CMI built up its sales database by hiring youth trainees and students in their summer vacations, and asking them to telephone hundreds of companies to ask for the name and direct line of their information technology managers. Mr Letts even brought in some students from France so he would have native speakers able to elicit the same information from French companies.This year, CMI expects a turnover of £1m, and plans to expand its portfolio of reports from 15 to 35 this year and to 60 by the end of 1996. If it succeeds, CMI will become the world’s biggest technology report publisher.But Mr Letts has even grander ambitions. He hopes the firm will double in size each year for the next five. If his hopes are realised, his fledgling publishing house will become bigger than the family diary business. But Mr Letts says his father, president of Charles Letts & Co, views that prospect with equanimity.”He is very involved in my business, and loves it,” says CMI’s 28-year- old managing director “He sees that CMI is the publishing business of tomorrow. It will carry the family into publishing for another 200 years.”.

If you switch on your computer one day only to find nothing happens, it could be because its insides have been stolen. This is the latest trend in computer burglaries, say crime prevention authorities. To alleviate this and other security worries, however, you can now buy a computer safe. The safe, made by Boxx Security of High Wycombe, can contain most brands of desktop computer and may be bolted to the floor or a wall, for “tower”- style machines, or to a desk for flat-top machines. Priced at £129 plus VAT, it’s made from steel and is designed to conform to British Standard 7558, which states that it must withstand attack for more than five minutes.

Tests have been carried out using the tools that an opportunist thief might be expected to carry, such as crow-bars, jemmies and screwdrivers, says John Randall of Boxx Security.
Mr Randall says the company’s expertise came originally from manufacturing gunsafes: protective, lockable containers for guns and ammunition that are required by law. Increasing levels of computer theft suggested a market for a variation on the theme.Insurance firms will welcome the device, he believes, especially as statistics indicate that a large number of companies suffering burglaries are robbed again within two weeks: that is, after just enough time has elapsed for them to have replaced their computing equipment using insurance money.Whether users will be prepared to turn their workstations into miniature Fort Knoxes could be a different matter, however.For further information, telephone 0 (149) 455 8181.. From fringe theatre to virtual cinema requires less of a leap of the imagination than you might think. In fact, for Greg Roach, artistic director and founder of Seattle-based Hyperbole Studios, discovering the computer as an artistic tool led him to the realisation, “that I’d really found my life’s work”. Greg Roach had spent most of his career in theatre as an actor, director and playwright.

“But there was very much a feeling of constraint in theatre, which was sort of economic,” he explains. This was because he had been writing plays that required many actors and scene changes. Sadly, he was finding that most commercial theatre would not risk staging original works of such size.
Enter his computer. Used primarily as a word processor, he now began to look at it as a processor of ideas. As he gradually became aware of the potential, he was left with a feeling that he had entered a new realm, that he had come in at the beginning of a new artform.”One of the main things was coming to realise, oh my God, there’s so many things I can do here,” he says “If I can imagine it, I can find a way to do it And the feeling of freedom … I suddenly saw that I had the means of creation and distribution for original works. I could become a publisher both for myself and for others.”Formed in 1990, Hyperbole’s first release was an interactive book entitled The Madness of Roland, which was described by MacUser as a “multidimensional, ground-breaking work”.

The CD-rom allows you to explore the medieval story of Roland, a super-knight in the service of the Emperor Charlemagne. Roland is a hero or villain, depending on which character you read/listen to.Jumping ahead quite a considerable number of centuries – to 2057, to be exact – Quantum Gate, his interactive movie/ game/story released in 1993, moved forward not just in time. While The Madness of Roland hinted at the possibilities of user interactivity, Quantum Gate begins to set down a genuine foundation. It showed off for the first time Hyperbole’s patented VirtualCinema multimedia technology, which allowed the user to become the central character in the story.Just released, its engrossing three CD-rom-packing, six-hour sequel, The Vortex: Quantum Gate II, is another step forward in technique and technology. With The Vortex you begin to see just where all this could lead, as you become a character in a plot that twists and turns, depending on the choices you make. You won’t be able to complain about the ending either – because that will depend on the path you have chosen.When they are perfected, interactive movies – or whatever you want to call them – will become an intoxicating and addictive experience for many people.