Simon Says 1.1 offers improved voice recognition and noise thresholds. You no longer have to train every command in applications before using them with Simon Says, and new enablers and disablers have been added for covering Simon's ears. A follow-up release is claimed to have PhoneKit support, speaker-independent voice recognition for U.S. English, and a published API. Agog: 517/627-2186 or HSD: 415/ 964-1400.
Stepstone Corporation announced ICPak101 for NeXTSTEP. The foundation-class library is sold with Stepstone's Objective-C compiler for PCs, Macintosh, and UNIX workstations and is now available for NeXT. ICPak101 is $149 per user, available from Stepstone, 203/426-1875.
Object Based Computing is a new newsletter for NeXTSTEP developers, published by Information Technology Solutions (maker of the SpeedDeX personal-information manager). The first issue of the newsletter, which bills itself as "a programmer's guide to object-based computing on the NeXT computer," features articles about what object-based computing actually is, the linguistics of object-oriented programming, and an analysis of why the computer industry is switching to object-oriented development environments. Annual subscriptions are $28. For info, contact ems@its.com or call 800/ 394-4487.
NeXT has created a new e-mail alias for developer comments. The alias, Dev_comments@next.com, was created after NeXT received a storm of e-mail surrounding the company's decision to charge for developer support. Each message sent to the mail alias will be logged and responded to, said Jan Tyler, manager of the NeXTedge products and programs group.
Aurora Software is sponsoring a software sweepstakes, in which it plans to give away copies of its $19.95 QuickStart application organizer and Dock extender. To enter, hand-print and sign your name and mailing address on a slip of paper and mail it before October 30 to Aurora Software, Attn: Software Sweepstakes, 16 N. Allen St., Madison, Wisconsin 53705. For complete contest details, contact Aurora at 608/231-3679; e-mail: sweepstakes@as.com.
A free port of X11R5 to the NeXTstation Color has been completed by Paul Poh of Tufts University. A beta release of the port can be obtained by anonymous FTP from the Internet site amethyst.tcs.tufts. edu [130.64.3.5]. The distribution requires 50MB of disk space and includes all libraries, standard MIT R5 clients, fonts, include files, and manual pages. For information contact Poh at ppoh@amethyst.tcs. tufts.edu.