Tech transfer begets map app
Working with a small business, the Navy is customizing big mapping applications through technology transfer without shelling out big bucks. "A lot of innovation comes out of small companies," said Carol Van Wyk, small-business innovation research program manager at the Naval Air Systems Command. Through a $70,000 feasibility study followed by a two-year, $750,000 contract, the Navy developed a prototype terrain-following system that uses a file format called GeoTIFF.
The AF uses license to buy 65,000 copies of Oracle
When the Air Force signed a three-year, $52 million site license for Oracle Corp. database software and development tools last month, it marked a new lease on life for the Defense Department's Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering contract. The Air Force also took the lead as DOD's top site licenser. Air Force logistics users, who work in more than 20 programs, will get 65,000 concurrent Oracle licenses at a 74 percent discount from the General Services Administration Information
IRS' TDA-3 contract faces competition for buyers
After a lengthy evaluation, the IRS last month awarded the Treasury Department Acquisition 3 small-business set-aside contract to SMAC Data Systems. Separately, the IRS last month issued a $1.3 million delivery order for IBM Netfinity servers loaded with Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 for agencywide e-mail. SMAC of Gaithersburg, Md., will sell PCs as well as peripherals on TDA-3, IRS spokesman Ken Hubenak said. The IRS manages the contract for Treasury's 12 agencies. SMAC's two-year award
Management application combines and updates data, reducing duplication
The Housing and Urban Development Department estimates it is saving more than $900,000 per year in mailing costs by streamlining records duplicated on different mailing lists. A half-dozen HUD divisions had the job of maintaining mailing list databases for members of Congress, mayors and HUD 2020 seminar participants. "Some of the databases were up to date, some weren't," said Joseph A. Duffy, project leader for HUD's Development Technology Division.
MEDCOM prescribes online distance learning
The Army Medical Command has during the last nine months deployed 67 computer training courses at 30 far-flung locations to help keep its transient personnel up to date on widely used software. "We cannot afford to do training in person any longer," said Maj. David Gilbertson, chief of information management and training programs for MEDCOM at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Air Force offers online shopping via six BPAs
Defense Department users can buy servers, PCs and peripherals online through six blanket purchasing agreements the Air Force has negotiated under its $435 million Information Technology Tools program. The Standard Systems Group last week announced the two-year IT2 PC and server BPAs it has set with Dell Computer Corp., Gateway Inc. and Micron Electronics Inc. of Nampa, Idaho.
Dell names Buchsbaum its federal division chief
Dell Computer Corp., the top General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contractor in fiscal 1998, has named Thomas Buchsbaum vice president and general manager of its federal division. Buchsbaum replaced Robert McFarland, who became vice president of sales for enterprise accounts. Buchsbaum had served as vice president of education for Dell.
Microtek touts scanners for image rerouting, push-button formatting
Priced from $99, the Microtek International Inc. SlimScan C6 36-bit color scanner claims 600- by 1,200-dot-per-inch maximum resolution. Users can rout scanned images or documents to optical character recognition, e-mail, fax or image editing programs. The Redondo Beach, Calif., company bundles Adobe PhotoDeluxe and Ulead PhotoImpact image editing software as well as Caere OmniPage Limited Edition OCR software and Caere PageKeeper Standard document management software.
HP rolls out a 32-ppm LaserJet printer, three other new printers and a Mopier
In its largest-ever printer rollout, Hewlett-Packard Co. has released two new color laser printers and one color ink-jet printer, plus a monochrome LaserJet and a Mopier. The $2,499 HP Color LaserJet 4500, which replaces the Color LaserJet 5, can print four color pages per minute and 16 ppm in monochrome. It has a 133-MHz processor and HP's JetDirect 600N internal print server to work with leading network operating systems.
Users seek technical aid plan
When the hard drive of Jerry Tatum's notebook computer failed six months ago, he set out on a hunt for technical support. Tatum, a records manager at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., tried contacting the manufacturer, EPS Technologies Inc. of Omaha, Neb. His calls and e-mails went unanswered. Tatum finally called the Better Business Bureau of Omaha, which referred him to an EPS attorney who confirmed Tatum's suspicion: The company had ceased operations.
USPS preps for use of software package to reach goal of 700 electronic forms
When the Postal Service begins using JetForm Corp. FormFlow in September, the goal is 700 electronic forms developed with the Ottawa company's software, said Clara Hankins, acting manager of Corporate Information Services in USPS' Forms Management Group. About 200 of the service's 1,700 forms already exist in electronic form through another software product USPS used until early this year. USPS software developers are now converting the most heavily used forms for personnel actions, procurement, travel and
FW2000 server does inside job for personnel vehicles
FieldWorks Inc. claims its FW2000 Series Embedded Vehicle System is tough enough to handle computing requirements inside personnel carriers and tanks. Officials of the Eden Prairie, Minn., company said the FW2000 server complies with the military standard 810E for shock, vibration, blowing rain, and windblown water and dust. It also has the National Electronics Manufacturers Association's 4X rating for corrosion, dust, ice, rain and water, according to FieldWorks.
Army opens up PC-3 buys governmentwide
The Army's latest PC contracts—awarded last month to Government Technology Services Inc. and IntelliSys Technology Corp.—are open to users governmentwide. "It's nice not to have to turn away anyone who wants to buy" from the PC-3 contracts, said Linda Cook, a product leader at the Army Small Computer Program office at Fort Monmouth, N.J.
Users continue to adjust to the complexities of federal buying
The numbers, though small, reveal how complex federal procurement can be even two years after the adoption of commercial practices. Space center officials began to set out their requirements in fiscal 1998. They wanted three-year, on-site warranties and installation under four full-and-open-competition procurements—two for desktop PCs, one for notebooks and one for engineering workstations, said John Bormann, the contracting officer's technical representative at the Information Systems Directorate in Houston.
USPS hands mail supervisors Windows CE on handheld PCs
A Postal Service handheld computing initiative, designed to streamline mail delivery, has become one of the nation's largest Microsoft Windows CE deployments. About 2,000 supervisors in the service's Great Lakes region, which covers Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, use Hewlett-Packard Co. 320LX and 620LX handheld units to track daily mail deliveries. Each unit runs Windows CE 2.0 and pocket versions of Microsoft Excel and Word, plus calendar, calculator, e-mail and tape recorder functions.
Energy, Intel collaborate on space-ready Pentium CPU
The Air Force Research Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Reconnaissance Office and Sandia National Laboratories will cooperate in the design project. Sandia handles microelectronics R&D for DOE. NASA will use the radiation-hardened processors in space probes to Jupiter's moon Europa, which has a liquid ocean, icecaps and heavy radiation, said Robert S. Blewer, deputy director of strategic partnerships at Sandia's Microelectronics Center in Albuquerque, N.M.
Replicator will let you daisychain CD-Rs to copy hundreds of CD-ROMs at a time
Microboards Technology Inc. has designed a $7,995 eight-bay CD-recordable replicator and a $9,995 four-drive desktop CD-R publisher for offices with integrated multimedia systems. The DSR8800 CD recorder-replicator comes in a tower configuration and hosts seven CD-R drives plus one 12X CD-ROM drive. In master-slave mode, users can configure the DSR8800 with up to three seven-drive CD-R slave units. Each master can direct as many as 28 recorders at the same time.
VirusScan now handles hostile Java applets
In VirusScan 4.0 Enterprise Edition, Network Associates Inc. has combined the scanning engine from recently acquired Dr. Solomon's Software Inc. with the ActiveX and hostile Java applet protection developed in previous versions of VirusScan. Some users had thought that the Santa Clara, Calif., company would discard the Dr. Solomon's technology, but the company has tried to retain the best features, said Sal Viveros, director of marketing for Total Virus Defense at Network Associates.
Buzz Lightyear, you have mail
Astronaut John Grunsfeld is pushing to improve e-mail connectivity between Earth and space so that crew members can exchange e-mail in space as easily as they can on the ground. "E-mail makes living in space a lot more utilitarian," said Grunsfeld, who is chief of the Computer Branch in the Astronaut Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "If we're going to be living and working in space, we need these tools" to help crew
As PC prices fall, feds are shopping for name brands
When SMAC Data Systems added Compaq Computer Corp. products to a Navy blanket purchasing agreement late last year, the move represented more than just a contract modification. It signaled a general shift in government contracts away from clone PCs and toward top-end, brand-name products. "We have to adapt," said Roland Hua, vice president of corporate development at SMAC, a Gaithersburg, Md., 8(a) manufacturer that made a name by selling its own no-name systems to agencies. "There are
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