General Magic's First Developers Conference
October 29th-November 2nd, 1995
So much happened at General Magic's first ever, sold-out developer's
conference that it was impossible for one person to keep track of
everything. That said, I've attempted to compile a list of the major
announcements for those unable to attend.
Open Telescript!
The big news was the launch of General Magic's Open Telescript
Initiative. Applause greeted the announcement that for the first time,
the public can get its hands on General Magic's Telescript technology.
Conference attendees each received two CDs: General Magic's Telescript
Development Environment & Metrowerks CW Magic. Armed with these two
CDs, developers can (to quote the official press release) "... begin to
create and deploy applications based on Telescript technology." Heady
stuff when you consider that access to Telescript had previously been
restricted to General Magic's partners and a limited group of developers.
Point your WWW browser to http://www.genmagic.com to see for yourself.
A series of announcements followed:
General Magic has teamed with Verity to embed Verity's Topic search
engine and agent technology into Telescript.
General Magic expects to ship tools to integrate Telescript technology
with the World Wide Web in Q1FY96. This means anyone with access to a
browser will be able to start taking advantage of Telescript. In other
words, we're going to start seeing some amazing Web pages. This point
was proven during a demonstration of a stock portfolio tracking package.
The Web server was using agents to hunt down useful information and
then dynamically generating pages with it.
General Magic also announced the establishment of the Telescript
Developer Greenhouse Program to assist selected developers with
innovative uses for Telescript technology.
The three hundred developers who were at the conference to see what
General Magic had to offer were pleased. During the three solid days of
demonstrations that followed, almost everyone had something good to say
about what they saw. Although the majority of conference attendees were
there to see Telescript, General Magic also took the opportunity to make
several more major product announcements.
Magic Cap News
General Magic announced the shipment of Magic Cap v1.5 software for
communicators. New features include improved memory management, more
comprehensive mail handling, and better international dialing support.
Magic Cap 1.5 drives Sony's new PIC-2000 (see below) and is expected to
be incorporated into future versions of Motorola's wireless Envoy.
Upgrade paths for current users of Magic Cap were not clearly laid out,
and have yet to be announced by either Sony or Motorola. Also
interesting, a version of Magic Cap for Windows was demonstrated and a
beta was distributed to conference attendees. Look for Magic Cap for
Windows coming to the General Magic web site in time for the holidays --
so, soon many of the functions of your communicator will be available on
the PC. Combined with Active Paper's POPmail client (!), this could be
a terrific setup for Windows users who are heavy duty emailers.
New Hardware
Sony demonstrated the PIC 2000, a much improved version of the original
Magic Link. The coolest new feature built into the PIC 2000 has got to
be the backlit screen, a vast improvement over the original Magic Link's
display. Other new features include a built-in 14.4kps modem (which
unfortunately does not appear to have on-board error correction!), 2 MB
of memory, 2 PCMCIA type II slots, and a built-in speaker phone. A new
communicator was also demonstrated by Panasonic. Motorola was dropping
some serious hints about the next generation Envoy .Can you say 19.2kps
wireless data transmission? Wow.
More Wireless News
AT&T announced that they will be entering this market in a big way. Not
only do they plan to offer faster data rates, they promised to reduce
the cost of wireless service substantially. No firm figures were
divulged, but this is encouraging for those intimidated by the costs
associated with wireless connectivity.
Other Interesting News
Metrowerks
Metrowerks had a very strong presence at the developers conference,
giving a free CD loaded with Magic Cap development tools to all
attendees. Greg Galanos, CEO of Metrowerks, reaffirmed his company's
commitment to General Magic. He explained that Metrowerks's success
was based on 20/20 foresight. By aggressively supporting the PowerPC
from day one, they were able to dominate the market for PPC developers
tools with their product, Code Warrior. The same kind of opportunity
that made Metrowerks a force in the industry exists again, he claimed,
this time in the form of General Magic's Telescript and Magic Cap
technologies.
AT&T
Although they made no major product announcements, they were definitely
at the conference to develop business. One look at their Personalink
Services developer support plan proved that to me. If you have an idea,
or content of interest to the communicator user base, AT&T wants to talk
to you. They are focusing on vertical market applications ,
specifically in the fields of insurance, real Estate, health care,
government markets and sales force automation.
Active Paper
Active Paper has developed a POPmail client for Magic Cap. In English,
this means that users of Magic Cap equipped communicators have another
email option in addition to AT&T's PersonaLink Services, America Online,
and RadioMail. POPmail is a well established protocol for delivering
email, and runs on most Unix systems. This means that email is now
available to the Magic Cap userbase from a huge variety of service
providers. Rumor has it that we can expect more Internet aware
applications from these guys, so keep an eye on them.
Nimble
Seattle based Nimble launched a virtual software store at the
conference. "Outfitters Direct" will allow communicator users to
purchase and install new software directly over the phone without the
"mediation of a desktop computer." This is great news for people who are
attracted to idea of a communicator, but want nothing to do with their
desktop counterparts.
Other Cool Stuff
Saving the best for last, General Magic closed the conference with a
glimpse of some things to come. Motorola and AT&T made encouraging
noises about future products and services, but by far the coolest
demonstration was that of a functional World Wide Web browser running on
a Magic Link. You knew it was coming, but seeing the concept of
browsing the Web with a hand-held communicator realized was still mind-
blowing. Although the demo wasn't wireless, when you consider whats
lurking in the near future, the possibilities are really quite amazing.
General Magic also showed off the potential of a Sony Magic Link's built
in serial line by connecting a printer and then (get this) a VGA monitor
to the device. In other words, the communicator doesn't have to be a
stand-alone device. This makes the communicator market a hot prospect
for hardware developers too.
SUMMARY
General Magic has made a strong commitment to developers. They've
released the tools developers need to build products. Wisely realizing
that the success of Magic Cap and Telescript depend on third parties,
General Magic is doing everything it can to encourage them.
Attendance Statistics
Almost 750 confernce attendees including over 300 developers, 130
partners, and 45 speakers and exhibitors were present.
Pointers to more information:
General Magic 420 North Mary Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94086
(408) 774-4000
People can order videotapes of the conference!
WWW:
http://www.genmagic.com (General Magic)
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/ (Intelligent Agents page)
http://www.metrowerks.com (Metrowerks)
http://www.apix.com (Active Paper)
News Groups:
comp.os.magic-cap
comp.client-server
comp.infosystems.announce
Mailing Lists:
TSCRIPT, MAGICCAP, MAGICDEV, & MAGICDST @ BROWN University To join these
mailing lists send a message to:
with:
subscribe <ListName> <FirstName> <LastName>
in the body of the of the message.
The TSCRIPT is for the discussion of topics related to General Magic's
Telescript technology. MAGICCAP for general discussion of Magic Cap
topics, MAGICDEV for discussing Magic Cap software development, and
MAGICDST, which is a mirror for the newsgroup comp.os.magic-cap.
Archives for the list are available, and may be accessed by using
anonymous FTP to brownvm.brown.edu. After connecting to the FTP server,
issue the command "cd listserv.460" to access the proper directory.
You may also use a World-Wide Web gateway to manage your subscription
and search the list archives. The URL for the gateway is:
http://www.netspace.org/cgi-bin/lwgate
Software Agents Mailing list
Contact: listserv@sunlabs.sun.com To join the mailing list send a
message to:
with:
subscribe agents <FirstName> <LastName>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Harpold "What is the use of a book," thought Alice,
"without pictures or conversations?"
tharpold@netdepot.com
terry_harpold@attpls.net -- Lewis Carroll, _Alice in Wonderland_