Spyglass, an NCSA spin-off company founded in 1990, develops visual data analysis software tools for engineers and scientists. Under this agreement, it distributes commercially enhanced versions of NCSA Mosaic for Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX platforms. Spyglass licenses its Enhanced NCSA Mosaic to networking software companies, systems vendors, and online service providers for incorporation into their products and services.
NCSA Mosaic gives users point-and-click access to the World Wide Web (WWW) [see access, Fall 1993]. More than two million copies of NCSA Mosaic are in use, and an additional 60,000 copies are downloaded each month from the NCSA anonymous FTP server.
The UIUC-Spyglass agreement creates a broader, more practical distribution channel for commercial versions of NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic has been available free with copyright to individuals or through a limited number of commercial licensees [see access, Spring 1994].
"With the overwhelming demand for commercial versions of Mosaic, our distribution system needed to be dramatically strengthened," said NCSA Director Larry Smarr last August. "Working with Spyglass, we can get NCSA Mosaic to everyone who wants it much more quickly--largely by mobilizing lots of vendors who will integrate, add value to, and incorporate Enhanced NCSA Mosaic with their products for distribution to their customers. We believe that this arrangement will free up NCSA developers to work on adding new leading-edge capabilities to NCSA Mosaic."
"This new agreement solves the problem of getting solid, commercial-quality copies of NCSA Mosaic to the tens of millions of people who want to tap the rich resources of the World Wide Web and the Internet," said Douglas Colbeth, Spyglass's president. "It will give vendors stable, standard, and feature-rich versions of Enhanced NCSA Mosaic that they can incorporate immediately into their products--with little or no additional development work, if they so choose.
"Our ultimate goal is to have people automatically receive Enhanced NCSA Mosaic as a standard part of their computer systems, networking software, and commercial online services. By this time next year, there should be more than 20 million copies of Enhanced NCSA Mosaic from Spyglass in use on desktops."
UIUC is honoring all agreements with current commercial licensees, but is referring inquiries about future commercial licenses to Spyglass and encouraging current licensees to work with Spyglass. Because Spyglass has committed to license very high volumes of NCSA Mosaic licenses from UIUC, the company can offer Enhanced NCSA Mosaic to licensees at favorable terms.
This UIUC-Spyglass agreement is an extension of a multimillion- dollar joint development and licensing agreement signed in May 1994. Under the agreement, NCSA now focuses on research into advanced features for the next generations of NCSA Mosaic--such as voice recognition, full-motion video, and intelligent agents for searching the Internet. Spyglass is developing and bringing to market commercially enhanced versions of NCSA Mosaic, focusing on large-volume sales to other vendors.
NCSA continues to offer a public-with-copyright version of NCSA Mosaic via the Internet that can be downloaded free. As part of its agreement with NCSA, Spyglass is providing a number of its improvements to NCSA for incorporation into NCSA's public-with- copyright version.
For more information, contact Spyglass Inc. at (217) 355-6000 or click here.
In August 1994, Spyglass Inc. announced the formation of relationships with IBM's Networking Software Division, Research Triangle Park, NC; FTP Software Inc., North Andover, MA; O'Reilly and Associates Inc., Sebastopol, CA; and Firefox Inc., San Jose, CA. Since becoming a commercial licensee of NCSA Mosaic, Spyglass has licensed more than 5 million copies of its Enhanced NCSA Mosaic to these companies and others that are integrating it into their products.
IBM's family of TCP/IP products provides a comprehensive set of applications to meet the interoperability and connectivity needs of business and home users. By integrating Enhanced NCSA Mosaic from Spyglass with IBM's TCP/IP application suite, IBM provides users with leading graphical facilities for accessing and navigating the Internet.
FTP Software, a popular producer of TCP/IP internetworking software, develops products that combine workgroup TCP/IP software with high-end features of enterprise environments. FTP Software plans to incorporate NCSA Mosaic technology into its future products.
O'Reilly and Associates is a popular publisher of books about the Internet, including The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog [see access, Fall 1993] and developer of Global Network Navigator (GNN) that links more than 650 Internet information servers. O'Reilly has licensed Enhanced NCSA Mosaic from Spyglass and will bundle the software with The Mosaic Handbook to be published in three editions (for Windows, Macintosh, and X Window System platforms).
The book is scheduled to be in bookstores this fall. O'Reilly's Digital Media Group (DMG) will distribute Enhanced NCSA Mosaic to GNN users who want a commercially supported version of NCSA Mosaic. DMG will license NCSA Mosaic to other digital Internet-based publishers.
Firefox Corporation Ltd., a popular provider of server-based TCP/IP communications services for use in Novell's NetWare environments, plans to provide Enhanced NCSA Mosaic as an integral part of its expanded NOVIX product line. NOVIX enhances NetWare by centralizing the administration, management, and security of TCP/IP communications and access at the NetWare server. Firefox's products are available through Novell.
The Illinois State Fair is the first state fair to have information on the WWW on an Internet connection. The 1994 Illinois State Fair marked the 175th anniversary of Illinois statehood.
In collaboration with Illinois Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra's office, Ameritech, UIUC's Computing and Communications Services Office, and the Illinois Math and Science Academy, NCSA's Education Group worked to bring the daily schedule and reports of many special events to the WWW community.
More than 43,000 users accessed this display during the last two weeks of August alone. NCSA Visiting Scientist Bob Panoff, who was responsible for getting the information online on NCSA's WWW server, reported receiving many electronic mail messages from displaced Illinoisians who lamented not being able to make it back for the fair. Said Pat Ridge, a high school teacher at an American school in Germany, "The Home Page for the Illinois State Fair looks great! How do I purchase my cotton candy?"
The state fair exhibit is still available, so you can bring back a bit of the summer by visiting it.
Look for information about the state's efforts to coordinate resources and services to promote increased use of computers and other new technologies for Illinois classrooms in a future issue of access.
The past, present, and future technology of network information systems on the Internet, focusing on WWW and NCSA Mosaic, was the cover article in the August 12, 1994, issue of Science that featured computing.
Bruce Schatz, NCSA research scientist, and Joseph Hardin, associate director of NCSA's Software Development Group, co- authored the article entitled "NCSA Mosaic and the World Wide Web: Global Hypermedia Protocols for the Internet." It was the first article (text, figures, and cover) submitted to Science electronically.
Ingrid Kallick, graphic designer in NCSA's Publications Group, designed the cover of Science, which was a montage of NCSA Mosaic screen images capturing displays on WWW servers around the world. The following blurb described the cover illustration:
"Composite of computer screens above a globe roughly corresponding to the location of the data. The screens were created with Mosaic software developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) for browsing the World Wide Web. This Internet technology enables scientists to make their information rapidly available to the global community. These and other issues are discussed in this special issue on computing. See the Editorial on page 851 and News Reports, Perspectives, and Articles beginning on page 879. [Image: I. Kallick and B. Schatz at NCSA, using public domain sources on the Internet]"
Images used were from WWW exhibits of the following organizations: CERN, JPL, NIH, UC Berkeley, UIUC, and NCSA.
Science is published weekly, except the last week of December, by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Used with permission from SCIENCE, vol. 265, cover, Aug. 12, 1994.