( ESNUG 323 Item 17 ) --------------------------------------------- [7/22/99]
Subject: OrCAD's Defends Their Big Brother Infomercial 'eCapture' Strategy
> BIG BROTHER INFOMERCIAL EDA In a fairly troubling new developement for
> EDA, OrCAD has announced eCapture, a free version of their schematic
> capture program -- but 'free' with a catch. It's hooked to the Internet
> and when it senses what types of parts you're placing, for example DSP
> chips, you'll suddenly see lots of paid ads for brands of DSP chips.
> Big Brother Infomercial EDA. Yeach. ( http://www.activeparts.com )
>
> "Big Brother Is Watching You!"
>
> - a motto from Aldous Huxley's book "1984"
From: Jim Plymale <Jim.Plymale@orcad.com>
Hi John -
The basic problem we're trying to solve is to help the PCB designer go as
quickly as possible from the component information that's out there on the
web from manufacturers and distributors, into the schematics that they use
to document their designs, and out into partlists that they can use to
order the parts for their prototypes.
Today, the engineers use "known good components", i.e. components that have
been used before and are known to the company. There are a number of
Component Information Systems (including one from OrCAD):
http://www.partminer.com http://www.unique-technologies.com
http://www.netbuy.com http://www.wyle.com
http://www.questlink.com http://www.digikey.com
http://www.insight-electronics.com
Now let's say, you finally find the part you want and you're ready to
"design it in" -- now you have to either track down or create the schematic
symbol, and manually enter all the data that you cared about, and link it
to PCB footprints, simulation models, etc. Also, you better make copies of
the spec sheets, pricing, etc.
We thought: "So how come you can look at the part, but you can't just drag
it into your design and get links to all that information that's on the
web?" So rather than try to go out and form a standards committee and
convince all the parts manufacturers and distributors that they should
publish data in a universal format (a noble, but unlikely goal), we decided
to do the "grunt work" of linking the data freely available on the Internet
(manufacturer's part numbers, descriptions, datasheets, pricing, and
availability) to the data that OrCAD had (tons of schematic symbols, and a
bunch of PCB footprints and PSpice models) in eCapture.
We currently have data for over a half million parts from over 500
manufacturers and we're shooting for over a million by the end of the year.
O.K., so we announced that we're giving away access to all this data to
OrCAD users, and we're even providing a free application (eCapture) so
non-OrCAD users can take advantage. What's the catch? When you drag a
component from activeparts.com into your design, we keep track of it. We
use that information to build a profile. These profiles have the same
intent as the cards you fill out when you subscribe to magazines to receive
a FREE subscription. They make it possible for our sponsors (primarily
component manufacturers and their suppliers) to display messages specific
to you about stuff they think you need to know about. Seminars, white
papers, new spec sheets, reference designs, etc.
What about your Big Brother privacy concerns? None of the information will
be disclosed to suppliers unless you choose to disclose it to them. We'll
have (when the site goes live) a detailed disclosure of exactly how we
intend to use the information we collect. We understand that the data
we're collecting is highly sensitive and we intend to protect it. We're
working with Arthur Andersen (Internet & security consultants) and Trust-e
(http://www.trust-e.com) to ensure this.
Thanks for keeping us honest, John!
- Jim Plymale, VP of Marketing
OrCAD, Inc.
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