OS/2 e-Zine! - First Looks and Nifty Gadgets

First Looks and Nifty Gadgets

irst Looks and Nifty Gadgets brings you reviews of the new and novel. Each month we take a look at what's just hitting the streets and some tiny, but tried and true products that are still helping people be as productive as possible.

This month we look at: Lookout for OS/2 | OS/2 World Tour | mp123 v0.59m | PM2Web v1.0

Lookout for OS/2

Fed up with going through a long list of "favorite" bookmarks every time you start your browser, yet only finding one or two have changed since you last visited them? Lookout helps solve this problem by monitoring your favorite sites and letting you know which ones have or have not changed, saving you the trouble of checking manually.

[Lookout for OS/2 Graphic]

Lookout can be configured to monitor Web, FTP or Gopher sites at any interval you please. With each site being individually configurable, you can tell Lookout to ignore certain files on an FTP site and signal you any way you want when a file changes. Lookout can either simply mark the site as changed in its main window, or pop up a message box, or play any .WAV file you choose.

So in addition to keeping you apprised of changes at your favorite web sites, Lookout can also be configured to keep an eye out for specific files to appear on FTP sites, saving you a lot of hassle and time when it comes to upgrading your software.

Lookout for OS/2

by Frugal Software
download from the OS/2 Supersite (ZIP, 600k)
Registration: US$15

OS/2 Warp Tour

In what seems to be a bizarre move considering IBM's current focus on the business market, Big Blue has produced what is a fairly good demo CD for OS/2 Warp 4. The "OS/2 Warp 4 World Tour" CD was actually produced late in 1996 -- but still advertised as recently as July of this year -- and if you didn't know better, you'd swear it was attempting to get desktop users interested in OS/2.

Part of the BESTeam Software Program, the World Tour is actually labeled "training CD" on the disc itself, but it's more accurate to call it an interactive, animated OS/2 love-in. The "hosts" of this multimedia adventure are international rock star, "Chip Ramsey", and his road manager, "Roxanne Rolls". The main setting for the tour is Chip's living room (JPG, 18.7k). Clicking on various objects will launch you into intentionally cheesy commercials for OS/2 and the BonusPak ("It does everything but julienne fries!"; "More versatile than ginsu knives!"), OS/2 reference materials, customer testimonials and awards lists, and the tour itself. You can even join Chip's fan club if you sit through the entire tour and collect all the required ticket stubs -- be warned though, this will take some time.

You might wonder exactly why IBM is using cartoon rock stars, catchy tunes and humorous commercials to promote an operating system which is supposed to be targeted at Fortune 500 companies. I know I did. While this is probably just more evidence of the schizophrenic nature of IBM, this CD is still a cool toy and a good way to show people the impressive benefits of OS/2. You might have some trouble tracking down a copy but for those who don't mind a little diligence, I highly recommend it.

OS/2 Warp 4 World Tour

by IBM
MSRP: Cdn$70.00

mp123 v0.59m

Lately there's been a lot of buzz on the Internet about a new audio format which can compress a five minute, CD quality song into "only" 4-5 megabytes. The same quality music stored in regular .WAV format would have taken up 40-50 megabytes, meaning this new format gets an unprecedented 10:1 compression ratio on music without sacrificing any noticeable quality. This new format is called audio MPEG Layer 3, or MP3 for short. MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) Layer 3 audio achieves its amazing compression by discarding data that the human ear cannot hear anyway. For example, you cannot hear a conversation between two people while an airplane is taking off overhead, and neither can you hear the notes of a soft instrument in an orchestra that's playing fortissimo. But even though your ear can't pick up these sounds, a flat medium, like tape, will record them anyway. MP3 throws this out and thus conserves a great deal of space.

mp123 is the, "official port of the fast MPEG Audio Player 'mpg123'," which was originally written for Unix. Another OS/2 port happens to exist too, so Niclas Lindström, author of mp123, shortened the name of his port (removing the "g") to help avoid confusion. mp123 is a command-line program that will play audio MPEG files encoded with layers 1 through 3.

What's unique about mp123 is that it can be set up as a Netscape helper application and actually play streaming audio over the web! With some sacrifice in quality, audio MPEG streams can be compressed small enough to be playable over a dialup Internet connection, giving you something roughly akin to RealAudio's technique. If you have a high speed connection such as ISDN, a T1 or a cable modem, you'll be able to receive higher quality (in fact, near-CD quality) broadcasts in real time too. While not as popular yet as the RealAudio format, there is a growing market of .MP3 audio sources on the 'net so this may be something to look into. For a few samples of web sites offering .MP3 audio, check out AudioActive.

mp123 v0.59m

by Niclas Lindström
download from Niclas' Web Site (ZIP, 100k)
Registration: Free

PM2Web v1.0

Remote control of a computer may have traditionally been the concern of network administrators, but Ridax programutveckling is doing their best to change that. Their new PM2Web program carries on the tradition of their more robust PM2You (and Win2You) remote control programs -- but with a twist. PM2Web allows anyone with access to a WWW browser to control an OS/2 Desktop from anywhere in the world, via the Internet.

This is actually a lot simpler than it sounds, although there are some limitations due to the nature of the WWW. Basically, the person who wants his or her Desktop to be available for control connects to the Internet and starts the PM2Web program. This program acts as an HTTP server and when anyone tries to log into that person's IP address (or domain name if one has been set for the IP), they receive a graphic snapshot of the Desktop. This graphic is an image map; below it are a few options to control what you will be able to do to that image. For example, if you select "Double Left" in the "Mouse" field and click a spot on the graphic, the corresponding spot on the real Desktop will act just as if it had been double clicked with the left mouse button. Through this method you can open folders, start programs, drag objects and do many other basic tasks.

PM2Web works more or less as advertised, though with Netscape Navigator for OS/2 you will be limited to using JPEGs as your "window on the Desktop". The other graphic formats supported by PM2Web (PNG and BMP) are not supported by Navigator 2.02 although bitmaps are supported by WebExplorer v1.2.

I also had some trouble getting the program set up. The documentation included in the file I downloaded was just the raw, uncompiled help file so reading through it was cumbersome, and the install utility didn't seem to install a working program object.

Still, despite these rough edges, PM2Web will serve the casual user when he or she needs to control his OS/2 Desktop from somewhere else. While you wouldn't want to try to work on a spreadsheet remotely with this program, it could be very handy in some situations.

PM2Web v1.0

by Ridax programutveckling
download from BMT Micro (ZIP, 155k)
Registration: US$67.00

That's it for this month. Tune in next time for more reviews of neat gadgets and first looks at new OS/2 tools.