• CANTER MAKES A MEDIABAND

Marc Canter, cofounder of the pioneering MacroMind, is now enthusiastically engaged in a new venture designed to bring alive the multimedia industry he helped invent. His new company is called Canter Technology, and he’s drawing on all his past experience (and friends such as Todd Rundgren) to create what he hopes will become a template for interactive TV and entertainment. Called MediaBand, it will combine live performance with video and a contrived “mythology” — Ă  la The Monkees and Spinal Tap — to create a new interactive experience. Knowing Canter, it will be, at the very least, entertaining. At best, he could be onto something.

• ‘CHANNELS’: CHOOSING THE BEST NEW MEDIA DISTRIBUTOR

“Channels” is a new column by distribution specialist Joey Tamer that we hope to feature regularly in Digital Media. Tamer has consulted on new media distribution strategies for such companies as Apple Computer, Blockbuster Entertainment and Drew Pictures. In this month’s column, she discusses the minefield that must be navigated when choosing a distributor.

• BLOCKBUSTER AND IBM JOIN FORCES

Prompted by Wall Street predictions that it was in a business doomed to failure, in mid-1990 Blockbuster Video purchased a controlling interest in a company called Soundsational. Its system would allow retail outlets to receive, via network, digital entertainment products from a variety of sources. Blockbuster brought in IBM as a strategic partner. Together they hope to create a commercial system based on Soundsational’s working prototype.

• I/O
Software’s David and Goliath clash as GeoWorks critiques Modular Windows and Microsoft responds.

• SIMGRAPHICS MAKES A VACTOR
Pasadena company inks deal with Iwerks for “live animation system.”

• MACROMEDIA WOOS TRADITIONAL PUBLISHERS
And so far, it’s an offer they can’t refuse.

• COLOSSAL GOES INTERACTIVE
Animation house opens digital production studio.

• IBM RESHUFFLES MULTIMEDIA
Carberry makes multimedia personal in Fireworks division.

• FROM FISH TO DOORKNOBS
It’s a digital world, all right.

• BRIEFS
CompacTVideo goes to 3DO; 3D holographs without glasses; Vidéoway; Cable changing in Europe; Passport supports ScriptX; Compton’s to rent CD-ROM software in video stores; Milken and interactive TV.

• EVENTS
Computers, Freedom & Privacy addresses the most pressing issues of the digital convergence.

CANTER MAKES A MEDIABAND
Multimedia impresario is creating interactive rock ‘n’ roll TV

Industry pioneer Marc Canter, founder of MacroMind, was first to give context to a new definition of the term “multimedia.” He almost single-handedly created the interactive digital media market, by virtue of both his relentless evangelism and the MacroMind Director authoring software that he believed would make the market a reality. Director, Canter believed, was the technology that would enable desktop publishers to become desktop video producers. And today Director is by far the most popular software for creating interactive media applications.

In a classic small-company struggle with venture capitalists and management brought in from the outside, Canter left MacroMind (now called Macromedia) in January of 1991. Today the 36-year-old entrepreneur-opera singer-computer graphic artist-software developer is once again doing what he does best: evangelizing a future that he is in the process of creating. This time the lure is interactive television.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND ENTERTAINMENT

Canter started Canter Technology a little more than a year ago to bridge the gap between technology and entertainment. Based in San Francisco, the company’s charter is to create new forms of interactive entertainment software and to develop content for emerging interactive TV systems.

Although the infrastructure to deliver interactive content into the home or to create the system necessary to run Canter Technology software isn’t in place — and probably won’t be for another five years — Canter has decided not to let this barrier stop him from pursuing his vision.

“101 percent.” Canter and his creative collaborators are “101 percent focused on interactive video platforms and television,” says Canter. “Our goal is to produce the software now and be ready when the infrastructure is in place.”

Those collaborators include Stuart Sharpe, the musician and artist credited with educating many multimedia neophytes about the potential of this form of communication with his original MacroMind Director demos, and John Sanborn, the well-known video artist and director whose project credits include the PBS series “Live from Off Center,” the high-definition TV demo “Infinite Escher” and numerous rock music videos.

In an exclusive interview with Digital Media, Canter discussed his company’s three-tiered plan for interactive cross-media product development using off-the-shelf multimedia products with Kaleida Labs’ ScriptX description language and cross-platform delivery technology, as well as custom extensions, scripts and templates, to create an original art form that combines music, technology and visuals.

MEDIABAND: USING TECHNOLOGY THAT’S HERE TODAY

The first phase of Canter Technology’s five-year business plan focuses on developing core system technology that can be used to build interactive entertainment products to appeal to the mass consumer market today. Canter refers to that technology as MediaBand.

The core system. MediaBand at its most basic is a “real-time networked performance environment,” says Canter. It is a technology prototype and was developed in part as a vehicle for audience participation during a live music performance. A live performance based on the system, for instance, would include several interactive music videos; instead of being played from start to finish, with images and music entirely prerecorded and synchronized, MediaBand’s music videos would be mixed live — driven by the performers and the audience’s direct interaction — and combined with live camera action, computer graphics and video effects.

“Live and prerecorded materials converge in a totally unpredictable mix,” says Canter. “The result is a show that’s different every time.”

The MediaBand technology is a patchwork of professional audio and video equipment, the NewTek Video Toaster, Macintosh-based hardware and software, some of which is proprietary, combined with a full MIDI recording studio, a camcorder, and interactive hand controllers. Canter describes MediaBand as “an integrated system for a single person’s workstation.” He calls it “a platform for the future.”

Join in the Band. To test the technology prototype of MediaBand, Canter realized he needed live entertainment — a real MediaBand. So he, Sanborn and screenwriter Michael Kaplan created a story or “mythology” about four young artists who create an interactive, cross-media performing group at the fictitious John Cage Academy of Multimedia. (It is now a finished screenplay.)

Canter Technology then auditioned and hand-picked four San Francisco Bay Area musicians to become the human MediaBand. Along with musician and video artist Todd Rundgren, who is the band’s music producer, and Sharpe, they are writing songs that will be shaped into a full-length live performance and traditional album. (Rundgren is creating his own “interactive album” for the CD-I player; see Vol. 2, No. 5, p. 3.)

Canter says the MediaBand will make a 15-minute debut sometime this April performing two or three of the band’s original songs (complete with audience participation) to a select group of potential investors, interactive TV and music producers, and consumer electronics and computer companies.

DENTSU MAKES AN INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE

Phase One primarily involves the delivery of a MediaBand album, a full-length, live performance and potentially a motion picture, says Canter. The film would be based on the script mentioned earlier and take advantage of the footage shot during the band’s live performance concerts.

These events are contingent on cash flow, however, and Canter is seeking financial investors and strategic partners. “It took me about a day and a half to get the money I needed to start MacroMind,” he says. “This time it has been much slower.”

To date, Canter Technology’s biggest investor is Dentsu, the largest advertising agency in the world. The Japanese-based company has shown a strong interest in the MediaBand concept from the beginning, according to Canter, and, he says, Dentsu hopes to bring the technology prototype to Japan before it premiers in the United States. He says he is in negotiations with Dentsu to develop a MediaBand TV pilot for Japanese audiences.

Kaleida’s in big. As for U.S. companies, Kaleida Labs (the joint multimedia venture between Apple Computer and IBM) has made a public financial commitment to the company. According to Canter, Miles Gilburne, a longtime friend of Canter’s and now a business and legal advisor to Kaleida, and Nat Goldhaber, CEO and president of Kaleida, have agreed that Kaleida will help sponsor MediaBand. (Kaleida is using Elliot Mazer, a well-known rock music producer who is an expert in audio compression and in digital radio broadcasting, to represent its interests in MediaBand. He will share the executive producer title for the MediaBand project with Canter.)

In addition to Kaleida, Canter says he is courting Apple, Viacom and a number of large entertainment distributors. But no additional sponsors for Canter Technology’s research and development have publicly come forth.

A CROSS BETWEEN ‘THE MONKEES’ AND ‘SPINAL TAP’

During Phase One, Canter Technology also plans to create a Macintosh CD-ROM version of MediaBand, based on Kaleida’s ScriptX technology. Canter says the interactive CD-ROM will be like watching a combination of the old TV show The Monkees and the classic film, Spinal Tap. The MediaBand Pilot, as the disc is called, will be the first iteration of the band’s so-called “mythology,” disclosing some of the MediaBand story as well as the MediaBand’s technology, cast of characters and philosophy.

The MediaBand CD-ROM will include a complete audio track that will play on all audio-only CD players. Canter says he also plans to release the standard CD track to radio stations for possible airplay. The production of this mixed-mode CD-ROM will coincide with the private mini-performance this spring.

All the video footage, musical material, art designs and computer graphics created for the MediaBand live performances will be digitized, modified and reused in related MediaBand projects — the film, the music album, the touring live show — according to Canter. By having reusable and extensible digital material available, he says, localized versions of MediaBand can easily be created, with local actors inserted in place of Canter’s selected band members.

THE NEW MULTIMEDIA PLAYER: NINTENDO MEETS MTV

By 1995 or 1996, Canter expects that the first successful full-frame, digital video-based interactive platforms will have made an appearance. This event will launch Phase Two, when Canter Technology plans to create the first home versions of its interactive, cross-media products.

“Today multimedia is boring,” he says. “It all comes down to click, wait and watch. As Trip Hawkins [founder of 3DO] says, ‘Multimedia players must combine the functionality of a game machine, the compatibility and flexibility of a home PC and an expanding new industry for digital video players.’ If we can’t provide the same interactive experience level of Nintendo, with the production values of MTV, then we can just forget about the whole thing.”

Tech specs. According to Canter, the “tech spec” for these machines of the future includes the following: high-quality stereo audio, including MIDI synthesizers and samplers, mixing and DSP-based external controller boxes capable of creating effects. The systems will feature “hardware blitters,” to move pictures around quickly on screen, and large amounts of RAM — 8 MB minimum (probably as much as 32 MB or 64 MB). These platforms will be able to process and manipulate digital video in real-time, allowing for multiple channels of interleaved video to be streamed off the CD-ROM.

This port to a digital video player will be Canter Technology’s first “true” interactive version of MediaBand. Canter Technology will only be able to implement its interactive content designs by taking advantage of hardware-based digital video, internal MIDI synthesizers, faster processors and large amounts of RAM. “In other words, we can’t let technology dictate to us what our content should be. Content should be used to define the technology,” he says. “We will wait until the right technology to deliver our content is here.”

Cross-media performances. Phase Two also includes developing several new cross-media projects — and any new technology that is needed for those projects as well — and culminates with performances by MediaBand and other new venues such as children’s programming, soap operas and talk shows on what Canter calls a “fledgling interactive TV system.”

This system will allow the company to start testing MIDI transmission and synchronization code, in addition to new types of single-user interactivity code. (Canter is not commenting on what such a “fledgling interactive TV system” might be, or what company might be manufacturing it.)

The “Kinko’s” of digital production. During this time period, Canter Technology also plans to offer its services as a digital production studio (DPS). Not only will the DPS bring in a new revenue stream, ensuring that Canter Technology’s R&D money continues to flow, it will also help to hone the skills of those working on interactive content for the company. What better way to stay ahead of the competition? (As has been often discussed in these pages, and in this issue on p. 14, Colossal Goes Interactive, these digital production studios are cropping up in Hollywood and around the entertainment community with the same speed as desktop publishing shops developed during the mid-1980s.)

Unlike Sand Box Productions of Los Angeles, San Francisco’s Colossal Pictures and Hollywood’s Magic Box Productions, however, the Canter Technology DPS will, at least initially, be for key partners only and will not accept work for outside companies. “All of our expertise and experience will be used by this resource center to provide support and hands-on training for affiliated artists and coproduction partners who are associated with our label,” says Canter.

In the long term, Canter says Canter Technology plans to establish DPS franchises under the Canter label around the United States.

THE HOME STRETCH: INTERACTIVE, OF COURSE

Phase Three of Canter Technology’s strategy is to develop new types of interactive TV programming, system software and tools that can be used by other creatives. Indeed, in the long term, Canter hopes the technology behind MediaBand will become the core digital production system used by TV producers to create interactive content.

Fundamentally, this will entail refining Canter Technology’s concepts on interactive rock videos and its other interactive media projects. “Obviously we will take all that we have learned and developed until this point, and profitably apply that expertise,” says Canter. “We also anticipate spending a lot of time working on the platform itself, making sure that all of the functionality, bandwidth and performance criteria that we need are there.”

His home box. Canter says the platform he envisions is a home cable box or chips built directly into a TV set that will provide the digital audio and video functionality for interactive TV. Massive amounts of data will then be sent down a fiber-optic wire or over satellite dishes, and the chips at the end of the wire inside the home will decode, interpret and display that data very quickly (at speeds of more than 100 million instructions per second).

“Our MediaBand project could evolve into an American Bandstand- or Club MTV-type-format show, where different bands or performers who come on the show each week will be able to show off not just their music, but also their video, graphics and interactivity,” says Canter. “Our future cross-media projects will reuse the MediaBand technology in new and different ways, each time expanding the base of technology that Canter Technology can offer to its own label and resource center.”

‘THE LOTUS 1-2-3′ OF INTERACTIVE TV

Marc Canter is offering us his view of the future, and once again it is an intriguing prospect. But can he pull it off this time? To date, few people outside of Canter Technology have seen the human MediaBand perform. According to Canter, the group is in the studio rehearsing and laying tracks for their upcoming album. Digital Media has only been privy to a sample of the band’s capabilities on a slick videotape that was full of Director-style hard cuts and glitz. It was impossible to judge the group’s real entertainment value.

Canter believes that interactive rock videos are “the Lotus 1-2-3″ of the interactive television market. He believes it is the first form of interactive that will capture the minds, hearts and wallets of the consumer. Certainly if he can make the right strategic relationships, and if he can acquire the necessary financial backing to take MediaBand past a 15-minute performance this spring — both pretty big “ifs” — then his vision may grab the attention of the MTV crowd.

Is anybody watching? The good news for Canter, and for the companies working on interactive home shopping and video-on-demand systems, is that every major communications corporation, cable company, phone company and media corporation — from Viacom, to Time Warner, to GTE, to TeleCommunications to members of the First Cities alliance (see Vol. 2, No. 7, p. 3) — is establishing community-wide interactive TV sites around the U.S. They are hungry for content ideas and enabling technology, and Canter is selling both.

Marc Canter is laying the groundwork — or, shall we say, the tracks — to launch an industry. He’s done it before, and he seems as intent upon it this time as he was when he founded MacroMind in 1984. Although the interactive TV industry doesn’t yet exist in any kind of recognizable form, Canter has a clear vision of the kinds of people who will be required to make it happen. Now the question is: Is anybody out there watching?

Janice Maloney

CHOOSING THE BEST NEW MEDIA DISTRIBUTOR
Genre, marketing and cooperation are key

Since 1990, Joey Tamer has consulted on new media distribution strategies to Apple Computer, Blockbuster Entertainment, Wood-Knapp Video, Drew Pictures, Deep River Publishers and others. In this column, she will regularly address business, marketing and distribution issues on new media. Responses are welcome, and mail may be addressed to Tamer, c/o Digital Media, at the San Francisco address listed on page 2.

At a recent dinner with new media title developers, I was presented with a question that had been debated inside their companies for several months: Should a developer place a game title, for example, with a distributor that predominantly distributes reference and book titles, so that the game title stands out and gains more mindshare? Or should it be placed with a game distributor, where it might potentially be lost in the crowd?

Of course, the developers assumed that a “hot title” would become a best-seller anyway, and gain its own attention. But if the title is placed with the wrong distributor, it may not gain enough coverage, shelf space or marketing attention to be discovered as a best-selling title.

So what are the best strategies for placing a new media title with the correct distributors, and then maintaining their attention?

STAND BY YOUR GENRE

We resolved during dinner that titles of one genre should be placed with the distributor who is strongest in positioning and distributing that genre, even if the developer and the title may get lost in the crowd. Inevitably there will be a shakeout among new media distributors as the market broadens, and more players will compete for the attention of both developers and retailers. Therefore, the titles that require the support of an additional or different channel will be most threatened when the hard times come. And generally, hard times come during shakeouts that affect all distributors at once.

For example, if a new media distributor focusing on education and entertainment finds itself in financial hot water, or chooses to focus on gaining major market share in a single niche, the distributor is more likely to let contracts lapse for new media titles in the areas of reference and business. So if a business title is dropped by one distributor, it may have difficulty finding placement with another, even one that specializes in the business genre.

DON’T LEAVE MARKETING TO THE DISTRIBUTOR ALONE

However, strategies to maintain the attention of a distributor are separate from those that lead a developer to place a given title with one in the first place. Market demand is key to maintaining a distributor’s attention, both for the winning product of today and the new products of tomorrow. Intensive direct mail and aggressive marketing by the title developer, not the distributor, must be done to create this market demand.

Small developers in particular often don’t believe the distinct language in all distribution contracts pointing out that marketing the product is the responsibility of the developer, not the distributor. This language should be taken seriously.

Distributors will pitch with all their might to get rights to sell a title, and will talk about all the marketing they can do for the developer. But no matter what a distributor says he’ll do, it will not be enough. To create demand for new media, marketing must go far beyond the distributor’s market development and cooperative programs. These programs should be pushed to the limit, of course. But if title developers are not willing to commit the resources and time to create demand for a product, then they should consider signing on with a publisher — who is responsible for marketing the product — rather than a distributor.

GET YOUR LIST AND LEARN TO COOPERATE

Developers dealing with either publishers or distributors should give special attention to promotional programs that return to them the customers’ names and create a strong end-user mailing list for their installed base. They should gather as much information about their customers as possible, and use it in direct mail, upgrade and new product campaigns. This is not just a good idea from a business standpoint, but is also protection against the nonrenewal of their distribution contracts. With an up-to-date customer list, they will be armed with the necessary information — i.e., how many products are actually sold, and to whom — for whatever kind of distribution deal they need to cut next.

Guerrilla marketing. And they should learn the skills of guerrilla marketing — seeking out fellow developers whose markets are similar but not identical (for example, a house-designing product with a product about interior design), but whose target customers are likely to be interested in both products. They should gang up and share each other’s lists, bundle promotional literature in each other’s packages, share ad space, and, in general, cooperate to expand the installed base that they control.

This is a new market, and creative marketing will win a place in it. By the end of our dinner, we had answered our question about distribution, and thought up two or three new guerrilla marketing tactics never tried before. As always, it is useful to keep the talk going!

Joey Tamer

BLOCKBUSTER AND IBM JOIN FORCES
It’s ’soundsational’ for on-demand entertainment publishing

Prompted by Wall Street predictions that it was in a business doomed to failure, in mid-1990 Blockbuster Video purchased a controlling interest in a start-up company called Soundsational. Soundsational was in the early stages of developing a prototype audio/video server; the idea was to allow retail outlets to receive — via network — digital entertainment products from a variety of sources. The stores could then produce and distribute audio CDs (or any other digital information on a digital storage device) in the store at customer demand.

According to David Lundeen, president of Soundsational and also director of corporate finance for Blockbuster, the next year and a half was spent refining its business plan and working with “hundreds of suppliers of computer, telecommunication, data storage and compression technologies” to develop a prototype that he felt could ultimately be deployed economically.

A partnership promise. As one might imagine, the prototype generated interest from many large technology companies, and Blockbuster decided to bring in a strategic partner. So it joined forces with IBM, and together the two companies hope to create a commercial system based on Soundsational’s working prototype. The deal is not yet official, but is sufficiently solid that both companies are speaking publicly about the promise of their partnership and the system.

While the company’s original idea was to provide “just in time” inventory for music, Lundeen realized that also games, video, computer software and any other digital data could also be handled by this system.

100,000 titles “online.” In addition to local data storage capable of holding 10,000 different music titles (more titles than most record stores have in stock today), the system would connect over a wide area network — phone or cable or satellite, being able to use any existing delivery mechanism — to a central storage facility that would have more than 100,000 titles online — far more than any record store could realistically carry. Each store would have the facilities to write CDs (or minidisks and analog or digital cassettes) and color laser printers to generate the artwork for each album.

Retail outlets would also be equipped with multimedia kiosks. Brian Henley, business development advisor for IBM, believes that kiosks hooked up to the Soundsational database — which allow customers to search for songs by a specific artist, look for specific titles, watch video clips and listen to tunes — will generate a heightened interest in buying. (We hope he’s right, but customer response will bear watching. Often listening to a CD before buying discourages the purchase, especially now that the standard price for a music CD has gone up again.)

Who’s providing what? The total package would be put together with hardware and software products from different vendors, not just IBM, although it’s not yet clear which companies are providing which technologies to the venture. Some is currently available through “off-the-shelf” technology.

Kodak, for example, has pioneered inexpensive, write-once CD technology, and while it has not signed up officially as a partner in the Blockbuster-IBM deal, its technology is being evaluated for use in the system. Other outside technologies are being evaluated as well, though much of the rest of the system is likely to remain proprietary.

Soundsational will remain a separate company from Blockbuster (although Lundeen predicts the name will change), and will plan on selling the technology and distribution service to other retailers. The deal with IBM, at this point, is nonexclusive: IBM is free to sell whatever pieces of the system it contributes to other companies. Soundsational will be the sole licensor of the entire system, and will operate the system, maintain the security of the network, and charge its customers (i.e., retailers) transaction fees.

Delays at the checkout stand? According to Lundeen, the Soundsational system requires between six and seven minutes to record a single CD. In order to make sure the fewest number of customers are kept waiting, Lundeen envisions each retail outlet “premanufacturing” popular titles while the store is closed at night, based on software designed to predict potential sales.

At the end of each business day, the system’s software will “decide” — based on factors such as how long a title has been on the market, its previous sales record and the success of the album’s single(s) — how many copies of Peter Gabriel’s new album, for example, should be pressed and available for sale in the morning.

If a customer wants to request an album not currently a top seller, he or she may have to wait a time for it to be downloaded and recorded. But assuming the record is still in the company’s catalog, it would be available to consumers.

A GOOD IDEA, BUT BLESSINGS ARE REQUIRED

Of course, nothing is ever that easy. Blockbuster is set to begin negotiations with the major record companies and movie studios for their blessing on this project. There are obvious reasons for hesitation, including guarantees that the record companies would be paid properly for each disc that is pressed, and the security of the system.

But the upside is quite attractive: instead of having to press a half million CDs of a new album, or 50,000 copies of a new CD-ROM-based video game, publishers could simply post the recording on the system, and see how well it sells without having to invest in materials. In addition, special-interest recordings or compilations could be put together almost overnight. “Whether 3DO or Sega, music or video, we just want to provide an efficient distribution system for entire catalogs” of products, said Lundeen.

That kind of power doesn’t come cheap. The storage requirements alone are immense, requiring terabytes (trillions of bytes) of local storage in every outlet. According to Lundeen, however, many record retailers carry anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000 of inventory at any one time. A record store could purchase a lot of local storage and processing power with that money, and these titles could be distributed on any digital medium the customer requests. Subsequent add-ons to the system may allow a retailer to manufacture Digital Compact Cassette or MiniDisc (even analog cassettes could be recorded). Such a system would allow a retailer to manufacture games, CD-ROMs and other software.

Although the next logical step is probably a little intimidating to companies that compete with Blockbuster — that is, to cut out the retailer entirely and allow customers to download titles to their home systems — the Blockbuster-IBM deal is a great example of the efficiencies gained by digital technology. If you’ll pardon the obvious pun, it sounds pretty good.

David Baron

FROM MARIO TO ‘VACTOR’
SimGraphics and Iwerks team for live animation

Long tucked away in the corner of the cultish world of virtual reality hackers, SimGraphics Engineering Corp. is stepping up its efforts to make a name for itself in the world of location-based entertainment.

Its most recent steps in that direction weren’t small. After inventing a fascinating, but incredibly complex, technology for producing what was formerly an oxymoron — i.e., “live animation” (see Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 12) — SimGraphics has inked an exclusive agreement with Iwerks Entertainment to market, sell and support the technology in entertainment venues around the world.

Splitting up VActor. SimGraphics’ original live animation project, called the Performance Animation System (PAS), made its debut at the 1992 winter CES doing MIRT — “Mario in Real Time” — at the huge Nintendo booth.

What booth visitors saw was a huge screen with a three-dimensional Mario looking directly at them, engaging them in conversation and occasionally morphing himself into various Nintendo products. “Behind the curtain,” so to speak, was PAS: an actor hooked up to a Waldo (an armature for tracking facial expressions), two joysticks, a 3D mouse and a foot pedal for eye motion, huge custom graphics databases for morphing and a powerful Silicon Graphics workstation to do the massive computations required for a live performance of high-quality graphics.

Audiences were wowed, and after MIRT’s overwhelmingly positive reception, it seemed like a good idea to find a way to make the system into a product instead of a service. A catchy new name for the system — VActor, for Virtual Actor — came about, as did a careful division of labor for the various pieces of the system.

HOW A VACTOR SYSTEM WORKS

Though most of us are familiar with computer-generated animation, and with the ability to “morph” human faces and/or objects into each other, SimGraphics is the first company that was able to drive facial animation using an operator’s actual face moments.

A VActor is the computer-generated character or object whose movements are controlled by this operator in “real time” — that is, here and now, as opposed to creating an animation then playing it back later. It is, in essence, real-time morphing; but instead of changing from a car to a tiger, or from a woman to a man, a VActor morphs between a happy face, a sad face, an expression of surprise. Though it looks less complicated because the character remains the same, it is just as much a computing challenge, especially because it is done live.

Live actors required. Operators wear specially designed devices for the face, hand and body, which allows them to control the movements and voice of computer characters at 24 to 30 frames per second. All VActors require live actors to operate, but VActors can also be used to create animation for playback in recorded animations.

(In fact, Steve Glenn, director of SimGraphics’ newly formed Entertainment Group, believes the VActor system’s greatest long-term potential is for animating characters in video games, interactive multimedia, film and TV — more on that later.)

3-way VACS. The entire SimGraphics system that’s used to develop, produce and “perform” VActors is called the VActor Animation Creation System, or VACs. It is comprised of three components.

The first, VActor Creator, will remain a service that only SimGraphics provides. A customer brings two-dimensional line art of an inanimate character to the company; it is then sent off to specialty shops that prepare massive graphical databases to SimGraphics’ specifications. These databases include a number of different morph “targets” — i.e., neutral, angry, happy, sad, surprised — and generally include mouth phonemes. SimGraphics then brings the databases back in-house and integrates them into the final VActor.

Using the term loosely. VActor Performer, which Iwerks will market, sell and support worldwide, is the standalone, $400,000 base price “mass market” (we use the term loosely) product designed for permanent installations.

A turnkey system includes Performer software, specialty input devices, audio-video equipment, a Silicon Graphics Crimson VGXT graphics computer, system setup and support. “But Iwerks still has to come to us to create the VActors,” says Glenn.

The final piece of the VActor package, still in development, is VActor Producer, which Glenn says will be used to produce high-quality animation for playback on TV, film, multimedia and video. It will provide art directors and editors the ability to truly direct animated characters, as opposed to the more tortuous task of redoing a computer-generated animation if it isn’t quite right. Obviously, Producer will include recording capability, as well as variable playback, channel editing and on- and off-line special effects.

Iwerks won’t own the market. Founded in 1986 by former Disney animator Don Iwerks, Iwerks Entertainment has built its reputation on the installation of big-screen movie productions, exhibitions and theme parks; it is now working on a new “urban movie park” called the Cinetropolis network.

According to Glenn, Iwerks will sell its VActor Performer system to entertainment installations — public venues like sports stadiums — for permanent, ongoing live-animation projects. “For example, Iwerks is in discussion with baseball and hockey teams who want to animate their mascots for display on large screens.”

But, Glenn says, “It’s not an exclusive thing.” SimGraphics has maintained the right to install temporary VActors, such as the Nintendo booth duty it did at CES.

Rentals have potential. Glenn foresees another big market for VActors in the A/V rental and production world of special events. “We’re soliciting show designers on the concept of using VActors in their businesses,” he says. “Agencies who rent out equipment and video walls could do very well providing a VActor service as well.”

One of the company’s first customers for such a service is PLS Staging in Cedar Grove, NJ, a staging and A/V equipment rental company that works with production houses and corporations on events. The scenario, according to Glenn, is that a company like PLS will buy a VActor Performer system from SimGraphics (which has become a value-added reseller for Silicon Graphics computers, as you might have imagined.) A show designer will then go to PLS and say it needs a VActor for an event. PLS will produce the show, contract with SimGraphics to produce the VActor, then lease a VActor Performer to the designer.

Glenn calls PLS “a performance partner” in this scenario. “We sell them the razor and the blades, but they can develop their own shaving business,” he says. “We’re trying to develop a worldwide network of people in the VActor business who are doing their own shows. We don’t want to be in show production and leasing equipment. We’re doing it now because we have to, but more and more we’d prefer to just sell the equipment.”

LIVE PERFORMANCE WON’T PAY THE BILLS FOREVER

Though certainly the public venues for VActors will get SimGraphics a lot of attention in the near term, Glenn says VActor Producer will probably end up being the most lucrative of SimGraphics’ products.

“We’re spending a lot of time on VActor Producer,” he says. “We’re looking for people who are developing disc-based titles who are interested in working with us, and using our system to record lots of animation for storage on a CD. Long-term, that’s the biggest market for us — not the live performance stuff, but TV, video and multimedia production using Producer.”

Denise Caruso

MACROMEDIA WOOS PUBLISHERS
Toolmaker wants to be the standard for interactive publishing

Macromedia has set its sights on becoming the de facto standard toolmaker for publishers who are ready to author interactive media titles. Despite many corporate upheavals — two painful mergers, five CEOs and countless rumors of taking the company public — the San Francisco-based multimedia company appears to be close to achieving this goal.

The reasons are twofold. First, Macromedia has almost no competition since it now owns, develops and distributes the two most established interactive authoring programs for both the Macintosh and Windows-based PC platforms with Authorware Professional and Macromedia Director.

In addition, the company recently announced an incentive plan called the Publishers Program. It offers traditional publishing houses both training and price discounts on bundles of the company’s multimedia software, including Authorware Professional, a high-end cross-platform authoring tool that was designed from its inception to help create computer-based interactive learning programs (see related story, p. 3).

AN OFFER TRADITIONAL PUBLISHERS CAN’T REFUSE

The Publishers Program is an offer traditional publishing houses, in particular the textbook and education publishing houses, will find hard to refuse — not because it is so stellar a deal, but because it’s the only game in town for cross-platform electronic media development and delivery.

According to a developers’ survey created for Apple Computer in June of 1992 by GISTICS, Inc., a research firm, Macromedia owns 60 percent of the developer market, with QuickTime, HyperCard and Microsoft’s multimedia software developers’ toolkit following in second, third and fourth places, respectively.

IBM has been a major player in the PC-based interactive education market, but has proven itself to be unclear on the concept of developing commercial interactive learning titles. For example, it spent $5 million on Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond, a beautiful but nearly impossible-to-navigate title that costs $3,000 retail. But what public school system in the U.S. today can afford $3,000 for a single software title and then another $3,000-plus for the customized Ultimedia system required to run it?

The time is ripe. While predicted earnings and percentage rates are all over the map, market research universally predicts a lucrative future for publishers who enter the interactive education market now. Nelson Heller, publisher of an education technology report, projects that educational technology will grow twice as quickly as textbook sales in the K–12 market by 1994. Heller anticipates the K–12 technology market will increase from $1.4 billion in 1991 to $2.2 billion in 1994. The K–12 textbook market, on the other hand, is expected to increase only a small percentage — to $2.6 billion from $2 billion in 1991.

TEXTBOOK PUBLISHERS EDUCATED ON NEW MEDIA

Already some of the largest educational publishers in the world have signed up with the Publishers Program, agreeing to use Macromedia tools to produce interactive titles.

On paper, Macromedia has received commitments from Jostens Learning, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, and a powerful newcomer to the publishing side of education — LifeTouch Learning, a fully owned subsidiary of LifeTouch, the Minneapolis-based company that is responsible for snapping almost every single elementary school student’s photograph in the United States.

Better the second time around. Like Jostens, which began as the company that made class rings (and now claims to own 70 percent of the interactive learning market), LifeTouch has a strong foothold in the U.S. educational infrastructure that might enable it to leap-frog its competition — traditional textbook publishers — and take a major piece of the market share.

The connection between Macromedia and LifeTouch Learning goes deeper than a partnership agreement. LifeTouch Learning is run by Michael Allen, the founder of Authorware and inventor of Authorware Professional, who started working for LifeTouch after the Authorware/MacroMind Paracomp merger, when it became clear that he had a different vision for the newly formed company’s direction. Bud Colligan, then president and CEO of Authorware, became president of Macromedia. Colligan is now CEO and president of Macromedia; he took over the post from Tim Mott, who is still chairman.

Despite their history, the two companies have made a long-term commitment to work together to build interactive learning applications using Authorware on the Macintosh. Ironically, Allen will now have to pay to use the software he developed.

One of LifeTouch Learning’s first customers is a nonprofit corporation called IMPAC, which is sponsored by the state of Arkansas. Both President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton sponsored IMPAC and its work when Clinton was governor of Arkansas. LifeTouch will develop courseware statewide for grades K–8, focusing on mathematics, language arts (writing), and reading curricula. Allen, who has his doctorate in educational psychology, retains the rights to distribute elsewhere the software curricula developed for IMPAC.

East Coast powerhouses. In addition to the deals Macromedia has announced publicly, the company is pulling out all the stops in an attempt to bring more of the large publishing houses into the fold. Macromedia recently held a one-day electronic publishing seminar in New York, in conjunction with Apple Computer and New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, to woo major players in the education publishing market, including Addison Wesley, DC Heath, Harper Collins, W.H. Freeman, Prentice Hall and Simon & Schuster which fall under the Paramount Publishing umbrella.

More than 75 executives from East Coast publishing houses participated in the seminar. Kevin Howat, manager of publisher sales at Macromedia, claims the seminar was an “amazing success.” (Translation: Expect several more commitments from major education publishers in the next couple of months.) Macromedia plans to hold a similar conference for publishers on the West Coast within the next two months.

Making the transition. “The educational publishers know they are going to have to make the transition from the textbook to the disc,” says Howat. “And we are the only company that can offer them the breadth of tools and cross-platform capabilities as well as the ready-made talent capable of using the tools.”

Although the Publishers Program has primarily attracted textbook publishers, Macromedia is not limiting itself to the education market. The program has also caught the attention of International Data Group and Viacom. The Sumeria Group, a new IDG company founded to create an interactive CD-ROM magazine, has made a nonexclusive commitment to use Macromedia tools, as has Viacom New Media, the electronic publishing arm of cable giant Viacom. (For more on title development — both entertainment and educational — at Viacom New Media, see Vol. 2, No. 5, p. 12.)

MACROMEDIA MOVES INTO A CLASS BY ITSELF

The Publishers Program — if handled correctly by Macromedia — may be a win-win situation for everyone involved. The publishing houses, which are in the business of developing and delivering curricula, gain access to a new delivery medium that is expected to be quite profitable.

Also, they gain access to equipment that is temptingly priced — both software and hardware, if Apple’s presence at the publishing seminar counts for anything — plus much needed technical support and savvy producers who are comfortable developing electronic media with the new technologies.

Look for the label. In return Macromedia creates strategic alliances with some of the largest content owners in the world, which have committed to use — and in some cases standardize on — the company’s software. Macromedia also gains some free advertising: The company has implemented a policy whereby all commercial titles developed with Macromedia authoring tools will carry a “Made with Macromedia” logo, similar to the “Intel Inside” insignia found on many hardware boxes. Both Colligan and Howat emphasize that they are not trying to pass judgment on the quality of these commercial titles by use of the logo.

MACROMEDIA PUTS EXPANDED ROYALTY STRUCTURE ON HOLD

Until recently, Macromedia was also considering a much more controversial way to increase its revenues: it was seriously considering expanding its royalty obligations to include a charge of one percent of net revenue on commercial titles created with the next generation of Macromedia Director. (To date, there is a charge of one percent of net revenue on run-time versions of commercial title created with Authorware Professional. A run-time version allows the user to play, but not create, an application.)

Developers just say no. Market research and a survey of a number of the company’s Director-based commercial title developers has convinced Macromedia to hold off on the royalty expansion program. According to Colligan, perceived benefits to the developer community were not substantial enough, nor was the potential increase in revenue for Macromedia substantial enough, to merit the increased obligation. Colligan says he’ll reassess the market in a year to judge whether or not it can support such a royalty.

In the meantime Macromedia plans to create a special version of Director for commercial title developers, to include some of the high-end functionality they have been requesting to produce interactive media titles, including a compiled version of Director’s Lingo scripting language and file locking.

Can’t blame Macromedia for trying. We applaud Macromedia for its decision to wait. Although we cannot blame the company for trying to generate a new revenue stream — especially considering the potential profits for title developers that can sell their products to the masses, as opposed to those profits garnered by multimedia toolmakers — there is still a question as to whether or not developers believe a toolmaker has the right to collect royalties. After all, they say, Microsoft doesn’t collect royalties on every book written with Word.

Macromedia’s Colligan counters that the royalty would be as much for the use of the player engine as for the actual authoring, but developers say they often write their own engines.

Needless to say, the jury is still out on how exactly the royalty structure will shake out for toolmakers. But today, in any case, the commercial market for interactive media is still far too small to support a new royalty structure, and authoring software companies that try to implement new financial obligations in such an environment may find themselves wondering where their customers went. Developers have made it clear that they won’t hesitate to find other authoring systems, or to create customized tools for in-house development if need be.

GIVING DEVELOPERS A CHANCE TO MAKE IT REAL

Macromedia seems willing to accept the fact that small, innovative companies cannot afford the added burden, at least not in the short term. How much profit can be gained on one percent of 3,000 discs sold at $50? That’s typically how many copies of a commercial title, probably authored with Director, are sold today. Certainly $1,500 isn’t a dazzling revenue stream to Macromedia, but it’s like asking a struggling artist for the moon, especially since these artists may also be paying license fees for the content. Even 30,000 copies would only produce $15,000 — not much to Macromedia, but a gargantuan amount for a developer trying to break even on a $250,000 title production bill.

For a company that wants to become known as “the” interactive media toolmaker, as Bud Colligan likes to refer to it, the decision to wait on the royalty obligation is a very smart move. Even if it’s only a temporary respite, the company appears to be offering its customers a chance to help make this industry real.

Janice Maloney

COLOSSAL GOES INTERACTIVE
Film, animation company embraces digital media

For 17 years Colossal Pictures, the independent animation and effects production studio founded by Drew Takahashi and Gary Gutierrez, has generated award-winning commercials, music videos, titles and effects, short- and long-form video and film projects as well as independent programming. The San Francisco-based company produces everything from classic cel animation to photo- and stop-motion, motion control, clay animation and computer animation to stage- and location-based live action.

Its impressive client roster includes BBDO Worldwide Advertising, Nike, Levi Strauss & Co., Nabisco, Bell Atlantic, Xerox, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo International, The Disney Channel, PBS, Saturday Night Live, Nickelodeon, HBO, Tri-Star Pictures, MTV, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and Capitol Records.

MOVING CREATIVE EXPERTISE IN-HOUSE

In part, Colossal’s success can be attributed to its powerful alliances with Pixar, creators of Tin Toy, the first computer-animated film to win an Oscar; Koninck Studios of London, which is world-famous for its stop-motion and puppet animation; and Big Pictures, a programming subsidiary.

But now the company has decided to bring more of the creative expertise in-house. Colossal Pictures has announced its plans to develop a digital media division that will produce interactive media titles and computer-generated imagery for video and film.

To head the new division, Colossal has hired Brad deGraf, a pioneer in computer-generated 3D effects. DeGraf, who cofounded deGraf/Warhman, is known as the creator of the first computer-generated character, Mike the Talking Head (who made his debut at Siggraph in 1988) and as the first person to use computer animation in theme park attractions.

He was also named as part of the creative freelance team behind Scott Billups’s new digital production studio Sand Box Productions (which we covered in a recent issue). DeGraf, however, will not be working with the Sand Box team; he has signed an exclusive contract with Colossal after more than a year of negotiations.

“This is an evolutionary step for Colossal, not a revolutionary one,” says deGraf. “We are going to incrementally add [technology] to the creative process that has already been going on. In terms of digital production studios, we expect to leapfrog a lot of the competition. It’s a lot easier to add the digital part into the equation, as opposed to the production part.”

A SERIOUS INVESTMENT IN ‘RED, PURPLE AND WHITE ONES’

To do so, the company is making “a serious investment” in digital technology. Already, deGraf and the management team at Colossal have brought a suite of Silicon Graphic workstations and Macintosh computers in house, or as Takahashi prefers to identify them, “a bunch of red, purple and white ones.”

In his role as liaison between creative design and technical execution, deGraf will be directly involved with three new groups within Colossal Pictures, including an interactive software publishing unit; an in-house computer graphics department; and the Digital Laboratory, a proposed beta-site joint venture between Colossal Pictures and Western Images, where the two companies can experiment with new digital video technology on loan from computer hardware and software vendors.

Although Colossal is unwilling at this point to tip its hat on interactive digital media projects that are now under way within the company, deGraf did say that as the delivery mechanisms for interactive CD-ROM and interactive TV become viable, “Colossal will be there with original interactive content.”

3D CHARACTERS AND DIGITAL BACKLOTS

DeGraf and a team of Colossal Pictures animators, directors and artists are developing what he calls “3D characters” and “digital backlots,” computer-generated characters and locations that can be combined to create a “virtual world” or as components of a scene that may also include live action.

To date these cartoon characters and sets have been used for linear narratives, including Peter Gabriel’s music video “Steam,” now appearing on MTV; a “virtual reality” commercial for Planter Lifesavers’ Bubble Yum Gum, airing in the southern United States; and Liquid Television, MTV’s Emmy-award winning series that is produced by Colossal’s Big Pictures.

Janice Maloney

IBM RESHUFFLES MULTIMEDIA
Strategy segments action into content and distribution

In the shadow of the largest losses in American corporate history and a subsequent boardroom executive shuffle, IBM has chosen an interesting time in history to reorganize its multimedia operations.

Called Fireworks Partners and based in Somers, NY, the shift in focus centralizes IBM’s efforts within the Personal Systems division of the company. Fireworks is under the direction of Robert Carberry, former assistant general manager of technology in the Personal Systems division, who reports to Personal Systems president James Cannavino. The new division combines IBM’s joint venture and alliance operations with multimedia application and content development.

Sell the blades. In describing the reorganization, Carberry emphasized that IBM had spent a lot of money developing platforms — both hardware and software — including the PS/2 Ultimedia line, the multimedia extension to Presentation Manager under OS/2 and the technology to transmit multimedia data over networks (see Vol. 2, No. 6, for an in-depth look at IBM’s multimedia strategies and technologies).

Now, Carberry says, is the time to see a return on those investments. Platforms, he says, “are the razors, and we want to be in the blade business.” To this end, Fireworks Partners “will provide both the creation and the delivery mechanisms for content.” (See related story on IBM and Blockbuster, p. 9.)

Reporting to Carberry is Mike Braun, formerly assistant general manager of multimedia, for the multimedia solutions development and marketing division, based in Atlanta, GA. Braun is now vice president and managing partner of Fireworks, and will continue to oversee the Kiosk Solutions unit and the Multimedia Publishing Studio.

The Multimedia Publishing Studio, headed by Paul Evans and also based in Atlanta, will expand its efforts to become a “label” for interactive titles. The company will fund the development of titles, develop its own original works, and publish works created by people from outside of IBM.

Beyond Intel and DOS. The Publishing Studio will also begin developing content for platforms other than Intel- or DOS-based machines. (Funny, the press release didn’t mention Windows….) Already it has created a dozen titles for the Sony MMCD player. On the drawing board are titles developed under Kaleida Labs’ ScriptX authoring language for Macintosh and PC, and 3DO titles for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. The studio even took exhibit space at Macworld Expo last month to attract Macintosh developers.

“Now is the time that a titles group can be successful” within IBM, according to Evans. In addition to multimedia computer software, the company has also produced films and books, and will continue its efforts in all media. Evans’s group has been best known for producing Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond and Illuminated Books and Manuscripts.

In addition to the these divisions, Fireworks and Carberry have control over the new business alliances and strategic partnerships in the multimedia arena. These include Kaleida Labs, IBM’s joint venture with Apple Computer to create a cross-platform multimedia authoring environment; newly formed relationships with Bell Atlantic, using IBM technology for video on demand; NBC News, and the NBC Desktop News system to provide news on demand (see Vol. 2, No. 7, p. 25); and the new partnership with Blockbuster Video.

In many respects, Fireworks Partners is designed like a venture capital group, where it will investigate and invest in many different projects, companies and ideas.

Hey, Ricky, where’s Lucie? Until the reorganization, the group responsible for virtually all things multimedia was headed by Lucie Fjeldstad, IBM’s vice president and general manager for multimedia. With hardware and software development, applications and solutions, alliances and new business ventures now reporting to the Personal Systems division, where does that leave her?

IBM maintains that the new division is not a loss of power or prestige for Fjeldstad, who will retain her title. She is on the advisory board of the new company and will continue developing a national broadband digital highway for providing multimedia applications over great distances.

This network would utilize all of today’s transmission systems (including cable television, telephone networks and satellite broadcasting) to deliver entertainment and/or business applications. Carberry says, Fireworks Partners, and the products developed under Fireworks, would “ultimately be customers of Lucie’s.”

Although the new company certainly demonstrates a refinement in IBM’s multimedia strategy, it is also curious that this particular moment in time was chosen for a reorganization of this magnitude. With a new president on the way and the upheaval that such a change will leave in its wake, we expect to see more than fireworks before the dust finally settles at IBM.

David Baron

MACROMEDIA PUBLISHERS PROGRAM IS A PACKAGE DEAL

Traditional publishers joining the Macromedia Publishers Program, which does not dictate that they use Macromedia products exclusively when creating electronic media, have two software bundles to choose from.

The first, Macromedia ProStudio for Interactive Learning, is for cross-platform development and delivery. It costs $9,995 (at retail, more than twice that amount) and includes Authorware Professional for the Macintosh, Authorware Professional for Windows, Macromedia Director, the Director Player for Windows, MacRecorder SoundSystem Pro, MacroModel, Three-D and two clip media collections for Macintosh and PC.

The second system, which is geared more toward producers developing interactive media for the consumer market, is called the Macromedia ProStudio for Multimedia Production. At $4,495, it includes Macromedia Director, the Director Player for Windows, MacRecorder SoundSystem Pro, MacroModel, 3D, SwivelMan, LifeForms and the two clip media collections.

Macromedia says it will offer training on the use of its products and on effective techniques for designing interactive media. The program tentatively includes two weeks of on-site training.

The company is also offering the MacroService Gold Priority Support Plan, which includes telephone technical support and a technical support team trained to answer questions specific to title development problems; 24-hour bulletin board/electronic mail support via AppleLink, America Online and CompuServe; and access to Macromedia’s “knowledge base” of commonly asked technical questions.

According to Bud Colligan, president and CEO of Macromedia, the company plans to expand the benefits for members of the Publishers Program during the next several months. It may include prereleased copies of development software for experimentation, access to a Macromedia user list for targeted mail campaigns and automatic entry into a title development awards contest held during the Macromedia User Conference.

Colligan says Macromedia will work with publishers to create customized systems, and site licenses are available for various configurations.

Janice Maloney

FROM FISH TO DOORKNOBS…
It’s a digital world, all right

The following gem was peeled off the Internet and sent to us. The author — Danny Hillis, founder of Thinking Machines in Cambridge, MA — agreed to let us reprint it.

I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, “Where are they all going to go? It’s not like you need a computer in every doorknob!”

Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors.

There was a computer in every doorknob.

AND NOW THEY’RE BAR CODING THE FISH
This story originated on the Newsbytes news service.

The Washington State Department of Fisheries and Intermec have figured out a clever way to bar code fish in hatcheries so their origin can be traced. By identifying the fish, researchers hope to be able to get better information on pollution, habitat damage and survival rates.

The method doesn’t involve any handling of the fish, but is done in the hatchery during the embryo state of salmon. A calcified element in the ear of fish, called an otolith, shows daily growth rings. By slightly lowering and raising the incubation water temperature for brief periods over 14 days, Intermec has been able to produce in the otolith rings in an Interleaved 2 of 5 bar code, representing the digit “6,” on two million salmon raised in the Cowlitz Hatchery in Washington State.

The Interleaved 2 of 5 code was chosen because it’s more easily visible to the human eye.

One digit isn’t enough, however, and tests are currently being done with 10 different incubation environments being used to encode 10 different digits. Intermec says the technique could be refined so it could be used to uniquely identify fish from every hatchery, and even subunits of hatcheries.

Intermec, a division of Litton Industrial Automation, says it has bar coded other animals, including bees and moths. The company says its business is data collection hardware, software, systems, services and supplies.

Presto!

GENERAL MAGIC TALKS TECHNOLOGY

Last week, just as Digital Media went to press, General Magic — the Apple Computer spinoff for personal communications devices and software — revealed its strategy and talked about the technology it is developing to revolutionize personal communications. Look for an in-depth report in the next issue.

COMPACTVIDEO GOES TO 3DO; WILL NINTENDO AND SEGA FOLLOW?

Although you didn’t hear much public acknowledgment of it at 3DO Co.’s big announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show last month, 3DO’s addition of video compression to its Interactive Multiplayer technology is courtesy of SuperMac Technology. 3DO has announced an agreement to license SuperMac’s CompacTVideo software compression for use in its machines. (The 3DO announcement is discussed in detail in “3DO: At last, the Wait is Over,” Vol. 2 No. 8, p. 13.)

The San Mateo, CA-based 3DO, which signed a nonexclusive licensing agreement with SuperMac, is following the example of Apple Computer, which licensed CompacTVideo for use in QuickTime 1.5, and Creative Labs, which licensed the software-only encoder-decoder for use in its digital video products. (Creative Labs now has the exclusive distribution rights to SuperMac’s VideoSpigot for Windows and is codeveloping multimedia hardware with SuperMac for the PC market.)

CompacTVideo’s growing appeal as a de facto software-only compression standard is primarily based on its ability to provide fast playback from a CD-ROM device. According to SuperMac, the compression codec makes it possible to fit as much as two hours of high image-quality video on a CD-ROM disc, and it allows full-screen, full-motion playback of digital video without the use of dedicated hardware. (CompacTVideo is an asymmetrical compression format, meaning the time required to compress and decompress an image is not the same. It can take up to 2 minutes to compress a single frame of video using the technology but it can decompress the same image in a fraction of a second.)

“The 3DO machine is perfect for running CompacTVideo,” says Peter Barrett, SuperMac’s director of software technology. “It has the right amount of CD-ROM bandwidth and the right amount of processing power. In fact, [the multiplayer] runs Compact–Video faster than a Quadra 700.”

The news of the licensing agreement should gladden the hearts of video game developers, who are expected to flock to the new 3DO platform. The software-only codec is available now, works with QuickTime- and Windows-based authoring tools and raises the level of interactivity in the consumer game-play experience through faster playback speeds. The licensing agreement means the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer could potentially handle game titles with more sophisticated video and graphics than existing Sega and Nintendo machines.

Surprisingly enough, the announced licensing deal may also warm the hearts of these two giants that basically own the multibillion dollar game market. Why? Because the licensing agreement between 3DO and SuperMac is to date nonexclusive. That means SuperMac could license its proprietary CompacTVideo technology to both Nintendo and Sega — potentially before the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer hits the retail channel next October.

3D HOLOGRAPHS WITHOUT GLASSES

A new visual transducer, made public this week at a technical conference in San Jose, CA, will purportedly be able to produce true 3D holographic images in real time under computer control, without the need for viewers to wear any sort of glasses.

The inventor, Jeffrey Kulick from the University of Alabama Computer Graphics Department, spent several years at the MIT Media Lab working on medical holographic imaging.

Experts say it’s the only really new visual transducer invented since active LCD s some 10 years ago, and may be an example of a rare “fundamental patent.” They say the way it operates is unlike any display device on the market today — even, perhaps, unlike anything in laboratories anywhere in the world, including Japan. Kulick and his colleagues have fabricated and shown a prototype that demonstrates this principle of operation but does not display an image.

The new device should have a wide variety of uses in virtual reality, computer graphics, teleconferencing, mobile computing, multimedia and medicine (the market for which it was originally developed).

VIDéOWAY PRESIDENT WARNS OF POSSIBLE PATENT INFRINGEMENT

The most visible interactive television company at the Western Cable Television show was Vidéoway (Les Enterprises Vidéoway, Itée), a Montreal-based subsidiary of Groupe Vidéotron, the largest cable operator in Quebec. The company has spent more than 100 million Canadian dollars over a period of 10 years developing interactive baseball, lottery and video games now offered to more than 200,000 subscribers who pay $18.95 (Canadian) per month for the service.

In 1993, Vidéoway plans to add home shopping and banking, coupon delivery and energy management options to the system. In addition, it licensed the interleaving technology originally used in the Hasbro Isis program (now used by Digital Pictures in its Sega CD video games, see Vol. 2, No. 7, p. 12) from its developer, John Perkins, and can provide real-time switching between four or more programs over a single TV channel. They use a multi-function box encompassing the pay and interactive TV features, data services and an electronic catalog at a price estimated to be $300.

It is now poised to move into the U.S. market and will be using satellite transmission in 1993 to provide programming for the U.S. service.

Michel Dufresne, president of Vidéoway and chief of development for the parent company, says his company is further along in development than other interactive TV projects, most of which are just beginning and do not have market experience or the patented technology available to Vidéoway.

Dufresne also claimed that his parent company, Groupe Vidéotron, is well protected legally against incursions into the interactive arena. His staff has been checking out a number of the prototype interactive systems — many of which he felt were using techniques and technologies that Groupe Vidéotron has previously developed, protected, licensed and implemented.

Dufresne specifically named the Cable Network Data Transmission System and ACTV, Perkins and FastTrack licensees, and hinted that owners of these systems will likely be told they cannot use certain techniques without paying a license fee. If this indeed is true, it will be interesting to see what impact this has on the burgeoning interactive TV market.

CABLE CHANGING FACE IN WESTERN EUROPE

A recent market research report published by Frost & Sullivan, Inc. of New York says that the European market for cable television is growing, though it will be quite some time before it reaches the 90 percent penetration of U.S. television households. However, the lack of penetration could work in favor of forward-thinking cable equipment vendors if they move quickly.

By the end of 1991, according to the report, more than 40 million of Western Europe’s TV homes had been passed by cable, with more than 25 million of those homes connected — representing a tiny 18.4 percent of the continent’s 139.3 million available TV homes.

Frost & Sullivan projects the subscriber market will grow at 10.5 percent annually until 46.5 million TV homes are connected in 1997. That’s a 30.9 percent penetration. Germany is the largest cable market in Western Europe, followed by the Netherlands and Belgium. By 1997, France is expected to take over third place from Belgium.

What’s most interesting about the report is not so much its analysis of why the cable industry is so much slower to grow in Western European countries than in the Benelux countries or in the U.S., but what it says about what will happen from now on.

European cable is leapfrogging all the regulatory struggles and scrambling for markets that has typified the U.S. cable industry on its way to 90 percent saturation. Fear of stiff competition by other networks such as the telephone companies and direct broadcast satellite delivery catapulted the U.S. cable industry into the world of digital transmission and information services.

Perhaps for the same reasons, the European cable business is about to change its identity from an entertainment medium to one that delivers a wide variety of services to businesses and homes.

But with a comparatively tiny infrastructure already in place, it seems that forward-thinking cable operators who are intent upon selling fiber-optic cable systems could think of Europe as even more ripe than the U.S. for a broadband cable network. If they succeed, Western Europe’s cable systems could be ready for interactivity at about the same time as U.S. systems.

PASSPORT TO SUPPORT KALEIDA SCRIPTX TECHNOLOGY

Passport Designs, a pioneer in digital audio and MIDI technology, recently announced its support for Kaleida Labs’ ScriptX description language designed to allow cross-platform development and playback of multimedia titles. To date, it is the third company, including Macromedia and Canter Technology, both of San Francisco, to publicly support this emerging technology from the Apple-IBM joint development venture.

According to David Kusek, president and CEO of Passport Designs, the company plans to build support for ScriptX into Passport Interactive, an interactive authoring program that can control external devices such as VCRs and laserdiscs and that will compete with Macromedia’s popular authoring program, Director.

Though still in development at Passport in Half Moon Bay, CA, Passport Interactive will be based on technology introduced in Passport Producer, the company’s first foray into the multimedia presentation market. Passport Interactive is expected to be available in the fall of 1993.

In theory, at least, supporting ScriptX means toolmakers such as Passport don’t have to create a software player for every computer platform. It is the mission of the Mountain View, CA-based Kaleida to create various levels of software that provide this cross-platform delivery system. “In essence, Kaleida wants to be the layer between the title and hardware,” says Kusek. “I write the title once and it runs everywhere that ScriptX lives.”

Passport Producer is one of the only products in its category and price range ($495) to support SMPTE time code for synchronous playback of mixed media. Kusek says the company’s strength in synchronizing media attracted Kaleida.

COMPTON’S TO RENT CD-ROM SOFTWARE

Compton’s NewMedia plans to be the first publisher to rent computer software in video rental stores. The Carlsbad, CA-based company has recently cut a deal with Major Video Concepts, the second-largest distributor of prerecorded videocassettes in the United States, to distribute more than 20 CD-ROM-based multimedia software titles to select video stores.

For the same price as a movie rental (about $3), customers in approved video retail stores will be able to rent both entertainment and educational CD-ROM titles for one to two nights, depending on individual store policy. Sleeping Beauty, USA Wars: Operation Desert Storm, Jazz: A Multimedia History, New Basics Electronic Cookbook, Stories of Murder, Mystery, Terror, Magic & More and the KGB/CIA World Factbook are among the 22 titles that Compton’s has agreed to distribute through Major Video.

To lure customers away from the movies, Compton’s is installing multimedia kiosks where customers can preview any of the available titles at no cost to the retailer.

The agreement between Compton’s and Major Video sets a new precedent for software distribution. It is the first time content developers have agreed to the rental of their software. (Major Video actually purchased the software titles from Compton’s, which owns exclusive distribution rights to more than 80 titles from 18 different software development companies. Major Video plans to then sell the titles to selected video stores.)

Compton’s says it does not believe consumers will “pirate” the contents of the CDs since most of the individuals who rent the titles are unlikely to have the data storage devices required to copy the contents of an entire disc (660 megabytes) or the writable CD-ROM drives necessary to duplicate the disc itself.

Both companies expect the discs and the point-of-purchase kiosks to be in place in select video rental stores before April 1. According to the companies, they are targeting affluent communities that are likely to have a large installed base of home computers. Neither company expects that the video stores will rent the hardware necessary to use the titles.

THE MOST AMAZING NEWS OF 1993 (SO FAR)

In a recent Saturday New York Times story about convicted junk bond peddler Michael Milken, friend and former aide Lorraine Spurge said that Milken is interested in doing his 1,800 hours per year (for three years) of community service by creating an interactive educational cable television network.

Some of Milken’s old junk bond clients included Viacom Inc., TCI and what’s now Time Warner. The community service plan is subject to the approval of New York Federal District Judge Kimba Wood, who cut Milken’s original 10-year sentence after he agreed to cooperate with investigators.

DAVID AND GOLIATH CLASH
GeoWorks and Microsoft fight it out over Modular Windows

Brian Dougherty is president of GeoWorks, an operating system software company based in Berkeley, CA. GeoWorks is providing system software for a new, so-called “personal digital assistant” being developed by Tandy and Casio. GeoWorks’ GEOS for the PC, though highly regarded technically, was never able to compete with Microsoft Windows. Now Microsoft is entering the PDA market with its Modular Windows operating system, and once again GeoWorks is head-to-head with the software industry’s Goliath.

During a meeting some months ago about the Tandy-Casio device, Dougherty told us some of his concerns about Modular Windows. They sounded like good fodder for discussion, so we asked him to write up his ideas for publication. Surprisingly, he was not upset when he learned we had solicited a response from Microsoft. (It follows Dougherty’s piece.) He believes that presented with adequate information, people will be able to make up their own minds; we think so too.

I had some trepidation about writing this piece. The whole industry seems to quiver in the presence of Microsoft and many a colleague has advised me to try at all cost to avoid the Wrath of Redmond. But someone has to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

First off, I should admit that this is not an entirely unbiased piece. Our company, GeoWorks, has spent the last five years designing an efficient, state-of-the-art operating system called GEOS. Our goal is to use GEOS to deliver computing to the mass market, so Modular Windows is clearly a competitive threat and that makes me something less than an objective observer. However, having studied nearly every operating system on the market in detail, I think I can point out some unarguable facts about Modular Windows.

Back in 1987, when we began our own project, our plan was to create a high-performance clone of Windows, a sort of DR DOS [the Digital Research competitor to Microsoft's ubiquitous DOS for PCs] for the graphical era with the efficiency to run on lower-cost hardware accessible to the mass market.

The code name for the project was “Windex.” We had a lot of experience optimizing code in assembly language for embedded systems and video game designs, so after studying Windows for a few months we were confident we could cut the code size of the operating system in half and double the performance of many of the system functions.

However, the more we studied the problem, and our goal, we realized that you couldn’t get there from Windows, no matter how small or efficient the operating system was. The problem was the size of applications. Windows, in its full glory, simply doesn’t do enough for applications. The result of the Windows architecture is a product like Word for Windows, which requires 15 megabytes of free hard-disk space to install. We realized that no matter how small or fast we made Windex, the efforts would be overshadowed by the size of the applications. Fortunately, we were able to achieve our goals using a different system architecture — but that is another story.

There are a number of reasons why code size is an important issue in the consumer market, but the most important is price. Successful mass market products range in price from $1 to $500 and the market for consumer products is enormously price-elastic. Those of you who remember the first video game boom probably remember the Mattel Intellivision and the Atari VCS. The Mattel system was considered hands-down the superior game machine, but it sold for $200 while the Atari System sold for $100.

I was working at Mattel at the time and in the two years from 1979 to 1981, our division grew from nothing to $500 million in sales. A phenomenal success by anyone’s standards. However, during the same period Atari grew to over $5 billion — a textbook example of how the market for consumer products is enormously price elastic. Larger memory, storage, and processing requirements mean higher prices. In a market where a $10 difference in the cost of goods can mean the difference between success and failure, efficiency is very important.

Another important consideration is battery life. Many of the consumer computing devices of this decade will be portable. Once again smaller code, less memory, and higher software performance yield lower weight and longer battery life, critical factors for success.

Many of the inefficiencies of Windows result from its being an old software architecture. Take, for example, the approach to user interface design. A large part of the size of any Windows application is code to manage and present the user interface. Almost every mouse click has to be handled by a function in the application. Essentially it is a do-it-yourself user interface with a set of toolbox routines that minimally help you accomplish the task.

Windows is a first-generation graphical environment, architected around 1982, long before Next Computer demonstrated the efficiency of offloading user interface code from the application by using system-supported user interface objects. Almost all new operating systems are using this object-oriented approach to help speed development and reduce application code size; unfortunately Windows predates this advance in computer science. And Modular Windows continues Microsoft’s commitment to this aging architecture.

Another deficiency of Windows is the quality of the imaging model. Separate code is needed to handle both screen and printer output. Document scaling (zooming in and out to provide a thumbnail view of a fax, for example) also has to be supported by the application. Scaling documents and images is important in the broader mass market because older users and those who are visually impaired need to scale documents and images to a comfortable viewing size.

Another sign of the age of the Windows architecture is the multitasking model — or, more appropriately, the lack thereof. Simply put, Windows doesn’t offer true multitasking, usually referred to as “pre-emptive multitasking.” It offers a simulation of multitasking called cooperative multitasking. Applications are run one at a time and when the application voluntarily yields the processor, another task may run. If applications are well behaved this simulates a real multitasking system, but often results in jerky behavior.

There are three reasons real pre-emptive multitasking is important on consumer devices: user responsiveness, multimedia and background services.

Consumers will be more demanding than PC users have been when it comes to their expectations for response times. If a button is presented on the screen, a mass market consumer will expect something to happen instantly, at least a visual acknowledgment of their action.

Although computer users have learned to accept delays, the mass market has not been so preconditioned. With true multitasking, user interface elements can take precedence over other application tasks and guarantee a quick response to the user’s actions.

The second argument for multitasking in consumer devices is multimedia. Under Windows [3.1] today, multimedia applications are difficult and time-consuming to design and produce. That’s because it is fundamentally a single-threaded architecture designed to run one application at a time, sequentially. In order to run multiple applications, each application developer must periodically and voluntarily yield the processor so the other tasks may run.

However, by definition, multimedia is the simultaneous presentation of multiple media sources: sound, text and pictures (animation, video, stills). Each media source requires time-critical software management. This can be cleanly and elegantly managed by a real-time operating system, or it can be kludged around with a cooperative multitasking system such as Windows.

The final argument for real multitasking is background services. Consumer computing devices in the home are likely to be connected to one of two information networks, the phone and/or cable TV. For example, a consumer might be in the middle of composing an electronic mail message on his/her smart phone when the phone rings for an incoming fax. The correct solution is to allow the user to continue composing while the fax is received in the background.

All of the previous analysis has been based on Windows 3.1, not the new Modular Windows. While I pointed out a number of glaring architectural weaknesses, the most damning for the consumer market is the lack of support offered for efficient application development.

Such lack of support results in memory- and processing-intensive applications. The solution to this problem in the business market has been to convince companies to upgrade their hardware. The size of Windows applications has been a tremendous boon to Intel’s ‘486 microprocessors. However, as Microsoft now turns to the consumer market, it has no viable solution due to the cost required to run Windows applications. Its answer: we’ll strip functionality out of Windows and call it Modular Windows!

This must be a joke, right? If Windows fully featured does so little for applications that a word processor requires 15 megabytes to install, how large will compelling applications be if you remove even more functionality from the operating system?

For example, Modular Windows does not include the TrueType font technology. So if an application wants to use high-quality text, it must provide its own font technology. Instead of this capability being leveraged across all applications, it is duplicated in every application that wants good document imaging, leading to less efficiency and higher costs. The irony is that the business world probably has not improved its productivity with 24-point memo headings in the Palatino font. But if you want to compete with and/or augment mass-market print publications by providing electronic information — an obvious market for consumer information devices — it is imperative to provide the consumer with professional production values or they will find the electronic information less enjoyable and return to their printed materials.

I have spoken with a number of Modular Windows developers who are writing for the Tandy VIS system. Uniformly they are underwhelmed by Modular Windows. Other than memory management, it provides little to aid their application development, and several commented that they spend a good deal of time trying to figure out how to get around Windows to effectively use the hardware.

In spite of the impediments posed by Modular Windows, they have managed to create some intriguing products. If the Tandy VIS is successful, Microsoft will no doubt claim credit and use it to convince other unsuspecting manufacturers to adopt the Modular Windows platform.

Unfortunately, while the emperor may have no clothes, it does have most of the gold, and we all know the “golden rule” — i.e., those who have the gold, rule. Through massive marketing and sales efforts Microsoft will undoubtedly convince a number of manufacturers and consumers to buy Modular Windows-based devices. And again unfortunately, the joke will be on those consumers.

Brian Dougherty

MODULAR WINDOWS AND THE CONSUMER ENVIRONMENT: A RESPONSE

Phil Barrett and Byron Bishop are development managers in Microsoft’s Multimedia and Consumer System’s Group. This is their response to Dougherty’s commentary on Modular Windows.

We would like to thank Digital Media for a chance to reply to Brian Dougherty’s sincere but misguided assessment of Modular Windows. We are very heartened by the market’s initial reaction to Modular Windows and the following will hopefully explain some of the reasons for the market’s positive reaction.

The first misconception presented is that Modular Windows is an operating system for so-called PDAs. In fact, Modular Windows 1.0 is an operating system for consumer devices that use televisions as a display. The features included in Modular Windows 1.0 were carefully chosen to meet the needs of audio-visual applications such as interactive books — a very different type of application than that usually ascribed to PDAs.

Next, Mr. Dougherty decries Modular Windows for its Microsoft Windows heritage. We, of course, believe that this is a key strength. Modular Windows is based on Windows 3.1 and as such, inherits most of what continues to make it great for developers. There are hundreds of third-party development tools and libraries. A quick glance through one of the catalogs that specialize in software development tools will verify this. There are at least 100,000 developers who are already familiar with the Windows APIs. There are numerous authoring tools for Windows that allow people who are not hard-core assembly language or C programmers to design and implement applications. Examples are Microsoft Viewer, Microsoft Visual Basic, Aimtech’s Icon Author, Asymetrix’s ToolBook and Owl International’s Guide. There are also thousands of high-quality applications written to this API. Again, a quick glance through a catalog will show this, too.

This extensive infrastructure for Windows-based development systems, development and authoring tools, and market knowledge gives both existing and emerging digital content creators a running start compared to brand new, untested operating environments with limited tool support.

Equally important, for those applications where appropriate, a single title can be produced for play back on multiple devices — for example, a Modular Windows system and a Multimedia PC (MPC). There is a powerful incentive to author titles this way because it allows an ISV to enter a new market for a small incremental cost. Tools exist to make it easy for a software developer to optimize an application for both the MPC (with a large secondary store) and Modular Windows (with its hand controller for input and TV for output).

With regard to Modular Windows, the existing product and future implementations are an OEM product line and thus will be customized by hardware developers. The key is that each product based on Modular Windows is optimized to the constraints and the opportunities of the platform.

As a simple example, Modular Windows for a hardware platform with no audio capability would not be burdened with unnecessary audio application programming interfaces (API).

We agree with Mr. Dougherty that smaller code, less memory, higher performance and longer battery life will be critical for success in these new consumer markets. The current version of Modular Windows takes less than 1 MB of ROM for a complete CD-ROM player product and executes directly from ROM. This includes all the necessary support for the CD-ROM, audio and video. Moreover, Modular Windows 1.0 uses less than 256K of RAM, which means that on a 1-MB system the vast majority of system memory is dedicated to the application.

Modular Windows 1.0 is not just a cut down version of Microsoft Windows. We have added a number of features in Modular Windows 1.0 that make it an appropriate base for television-connected, CD-ROM-based consumer products. We have added a hand controller API that makes it easy to use a variety of remote controls often found in these consumer products. We added an API to allow the user to navigate on the screen with directional buttons in addition to the traditional “random roam” mouse-style navigation.

We added user interface elements that are more appropriate for TV connected devices. A television is quite different from a computer monitor. It has lower resolution. It is viewed at a distance typically greater than six feet while a computer monitor is usually viewed from much closer. Color intensity needs to be handled differently. We adapted the Modular Windows UI controls to work well in this environment.

Mr. Dougherty says that the only feature in Modular Windows 1.0

that VIS developers use is memory management. He is just plain misinformed. Among the Modular Windows’ features commonly used by VIS applications are its graphics primitives (GDI), Television User Interface, streaming audio services, MIDI synthesis capabilities, file I/O, and software motion video (Video for Windows) playback. We know of no other consumer operating system that provides this broad a range of capabilities, much less fits them into 1 MB of ROM.

Because Modular Windows builds on the PC heritage, it makes life very easy for the hardware manufacturer. CD-ROM extensions are a good example. An OEM does not need to write any code to integrate a CD drive. Another example is a flash memory file system; an OEM need not write any code to utilize flash memory in its system.

Modular Windows for future platforms will share the same mix of targeting the right features for the platform and the right levels of compatibility. For example, we agree wholeheartedly that a consumer device for receiving electronic information will be less enjoyable than print if it does not have the same production values. However, the strength of the Modular Windows strategy allows us to consider the platform’s ROM budget, screen size and resolution when making design decisions; whether to include TrueType, lots of fonts, and downloadable fonts; or TrueType and two fonts; or just three raster fonts.

Let’s now consider Mr. Dougherty’s repeated arguments that Windows must be inefficient because Microsoft Word for Windows requires 15 MB of disk space. Breaking this number down is quite instructive. Word’s executable itself is 1.2 MB. This represents a tremendous amount of functionality: tables, stylesheets, multilingual support, sophisticated search and replace, macros, outlining, mail-merge, and so on. The list is huge. The remaining 13.8 MB includes content intensive information: extensive help files, tutorials, dictionary, thesaurus, format translation libraries for importing third-party documents, charting and drawing tools, and so on. That Microsoft Word for Windows can deliver such a range of functionality to its users is in no way an argument against Modular Windows’ suitability for consumer systems. What Mr. Dougherty seems to be identifying is a well-understood trend in the PC industry toward feature-rich applications in order to compete for the consumer’s dollars.

Mr. Dougherty is incorrect in his assumption that Object-Oriented (OO) systems automatically produce smaller applications. It is true that when an application’s functionality is well matched with the functionality of the underlying system objects, the application will be “small” when compared to the same application on a system where the match is not as strong. An equivalent word processor on any OS would be as large as Word for Windows except to the degree the size of the OS was substantially increased to include objects provided in Word for Windows; for example, a thesaurus.

The claim that Modular Windows is not object oriented and thus every mouse click must be handled by the application is equally misleading. The various control classes are objects provided to aid the application developer in this very task. Windows may lack some of the buzzwords of OO systems, but not the benefits. For example, Windows programmers regularly subclass controls to modify the default behavior of the control. In addition, OO programming is more than just a technique; compilers, debuggers and class libraries are needed to complete the picture. There are a number of C++ compilers available from the major programming tool vendors for Microsoft Windows and these come with debugger and class libraries.

Every designer of a system that must meet resource constraints is faced with the same issue: How much and what functionality to put in the OS and what freedom to leave for application developers. The appropriateness of an OS for a given platform must be judged on this issue. The argument over which system is more truly object oriented is irrelevant.

Next, let us address some of the other issues raised in Mr. Dougherty’s article.

Mr. Dougherty claims that separate code is required for the printer and the screen. This is a gross exaggeration. The font model is common to both screen and printer output. The basic API works for both cases. Exceptions are largely due to differences arising from the physical realities of the printing device. For example, a full-page image may not fit in memory and thus ‘banding’ is required to allow an image to be prepared. It is also instructive to examine the graphics component of the Win32 API that Microsoft is moving to. It contains many improvements that software developers have asked for. This is an example of our commitment to improving the computing environment for software developers. Many of these enhancements will be available in a future version of Modular Windows.

Mr. Dougherty suggests that Modular Windows’ multitasking model is somehow a problem. We disagree — for a device such as a VIS player in which only one application is active at a time, nonpreemptive multitasking works great and gives the developer control over the machine. In addition, were one to examine the Win32 API and stated future directions of Microsoft, one would see that preemption

is a feature in future versions of Microsoft Windows and thus, Modular Windows.

Mr. Dougherty implies that Modular Windows is incapable of clean multimedia. This claim really baffles us. Microsoft Video for Windows, which is included in Modular Windows 1.0, has been released to kudos from both developers and analysts. For example, Byte magazine conferred upon VfW their award for best multimedia Software at Comdex in November, 1992.

One of the points Mr. Dougherty and we appear to agree on is that the success of a platform is due to the strength and quality of the commitment of software developers to that platform. Any microprocessor-based product category that succeeds will do so because of the applications that software and content developers produce for it. Every design decision in Modular Windows was made to help developers succeed in this new market.

Modular Windows isn’t perfect — we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us to make it even better. However, the feedback we’ve gotten from developers in general has been almost uniformly positive (except, we must admit, from developers of competing operating systems). We believe Modular Windows 1.0 is a very strong foundation for the interactive media industry to build on.

Phil Barrett, Byron Bishop

COMPUTERS, FREEDOM AND PRIVACY (CFP ‘93)
March 9–12, Burlingame, CA
Assoc. for Computing Machinery
(510) 845-1350, fax (510) 845-3946

For the third consecutive year, this vital conference will convene to discuss the impact of computer and telecommunication technologies on freedom and privacy in society. The conference is an absolute must-attend for anyone concerned with the social implications of the transition to a digital world.

CFP ‘93 begins with a day of tutorials on March 9. These practical sessions will cover the topics of access to government information, private sector marketplace and workplace privacy, constitutional law, telecommunications fraud, and civil liberties implications of computer searches and seizures.

A single-track conference program will be presented during the following three days. Sessions on electronic democracy; electronic voting; censorship and free speech on the networks; artists on the Internet; digital telephony and cryptographic policy; medical information and privacy; the digital individual, gender issues in computing and telecommunications; law in cyberspace; the power, politics and promise of “Internetworking”; and international data flow make up the agenda.

The conference sessions will be chaired by experts and newsmakers involved in the field of technology and freedom and privacy concerns.

The conference agenda will also include a series of addresses by well-known industry figures. Featured speakers will include Nicholas Johnson, former head of the FCC and codirector of the Institute for Health, Behavior and Environmental Policy at the University of Ohio; Willis Ware, fellow at the Rand Corp.; John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); and Cliff Stoll, author of The Cuckoo’s Egg.

Special-interest discussions, typically called “Birds of a Feather” sessions, will be held nightly as an open forum for discussion of topics not included in the formal program.

Attendees at CFP ‘93 will include computer scientists, lawyers, business people, educators, researchers, government officials and many others. Registration is limited to 550 people.

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