Access and Shikoku Electric Power Form an Alliance to Develop Embedded Client Software for Mobile Devices and Server Software for Home Electronics Control.TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 12, 1998--Access Co., Ltd. (Tokyo) and Shikoku Electric Power Co., Inc. (Kagawa, Japan) agreed to develop a remote control system for consumer mobile information appliances with Shikoku's OpenPLANET, an integrated remote monitor and control system, and Access' powerful embedded Internet software technologies. The systems will allow users to remotely control consumer electronics devices from outside their homes by cellular phones, PHS (Personal Handyphone System) A TDMA-based cellular phone system introduced in Japan in mid-1995. Operating in the 1880-1930 MHz band, PHS uses microcells that cover an area only 100 to 500 meters in diameter, resulting in lower equipment costs but requiring more base (Japanese small cellular phone), PDAs (personal digital assistant), car navigation See GPS. systems, and other mobile devices. Access will also co-develop with Shikoku Electric Power the electric power meter server with Access' embedded software technologies. OpenPLANET by Shikoku Electric Power OpenPLANET is the next-generation integrated system of remote controlling and monitoring via the Internet for any electronic devices from anywhere and anytime. OpenPLANET increases safety, convenience and comfort for users, as well as conserving energy and natural resources to protect the natural environment of the information society. OpenPLANET has been considered as remote control and monitor systems at various factories and buildings, and the technical testing for home use has just been completed. Home consumer electronics products with electrical power connection are controlled by a server integrated with the electric power meter. This server is connected to the Internet and the home electronics products can be accessed from anywhere in the world. The communication method is based on the mobile data communication such as cellular phones and mobile information appliances. Applications of Remote Control of Consumer Electronics Products Access' embedded Internet technologies including NetFront(TM) browser for consumer electronics; Compact NetFront(TM) for small devices; and JV-Lite(TM), a Java Virtual Machine A Java interpreter. The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is software that converts the Java intermediate language (bytecode) into machine language and executes it. The original JVM came from the JavaSoft division of Sun. compliant module for consumer electronics, will be integrated into home remote control electronics with mobile devices via OpenPLANET. The browser software and JV-Lite are client software embedded in mobile devices that can communicate with the electric power meter server to execute Java applications for the control of home electronics. For example, users can operate the air conditioner and boil water in the bath by a cellular phone or inform home your current location from your car using the car navigation system. Additionally, the integrated technology can be applied to an agent application server and a remote monitoring system for industrial use. Future Development Based on Access' compact software technologies, Access and Shikoku Electric Power plan to jointly develop a small and low-priced electric power meter server aimed at mass production. Low-priced and compact size are the key success factors for the home market. Advantage of Java Technology Java programming language is hardware independent and ideal to run applications which control various home electronics products, for example, to upgrade client side software through network oriented content and services. Today, Java is still not a practical solution for consumer electronics because of its large memory requirements. Access' JV-Lite solves the memory problem with small memory footprint and allows Java language to run in PDAs, car navigation systems, dedicated terminals, cellular phones and PHS. Shikoku Electric Power promotes a plan to locate the electric power meter server to home starting year 2000 after completing the testing. In the near future, Shikoku Electric Power, in cooperation with other electric power companies, will build a new global network which covers national households. Access and Shikoku Electric Power will cooperate to develop a global network for home, content and service providers, and intelligent mobile devices. Also, both companies will promote standard specifications and API design for realistic system developments as well as conducting research with related companies. About ACCESS Access, headquartered in Tokyo, with an office in Santa Clara, Calif., is a leading Internet software company with its flagship products NetFront and Compact NetFront. Since its inception, Access has established close working relationships with leading worldwide consumer electronics companies. Over one million units of software licenses have been shipped and adopted by more than 30 major consumer appliances makers for TVs, set top boxes, word processors, PDAs, car navigation systems, cellular and PHS phones, and dedicated terminals. NetFront 2.0 NetFront 2.0 is a modularized mod·u·lar·ized adj. Having or made up of modules: modularized housing. , comprehensive embedded software suite for designing consumer Internet appliances. NetFront offers system designers a cost-effective, turnkey solution with software modules and open APIs that consist of a WWW browser, Email, PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) The most popular method for transporting IP packets over a serial link between the user and the ISP. Developed in 1994 by the IETF and superseding the SLIP protocol, PPP establishes the session between the user's computer and the ISP using , HTML HTML in full HyperText Markup Language Markup language derived from SGML that is used to prepare hypertext documents. Relatively easy for nonprogrammers to master, HTML is the language used for documents on the World Wide Web. parser A routine that analyzes a continuous flow of text-based input and breaks it into its constituent parts. See parse. (language) parser - An algorithm or program to determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or string of symbols in some language. , HTTP HTTP in full HyperText Transfer Protocol Standard application-level protocol used for exchanging files on the World Wide Web. HTTP runs on top of the TCP/IP protocol. , TCP/IP TCP/IP in full Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol Standard Internet communications protocols that allow digital computers to communicate over long distances. , FTP FTP in full file transfer protocol Internet protocol that allows a computer to send files to or receive files from another computer. Like many Internet resources, FTP works by means of a client-server architecture; the user runs client software to connect to , SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) The standard e-mail protocol on the Internet and part of the TCP/IP protocol suite, as defined by IETF RFC 2821. SMTP defines the message format and the message transfer agent (MTA), which stores and forwards the mail. , POP and other network communication modules. It supports the latest WWW WWW or W3: see World Wide Web. (World Wide Web) The common host name for a Web server. The "www-dot" prefix on Web addresses is widely used to provide a recognizable way of identifying a Web site. standard specifications. Other complementary modules include JV-Lite(TM), a clean-room Java compliant Virtual Machine module; encryption module for information appliances (Crypt module) and compact Secure Socket Layer (SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) The leading security protocol on the Internet. Developed by Netscape, SSL is widely used to do two things: to validate the identity of a Web site and to create an encrypted connection for sending credit card and other personal data. ) module; and Internet Personal Information Manager (PIM (1) (Protocol Independent Multicast) A multicast routing protocol endorsed by the IETF. Used in conjunction with an existing unicast routing protocol, it comes in two flavors: Dense Mode (PIM-DM) is used when recipients in the target group are in a concentrated ) function. JV-Lite JV-Lite is a clean-room Java compliant Virtual Machine (VM) module with small class library. Since JV-Lite is a Java compliant VM, developers can easily use commercial development tools for any Java applications development. JV-Lite and class library can be embedded in ROM and JV-Lite supports various Real-time OS because of its platform independent design. CompactHTML Access submitted the original markup language Compact HTML for small information appliances jointly with Matsushita Electric, NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. , Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, and Sony to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, www.w3.org) An international industry consortium founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee to develop standards for the Web. It is hosted in the U.S. by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT (www.csail.mit.edu/index.php). ). Access released Compact HTML-based browser called Compact NetFront, which will be integrated into cellular phones and released in late 1998. Notes to Editors: NetFront and JV-Lite are registered trademarks of Access Co., Ltd. in Japan. Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other corporate and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. |
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