TidBITS#379/12-May-97
=====================

 Considering the purchase of a Newton? Don't miss this week's
 detailed review of the Newton MessagePad 2000, written by a long-
 time Newton owner who recently bought the latest model. This week,
 we also examine each of the entries in our TidBITS Search Engine
 Shootout, and bring you news about the upcoming PowerBook 2400c,
 and Aladdin Systems purchasing Rev.

Topics:
   MailBITS/12-May-97
   Shootout at the Searching Corral
   MessagePad 2000: New Newton Exceeds Expectations

<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-379.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1997/TidBITS#379_12-May-97.etx>

Copyright 1997 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
  Information: <[email protected]> Comments: <[email protected]>
  ---------------------------------------------------------------

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- <[email protected]>
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  InstallerMaker 3.1.3, the leading installer for Mac developers.

* Small Dog Electronics -- Special TidBITS deal!
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  ---------------------------------------------------------------

MailBITS/12-May-97
------------------

**A PowerBook for Tiny Fingers** -- Apple and IBM officially
 introduced the PowerBook 2400c last week, filling the sub-notebook
 category left vacant by the discontinued Duo line. The machine
 runs on a 180 MHz 603e PowerPC processor with a 256K Level 2
 cache, and supports a 10.4-inch active-matrix color display.
 Weighing only 4.4 pounds and smaller than notebook-sized paper,
 the 2400c should be a relief for travelers burdened by shoulder-
 straining loads of equipment. Some concessions Apple made in the
 2400's size are a smaller keyboard (originally designed for the
 Japanese market, where hunt-and-peck typing in Kanji is more
 common than touch typing in English) and a lack of an internal
 floppy drive. Prices should start around $3,500; units will start
 shipping in Japan at the end of the month, and are expected be
 available in the United States at the end of July. [JLC]

<http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1997/q3/
970508.pr.rel.pb2400c.html>


**Aladdin Revs Up** -- Aladdin Systems has acquired publishing
 rights to 6prime's Rev, the $99.95 easy-to-use revision control
 software I reviewed back in TidBITS-362_. Rev saves intermediate
 versions of frequently saved documents, making it possible to
 return to one of those intermediate versions in case of otherwise
 irrevocable mistakes. Even though Nisus Writer provides unlimited
 undos that work through saves, I still use Rev with documents I
 work on frequently, and on several occasions Rev has saved me from
 recreating work. I'm pleased to see Aladdin picking up Rev so it
 can benefit from the additional support. [ACE]

<http://www.aladdinsys.com/rev/>


Shootout at the Searching Corral
--------------------------------
 by TidBITS Staff <[email protected]>

 The deadlines for our TidBITS Search Engine Shootout contest
 announced in TidBITS-368_ have come and gone, and it's time to
 share the results. To begin, we want to thank each and every
 entrant personally. These folks put tremendous effort into
 creating search engines that would serve the Macintosh community,
 and for that alone they all deserve kudos. Overall, the quality of
 the search engines was great, and we enjoyed reading about how the
 entries were constructed.

 In this week's article, we're going to spotlight each entrant and
 provide comments about each search engine. Then, next week, after
 we've had more time to chat with the top entrants, we'll announce
 the winner (or winners, if necessary). Feel free to visit the
 sites (listed below in no particular order), but don't worry if
 you can't connect - because some entries are running on personal
 machines, they may not be available full time. You can also refer
 to TidBITS-368_ for the contest criteria.


**Scott Ribe & WebServer 4D** -- By far the snappiest entry came
 from Scott Ribe, who wrote a text indexing extension that works
 with MDG's $295 WebServer 4D to provide a blindingly fast, full-
 text search engine for TidBITS. Although Scott had to write the
 code, which took a few weeks (and it's still relatively hard-wired
 to TidBITS, but he plans to generalize it for commercial release),
 the setup seems simple, with the text indexing extension looking
 for TidBITS issues in a specific drop folder.

<http://www.mdg.com/>

 We liked this entry quite a bit, in large part thanks to its
 speed. It has a relatively spartan results page, with the issue
 number and the article title, but I imagine it could fairly easily
 add the author, or perhaps the first line of the article to a
 summary list. Results are sorted by reverse chronological order,
 and Scott plans relevance ranking for a future release. The search
 finds articles containing all the search terms, and although you
 can search for issue dates, neither Boolean nor phrase searching
 is available. Oddly, it also can't handle hyphenated words, like
 "Ashton-Tate". [ACE]

<http://38.254.39.13/tidbits_archive/>


**Ethan Benatan, Frontier & Phantom** -- Ethan Benatan came up
 with a creative, highly functional solution for searching TidBITS
 issues: using Userland Frontier, Ethan wrote a scheduled script
 that uses Fetch to download new TidBITS issues, and (when a new
 issue appears) breaks it up into articles and saves the resulting
 files in a local directory. Each night, Maxum's Phantom adds any
 new files to its cumulative index, while continuously serving as a
 CGI to handle queries from users. Frontier also uses Eudora Light
 to send status reports. Phantom is about $300, while Frontier and
 other components have little or no cost.

<http://www.maxum.com/Phantom/>
<http://www.scripting.com/Frontier/>

 The result is a spiffy TidBITS search engine, offering word-
 stemming, Boolean and phonetic searching capabilities from
 Phantom, plus "convenience" features for searching just 1996 or
 1997 TidBITS issues, searching only URLs or headers, detailed or
 compact results formats, and relevancy-ranked search results
 (expressed in percentages). To our delight, Ethan went to the
 extra effort of breaking MailBITS up into separate articles so
 they can be matched individually. Although the detailed search
 results are marred by navigation links showing up in the three-
 line previews, all in all, Ethan's effort is outstanding. [GD]

<http://anacardium.bio.pitt.edu:8080/>


**Andrew Warner & FoxPro** -- You don't hear much about the Mac
 version of FoxPro since Microsoft purchased Fox back in 1992 (see
 TidBITS-113_). But, it's still out there, and Andrew Warner has
 shown that it can still perform. This search engine was written
 entirely in FoxPro and is highly customizable. It reads TidBITS
 issues from a drop folder, and provides dynamic headers and
 footers. The system includes a file parsing program that reads the
 HTML of each issue and parses them into separate articles. Then,
 Phdbase, a text searching library add-on for FoxPro/Mac, does the
 indexing.

<http://www.microsoft.com/vfoxpro/vf_xplat.htm>

 Since Andrew had to run this on his personal machine, we couldn't
 do much testing in the time available. Boolean and phrase
 searching (via quotes) were available, and you could limit the
 searches to specific fields (such as article title or,
 hypothetically, date) as well. Andrew didn't spend much time on
 this solution, but he said he could easily add or modify many
 features, given more time. The results list included the article
 title and issue date, and articles displayed relatively well, with
 an occasional glitch or inappropriate search hit. [ACE]

<http://agency.arnoldcom.com/aw.search2.html>


**Ole, David, FileMaker & Frontier** -- Ole Saalmann and David
 Weingart harnessed Userland Frontier not only as a CGI engine for
 returning search results, but also as a parser and scheduled
 retriever for new TidBITS issues. Frontier scripts grab TidBITS
 issues, break them into articles, and stores them in a simple
 FileMaker Pro database. When search requests come in from users,
 Frontier tells FileMaker what to search for, then returns the
 results in HTML.

<http://www.scripting.com/Frontier/>
<http://www.claris.com/products/claris/filemakerpro/filemakerpro.html>

 Ole and David's project offers a pleasing AltaVista-like
 interface, detailed and compact results pages (plus an Advanced
 Search option with some Boolean and phrase-searching operations,
 plus searches in articles titles, issue ranges, and date ranges).
 Although the service displays some HTML oddities and doesn't offer
 relevancy ranking for articles, it's speedy, offers excellent
 search results pages, and has a particularly elegant scripting
 setup on the Web server. [GD]

<http://www.gilbert.org/searchBITs.fcgi>


**Duane Bemister & WebSonar** -- Duane Bemister created his entry
 using Virginia Systems' WebSonar Professional. Products in the
 WebSonar line make it possible to search large quantities of
 documents via the Web, and those documents can be in many
 different formats, making it possible to place documents online
 without converting them to HTML.

 Although WebSonar offers many sophisticated options, it suffers
 under the burden of so many possibilities that casual users may
 become discouraged with the complex menu- and toolbar-driven
 interface. Further, WebSonar uses a page metaphor which causes
 search results to not appear to return discrete articles. WebSonar
 represents a powerful tool, but we aren't convinced that casual
 searchers will wish to devote the mental cycles necessary to jump
 its learning curve. [TJE]

<http://www.websonar.com/websonarcom/tidbits_challenge.html>


**David, Curt & Apple e.g.** -- We received two entries that used
 Apple e.g., a CGI (currently freely available and in beta) from
 Apple that adds search features to Macintosh-based Web sites.
 Technically speaking, Apple e.g. uses technology from Apple
 formerly codenamed the V-Twin text indexing engine, but now
 saddled with the rather dull appellation of Apple Information
 Access Toolkit. From a backend standpoint, we like the way both
 entries integrate Apple e.g. with TidBITS, and we also like the
 user experience. It's easy to find articles, and the results list
 gives a relevancy score for each found article. Plus, there's a
 feature for checking off particularly relevant documents in a
 results list, and then finding similar articles to those checked.
 We were rather impressed at how well that feature works.

<http://cybertech.apple.com/apple_eg.html>

 The first entry, created by David Clatfelter, gives results in
 table or text format. Table format uses graphics to create a
 relevancy score fill bar and gives information about each found
 article. Unfortunately, the information begins with a jumble of
 text from the top of the issue containing the found article. The
 text format uses asterisks to indicate a relevancy score and gives
 the title of the issue in which the found article resides.

<http://idoseek.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/appleeg/eg.acgi>

 Curt Stevens submitted the second Apple e.g. entry. Users can
 choose from full or compact format for viewing results. Full
 format returns a list of found articles, each with a fill bar
 indicating a relevancy score. After the score, each entry begins
 with the article title, and includes the first few lines of the
 article, making it easy to determine if the article is of
 interest. Compact format is much like David's text format, except
 it lists the article's title instead of the title of the issue
 that containing the article. Overall, we are impressed with the
 performance and possibilities of Apple e.g. and plan to take a
 closer look. [TJE]

<http://17.255.9.121:8080/TidBITS.acgi>


**Jacque Landman Gay & LiveCard** -- When I wrote about LiveCard,
 the $150 CGI from Royal Software, in TidBITS-338_ I mostly noted
 its ability to put HyperCard stacks on the Web with little or no
 modification. Little did I expect one of the most noted members of
 the HyperCard community would use it as the basis for a TidBITS
 search engine.

<http://www.quibble.com/HyperActive/LiveCard.acgi>

 LiveCard acts as an intermediary between a Macintosh Web server
 and Jacque's custom HyperCard stack that indexes issues, performs
 searches, and report results. LiveCard presents a simple search
 form for entering up to three sets of search terms. Quoted phrases
 can be used, and Boolean search options are available. Search
 results are displayed as a list of article titles, and clicking a
 title takes users to the appropriate location in a TidBITS issue.
 Although HyperCard is sometimes maligned as a CGI engine in
 comparison to Frontier or compiled solutions, this LiveCard tool
 searches more than 10 MB of TidBITS articles and returns search
 results with surprising speed (and my server, where it's
 temporarily being hosted, isn't particularly fast). Although this
 search engine doesn't let users restrict searches to particular
 ranges of dates or issues and only presents a bare-bones results
 listing, it's a surprisingly smooth effort given the small amount
 of time Jacque was able put into it, and an apt demonstration of
 the kinds of Web services that can be produced with off-the-shelf
 authoring software (especially since LiveCard is included in
 Apple's HyperCard 2.3.5 Value Bundle). [GD]

<http://www.interedu.com/royalsoftware/descriptions/LiveCard.html>
<http://hypercard.apple.com/>


**Glen Stewart & WarpSearch** -- Glen Stewart's WarpSearch CGI
 works differently from most of the other entrants. Other solutions
 usually index the entire TidBITS archive, which makes for fast
 searches, but requires weekly additions to the index and can use a
 fair amount of disk space. In contrast, WarpSearch just searches
 the entire archive each time. That might sound slow, but it still
 manages to search the 10 MB of TidBITS issues at roughly 700K per
 second.

 WarpSearch only allows phrase searches, and no Boolean or multiple
 non-contiguous word searches. The results list provides the issue
 name, the size of the issue, the modified date, and the number of
 matches in that issue. Unfortunately, it doesn't break articles
 out of the overall issues, sometimes returns unintelligible
 issues, and because it uses text from our setext files rather than
 the HTML versions, the found text doesn't look as good as it
 could. [ACE]

<http://stewart-3.pnet.msen.com/cgi/warpsearch/warpsearch.html>


**Nisus Software & GIA** -- Although Nisus Software's GIA (Guided
 Information Access) technology isn't precisely a full-text search
 engine, we decided to let them compete anyway. GIA provides
 keyword-based live filtering, so as you select keywords from a
 predefined list, the lists of matching TidBITS articles and
 available keywords both shrink. Selecting additional keywords
 decreases the number of articles and keywords until you've
 narrowed the search to a manageable set of articles. The hardest
 part of setting up a keywo
rd system is selecting the keywords, and
 the system seemed to work best for relatively broad searches.
 Looking for a specific article was sometimes frustrating if
 necessary keywords weren't present.

 I continue to be impressed with the possibilities of GIA, but its
 reality lags. Nisus Software has implemented GIA entirely in Java,
 and although we used it with a different Java VMs (including
 Internet Explorer on a PC), it was continually plagued by
 interface glitches. Some can no doubt be easily fixed, but others
 may be more basic to Java or current tools. In the end, although
 GIA is fascinating technology, it doesn't meet the shootout
 criteria, since the server doesn't currently run on a Mac, and
 it's not providing a full-text search. [ACE]

<http://www.infoclick.com/gia/gia6/TidBits1.html>


**Roger McNab & NZDL** -- Roger McNab at the University of Waikato
 integrated the text of TidBITS issues with the search engine of
 the New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL). The NZDL enables users to
 search specific collections of documents (including Project
 Gutenberg, FAQ Archives, others only available in PostScript or
 TeX formats), and permits ranked or Boolean queries, additional
 search options, and compact results pages that identify article
 titles and authors.

 Although the NZDL archive is functional, useful, and offers an
 attractive query interface, it also violates one of our contest's
 ground rules: it doesn't run on a Macintosh. Although core
 portions of the project are written in Perl and the author doesn't
 anticipate problems with a Macintosh port, the simple fact is that
 a Mac version doesn't yet exist. [GD]

<http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~nzdl/tbc/>


**Tune In Next Week** -- There you have our contest entrants -
 tune in next week for more details on our favorites and the
 eventual winner or winners.


MessagePad 2000: New Newton Exceeds Expectations
------------------------------------------------
 by David Gewirtz <[email protected]>

 It took a long time, but I'm finally the proud owner of a slick
 MessagePad 2000 (MP2K). Getting it was a challenge. The original
 unit I purchased was stolen en route from NewtonSource to my
 office, but after a week or so (and thanks to a harried
 NewtonSource employee), a unit is in my hands. Although I've had
 the machine for a short time, I can definitely say it's pretty
 cool.

<http://www.newton.apple.com/product_info/devices/MP2000/MP2000.html>
<http://www.newtonsource.com/>


**MessagePad 2000 Hardware** -- Compared to my previous Newton (a
 MessagePad 120), the MP2K is about three-eighths of an inch wider,
 a tad taller, and about the same thickness, although most reports
 claim it's thinner. Using the always-scientific "heft test," the
 MP2K (with batteries) feels slightly heavier than its older
 cousin. [The spec sheet claims a height of 1.1 inches, width of
 4.7 inches, and depth of 8.3 inches, with an overall weight
 (batteries included) of 1.4 pounds. -Tonya]

 Despite the small physical size increase, the screen real estate
 has grown dramatically from 320 by 240 to 480 by 320. The added
 pixels fit nicely into a similar physical display space because
 the new screen has a resolution of 100 dpi. It was neat seeing my
 to do list (which had previously spilled over the bottom of the
 screen) fit inside the available space. Comparatively speaking,
 you get about as much additional screen space as you would if you
 jumped from a 640 by 480 monitor to 800 by 600.

 The display also now supports 16 shades of gray, which provide a
 slight improvement to some interface items (like the Newton Works
 scroll bar), but the various grays become somewhat difficult to
 see in less-than-perfect lighting.

 Though the MessagePad 130 featured a backlit display, this is my
 first experience with one. As I sit at Bennigan's (a restaurant)
 gobbling appetizers, I can finally clearly see my MessagePad's
 screen. It's even bright enough to use in the total darkness of my
 car.

 Handwriting recognition is fast (especially if you turn off the
 delay option), thanks to the MP2K's 161 MHz StrongARM processor.
 When writing long notes in the MessagePad 120's NotePad, I often
 experienced lags; this problem does not occur on the MP2K, and I'm
 happily writing this article in the new Newton Works word
 processor.

 The MP2K looks different than its predecessors. The pen drops in
 from the top and has a nifty pop-out stand. The screen cover opens
 like a book from the side. With a bit of creativity (propping it
 up on the keyboard case and rotating the screen), the door becomes
 a stand that holds the Newton at the right angle for typing on the
 optional external keyboard.

 Taking honors as the first Newton with sound input capabilities,
 the MP2K includes a new NotePad paper that records sound for up to
 sixty seconds per sheet. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to
 start recording without going to the NotePad and clicking the
 record button - which means it's tough to do one-touch recording
 while driving.


**Docking Port** -- A small door located at the top of the MP2K
 opens to reveal a power tap and a mini-bus that's now called a
 "docking port." The earlier mini-DIN serial port now comes in the
 form of an easy-to-lose dongle that plugs into the docking port.
 As soon as they become available, I plan to buy several dongles
 for when I lose the original.

 The MP2K includes an auto-docking function that activates the
 connection utility when the dongle is plugged in. That's not
 necessarily exciting in its own right, but I hope that some
 enterprising firm builds a complete docking stand that takes
 advantage of this feature.


**PC Card Slots** -- A real win is the addition of a second PC
 Card slot. It's finally possible to put a modem in one slot and a
 memory card in the other. This will come in handy as you make use
 of EnRoute i-net (an email client) and NetHopper (a Web browser).
 EnRoute has a robust set of rules to process incoming mail, but I
 also want to see how Eudora Pro for the Newton stands up.

<http://www.netstrat.com/>
<http://allpen.allpen.com/nethopper3.html>
<http://www.eudora.com/newton/>


**Battery Power** -- The MP2K uses four off-the-shelf alkalines
 (AA) to power its hungry processor. Though marketing hype claims
 three to six weeks of life during normal use, I worry about it.
 After a week, the battery indicator shows I've consumed half the
 available power, leading me to believe I'll be swapping batteries
 at least twice a month.

 There's no support for a charging station (although the docking
 connection could conceivably be useful here), so it's not possible
 to drop the MP2K onto the charger when you return home at night
 and know there will be juice in the morning. Apple offers a Newton
 9W Power Adapter that's supposed to charge a set of nickel-hydride
 batteries, but neither the battery nor the charger I ordered
 showed up with the Newton. In the interim, I've installed a 4 MB
 memory card, and I'm going to initiate a backup each morning.


**Button Panel** -- Instead of the silk-screened button panel, the
 MP2K renders a "soft" panel on the display. At first I wasn't
 impressed with the grayscale shading of the panel, but it grew on
 me as I discovered some of its secrets, such as:

* When you rotate the screen, the panel rotates as well, so the
 buttons and associated text face the right direction.

* You can drag & drop items from the Extras drawer onto the button
 bar, and - in this way - customize the bar to contain the goodies
 you want.

 Since the button bar is a function of software, we can expect to
 see replacements and enhancements in the future.

 (Ah, the perils of mobile computing. Bennigan's is closing, so
 I'll continue this review somewhere else... and here I am a few
 days later having breakfast at Friendly's.)


**Newton Works** -- An important new feature, Newton Works appears
 at first to be a simple word processor (like the original
 MacWrite). But if you look at the New pop-up menu, you'll discover
 you can create a new paper or a new spreadsheet, thanks to the
 optional QuickFigure Works. There's now enough screen space for a
 reasonable number of cells, so a Newton spreadsheet is finally
 practical. According to the documentation, QuickFigure can read
 and export to Excel.

 I'm not sure why QuickFigure Works is part of the Newton Works
 program. There's no provision for intermixing spreadsheet data and
 word processing documents (or I haven't found any), and though the
 word processor requires the Newton Keyboard (there are some
 downloadable utilities to get around this), the spreadsheet
 recognizes handwriting. Interestingly, the paper document object
 has a subordinate object called QuickSketch that enables you to
 put a drawing in a word-processed document.


**Other Installed Software** -- The traditional Newton
 applications haven't changed in any discernible way. The In Box
 and Out Box icons have been combined into InOut; the Connection
 icon has become Dock, and (depending on which Newton bundle you
 purchase) you'll also get EnRoute, NetHopper, and QuickFigure
 Works.

 After crashing my Newton badly on the first day (I kept popping
 out the battery pack to show it around), I was concerned I'd lose
 the installed software on a system reset. Fortunately, I didn't
 have to reset the MP2K back to bare hardware to restore the
 system. If it has been necessary to zero the system and restart
 it, I could have downloaded the spreadsheet, email software, and
 Web browser from a desktop computer, and Apple provided PC and
 Macintosh floppies with copies of the add-on software.


**Newton Connection Utilities** -- Because I'm thrilled with my
 MessagePad 2000, I hate to end this review on a sour note, but I'm
 disappointed with the long-awaited Newton Connection Utilities
 (NCU), which comes as a beta release with the MP2K, complete with
 a "special, limited time offer" that gives users the "incredible
 opportunity" to upgrade to version 1.0 sometime between now and
 November.

<http://www.newton.apple.com/product_info/SW/ncu.html>

 I find shipping a beta version inexcusable. Users are spending
 nearly a thousand dollars on what, for many, is a luxury item, and
 they shouldn't have to worry that the software for moving personal
 data between a desktop computer and the Newton is unfinished and
 subject to known problems.

 NCU is huge. Weighing in at over 4 MB (for a data transfer
 program!), NCU supports backup, synchronization, package download,
 and remote keyboard functions. I tried a backup and it failed
 twice. The third time NCU successfully accepted a backup session
 from the Newton.

 NCU provides synchronization functions for _only_ Claris Organizer
 2.0 and Now Contact/Up-to-Date 3.5. I own version 3.6 of Now's
 products, so it's not clear if I'll be able to do a successful
 synchronization.

 I considered purchasing a U.S. Robotics PalmPilot because of its
 one-touch synchronization feature (and the little dock is sexy).
 However, I didn't want to learn Graffiti, it didn't include an
 outliner, and its the desktop computer software is single-user
 only. [TidBITS will review the Pilot in the near future. -Jeff]

 By contrast, the Newton has everything - except quality
 synchronization. NCU could have provided it, but although there's
 an auto dock feature on the MP2K, there's no corresponding
 functionality in NCU, and you must launch NCU by hand. Further,
 NCU has no facility for automation and no scripting support.


**Conclusions** -- The Newton MessagePad 2000 is an exceptional
 piece of hardware. The fit and finish of the device is everything
 we've come to expect from Apple. Even so, I am disappointed with
 Apple's performance in providing supporting resources:
 rechargeable batteries, docks, replacement dongles, and a better
 version of Newton Connection Utilities.

 Given Apple's inconsistent long-term approach to the Newton
 platform, I worry about relying on the product. On the other hand,
 I'm extremely happy with the device, and I'll continue to use it
 constantly.

<http://www.newton.apple.com/>


**DealBITS** -- Through the URLs below, Cyberian Outpost is
 offering TidBITS readers deals on the Newton MessagePad 2000. The
 basic MP2K is $939.95; the enhanced model with keyboard, case, and
 spreadsheet, is $1,079.95.

<http://www.tidbits.com/products/message-pad-2000.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/products/message-pad-2000-deluxe.html>



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To search back issues with WAIS, use this URL via a Web browser:
http://wais.sensei.com.au/macarc/tidbits/searchtidbits.html
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