I have a bunch of Be email starting in March of 1998. Be Newsletters, correspondence, tech support.
Be Developer Letter – Issue #5 – Friday, May 1st, 1998
TABLE OF CONTENTS
** Be at PC Expo: Be Software Promotion Program
** Interim Release (3.1) Early Details
** Debugger Info
** Developer Tech Support Update
PC EXPO – Be Software Promotion Program
Frank Boosman – VP Developer RelationsIf you’re currently developing commercial (or potentially
commercial) software for the BeOS, and you think you might be
ready to ship by mid-June, we have some exciting news for you!As you may know, PC Expo (to be held 16-18 June in New York City)
is one of the most important computer shows in North America. Be
will be there in force, with our large booth and a full
complement of personnel on hand to promote the BeOS and
third-party applications.We will use PC Expo as an event to show both attendees and the
world at large the wide range of commercial software available
for the BeOS. To do this, we have worked with our friends at
StarCode – operators of BeDepot – to put together a special PC
Expo software promotion program.To participate, you need to be shipping an Intel (and, hopefully,
PowerPC) version of your commercial (not shareware or freeware)
BeOS application no later than one week prior to the start of PC
Expo, 9 June. If you meet this requirement, here’s what we will
do for you, all at no charge:
Be and StarCode will create a special promotional
area on BeDepot, to open the first day of PC Expo and
end on 30 June. Your software will be included in
this special, highlighted area.Be will promote this program prior to and during PC
Expo through banner advertising on our Web site,
articles in our newsletters, and press releases.On the show floor, we will have machines set up to
browse through the special area on BeDepot. We will
also dedicate one of our developer demo stations to
showing software from participating developers. Be
will staff this station, meaning you can have your
product shown at PC Expo at absolutely no cost to you.BeDepot will be reducing its standard distribution
fees for the duration of this event for participating
developers. We hope you’ll pass on the savings to
your customers!We also encourage you to create special promotional
bundles if possible – additional content and/or
other features that will make the software selection
that much more impressive.So, what do you have to do to participate? Not much:
You must be a registered Be developer.
You must have (or set up) an account with BeDepot.
You must be shipping a commercial application for
the Intel version of the BeOS (again, PowerPC would
be nice as well) no later than one week prior to
the start of PC Expo (9 June).You must notify us of your intent to participate
no later than two weeks prior to the start of PC
Expo (2 June).This is probably a good time to remind you that BeDepot makes it
easy to become a commercial software publisher. BeDepot is a
turnkey distribution system for developers, handling credit card
authorization, reliable software downloading, flexible updating
options, extensive reporting capabilities and much more. If
you’re planning on releasing your product as shareware, you may
want to consider going commercial with BeDepot. You can check
them out at:<
www.bedepot/>For more details on this program, send e-mail to Valerie Peyre,
Developer Programs Manager, at valerie@be.com.PC Expo General Info:
June 16-18, 1998
Jacob K. Javis Convention Center
New York, City
Be Booth #1640, Level 3
Interim Release (3.1) Early Details
In an effort to keep our developers informed and able to plan
ahead, we’d like to share some early details of an interim
release of the BeOS (3.1). This information should be considered
confidential between Be and its developers. As always,
disclaimers apply to the information below as we cannot guarantee
that the interim release will include every item.
- Increased support for additional BIOS and motherboards
(e.g. better Dakota MP board support, BX support)- Support for NEC CD-ROM drives
- Support for 3Com 3C9xx Ethernet cards
- AWE64 sound levels fixed
- Support BDirectWindow for Virge-based graphics cards
- Improved Postscript support for printing
- VGA mode driver
- Numerous minor bug fixes.
Debugger Info
We are working on a source level debugger for the x86 Release 4
of the BeOS. The feature set will closely mimic the current
PowerPC version. The new debugger is being rewritten from
scratch, however, and should perform even better. Source level
breakpoint control and data structure manipulation will provide a
powerful tool for developers debugging their applications.
Developer Tech Support Update
This month we’d like to welcome our newest Developer Tech Support
team member, Michael Morrissey. With the release of R3 last
month, our devsupport@be.com and devservices@be.com traffic
has gone up tremendously. Michael will definitely help Be cope
with the rising tide of developer support questions we receive.
With the addition of Michael, though, we’re also implementing a
new method of tracking developer support and developer services
requests. We’ve gone to a database-driven HTML-based system,
allowing us to coordinate developer questions with DTS folks much
more easily.The first stage was implemented this week; devsupport and
devservices e-mails are currently being “slurped” into a database
and assigned to a DTS engineer. A message can be re-assigned to a
different engineer through a pop-up and a NetPositive form
submission; this step alone will save a significant amount of
wasted time every day spent figuring out who should respond to
which e-mails.This is only the beginning, though; the next stage should be
implemented next week, when we start using the database to reply
to messages. E-mail responses which you the developer receive
will include a “Thread ID” number in the subject of the e-mail.
If you need to respond to the devsupport response you received,
please be sure to preserve the Subject of the message – with the
Thread ID intact. Your query will then be re-opened and
re-assigned to the same DTS engineer who originally assisted you.Shortly after this stage is implemented, a query submission form
will be available in the Registered Developer Area of the Be web
site. By using this form instead of sending e-mail to
devsupport@be.com or devservices@be.com, we can use your
Developer ID to coordinate your latest query with your past
queries. Follow-up messages between yourself and DTS engineers
can still be made using e-mail; as long as you’re sure to include
the Thread ID in the Subject of your response, your messages will
be coordinated in our database. When this form is available on
the web site, we’ll send out a notice to all registered
developers.So what do these improvements mean for you, the developer? In
short: a faster response time from Be DTS! We’ll be able to
assign your questions to the correct DTS engineer more easily,
coordinate your follow-up e-mails with your original query, roll
in information from Be engineers more efficiently, easily see all
of the queries you’ve submitted, cross-reference these with your
bug reports and developer information, and basically maintain a
coherent database of our Developer Tech Support questions and
responses.This transition won’t be painless, though – we’re asking for
your patience in advance as we move to the new system. If you can
help us out by using the facilities we’ll provide, like a
web-based form and a Thread ID for your questions, you’ll be
rewarded with faster response times from DTS.Of course, if you’d really like to speed up DTS response times,
you (or a friend!) could join the Be DTS team; you can find the
job opening at: <www.be /aboutbe/jobs/DTSEng.html>[DTS Update provided by Be Webmaster Ron Theis, filling in for
DTS as they busily respond to your questions.]
Please feel free to contact valerie@be.com if you have any
questions or comments.Thanks for reading!
The Be Team
Valerie Peyre
Developer Programs Manager
valerie@be.com
Tel: 650-462-4132
Fax: 650-462-4129
www.be.com
Be Inc
800 El Camino Real
Suite 300
Menlo Park, Ca 94025
