|
Be Newsletter
Issue 28, June 19, 1996
Table of Contents
Changes in the "Be Newsletter"
The "Be Newsletter" has been published weekly for seven
months. In that time, we've had a chance to review its
presentation and content. You'll notice a few changes in
this week's edition:
- The biggest change is in the weekly DEVELOPER PROFILE
article. We've changed the focus of the article to allow
the developer's voice to be heard more directly.
Dispensing with the familiar journalistic reportage, the
profile is now presented "straight from the horse's
mouth." Even the name has changed: The profile is now
called "BE DEVELOPER TALK." Our first developer in this
new presentation is Steven Knudsen of Resolute Research
Ltd.
- A number of readers have asked that we provide more
sales and marketing information. Starting this week,
you'll find a "BE MARKETING MUTTERINGS" column that
should help you understand Be's products and marketing
strategies. The column will appear biweekly.
- Starting next week, we will provide a summary of the
threads that are taking place on the BeDevTalk discussion
group. As many of you know, BeDevTalk is an unmonitored
forum where Be developers (and other interested parties)
exchange ideas, myths, suspicions, recipes, and,
occasionally, throw virtual brickbats at each other. In
summarizing the week's BeDevTalk traffic, we hope to
provide a scorecard for new and casual listeners. (To
subscribe to BeDevTalk, visit the mailing list page on
our web site:
http://www.be.com/about_be/mailinglists.html.)
That's it! We hope you'll like the way we've revamped the
newsletter. We want to know what you think, so please send
your comments and ideas to
newsletter@be.com.
Paris Summer GeekFest: June
24, 1996
Where: Palais des Congres, Porte Maillot, 5th Floor, Room
52AB
If you live in Europe and have been following Be, you
were probably one of the "geeks" present at the Euro
GeekFest held in Paris in January -- or you've been told
about it. We'll be very happy to welcome all of you at the
Paris Summer GeekFest on June 24, 1996.
This second European GeekFest is an opportunity for
current and soon-to-be developers to:
- See the state of BeBox development
- Get an in-depth view of release DR7 of the Be
operating system
- Discover new development tools and see and how easy
it is to create a Be application
- Meet Jean-Louis Gassée and Be engineers
AGENDA
For REGISTERED DEVELOPERS ONLY at 4:00 PM
For EVERYBODY (included Developers) at 6:00 PM
REGISTRATION IS MANDATORY
To register, please send e-mail to
droulers@beeurope.com
or visit our web site
(http://www.beeurope.com/Demos/geekfest.html).
MORE INFORMATION
Visit our web site:
http://www.beeurope.com/Demos/geekfest.html.
The whole Be team and the French Be User Group will be
more than happy to welcome you. Expect some surprises and
see you there!
BE ENGINEERING INSIGHTS: Investing
in CDs
By Robert Polic
Nope, sorry -- this article doesn't contain advice on
where to stash your money for the highest return. But it
does contain advice on making a smart purchase of a SCSI
CD-ROM drive for the current BeBox system software.
The ANSI SCSI II specification does an excellent job of
providing commands for extracting data from CD-ROMs.
Following the specification, we've been able to extract data
from every drive we've tested with our SCSI CD-ROM driver.
Unfortunately, it appears that the standards committee
ran out of time in the process of providing the same level
of commands for accessing audio tracks. While the
specification does provide audio commands for playing,
pausing, accessing the table of contents, and adjusting the
volume (though different vendors have different
interpretations on this), there are no standard commands for
stopping, scanning (fast- forward, fast-reverse), and
reading audio tracks. Because of this, each vendor has
chosen to implement these commands in a unique way.
Be's current implementation of the SCSI CD-ROM driver
only offers full support (data and audio) for the Toshiba
family of drives (the 3401, 3601, and 3701). The driver only
offers data and limited audio support for other drives. If
you need to extract digital audio from a CD, then you'll
need a Toshiba drive. Disregarding audio, any SCSI drive
(the cheapest you can find) should be sufficient.
In the future we'll provide support for more drives and
make it simpler to add support for others. We'll do this by
redesigning our current driver to use "add-ons" for audio
access (currently, all audio access is done in the driver,
which is linked into the kernel and not easily replaceable).
We'll publish the API for CD-ROM add-ons so developers and
vendors can also add support for additional drives.
BE DEVELOPER TALK: Resolute
Research Ltd.
By Steven Knudsen, Vice President, Resolute
Research Ltd.
(steve@worldweb.com)
All I could think when I first saw a BeBox was, "Gee! It
sure would have come in handy for my Ph.D.!"
My wife, Katherine, and I started Resolute Research in
1994. We develop custom scientific and engineering solutions
including signal processing, data analysis and manipulation,
communications, and embedded microsystems. It's pretty much
right down our alley, because I've got a Ph.D. in
multidimensional signal processing and Katherine's a
petroleum engineer.
Be has me as excited as the day my first full-blown Mac
application ran. For an electrical/computer engineer, the
BeBox is a "must-have" platform. Its combination of a brand
new OS and development environment, a flexible, open
hardware architecture, and accessibility to the entire
system from the external signal/board level on up is unique.
Like all developers, I want to see the BeBox achieve a
significant customer base in the long run, but for now, for
the markets we serve, I see it as a very practical platform
upon which to base powerful, new, vertical market solutions.
The GeekPort(TM) in particular is ideal for prototyping
electronic circuits in signal processing and robot projects.
I'm dying to try some of my nonlinear adaptive filtering
algorithms in real-time!
The more I work with the BeBox, the more ideas spring to
mind. The problem is deciding what to focus on first! Right
now, I'm spending most of my time learning the system. And
I've started on a port of the NCSA's Hierarchical Data
Format (HDF), with an eye toward using it as the basis of a
multidimensional data manipulation and analysis library and
application.
Further down the road we'll be working on microcontroller
development tools, primarily for the PIC family of
microcontrollers. The GeekPort is a natural fit. A possible
first application would involve the control of household
electronic equipment and monitoring household functions
using the BeBox's IR ports and an IR transceiver, built
around a PIC. It's also the first step in developing and
controlling autonomous and semi-autonomous mobile robots.
Longer term? We're looking at projects centered on signal
processing applications. Initially, some sort of basic DSP
framework, and after that, some state-of-the-art, one-
dimensional and multidimensional signal processing
algorithms. Motion detection and tracking in digitized video
are particularly interesting.
Our database libraries should be available by mid-summer
1996, with the DSP environment and associated applications
coming in late 1996. We wish it were sooner, but, like so
many small consulting companies, we've been busier
satisfying customer contracts than developing our own
products.
Actually, that's not entirely true. Katherine has, after
nine months of development, produced our finest product to
date: Baby Knud Soren Knudsen! I lobbied for a name that
included "Be-something," but being only Vice President , I
was voted down...
BE MARKETING MUTTERINGS
By Alex Osadzinski
The lifeblood of any company is communication, between
its customers, partners, suppliers, employees, friends, and
shareholders (with, we hope, significant overlap among these
groups). The primary function of a marketing organization is
CONNECTION: To lubricate, stimulate, and participate in the
connections between customers and engineers, developers and
managers, and others. To aid in forming and maintaining
those connections, we're going to use this space in the
newsletter every two weeks to write about goings on at Be
and in the Be community. True communication is, by its very
nature, bidirectional, so send me feedback, comments,
criticisms, and suggestions (to
alex@be.com).
Startup companies live by only one credo: Product. Those
that don't live by that credo don't live. So, for the past
five years, Be has focused on developing its product and
turning it into something ready for the market -- or at
least ready for application developers, who will help us
turn it into something ready for end users. As the product
neared developer readiness, Be hired a few people to focus
on getting that product out to the developer market. As a
recent hire myself, I am simultaneously excited by the
product and what it could do and somewhat wistful at having
missed the company's first five years of hard work and
satisfaction; there's nothing quite like being in at the
beginning of something great and seeing it grow. However,
there was a reason why Be didn't hire a salesperson five
years ago: The company is resisting the allure of the quick
buck and -- gasp -- is selling what it has today rather than
what it will have someday in the future.
So what is the purpose of the freshly minted sales and
marketing team, hired over the past few months? The answer
is simple: To help developers ship successful applications
on the Be OS. Our priorities are to provide technical and
marketing support to developers, to assist in connecting
developers with potential customers, and to manage the
logistics of buying, shipping, and (occasionally) fixing
machines. In the past week, I hope that every developer who
has applied to join our developer program has heard back
from us (if not, please let me know). BeBoxes are available
immediately to all developers. Now is the time to start
developing your application! To help fulfill our promises of
support, we're hiring evangelists: Highly technical people
who can work alongside a developer to get applications out.
Those are the only people we're hiring this year into the
sales and marketing organization. If you know of someone, or
have a yearning to evangelize the BeBox and Be OS, we'll
roll out the red carpet for you.
Keep in touch.
Evangelism
By Jean-Louis Gassée
The term "evangelism" was coined by Steve Jobs at Apple,
in the pirate flag days of the Macintosh division. At the
time, the Holy Grail was getting application software for
the Macintosh. The Apple /// wasn't working too well, the
Apple II was running out of hardware, and the Lisa was
destined to disappear after being rechristened Mac XL (for
Xtra Large or eX Lisa...). The adversary at the time was
IBM, positioned as Big Brother in the 1984 Ridley Scott
commercial. The polarization was effective. IBM still
reigned and had done a terrific job in establishing
themselves as the winner in the battle for the PC market, or
so said the "Business Week" cover story. At the time, little
did we know that the real winner lived inside the PC:
Microsoft would end up dominating both the operating system
and office application markets.
I have two problems with the implications of the word
evangelism -- even if I agree to bow to usage.
The first problem is with the religious implications.
More precisely, the intolerance often associated with
evangelical religion. I'd rather not see our company behave
in a rigid fashion and belittle "nonbelievers." There are
many ways in the Lord's House, and I'd like to present ours
as one way -- not The way -- to exciting new technologies,
markets, and applications. Which leads me to the second
problem: Polarization. Yes, after seeing the famous
commercial and the Macintosh descend from the sky, Steve
Jobs' depicting IBM as the oppressor of personal computing
freedom focused emotions. But, as we know now, that was at
the expense of intellect. One's opinions on who was the real
adversary may vary, but it wasn't IBM.
Polarization makes good PR, but it doesn't necessarily
make good sense after the newspapers are recycled. Yes, some
say they'll work with us because we aren't this company or
that one. If it's because we offer features, market space,
or services not easily accessible through other
associations, we have a sound basis for a partnership. We'll
also take style or chemistry: Even the computer business is
still conducted by humans. But we'd rather appeal to
positive aspirations such as innovating, building, and
sharing. Does this make us naive? On the contrary. We have
high aspirations for this company, and we'd rather build it
on positive foundations with like-minded partners. Still, we
have competition, which will intensify as we gain momentum.
This is no excuse for facile polarization. I'd rather follow
the "two Bills" school of coaching. Outside the company:
Bill Walsh. We're playing against a great team, it will be a
tough game. If you win, you beat a great team -- if you
lose, you lost against a great opponent. Inside the company:
Bill Gates, always on the watch for threats and
opportunities.
So, we'll strive for good deeds, we'll speak well of our
partners and competitors, and we'll keep our dark thoughts
to ourselves. What about evangelism, then? Many things have
changed since that term was coined. Even if the stated goal
is the same -- to get applications on the platform -- even
if Guy Kawasaki's book, "The Macintosh Way," has withstood
the passage of time, much of the context has changed. Great
development tools, a simpler platform, and electronic
distribution of software have simplified the business model
of application development on the BeBox.
As a result, we're singly focused on establishing
relationships with authors who'll produce good code -- not
business plans. We want evangelists who can sell the
benefits of the platform, stay on the relationship, and
provide at least the first level of technical support to
their developers. It seems a tall order, but we believe the
benefits to be even taller. Just as we say better products
are developed if more decisions reside inside a single human
head, we'll have a better relationship with each developer
if technical and business discussions are held with a single
Be human. We'll advertise for several evangelist positions.
Given our requirements, we're also likely to use a search
firm. But if you know an MBA who can write and debug C++
code, let us know, let him or her know. You might help a
great application be born and you'll certainly help this
young company.
|
