ANALYSTS EXPECT FLOOD OF INTERNET SOFTWARE.Byline: Lawrence M. Fisher The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times One of the more popular prognostications for the Internet and the World Wide Web is that they will usher in Verb 1. usher in - be a precursor of; "The fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in the post-Cold War period" inaugurate, introduce commence, lead off, start, begin - set in motion, cause to start; "The U.S. a new breed of software: tiny "applets" that will replace bloated bloat·ed adj. 1. Much bigger than desired: a bloated bureaucracy; a bloated budget. 2. Medicine Swollen or distended beyond normal size by fluid or gaseous material. applications and continual upgrades. But these applets remain only concepts, as does the $500 Netsurfer computer they will supposedly run on. Until they become reality, industry analysts expect a flood of "Web-enabled" and "Internet-ready" versions of the applications that are already in use. Some of these Internet add-ons will appear as free downloads on the Web itself, others as additional features in new upgrades. The push for upgrades expected to be driven by Windows 95, the Microsoft Corp.'s new operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. , may instead be motivated by the Internet, analysts say. They expect Web-compatible applications to create a new need for upgrades - and a new market for software developers. "I'm not seeing Windows 95 apps," said David Coursey, editor of PC Letter, who has been reviewing programs for the forthcoming Demo 96, an annual personal computer industry conference. "People are not saying, 'Look at our Windows 95 stuff.' They're saying, 'Come look at all the cool Internet stuff we're doing.' " Industry analysts and software developers say the World Wide Web amounts to a new computing computing - computer standard, or "platform," much as the personal computer did 15 years ago. That new platform has so far been driven primarily by new products from new companies, like the Navigator browser browser Software that allows a computer user to find and view information on the Internet. The first text-based browser for the World Wide Web became available in 1991; Web use expanded rapidly after the release in 1993 of a browser called Mosaic, which used from Netscape Communications Inc. In 1996, however, there will be a number of programs from established players like Microsoft, the Lotus unit of IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) and Apple Computer Inc. "Today there's the real world and there's the Internet," said Michael Hebert, Microsoft's product manager for Office 95, its suite of applications. "We think it all should, over time, become a natural extension of how people work. The real place we see value is making the Internet an everyday part of business users' tasks." |
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