Digital Camera Review, by members. Year End Party / Election of officers for 2005.

Report by Peter Hirsch

Rachael M. Rusting, Group Manager, Brand Marketing Rational Software, IBM Software Group, will introduce IBM's newest acquisition

IBM acquired Rational Software more than 18 months ago to drive and meet the growing demand for business-driven software development. Come learn about Rational products and hear how internal teams across IBM are using Rational and how IBM customers are benefiting from streamlined software development offerings. Rachael Rusting, Group Manager for Rational Team products will discuss the goals for the IBM Software Development Platform (SDP), how IBM is leveraging the Eclipse open source movement, and how the Rational products at the core of the SDP, provide a full lifecycle application development capability.

Visit the IBM Rational User Conference:
"I have seen the future and it is Booch"

Everyone is talking about Linux - but where are the applications for end users? Dick Delp will introduce and show what is available on the market today. See for yourself at
Linux Online and
Abundant Linux Application directory

Rescheduled to February 2005: Roger Steele will demonstrate Sonic's MyDVD 5.3 Deluxe. This product was endorsed by Walter Mossberg in his Wall Street Journal column page B1 August 12th.

POSTPONED to 2005: Speech Recognition, Bernhard Krevet

ViaVoice® technology, now available to consumers on the Windows, Macintosh and handheld computer platforms, can afford a 'multi-modal' environment, freeing users from dependence on the mouse, keyboard and stylus for many applications.

ViaVoice personal computer software leverages generations of IBM voice recognition research and accomplishment. ViaVoice for Windows Release 10 product family offers a complete portfolio appealing to every level of user expertise, and our ViaVoice for Mac offerings were the first continuous speech products on their Apple Macintosh platforms in the consumer marketplace.

ViaVoice software is now available through and supported by ScanSoft Inc

Intel Centrino Mobile Technology; Come and hear an introduction to Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology. It has expanded Intel's history of innovation with new notebook capabilities designed specifically for the mobile world. Now you can work, play and connect without wires. And choose from a whole new generation of thin, light notebooks designed to enable extended battery life.

This new innovative technology enables:

• Integrated wireless LAN capability
• Breakthrough mobile performance
• Extended battery life
• Thinner, lighter designs

View a great article about the Centrino!

The future is there and we have a chance to look at it! Dick Delp presents three items of interest:

1. The principal subject, a new DECIMAL Floating-Point Arithmetic, now proposed for incorporation into the IEEE Floating-Point Standard. Its architect and advocate is Dr. Mike Cowlishaw of IBM Hursley. Its lead implementor is Eric Schwartz of IBM Poughkeepsie. This arithmetic is very likely to be incorporated in future IBM mainframes and workstations
2. The foils for the presentation will be done entirely not in Power Point, but in Impress, a similar product included in most versions of Linux at no additional charge.
3. The hardware for the presentation is a "Small Form Factor" computer (a small mechanical package using ac power) having an Athlon 64 processor.

RAMAC - revisited:
Dr. A. Hoagland speaks at our PC Club about the history of the RAMAC and Digital Storage Museum.

(Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) The first hard disk computer which was introduced by IBM in 1956. All 50 of its 24" platters held a total of five million characters! It was half computer, half tabulator. It had a drum memory for program storage, but its I/O was wired by plugboard.

After 38 years, IBM resurrected the RAMAC name with the introduction of a high-capacity disk storage system in 1994. The differences between the 1956 and 1994 RAMACs are rather dramatic. Areal density rose from 2,000 to 260 million bits per square inch, increasing total storage capacity from 5MB to 90GB. Access times changed from 600 ms to 9.5 ms.

Mirra Personal Server Demonstration

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 7, 2003 /PRNewswire/ -- Mirra, Inc., formerly Ispiri, Inc., today announced the company's name change, effective immediately. The announcement was made in conjunction with the preview demonstration of the company's new product, Mirra, the first truly personal server, at Silicon Valley 4.0: The Future of the Future, a forum produced by Garage Technology Ventures and The Churchill Club.

Mirra was one of six companies selected to demonstrate products determined to provide a glimpse into the future during Silicon Valley 4.0, a one-day gathering of industry thought-lead rs to exchange ideas about next-generat on high-tech innovation and funding. The event convened here at the Computer History Museum.

Mirra, publicly shown for the first time last month, won acclaim at the recent DEMOMobile conference and was the recipient of a DEMOgods(TM) award. Mirra is an all-in-one personal server designed to help consumers and SOHO professional easily protect, remotely access and share their digital files, photos, e-mail and other digital assets.

"We are honored to be one of the few companies invited to Silicon Valley 4.0 to provide a glimpse into the future," said Richard Mandeberg, Mirra's CEO. "The core promise of Mirra is taking the expense, hassle and complexity out of managing your growing digital content, whether you are a consumer with a large digital photo collection you want to protect and share, or a small business professional who just needs access anywhere, anytime.

"Mirra was created with supreme ease of use in mind. Today we're making it even easier for customers to remember our company's name and Web site. In short, our company name-change places total focus on the Mirra promise," Mandeberg added.