articles - Computer Telephony 97 Fall Demo Best of Show

[January 1998]

BLACK ICE'S RED-HOT FAX TOOLS

Black Ice (Amherst, NH - 603-673-1019) is a bit of an industry mystery to most. But if you're a fax coder or app developer or board vendor, you probably know about them. If you don't, you should.They've always made low-level tools that Zippy and the other nerds around here have liked. New on that front is a fax-specific C++ developer toolkit that includes a 32-bit OCX and Object Oriented Interface, which, according to Zippy, is a helluva lot easier to deal with than the API's you get from card vendors.
Strong stuff, too. Its standard feature list is immense, making it perfect for CT software companies who are looking to add fax to their voice and e-mail packages.
Super nice touch: it supports Brooktrout, Dialogic and Gammalink(the latter two's API's definitely are different- as though they came from different companies). The OOI also supports theses resources within the same server - it maps between the different vendor's interfaces.
It also supports any Class 1, Class 2 and Class 2.0 off-the-shelf fax modem and all Rockwell chipset modems. A few of the features include Text and Form overlay to create a fax page, Caller ID, Group 4 faxing, Phone Book and Send / Receive Queue.
The other big Black Ice news down in Florida was the release of their new Impact Fax product suite. It includes Impact Fax Pro, Impact Fax on Demand, Impact Fax from Web and Impact Fax Server.
Impact Fax Pro competes with WinFax Pro. It's standalone Win 95 and NT fax software. Black Ice says it's different from WinFax because, among other things, it supports all that different hardware from all those different vendors (including the Big Three in multiline CT fax processing).
Main features include: Send and receive picture-quality fax, logging, phonebook, cover-page editor, annotation, fax management, printing, export / import of 12 different file formats and more. Only $49.95.
Impact Fax From Web is a new automation tool and a traditional fax-on-demand system. It operates off a Web page to deliver information on hard copy to anyone with a fax machine. Again, it's integrated and available as a single package with the Impact Fax on Demand. $995 for single port; $1,995 for multi-port licenses.
Impact Fax Server is for integrated messaging systems. It requires Exchange Client as the universal mailbox for fax messages. Only $995 for 25 users.
Black Ice has a lot more fax software. General rule of thumb - if you're looking for either low-level fax tools or app software, they're a good place to turn.