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Summary: A recap of the past two weeks events and news as it occurred on the Internet for those who may have missed it.

VOICE Speak-Up Session with Sundial

Happened on: Monday, September 21st.
Where: IRC Channel #VOICE on Webnet IRC network.

Rollin White, Randell Flint and Dan Kulp of Sundial Systems, Inc. -- makers of the popular Relish personal information manager, Mesa 2 for OS/2 spreadsheet and DBExpert database -- discussed their company and product line in an internet chat session with V.O.I.C.E. The main focus of the interview was their Mesa 2 spreadsheet product. Among the highlights were:

• Version 2.2 of Mesa 2 was announced (early, the official release occurred the next day on the 22nd), with an upgrade price of $39, a regular retail price of $129 and a 98-day limited offer of $98.
• New features in Mesa 2 that include SmartFormulas, Freezing of titles, enhanced customization, HTML exporting, and an improved user interface (see our preview look at Release 6 for more information).
• Excel 95 and 97 import/export capabilites (for files up to 7mb in size).
• A new version of the ClearLook word processor is in the works, but no hints or giveaways as to its features were made. They did let it drop that the 100 page supplement to the Mesa 2 2.2 manual was made entirely in an "internal build" of ClearLook.

Communicator 4.04 for OS/2 Released

Happened on: Tuesday, September 29th.
Where: IBM Software Choice

Out of Beta and into General Availability, Communicator 4.04 for OS/2 is the must-have upgrade to Netscape Navigator 2.02 that we've been stuck with for so long. Available for free to all owners of OS/2 Warp 4, Communicator is available with both low-grade encryption capabilities, or 128-bit high-grade encryption for use within the continental US and Canada only.

The download weighs in at 7mb, plus another 2.3 megs for the optional and updated Plugin pack. You might want to note that as of writing, there is a typo on the download page for the 128-bit (high-grade encryption) version that reports Communicator's size to be 16 megabytes instead of 7. So don't worry if the file is half the size you expected, it hasn't been corrupted.

Early users are reporting faster page-rendering speeds but some are still having problems with blank lines corrupting images. Mike Kaply, of the Communicator development team, posted some tips for Communicator, one of which claims to fix this remaining major problem.