World of Commodore Amiga Show Report Part 5, Interviews on Show Floor by Dan Zerkle This is part 5 of my report from the World of Commodore Amiga show held in Pasadena, California, on September 10th, 11th, and 12th. This section details interviews I conducted at the booths on the show floor. I will continue to post sections each night or so until I finish. There should be at least two more sections. HEIFNER COMMUNICATIONS After the keynote address, I went by the booth of Heifner Communications, Inc. They were, of course, showing off their new Pegger JPEG compression software. I managed to talk with several people there. I have already posted an announcement of Pegger on the group, so I won't go to extreme detail here. Pegger wedges in to the file system to notice when a graphics file is being written. It automatically compresses the file using the JPEG standard, resulting in up to fifteen-to-one savings in disk usage. It translates the file right back when it is read. Heifner Communications is promoting it as a low-cost alternative to a large hard drive. They were also demonstrating their Toaster Cozzy 4000. This is basically a little box that sits on top of your 4000 (or, I presume, 3000), and holds one of Newtek's Video Toaster cards. While this is less essential with the introduction of the Toaster 4000 (the older Video Toaster doesn't fit properly into a 3000), it does free up a Zorro 3 slot. The main business of Heifner Communications, it turns out, is distributing television signals to local cable stations and providing technical support. They have been in the business for about twelve years. The Amiga support is apparently an outgrowth of their video work. REFLEX POINT BBS Somehow, this Pasadena bulletin board system managed to fund a booth for the show. They were very ambitiously handing out flyers to anybody who got too close. In particular, one red- haired young woman tried to give me flyers at least five times. I think she was doing it on purpose to get me to scream and run away. It almost worked. ReFLex Point is a free multi-line BBS supporting the Amiga. The flyer hints at networked electronic mail, but doesn't indicated what kind. It has areas especially dedicated to Japanese animation and to science fiction. It also has on-line chat, Amiga files to download, and on-line games. See below for dial-in lines. SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT SERVICES I had a short chat with David Griffith of Systems Development Services. They were showing off a new educational game called "Robokeet." Robokeet is intended to teach spelling to early elementary school children. SDS intends to eventually sell it on CD-ROM for CDTV and CD32, but the version they demonstrated was running from normal magnetic disk. The game seemed to consist of two kinds of segments. In one segment, you get to try to spell words. If you do well here, you get to arm a parakeet with various weaponry and armor. The other segment is a side-scrolling arcade sequence. Your brave budgie sets out to shoot down the enemy. If you do well with the spelling, this sequence is easier. ADDRESSES Heifner Communications (no address given) Phone: 800/445-6164 314/445-6163 Fax : 314/445-0757 ReFLex Point BBS v.32bis: 818/792-3477 : 818/792-5622 2400bps: 818/792-3938 Systems Development Services, Inc. Route 4, Box 41AA Dupont Plaza, Room 2W Parkersburg, WV 26101 Phone: 304/863-6592