ADSL got a boost recently with the announcement that Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, N.J.) and Westell Technologies (Aurora, Ill.) plan to offer telecommunications-service providers asymmetrical-digital-subscriber-line (ADSL) capabilities based on technology that the International Telecommunication Union has said will be an industry standard.

"The relationship will bring lightning-fast data services to telecom providers more quickly and efficiently than thought possible a few months ago," said Frank D'Amelio, Lucent's vice president of switching and access product management and marketing.

"The capability will exist this year to provide ADSL features on the more than 100 million lines currently served [by Lucent's 5ESS switch]," D'Amelio said.

Late in 1998, Lucent and Westell plan to offer to service providers the hardware and software solution integrated into the Lucent switch.

EE TIMES EDITOR Alex Wolfe thinks Hewlett-Packard will make Merced a winner, despite Intel's imposed news blackout. He gives the lowdown at.

"MANY JOURNALISTS no w troll the Internet looking for stories, but the Intel episode [1994 Pentium flaw] was the first where the news itself unrolled on the Net.

"Intel carefully tried to spin the story in the broadcast and print press, but on the Net the real story played itself out as the sheer unpaid information spread out and confounded traditional media coverage.

"The information itself, without brand names or control, self-organized into a new version of the truth: Intel had screwed up in an attempt to minimize the Pentium's flaw."

- Esther Dyson, author and industry futurist

MARCH 19-25: The big CeBIT '98 show will be held
in Hannover, Germany, but the Web site
has all the virtual info-conferences,
lectures and a special news site.

FASTPARTS INC. (Chicago) has an online "Trading Exchange" that offers contract circuit-board assemblers a Web-based trading floor where buyers and sellers can negotiate and execute deals.

EDTEC (Atlanta) offers the scoop on its hardware and software development for embedded control applications, printed-circuit-board designs and custom electronic products at.

AUTOMATED ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS INC. (Quincy, Mass.), a developer of software for the electrical industry, has a site. "Raceway Wizard" calculates electrical raceway size, overcurrent device size, voltage drop, fault current and withstand ampacity. "Electric Calculator" converts lengths, areas, weights, temperature and light.

NJR CORP. (Mountain View, Calif.), North American subsidiary of New Japan Radio Company (Tokyo), a maker of bipolar and CMOS linear ICs, has a site. Find out about the firm's 35-year history, and how it provides semiconductor products and microwave components for the industrial and consumer markets.

"A NEW INFORMATION ORDER is being born," says the EG3 Communications Inc. (Newark, Calif.) Web site. And for electronics-design engineers, the company has grown a terrific site with a philosophy of distributing "open" or free information to help make sense of it all.

The site-dubbed the "EE Toolbox" offers a plethora of useful information for EEs specifically in digital signal processing (DSP), embedded systems, real-time, board-level computing and software development for electronics.

EG3 has also added several resource sections covering bleeding-edge design in board-level computing and the emerging market of "smart" technology.

These sections link the engineer to proprietary site information or to other sites focusing on standards, new books, manufacturers, FAQs, overviews, related publications and FTP sites.

The resource section on MCUs and MPUs includes a master index to the major semiconductor vendors, the latest books on the topic, free and non-commercial resources, and Usenet newsgroups.

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