphics and cc:Mail for IBM's OS/2 2.1 operating system and powerful Workplace Shell. AT & T customers now will be able to buy an entry-level video-conferencing sub-system for as low as US$3,995 that provides up to full-motion video-conferencing and real-time application sharing with a range of connectivity options. AT & T is also offering a range of solutions up to fully configured systems that include PCs. The products were developed in response to customers' requests to help meet business needs, Allen F. Rehert, vice-president of AT & T's Visual Communications market group, said. ''Customers want to buy standards-based systems so they can communicate with anyone else's standards-based system, whether it be on the desktop or in a conference room,'' he said. Customers can immediately buy a completely configured AT & T TeleMedia Personal Video System that includes an NCR 486SX PC for US$5,995. THE AT & T Multimedia Software Solutions (AT & T MSS) group has announced a strategy to market more than a dozen multimedia applications next year. AT & T MSS plans to address every level of the emerging multimedia marketplace with packages ranging from drawing, animation, and presentation software for the consumer market, to advanced feature products for Windows and Windows NT. The products will be designed and priced differently for the professional, desktop, and consumer-home office markets. The group markets illustration, animation and interactive multimedia writing software in the high-end DOS marketplace under the names RIO, RIO Animator, and Panorama but expects to change the names of its current products to reflect AT & T's overall multimedia strategy. The first two products to be introduced will be Windows and Windows NT versions of the popular DOS-based RIO image design, illustration, and creation software package. NEXT Computer will ship PDO - Portable Distributed Objects - for Hewlett-Packard's HP 9000 servers. PDO is the first product to be released from NeXT's recently announced Object Enterprise relationship, which combines NEXTSTEP, NeXT's object-orientated software, with the HP 9000 product family. This provides a scalable solution for client-server development based on a common object-orientated framework. NeXT also said it planned to ship NetInfo for HP-UX soon, as the second product from ObjectEnterprise. Netlnfo for HP-UX is a flexible and extensible database system for distributed system and network administration. PDO is the first industry product to provide a heterogeneous client-server framework based on objects. KNOWLEDGE Adventure Inc, which develops multimedia educational software products, unveiled its 3-D software technology at Comdex. The 3-D Dinosaur Adventure and 3-D Body Adventure are the company's first products to feature this technology on PCs. Knowledge's 3-D software technology creates realistic stereo, 3-D still images and movies using a standard PC equipped with a VGA monitor and a CD-ROM or hard drive. No special hardware is needed. Users wear 3-D glasses, two pairs of which are supplied with each product, to see the specially computer images and movies that appear to float in front of and behind the computer monitor.
