2netFX and Zapex Team up to Provide Distance Learning Tech

San Jose, CA – 2netFX, a leading provider of streaming solutions for intranet and broadband Internet media delivery, and Zapex Technologies, Inc. an industry leader of MPEG-2 compression products, have formed an alliance to design and deliver innovative hardware and software broadcast solutions to be used in the IP distance learning market. This HDTV over IP technology is currently under consideration by many for distance learning and diagnosis in the medical market. Surgical procedures via HDTV have the resolution to show the minute detail as well as the ability to be used in locations where there is no trained personnel available. Ultrasound results and other diagnosis methods can be sent to any location on earth via satellite or terrestrial means for a concise diagnosis. It is the only company that offers multicast HDTV over IP that is available now as well as via the Linux platform.

The new solution for Linux-based platform users will be demonstrated at the Streaming Media West show in San Jose, California from December 12-14. The companies will be sharing space in booth #630, displaying several broadcast options.

“This alliance enhances the vision of both companies in bringing intranet broadcast capabilities to any PC-based enterprise,” comments 2netFX vice president of marketing William Reed. “It provides both companies with a solid foundation for penetration into the IP market. Users now have the capability to set up full-motion, full-screen, virtual-television broadcasting stations on IP networks using solutions deriving from our collaborative efforts.”

The first system offered by the alliance is a Linux-based server solution, providing users a viable means to stream broadcast-quality transmissions. It includes 2netFX’s StreamRider client and ThunderCast/IP server software and Zapex’s ZL-330 encoder with Dolby� digital audio and MPEG-2 video. It is the first encoder of its type to achieve Dolby certification for Linux operating systems, and it eliminates inherent lip-sync issues by providing Transport Stream multiplexing within the Zapex encoder. “Together, these products provide a low-cost, high quality, real-time broadcast solution in an easy, ready-to-use package,” remarked Reed.

The ZL-330 produces high quality video images at low bit rates. “The resulting low-bandwidth video stream from the ZL-330 permits an unlimited number of users to access a multicast video,” says Gary Marsh, Zapex vice president of sales and marketing. “Coupled with the 2netFX software, PC users can interactively select which programming they wish to view, then capture and store the video locally. Effectively, customers can select their own viewing schedules, depending on application.”

About 2netFX

2netFX (www.2netFX.com) is a leading provider of streaming solutions for intranet and broadband Internet media delivery. Founded in 1996, 2netFX was the first to offer multicast streaming of HDTV over ordinary networks, advanced client player customization and integration, and fully featured media server solutions with the lowest latency in the industry.

2netFX’s Streaming Media Application (SAM) server and SAM receiver provide complete hardware/software turnkey solutions for delivering and receiving MPEG-1, 2,4,H.263, and HDTV streams from 28Kbps to 25Mbps via satellite, ATM, LAN/WAN, xDSL, cable modem, or dial up.

Designed for a variety of applications, including distance learning, corporate communications, government, education, and the military, 2netFX products are currently bundled by many leading digital video companies and in use at leading organizations including Sprint, Panasonic, Wal-mart, MCI Worldcom, Hughes Networks, NASA, GlobeCast/France Telecom, Walt Disney Studios, Lucent, Echo Star and others.

About Zapex

Zapex Technologies Inc., a company of Brother International, and a leader in compression technology, designs and manufactures MPEG encoding systems for PC platforms, providing digital video and audio solutions for DVD, networking, broadband and storage applications.

The company’s U.S. headquarters is located at 2432 Charleston Road, Mountain View, Calif., 94043. Telephone is 650 930-1300. Fax is 650 930-1399. Web address is www.zapex.net.
-30 —

2netFX Contact: William Reed, Vice President, Marketing (408) 232-1691 breed@2netFX

Carol Warren, Account Manager
Public Communications Worldwide
(562) 944-4626 carolw@pc-w.com

All products/services and trademarks mentioned in this release are the properties of their respective companies. Products and specifications are subject to change without notice.
Copyright 2000 2netFX. All rights reserved. (*Media NOW!, Inc. dba 2netFX)

Wired: Med Records Get Cue From Napster

Wired is reporting on CareScience Co.’s plans to use Napster-like peer to peer networking to share medical records among health care workers. The article states that ‘…at least 50,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors that
are often linked to physicians not having immediate access to information that they desperately need to care for their patients…CareScience aims to change those statistics using Napster-like peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to give medical personnel easy
access to crucial health-related data…’

ELT: Inpharmatica Installs 1,100 Processor Linux Protein Analyzer

Enterprise Linux Today is reporting on Inpharmatica a European company that does genome and protein research to find new drugs. The article states that the company has installed a 1,100 processor Linux system to do computerized analysis. ‘…This substantial upgrade propels Inpharmatica into an even stronger position in the provision of up-to-date, comprehensive and, above all, useful
information on the human proteome…’

Public Beta Version of Linux Medical Imaging Software

DigitalMedics announces the first
public beta release of REALTIQ, a medical image
processing software for tissue quantification
of metacarpal bones running exclusively under the Linux operating
system. The software and a set of example image
data for evaluation can be downloaded from their
site. LinuxMedNews originally reported on it in this article.

Wired: Med Sites Need a Dose of Privacy

Wired News reports about online patient privacy in a recent article. ‘…Nearly 41 million adults…currently use the Internet for health care, according to
the recent Cybercitizen Health study conducted by Cyber Dialogue, a New York-based provider of customer-relationship
management software. But while 55 percent of physicians use the Internet daily, only 24 percent of them use it regularly for
professional reasons…”Protecting personal privacy both on- and off-line is the hottest topic in Washington today”…’

Wired: A Wireless Doctor Is in the House

Wired News recently reported on the impact that wireless and handheld computers are having on health care as well as discussing a mish-mash of technologies. Dr. Daniel Sands of CareGroup HealthCare System and Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center is quoted as saying: ‘…While e-mail is not the most secure medium…neither is a postcard, fax, cordless
phone or cell phone — all of which doctors use regularly for patient communications.

“The security issues for e-mail that people worry about are the wrong issues,”

It’s not hackers that should keep you up at night, but shared e-mail, incorrect addressing, multiple addresses,
employer-owned accounts, printed messages and unguarded systems with e-mail showing on the monitor — all of
which can be easily corrected with common sense and encryption…’

IBM to Invest $1 Billion into Linux

Zdnet is reporting on IBM‘s announcement that the company will be investing $1 Billion dollars in Linux for 2001. The article quotes IBM CEO Lou Gestner as saying “We’re convinced Linux can do for business applications what the
Internet did for enterprise applications…Sun, Microsoft and EMC are running the last proprietary plays of
this business…An increasing number of customers will buy IT as a utility — like a
service over the Web…”

Review: Netscape 6: Is the Wait Finally Over?

Ed: This is the first in a series of articles of Captain Fantastic’s (aka Jim Intriglia of JimIntriglia.com) experience with Netscape 6. The short answer is no and I’ll detail why below in this narrative of my experience downloading and running Netscape 6. I run the Red Hat Linux distribution on three systems in my home office.
One of the features that I appreciate is the Red Hat Package Manager, a
software utility that makes it a snap to manage the installation of software
on my Linux systems. As it usually take a while before somebody in the
user community creates an RPM package for new software releases, I was
not surprised when I did not find an RPM package for Netscape 6. Thus,
off to the Netscape web site to do a download of a Netscape 6 tar ball,
so I could do a manual install.

Without too much difficulty, I was
able to locate information on the Netscape 6 product release via Netscape’s
Home page. In fact, a pop-up box appears when you access the home page,
offering you a chance
to win $100,000 via the Netscape 6 stakes as well as download or purchase
the Netscape 6 product.

I chose to download Netscape 6 via my 56K
dial-up connection, a worst case scenario to be sure. (My practice is to
purchase a CD-ROM when a software release is proven to be stable.) After
a short period of time, I noticed that the download had completed. In my
download directory, I noticed the file netscape-i686-pc-linux-gnu-installer.tar.gz.
The “i686” tells me that this distribution is for Intel Pentium II machines
– wonder when a distribution will be available for older Pentium I PCs?

After unzipping the tar file via the
command tar -zxvf netscape-i686-pc-linux-gnu-installer.tar.gz, I
printed a copy of the ReadMe file, which then instructed me to run the
Netscape 6 installer (while I have an Internet connection up-and-running
BTW) by entering the command ./netscape-installer. I noticed
that the web page conflicted with the ReadMe instructions, as the web page
instructions stated that one should enter ./ns-install
rather than ./netscape-installer.

A nice-looking GUI-based dialog was displayed, providing me the usual
options of a standard or custom install. I chose a custom browser install
option, checking off the Instant Messaging, Java 2, UK browser Pack as
desired installation options. After submitting my options, the Netscape
installer began to download the software files needed to complete my desired
installation.

The expected then happened – after three software file packages had
been downloaded, my Internet connection monitor indicated that the download
process stalled. After waiting fifteen minutes or so for it to restart,
I decided to abort the process and re-start the process again via the ./netscape-installer
command. Surely the installer
would detect what had been already downloaded and pickup from where the
process stalled.

Surely not.

After
restarting the installer and re-selecting my custom install options, the
installer began downloading the very first package, which
had been previously downloaded in the prior run of the installer. Nuts.
Even AOL software is smart enough to detect where a installation qiit and
go on from there. I chalked-up a demerit for this annoying oversight on
the part of the installer developers.

The second time around, the download/install
process got further along, stalling and forcing me to abort after about
five or so file packages had download. This is nuts – I aborted the process,
restarted the installer, and decided that I would purchase the CD-ROM if
this sucker stalled again.

On the third run of the installer,
it appeared to hang after completing the download of the Java 2 file package.
I am not sure if the process really hung, if the developers decided that
a “install process complete” message was not really necessary. Based on
my experience working with various software installation package, I decided
that the installer crashed this time around. If I wanted to evaluate Netscape
6, it looked like I would have to purchase a copy of the software
on CD-ROM. Two steps forward, one step back.

On the outside chance that the install process completed and crashed
at the point of displaying the desired “installation completed successfully!”,
I decided to try the final step, and boot Netscape 6. I typed ./netscape
and kept my fingers crossed.

Much to my delight, I was greeted with a
very slick-looking Netscape 6 web browser! The new look of Netscape 6 is
welcome as compared to the boxy and cryptic-looking Netscape 4.7x release
for Linux. The feature set implied by visible graphic cues promise some
neat features, as well.

Another nice feature of this release is that
if you are a registered NetCenter user (you go through this registration
process the first time you need to update Netscape online), the Activation
process – whereby you are prompted to register – is completed automatically!
Slick and a real timesaver. If you click on the NetCenter User option,
you are prompted for your User ID and Password, and boom – you are registered
and ready to surf the ‘Net. It may be a good idea to become a NetCenter
user before installing Netscape 6, as it will save time during the registration
process and in the future when Netscape releases updates for version 6.

In playing with the browser for a week
or so, it has not yet locked-up or crashed and burned. I have confirmed
the reported bug that it cannot handle SSL, which is the reason you need
to hang-on to the old 4.7x release until this problem is fixed in
the next release.

This is the first of a series of reviews of the Netscape
6 for Linux. The latest version of this document as well as future articles
on the capabilities of Netscape Communicator/Navigator can be found at
JimIntriglia.com

© Copyright 2000 James C. Intriglia

All Rights Reserved.

Live HealthCast: Patient Safety, Health Care Quality

Kaiser Network has a number of web casts regarding patient safety and health quality from the National Summit on Medical Errors and Patient Safety Research, Washington, DC which you can see live today from 8:45 am – 11:45 am EST. ‘…in a profession that consists largely of balancing probabilities, the likelihood of errors is 100%…medical errors are the eighth largest cause of death…They are issues of system failures, not of individual failure…dealing with this will require long-term committment and long term investment…’ They call for funding of research into the problem as if it where an epidemic. Editor: it would seem that open source medical software holds great promise in addressing these system failures.

Sidebar
Skip to toolbar