NEWS IN BRIEF

David Pollack, Athena Design's warrior-developer, was defeated by the Goliath U.S. court system in October, as his motion for a writ of mandamus before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit was dismissed without comment. Pollack sought relief under the First Amendment against that court's ruling in August that protected Lotus's macro language from being used in Borland's spreadsheet products. As a result, Athena has removed Lotus-macro compatibility from its Mesa spreadsheet. Athena Design: 617/734-6372.

Uptime Object Factory began shipping in September its DatabasePassword, a Preferences bundle that allows users to change passwords on Sybase and Oracle databases. The software is localized for both English and German and will support other databases in the future, according to the Zurich, Switzerland-based company. DatabasePassword sells for approximately $60; a demo version is available on the archive cs.orst.edu. Uptime: 41/1/313-0607; info@uptime.ch.

Williams Telecommunications extended its WilPak frame-relay service to Europe in October. The system is an extension of WilTel's fiber-optic private-line telecommunications network, which was designed over the past two years and operates under NEXTSTEP. The network offers clients high-speed data and voice-communications capabilities, as well as custom reporting and administration tools. WilTel: 918/588-5752.

Ciusa was scheduled in December to release NoteAbility, a professional music-notation package. The software is designed to let users input notes via mouse action, keyboard, on-screen keyboard, and step-time and real-time entry from a MIDI keyboard or device. NoteAbility also accepts NeXT MIDI and score files, as well as files from NoteWriter, a popular Mac notation program. The fat-binary package will have a retail price of $499 and an educational price of $299, according to the company. Ciusa: 612/822-1604; info@ciusa.com.

Digital Tool Works in September shipped a multiple-architecture-binary version of EquationBuilder, its WYSIWYG technical-equation editor. Version 3.1 is available from several NEXTSTEP resellers, including NeXTConnection and Paget Press; contact Digital directly for site-license purchases and upgrade information. A fully functional demo version can be found at the FTP sites cs.orst.edu and sonata.cc.purdue.edu. Digital Tool Works: 617/742-4057; info@dtw.com.

Sirius Solutions in October announced new pricing and an update to its CheckSum accounting program. Version 1.1 tracks expenses, income, property, and cash, and provides income statements and balance sheets for the single user or small-business owner, according to the company, and costs $95. An educational price of $75 has also been set. A demo version is available from cs.orst.edu. Sirius: 415/957-9044; checksum@sirius.com.

Pinnacle Research has added SunOS and ULTRIX systems to the list of servers supported by its Transfer connectivity solution. The $249 package is designed to provide remote access to NeXTmail and files, and command execution on a variety of UNIX servers, as well as customized connectivity solutions. A demo version of Transfer can be found on the cs.orst. edu archive site. Pinnacle: 602/ 529-1135; transfer@pri.com.

Cub'x Systmes has changed its name to Intuitive Technologies. The developers of the Cub'X-Window X11R5 solution and intuitiv'3d 3-D modeler can still be reached at 33/1/47.08.74.40; info@cubx.com.

Alpine Computing Microage announced in October its NEXTSTEP for Intel Processors product catalog. The catalog offers workstations from various manufacturers as well as NEXTSTEP user and developer versions and selected third-party software. Alpine: 801/268-8877; kris@ magnusson.uuco.