north shore news

Sil

IGH TECH

NEWS photo Mike ‘Wakatletd

CYPOST Cerporation president Steve Berry is flanked by sofiware developers Felicia Miulet and Marian * Miulet. The cornpany specializes in online encryption.

‘Securi

Michael Becker.

News Editor _michael@nsnews.com THE World Wide Web is a promising Place to Play.

> Yet misgivings linger ..- regarding the. security of on- ‘line transactions. The antici:. "Rated boom in * e-commerce

fully materialize only when he exchange. of information is ” Proven to be hacker-proof. North Vancouver-based -

company is addressing the ‘challenges. - --.- CyPost Corporation was -founded ;in- 1997" by Carl Whitehead -. and. Robert Sendch. ah vt ~, The rapidly-growing tech company — up from eight to 23 employees since January — offers solutions for online pri- -Vacy and protection. ;

: Gyro CEO and president »/ Steve Berry, 40, joined the

‘company after, Whitehead and ‘Sendoh' ‘approached © him ‘about a ear and a half ago. "The Lions Bay resident had . headed Profile: . Business “Supplies,” an office Products distribution com he foun en dors rote was bought by Corporate Express in -1994. Berry remained to | run nthe B.C. division of the .

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company until CyPost approached him.

“It had to be proven to me that there was a product to be sold. I eventually came to grips with what we were going todo last summer.”

The product is Navaho Lock, an encryption and com- pression software application.

The software allows secure stovzze of files on PCs and suse transmission of them over the Internet and other networks. -

The software features built- in file compression that can be used with or without encryp- tion.

If you send encrypted files to people who do nor have

Navaho Lock, those receiving:

your messages will be directed to the Navaho Lock Web size where they can download a free copy of Navaho Viewer. Building upon the capabili- ties of the initial software, the company announced in July the beta release of Navaho Voice, an application that

incorporates. encrypted voice

messaging into the mix. Said Berry, “What I really brought honic in terms of the

programming ‘staff that I involved with in January is

while I can’: complement the.

team in terms of technical pro-

ficiency, Ikept telling them,

a ‘nebwork °

you’ve got.to deal with guys like me out there.

“ft was a VP of marketing and sales after I sold my com- pany. I want real world applica- tions. I don’t want you to tell me that J have to go through a road map to use a piece of soft- ware. We kept saying what can we do next?”

The software allows docu- ments, text and graphics to be easily compressed and encrypt- ed. The voice application allows the user to add encrypt- ed and compressed voice mes- sages to be sent over the Internct as well.

Said Berry, “I can do a voice only, document package only, e-eail only.”

He acknowledges there are

“some good competitors” out

there.

But like many tech compa- nies that begin to take off with a good software idea, CyPost is banking cn a growth strategy that takes the company beyond the marketing of a product.

With CyPost stock up more than 400% this year, the com- pany now finds itself in a buy- ing mood.

CyPost is page together

ISPs (Internet Service Providers) throughout Canada and the U.S. The ISP network will be bolstered by

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key at CyPost

CyPost’s encryption technolo- gy, anti-virus software and content management (such as filtering) applications.

Berry of the strategy to focus on ISPs. “We really did a lot of soul searching on this. Is software something you want to build a company around? The answer is no. The sale of software is going to have a five-vear or 10-year life. The reality in this world is that we're all living in dog years.”

CyPost has since June 30 assembled a base of about

20,000 ISP clients. Among the .

1SPs purchased: Connect Northwest in Seattle and Western Washington; NetRover Inc. in Ontario and Quebec; Internet Arena in Oregon; Hermes Net Solutions and = Intouch Interaet in Vancouver.

Berry said Navaho Lock.

will be provided to network users. “The Internet has just surpassed the U.S. postal ser- vice in terms of what ix deliv- ers. As a result of that, when people find out how insecure their correspondence is, with higher speed access people are poing to use it for more ¢-

usiness type applications, they’s e goin oing to need some

err more an yPost visit <www.cypost.com>.

Wednesday, August 11, 1999 — North Shore News — 15

MP3 outranks sex on the Internet

TODAY we're going to focus on the emergence of a revolutionary tech- nology that has shaken the foundation of the world’s music recording and distribution indus- try.

The distribution of music has been forever changed with the introduction last year of MP3 technology. Simply srat- ed, MP3 is a file compression format that allows all con- sumers to download any music over the Internet, in relatively quick time.

Because the files are large, sounds and pictures are mem- ory hogs on your computer. Large files, in turn, take a long time to download off the Internet, particularly with the average dial-up access, nor- mally set at 56K (56,000 bytes per second). This is the speed of your modem. In a future column we'll talk about bandwidth pipe and what the future holds for all of us, as broadband services become more available on the North Shore.

Over the years there have been many attempts to get

around the constraints of the —

narrow p ips on the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System). The common

. approach to perfecting the

transfer of large application, sound or vidco files over the Internet was to somehow compress or reduce the size of the file before the transfer and then decompress or expand - the file once it arrived at your computer. A typical four- - minute song would normally be approximately 75 to 100° Megabytes large, and would take approximately half a day to download! :

With MP3 your wait time is cut to 10 to 15 minutes. The implications are ener- mous and the revolutionary impact of BIP3 has not been lest on the Recording .. Industry Association of America (RIAA). Recent'sur- . veys show that MP3 files may

be a contributing factor to the | decline in musi eer nirchases by © oO!

15-to-24 year-olds, once the mainstay of the retail music market. In fact, many Internet search engines now report. © that MP3 queries outrank sex.-

RIAA’s initial reaction was _

to simply neglect the impor-. - tance of MP3, and to grudg- © ingly witness the digital stam- pede to upload, share and “

<www.nullso!

download music over the Web. However that all changed with the introduc- tion last fall of DiamondMedia’s Rio Portable Music Piayer, (avail- able at London Drugs or Future Shop for $200). With this litle device, smaller than a Walkman, music fans can download tracks of music . independent. of their comput-

er. The RLSA and the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies immediately sued Diamond to stop the Rio. The recording industry, which wrofits from CD sales, knew that once consumers were free of their PCs and could listen

~ to their downloaded tracks

while working out at the gym, the new MP3 format would take off. They were right. Unfortunatciy for chem, they jost their case in carly June. Under the guise of pre- venting piracy, the RIAA’s * effort was nothing short of good old fashioned greed, stubbornness and a panting desire to protect an existing _ music distribution monopoly

‘that, many claim, gouges cus-

tomers. The monopoly is doomed.

MP3 represents the end of an era when music was |

. burned onto discs and

shipped to all the bricks and: *

mortar stores. The.days of

buying 2 whole album when

~ you really only want a couple

of songs are over. . *. - Go ahead and try it your- ‘ self. Pull a song off the Web.

_ All you necd is a music player,” * a software program that will:

play the music you want to download. The ‘most common © players are Winamp, AusicMatch and ne G2: ae RealPlayer. My preference at the moment is the Winamp and you can rons com>. This is a small so program aru takes no time to download - and install. :

Next, go to’a search

* engine site edevoted to locat- a

See MP3 page 16

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