TOP 10 The Good, the Bad and the Absurd Highlighting (for various reasons) 10 products announced or shipped during the previous month or so. 1. NEC PC-VCR The $2,100 price tag is one good reason to keep an eye on this videotape editing and presentation building system from NEC Technologies' Professional Systems Division. Even more noteworthy is the fact that for a few hundred dollars more, it runs video editing software created by Light Source, the Sausalito startup founded by former Pixar wizards Rob Cook and Ty Roberts. One of the software's many remarkable aspects is its ability to imbue existing videotape with time code information without damaging pre- recorded images. Light Source has a time-limited exclusive deal with NEC, but expect to see the software work with Sony Control L VCRs, too. Light Source also developed a Multimedia Tool Kit, based on HyperCard, to help develop interactive applications using the PC-VCR. And expect to see a lot more hot stuff from Light Source. NEC Technologies, (708) 291-1080; Light Source, (415) 332-3288. 2. IBM LINKWAY 2.0 If IBM is trying to make school kids media literate with this upgrade to its abysmal first run at a hypertext and hypermedia training and information manager, it's got many rivers to cross. The installation program alone is enough to make even the most adventurous computer user do a very impressive imitation of Edvard Munch's "The Scream." It requires wading through 26 pages of C prompts and arcane DOS hieroglyphic commands. Guess they didn't look too closely at HyperCard after all. IBM Education Division, (404) 238-4477. 3. PHOTO CD SYSTEM The "photo album on a CD" product was jointly developed by Kodak Corp. and Philips. Compatible with NTSC, SECAM and PAL formats (as well as upcoming HDTV standards), the product allows users to scan their 35mm images and dump them onto compact disc for viewing on TV sets. Available in 1992, it includes a new category of CD player from Philips, blank recordable "photo CDs" made by Kodak which hold up to 100 images, a photofinishing workstation (scanner by Kodak, Sun Microsystems computer, Photo CD discwriter from Philips) and thermal printer and paper made by Kodak. Player price is expected to be about $500. Kodak, (716) 724-4000. 4. CORNUCOPIA This developing product, from a company called Empruve, Inc. of Knoxville, TN, is another in a growing genre of standalone CD-ROM reader devices. At least Cornucopia isn't trying to "empruve" things yet further by using yet another non-standard authoring and/or operating system. It's MS-DOS compatible and uses DVI compression algorithms, with its own PathFinder software for navigation. The oddly shaped "console," as Empruve calls it, has a 10-inch black-and-white portrait screen that emulates a book page, a 4-inch color video screen and two 4-inch hi-fi speakers with headphone jack, and is by joystick. Developer costs range from $4,000 and $5,000 and the company is Desperately Seeking Content Producers. Empruve, (615) 558-3421. 5. MAPACCESS This programmer's toolkit from the Rupert Murdoch-owned Etak, Inc. of Menlo Park, is design to reduce the time and cost of development for one of the fastest-growing applications areas in the graphics business: geographic information systems, or GIS. Available for DOS and Xenix today, with versions for AIX and OS/2 coming into the fourth quarter, MapAccess is a C- language library with function modules. Etak's original product, the Navigator, was one of the first automobile navigation systems and shows a continuously moving map of the area using an on-board graphic display. Think of the possibilities for your very own, personal interactive marketing kiosk. That's what Murdoch is doing -- his vision, according to Etak, is to create a whole new medium using Etak's extensive electronic map database (EtakMap) as a foundation. Etak, (415) 328-3825. 6. MOTOROLA 68340 The latest contender in the escalating multimedia chip wars is Austin-based Motorola Corp. with its 68340 Data Movement Engine. It contains a 32-bit direct memory access controller that routes data between hard disk and memory at up to 33 megabytes per second without intervention of the chip's core processing unit -- thus easing the movement of large amounts of data between memories, video screens, speakers and other parts of a multimedia system. Though hard to understand as a driving justification, Motorola says Philips' CD-I technology was a key stimulus for the development of the chip. The 16-MHz chip is part of Motorola's strategy to direct its growing 68000- based products toward specific applications without cannibalizing its present software base. Available in early 1991, cost in quantities of 1,000 is under $40. Motorola, (512) 891-2125. 7. PICTURE PRESS This software implementation of JPEG, JPEG++, and Lossless image compression standards, by Storm Technology of Palo Alto, CA, claims to compress a 1-megabyte, 24-bit image file to 100K or less in less than a minute with "virtually" no loss of image quality. In addition, Storm claims several major manufacturers are testing its hardware accelerator based on advanced digital signal processors, and the company also plans to announce, in October, a NuBus card that accelerates Picture-Press' compression and decompression by 10 to 50 times. Storm Technology, (415) 322-0506. 8. VERIFY Inexpensive and dBASE-compatible, Verify was developed by Logos Systems International in Scotts Valley, CA,, to help create images and sound databases. For $250, the compiled standalone package claims to integrate photo, signature and voice into existing databases. Logos is shipping monochrome and color versions of DoubleTake AV+, its audio-visual digitizer board, for $350 and $570, respectively, as well as an AV+ Programmer's Toolkit for $300. Logos Systems, (408) 438-5012. 9. LOUVRE ON DISK If by the time you read this, Apple has shipped HyperCard 2.0, then you'll also be able (finally!) to get your hands on Volume 1 of The Voyager Company's interactive videodisc and HyperCard stack, archiving the paintings and drawings of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Volumes 2 and 3, with sculptures, objets d'art and masterpieces of antiquity, will come later in the year or in early 1991. Altogether the set will include some 30,000 images, all produced under the supervision of the Louvre's curators. Voyager, (213) 451-1383. 10. INTERACTIVE TELEVISION: Billed as the "first-ever business report on the new industry that marries computers and television," this study by Diana Gagnon, PhD, a former researcher at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard University, is edited and distributed by Arlen Communications, a media research firm in Bethesda, MD. The report addresses comparative technologies and applications, and profiles ITV system providers as well as future formats. Arlen Communications, (301) 656-7940.