• Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates said the company is working on new versions of Windows that will be used not only on next-generation PCs but on such products as personal digital assistants, intelligent telephones and navigation systems for automobiles. He also predicted that PCs set for release as early as next year will be more powerful than most of today's workstations.
• Sales of 32-bit apps took a huge jump in the first half of 1996, according to the Software Publishers Association. The greatest growth spurt came in areas such as desktop publishing, databases and development languages. Win 3.x app sales receded by 5 percent, but it remains by far the single largest platform.
• Intel and its new partner MCI jointly offered MCI Webmaker, an integrated package of Internet hardware, software, access services and technical support aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. In a very different deal, the chip giant teamed with MTV for a new video channel that uses Intercast, Intel-developed technology that allows PC users to simultaneously watch TV and receive broadcast Web pages.
• While the Windows of yore was never a serious contender as a games platform, Win95 is shaping up to be different. Microsoft, which fully intends to be a player in the market itself, acquired Electric Gravity, creator of the Internet Gaming Zone.
• ISDN looks to keep gaining popularity as costs keep coming down. Cardinal Technologies shipped its ISA-bus ISDN basic-rate adapter for just $199, barely more than the cost of a 28.8Kbps modem.
• Microsoft launched a PR disaster when the thesaurus in the Spanish version of Word 6.0 was found to have racist terms and other insults among the suggested alternatives for words such as "Indian." The company apologized and scrambled to offer a free fix.
  

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