Winners for the 1996 Dvorak
Telecommunications Excellence Awards

Home | 1996 Categories | 1996 Winners | 1995 Winners | 1994 Winners | 1993 Winners | 1992 Winners
About the Awards | Location | John C. Dvorak | Sponsors | Acknowledgements

  1. Lifetime Achievement

    2. Tim Berners-Lee, MIT, W3

    Accepting the award for Mr. Berners-Lee: Doug Englebard
    Tim Berners-Lee is a software engineer who modestly says he just wanted to make his work at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, easier. He succeeded, and in the process created the World Wide Web. This Internet-based hypermedia system for global information-sharing sparked the "Internet explosion" of the last few years, and forever changed the world's flow of information.
    Tim wrote both the first Web clients and the first Web server, and he defined the URL, HTTP and HTML specifications on which the Web depends. He did most of this world-changing work in late 1990 at CERN, but since then has moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS). He doubles as Director of the W3 Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations whose mission is to realize the full potential of the Web.
    Before going to CERN, Tim was a founding director of Image Computer Systems, and before that he was a consultant in hardware and software system design for real-time communications, graphics and text processing. He also was a Principal Engineer with Plessey Telecommunications, in Poole, England. He graduated with first class Honors in Physics from Queen's College at Oxford University in 1976.
    Tim is married to Nancy Carlson. They have two children, born 1991 and 1994.
      Tim Berners-Lee, Director
      MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
      545 Technology Square
      Cambridge MA 02139
      Tel: 617-253 5702, Fax: 617-258 8682

      Public Relations:
      Tel: 617-520-7037, Weber Group, Heather McClellan

      Email: timbl@w3.org

      URL: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/People/Berners-Lee/

      Susan Hardy, Administrative Asst., Email: susan@w3.org

      MIT Press Office Tel: 617-253-2700

    Category Listing

  2. Man of the Year - Personal Achievement

    3. John S. Quarterman

    President, Matrix Information and
    Directory Services (MIDS) and Author of The Matrix
    Accepting the award: John S. Quarterman
    John S. Quarterman is author of The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, Digital Press, (1990) and co-author of six other books about the Internet and related networks and issues: co-author of the books The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System, (1989), UNIX, POSIX, and Open Systems: The Open Standards Puzzle, (1993), Practical Internetworking with TCP/IP and UNIX, (1993), The Internet Connection: System Connectivity and Configuration, (1994), The E-Mail Companion: Communicating Effectively via the Internet and Other Global Networks, 1994, and The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System, (1996), all from Addison-Wesley. He is currently working on a second edition of The Matrix, URL: http://www.mids.org/matrix/.
    He is Editor of Matrix Maps Quarterly, a color publication of Internet and cyberspace maps, of Matrix News, a monthly newsletter about issues that cross network, geographic and political boundaries, and of the MIDS Internet Weather Report. All are published by Matrix Information and Directory Services, Inc., (MIDS) of Austin, of which he is President, URL: http://www.mids.org.
    He is a partner in Texas Internet Consulting (TIC) URL: http://www.tic.com, which consults in networks and open systems with particular emphasis on TCP/IP networks, UNIX systems and standards. He is also is a partner in Internet access provider, Zilker Internet Park URL: http://www.zilker.net.

    Category Listing

  3. Outstanding Volunteer Internet Organization

    4. Internet Engineering
    Task Force (IETF)

    Accepting the award: Fred Baker, Cisco, IETF/IESG Chair
    The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the protocol engineering and development arm of the Internet. It's responsible for setting standards, so that everyone on the Internet uses the same protocols and conventions. Without the IETF, the Internet would disintegrate into different factions that cannot communicate with each other -- much the way some partisans believe the many independent HTML "extensions" among warring Web browsers have done to the World Wide Web.
    IETF standards do not carry the force of law -- no standards body does, in the Internet's wide-open, international venue. Rather, it is a large, open international community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers concerned with the evolving Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual, though people who are technically or professionally involved with the Internet make up the majority of members.
    The IETF's actual technical work is done in working groups organized by topic into various areas like routing, network management, security, and so forth. Members keep in touch by mailing lists, which allows rapid and widespread cross-pollination of ideas between members. Three times a year, the IETF also holds face-to-face meetings.

    Category Listing

  4. Outstanding Commercial Internet Organization

    5. Network Solutions, Inc.
    Internet Network Information Center
    (NSI/InterNIC)

    Accepting the award: Dr. Donald N. Telage, President
    In 1992, the U.S. National Science Foundation entered into a Cooperative Services Agreement with the Virginia company, Network Solutions, to manage domain registrations for nonmilitary portions of the Internet. In April of 1993, the project officially started, and it has been expanding ever since.
    In 1995, the Network Solutions team in charge of domain names walked through the fire. The Internet drew more new users, more money, and more tons of newsprint publicity that year than ever before, as "everyone who is anyone" rushed to "get on" the Net. Companies leaped in faster than ISP servers could expand to accommodate them. NSI handled it all. In addition, NSI has taken a leadership position in a new frontier of "cyberlaw", where there is no legislation or case law, by establishing a policy which attempts to balance the opposing positions of trademark owners and domain name holders.
    Here's some perspective. In April, 1993, there were about 9,000 registered domain names. A year later there were 18,000 and the number was growing at a rate of about 1,000 a month. In late 1994, the growth became exponential, and in April, 1995, there were 63,000 unique domain names. By mid-April of 1996, the number of registered names had grown to 341,000 and about 40,000 new ones were being registered each month.
    Bear in mind that neither InterNIC nor the Web itself even existed until 1993. Somehow NSI succeeded at this impossible task. Right now 75 percent of new registrations are processed within a day, and the rest are backlogged less than a week. It has been a truly remarkable performance by the NSI team.
      Network Solutions, Inc., InterNIC Registration Services
      505 Huntmar Park Drive
      Herndon, VA 22070
      Registrations:
      Public Relations:
      President:
      Internet Business Manager:
      URL: http://rs.internic.net
      NSI Team members: Mark Kosters, Principal Investigator and Senior Software Engineer, Charles Gomes, Program Manager, Deborah Fuller, Operations Manager, Kim Hubbard, IP Section Manager, Bonnie Detrich, Receivables Section Manager, Mr. Tom Newell, Liaison Section Manager, David Graves, Internet Business Manager, Doug Armentrout, Domain Registration Section Manager, Grant Clark, Corporate Counsel.

    Category Listing

  5. Outstanding Online Navigation Tool

    6. AltaVista, Digital Equipment Corp.

    Accepting the award: Louis Monier
    There are now literally hundreds of search and indexing services on the Internet, but Digital Equipment Corporation's AltaVista is widely regarded as the fastest and most complete of them. Louis Monier, with Mike Burrows, led the development of the enormously fast and powerful AltaVista search engine at Digital's research labs in Palo Alto (monier@pa.dec.com).
    The team's AltaVista search engine, at http://www.altavista.digital.com, is one of the Web's most popular sites, and handles millions of search requests each day. To provide its lightning-fast searches, it uses 10 billion keywords from over 30 million Web pages. When a user searches using one of the keywords -- and it is hard to avoid coming up with a match -- AltaVista lists the sites that match, sorting them according to which sites fit the search terms best.
    The constantly updated index allows AltaVista to generate lists with thousands of matching sites in seconds, since it stores its search terms locally. To keep up-to-date, AltaVista uses robot "spiders" to find its search terms. Its robot agents go out onto the Internet to search for new sites regularly, following links from site to site.
    Dr. Monier, AltaVista development team co-leader, holds a Ph.D. from Orsay University of Paris, May, 1980. He cites his current research interests as CAD tools, VLSI design, software development tools, algorithms and theoretical computer science, arithmetic and generally anything but artificial intelligence.
      AltaVista, c/o Digital Equipment Corporation
      Western Research Laboratory
      250 University Avenue
      Palo Alto, CA 94301 USA
      Tel: 415-617-3300 Main

      Louis Monier, Senior Consulting Engineer
      Chuck Malkiel, Public Relations
      URL: http://altavista.digital.com

    Category Listing

  6. Outstanding Online Research Tool

    7. Electric Library, Infonautics

    Accepting the award: Joshua M. Kopelman
    Infonautics first drew attention for the sophisticated research database it developed for middle school and high school students. When Prodigy's online service offered it as the "Homework Helper" service to its subscribers, thousands of students quickly came to rely on this comprehensive database. Very quickly, so did adults in education, information and other fields.
    Known as The Electric Library in its more general form, the database has an attractive and easy interface that lets users find text, pictures, maps and diagrams involving any specified topic. The search engine is extremely fast, and rates its natural language query finds on the basis of importance.
    As The Electric Library, this search system has become the consumer-oriented online research library of choice for many thousands of Internet users. It emphasizes depth and breadth of coverage and affordability, with a user-friendly interface. Aimed at computer users of all ages, The Electric Library aggregates more than 150 full-text newspapers, nearly 800 full-text magazines, two newswires, multiple reference books, hundreds of maps, thousands of photographs and major works of literature and art. Its database includes materials from world renowned publishers such as Archive Photos, Reuters, Simon and Schuster, Gannett and Compton's New Media.

    Category Listing

  7. Outstanding Online Wire Service

    8. The Sydney Morning Herald

    Accepting the award: Matthew Doull (Hollinger International)
    The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily metropolitan broadsheet newspaper from Sydney, Australia, published by Fairfax. Its Web site sends out daily refreshed news and features as not only conventional Web pages, but also via email bulletins (majordomo), video conferences (CU-SeeMe and IRC) and as radio-style transmissions (RealAudio).
    The site's major components, apart from daily news, are "Metro" (a guide to music, film and Australian cultural events) and "Computers" (a definitive coverage of the latest technology).
    The Sydney Morning Herald RealAudio server provides interviews with Fairfax correspondents stationed throughout the world, as well as with leading figures from the computer industry, the arts and politics. The SMH also offers special projects such as the Fairfax@Atlanta site with up to 4GB of continually refreshed Olympics-related multimedia resources.
    Few big, conventional metro daily newspapers have leapt on the Internet as imaginatively as The Sydney Morning Herald from Australia.
    They were the first newspaper in Australia, and possibly the world, to introduce an extensive collection of RealAudio interviews. The site's frequent live interactive videoconferences and page one stories are broadcast daily (as well as offered in a full-text Web version), and a daily dispatch of news and feature stories is sent via email. The site features reports from The Sydney Morning Herald's columnists and correspondents based in countries throughout the world.
      The Sydney Morning Herald
      Jason Romney, Associate Editor (Computers)
      201 Sussex Street
      Sydney NSW AUSTRALIA 2000
      Tel: 011-41-2 282 1861, Fax: 011-41-2 282 1881

      Email: jromney@smh.com.au

      URL: http://www.smh.com.au

    Category Listing

  8. Outstanding Online Newspaper

    9. Chicago Sun-Times Online

    Accepting the award: Fred Lebolt, Online Publications Director
    U.S. newspapers have rushed to the Web perhaps more than any category of company outside of the computer industry. Many have become near standards for effective use of Internet resources -- for example, the San Jose Mercury-News, in the heart of "Silicon Valley," is a previous recipient of a Dvorak Online Newspaper Award.
    This year the award goes to the Chicago Sun-Times, which in the course of a year has created a remarkably rich and useful site used by many thousands of people worldwide each day. Its development was a model of how to build a Web site effectively without wasting resources.
    Throughout the development period the staff has actively sought, and responded to, feedback from visiting surfers. As bandwidth became critical, they built parallel Web sites designed for faster or slower connections. Then they used HTTP information to identify the requesting browser and point it automatically to the appropriate branch of the site.
    Then came phase two, in which the staff reinvented the site almost from scratch. Its current incarnation is based almost entirely on content and provides the best of what the Sun-Times, a world-class newspaper, offers its readers. It is peppered with services that use the Internet's best capabilities to find and present information. And its graphic look is clean, very fast and accessible to users at any modem speed. It reaches out to the broadest segment of its potential audience, not forgetting that to work, the site must be fun to visit.
    The Sun-Times operation is an extension of the mass media, not a specialized publication for a narrow audience. It uses the best features of the Internet, rather than being dominated by them. The Sun-Times approach has worked brilliantly well, and was done without a huge staff or massive capital expenditures. It is an example of how to use the resources of the Internet effectively.
      Chicago Sun-Times Company
      401 North Wabash Avenue
      Chicago, IL 60611
      Tel: 312-321-3000, Fax: 312 321-2849
      Tel: 312-321-2610 Online Publications

      URL: http://www.suntimes.com

      Email: lebolt@suntimes.com
      Online Publications Director, Fred Lebolt

    Category Listing

  9. Outstanding Internet Innovation

    10. RealAudio, Progressive Networks

    Accepting the award: Rob Glaser, Bruce Jacobson
    Progressive Networks' RealAudio client-server software system enables Internet and online users equipped with conventional multimedia personal computers and voice-grade telephone lines to browse, select and play back audio or audio-based multimedia content on demand, in real time.
    Real Audio supports the Windows 95, Windows NT, Apple Macintosh and Power Mac/System platforms. There are over six million RealAudio players in distribution and thousands of RealAudio Servers serving audio content including, news, sports and music.
    Progressive Networks develops and markets software products and services designed to enable users of personal computers and other digital devices to send and receive audio and audio-based multimedia services using the existing Internet infrastructure.
    The server software enables individuals to serve up real-time audio on demand from their own PC. It supports 2 external streams and one local stream. The program provides a GUI which allows owners to monitor who is listening and what they are listening to. An Encoder for encoding audio files in RealAudio format is included with single button access.
      Progressive Networks, Inc.
      1111 Third Avenue, Suite 2900
      Seattle,WA 98101
      Tel: 800-230-5975 Sales
      Tel: 206-674-2700 Main, Fax: 206-674-2699

      URL: http://www.RealAudio.com

      Maria Cantwell, Vice President, Marketing

    Category Listing

  10. Personal Achievement in Network Engineering

    11. Charles Corbalis
    for Fast Packet Technology

    Accepting the award: Charles Corbalis
    A co-founder of StrataCom, Mr. Corbalis has been responsible for the architecture and implementation of many of StrataCom's products including the IPX, the BPX, AXIS and StrataView+. Mr. Corbalis' group included the founding patent engineers and key contributors: Pete Stonebridge, Jim Margraff, Jon Masatsugu, Brian Holden and Mark Vatuone.
    Mr. Corbalis' group implemented the packet voice-over cell-relay capability and the world's first frame relay interface for the IPX.
    Mr. Corbalis was editor of the LMI protocol specification and co-inventor of the companies' ForeSight congestion control algorithm. He was promoted to his current position in 1994.
    Prior to StrataCom, Mr. Corbalis was the Hardware/Firmware Manager at the predecessor company Packet Technologies, Inc. Mr. Corbalis started his career at ROLM Corporation, where he designed hardware and firmware for ROLM's T1/D4 product that was introduced in 1983.
    Mr. Corbalis has a BSEE/CS from the University of California, Berkeley and an MSEE from Stanford University.
      StrataCom, Inc.
      1400 Parkmoor Avenue
      San Jose, CA 95126
      Tel: 800-877-0519 or 408-294-7600
      Fax: 408-999-0835

      David Callisch, P.R. Manager
      URL: http://www.strata.com

    Category Listing

  11. Outstanding Special Purpose Application

    12. Net Nanny

    Accepting the award: Gordon Ross, President
    Net Nanny provides Internet users' children and other family members with protection while surfing the Internet and prevents access to certain information on users' PCs. It enables users to prevent their address, phone and credit card numbers from appearing on the Internet, to prevent other personal or sensitive data from being given out on the Internet, to prevent loading, downloading and running of unauthorized software or CD-ROMs, and to prevent user-definable words, phrases, sites or subject matter from being sent from or received by their PCs.
    The program stops users' disks and hard drives from being reformatted and users' files from being deleted or tampered with. Users can develop their own dictionaries of words, phrases and subjects. An audit trail is maintained of monitored words, phrases and user-defined content on users' PCs that indicates PC startup and triggered violation shutdown dates and times. The program is compatible with on-line providers and with email and IRC.
    Users can select the terminal action they want taken for violations: such as monitor, application shutdown, or full shutdown. The software can control the files users may install, change or remove. The administration program supports access to all program functions. Users can add, modify or delete stored dictionary items at any time and can turn the program on and off at their own discretion.
      Net Nanny Ltd. (subsidiary of Trove Investment Corp.)
      Gordon Ross, President
      525 Seymour Street, Main Floor
      Vancouver, BC, CANADA V6B 3H7
      Tel: 604-662-8522 or 604-683-2195 or 800-340-7177
      Fax: 604-669-0596

      Email: GrahamH@netnanny.com

      URL: http://www.netnanny.com/

    Category Listing

  12. Outstanding Web Management Tool

    13. Lotus InterNotes
    Publisher, Lotus Development Corp./IBM

    Accepting the award: Paul Haverstock, Director of Internet Product Development
    Lotus InterNotes allows organizations with multiple authors in multiple locations to use Notes replication and distributed storage capabilities to automatically create and manage a corporate Web site. The program creates HTML pages of Notes Views which automatically populate and manage changes to an HTTP Web server such as Netscape, NetSite or EMWACS. It allows browsers such as Netscape Navigator and NCSA Mosaic to gain access to documents stored in Notes databases. Notes application development capabilities allow items to be programmed to show a "New" sign or to be present on the Web site for only a specified period of time. Document currency is maintained due to automatic updating of Web material whenever documents are revised in Notes.
    Lotus Internet News brings Usenet News articles into Notes discussion databases. It allows users to leverage Notes capabilities including full text search, threaded views of discussions and multiple indexed views of articles. The program can be configured for specific newsgroups and to allow administrators to provide access to only those newsgroups appropriate for business use. Notes users can participate in Usenet News by posting a response from Notes or by replying directly to the author using Internet SMTP mail.
      Lotus Development Corp./IBM
      55 Cambridge Parkway
      Cambridge, MA 02142-1295
      Tel 800-346-1305 Notes Presale, Tel: 800-343-5414
      Tel: 617-577-8500 Main
      Fax: 617-693-3512
      BBS: 617-693-7000
      Faxback Tel: 800-346-3508

      Andrew McDavid, Communications - Lotus Corp./IBM

      Public Relations:
      URL: http://www.lotus.com or http://www.internotes.com

    Category Listing

  13. Outstanding Special Interest Web Site

    14. The Los Angeles Dodgers Web Site

    Accepting the award: Barry Stockhamer, VP Marketing, The Los Angeles Dodgers and John K. Sloatman, Chief Operating Officer, Only Multimedia Network
    The Los Angeles Dodgers National League baseball team hosts a Web site rich with content that pushes HTML to its limits. Designed by Only Multimedia Network, Inc. The site is fully interactive and animated, has many unique baseball graphics, color photographs and art work, crisp sound, real-time audio and video broadcasts and an intuitive user interface.
    The site has facilities for downloading all the plug-ins supported and setup instructions. Using the QuickTime VR plug-in, users can view Virtual Reality movies, navigate through VR scenes, and manipulate VR objects while viewing a Dodgers 3D Tour. Using EchoSpeech Audio plug-in users can hear real-time speech compressed over the Internet of various Dodger audio clips. Using the StreamWorks plug-in users can view the audio/video of live events at Dodger Stadium.
    There is a guest book and fan forum with various contests. The site's key areas include: Game Results and Information, Ticket Information, 106 Seasons Summary, Player Information, Baseball Around the Globe, Dodgers in the Community, Jackie Robinson, Press Releases, Nomomania, Chan Ho Park, Broadcast Information, Down on the Farm, Gift Shop, Multimedia Gallery, Dodger Publications and For Kids Only. Additional offerings include: Exclusive Game Notes, Merchandise Specials, Dodgers News, a text version of the team's Home and Road Schedule, the sound track of Vin Scully's Game Recap, Baseball Poetry readings by Vin Scully, Tommy Lasorda and Rick Monday, and complete Minor League Box Scores.
      Los Angeles Dodgers
      1000 Elysian Park Avenue
      Los Angeles, CA 90012
      Tel: 213-224-1500, Fax: 213-224-1269

      Barry Stockhamer, V.P. Marketing
      Jay Lucas, Publicity Tel: 213-224-1301, Fax: 213-224-1459

      Email: Webmaster@dodgers.com

      URL: http://www.dodgers.com

      Only Multimedia Network

    Category Listing

  14. Outstanding Online Document Publishing Advancement

    15. Adobe Acrobat 3.0

    Accepting the award: Sarah Rosenbaum, Adobe Acrobat 3.0 Product Manager
    Companies rushing to the Internet are discovering a critical problem: design-rich materials used to convey brand identity and complex ideas, such as presentations, brochures, charts and maps, don't translate very well to the Web.
    Web browsers may interpret and display HTML in different ways, there is no way to guarantee what a Net surfer will see when entering a given site. Even the "dominant" browsers don't display things the same way on all platforms. The other problem is that, with the exception of bitmaps, there is no real graphic standard for the Web. Right now, companies must use the GIF or JPEG bitmap standards to display any graphic information other than plain text, which results in a serious compromise between high quality and small file size.
    If you have put thousands of dollars into creating a careful and precise "look and feel" for your company, the vagaries of the Web can drive you nuts.
    Since PostScript, an Adobe Systems product won the printer language skirmishes, it is no surprise that the company has produced a strong analogous product for the Web.
    Acrobat is a widely accepted electronic document software product that uses the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) to display documents and graphics with exact fidelity across all major computer platforms. The Internet version of Acrobat displays one hyper-linked page at a time and links to outside Web sites as well. Using Acrobat, documents created with QuarkXPress on a Macintosh look exactly the same on a Windows, Macintosh or Unix machine without having the QuarkXPress authoring program present.

Category Listing

Home | 1996 Categories | 1996 Winners | 1995 Winners | 1994 Winners | 1993 Winners | 1992 Winners
About the Awards | Location | John C. Dvorak | Sponsors | Acknowledgements

Note: Graphics used in these pages are best viewed with a minimum of a 256 color display.

Last update: 19 December, 1997 Suggestions? Email to webmaster@citivu.com

Copyright © 1995-6 by John C. Dvorak. Permission granted to create World Wide Web pointers to these pages. All other rights reserved.

For information concerning next years awards contact:
'97 Dvorak Awards Committee, Tel: 909-860-6914 Fax: 909-396-0014 Email: Dvorak@citivu.com