VIA BECOMES ISA; SHIFTS FROM VIDEOTEX TO INTERACTIVE SERVICES

Like sand through the hourglass, so are the changing names, affiliations and loyalties of once-stable industry organizations as they decipher the handwriting on the wall.

The latest to drop is the former Videotex Industry Association, or VIA, which last month was succeeded by the Interactive Services Association.

Though the Washington, DC-based VIA was plagued by what was essentially two decades of bad press, its conferences for the past couple of years have reflected a solid knowledge that the videotex we knew and sneered at was not where the future was headed.

Instead, it saw the future was convergence — of audio, data and video capabilities in all forms of telecommunications-based services such as cable, broadcast and telephone. (Do you think they’ve been reading this newsletter?)

After forming the body itself, ISA immediately convened an executive forum called “Media Shift: From Passive to Active,” and panel members included representatives from the Tribune Company, BellSouth Information Networks and the Cable and Business Development Division of NBC.

Though as a genre, newspapers, cable companies and phone companies are at war at the moment, all forum panelists seemed to agree that passive media (i.e., regular old TV, plain old phone service, standard daily newspapers) were too expensive, unaccountable, cluttered and remote to “build customer relationships.”

ISA will sponsor a conference called “Interactivity I: America’s Telecommunications Future” on February 13-14 in Washington, DC. All the hottest “convergence” topics will be on the agenda, from “Forging New Partnerships” to “The Connected Community — An Electronic Mailbox for Everyone.”

If the group can indeed create a constituency among the archenemies it calls members, it will be an historic organization indeed.

WE HATE TO SAY WE TOLD ‘EM SO, BUT …

The Multimedia PC (MPC) Marketing Council has finally come the conclusion that a 10-MHz ‘286 PC is insufficient for the demands of multimedia computing. What a revelation! Especially for Microsoft, which controls the MPC Council and has been luring software developers with the promise of 13 million upgradable PCs already in the market.

The new specification calls for a minimum configuration of a ‘386SX microprocessor. All of the other specifications remain unchanged.

It would seem that the market has proved what everyone outside the MPC Council already suspected: the only people upgrading their computers to the MPC level were owners of ‘386SX-based machines or better. In addition, even the MPC hardware providers were leery of the slower machines, and released on ‘386 or ‘486 multimedia computers.

Many of the software developers didn’t buy the ‘286 argument either, and refused to develop for that platform, believing that their applications would not run effectively. Windows itself barely runs satisfactorily on such a machine.

Members of the MPC Council have said (at least in private) that the standard would be fluid, with changes and upgrades to the standard implemented as necessary. They are sticking to their word.

The change is welcome news to developers. “A few could say, ‘Why didn’t you do it six months ago?’ We hope they’ll say they’re glad we’re not so prideful that we can’t change it now,” said Rob Glaser, manager of the multimedia systems group at Microsoft.

THE TINIEST RADIO PACKET MODEM

Motorola’s Mobile Data Division recently introduced what it claims is the world’s smallest internal radio packet modem, some 73 percent smaller than any other that’s been introduced to date.

Its predecessor, the RPM400i, is already built into notebook computers like the IBM PCRadio (a big seller in the mobile workforce world) and the Poqet Communicating Computer. But the new modem, in addition to being much smaller, also uses much less power.

It’s designed to send and receive data over North American wireless data networks such as Ardis, co-owned by IBM and Motorola.

The RPM405i signals the start of an era of personal communication devices. The success of the Sharp Wizard, for example, is likely to be intensified by an upcoming model that contains a radio modem… . You get the message. So to speak.

SONY IRISTER TECHNOLOGY

Scientists around the world have long been searching for a way to increase the storage capacity and access speed of erasable optical storage media. By increasing density, more data can be stored on a disc, and that data could potentially be streamed off the disc at a faster rate.

While some, like Andreas Bechtolsheim (see Vol. 1, No. 3), have advocated the commercialization of blue-light lasers, which to date are still in the research phase, Sony Corporate Research Laboratories in Japan has created a technology to increase data densities on erasable magneto-optical discs using existing (as well as cheap and ubiquitous) red-light lasers.

Sony claims its new technology — called Irister, for Iris Thermal Eclipse Reading — can increase the capacity of standard 5.25-inch optical discs by a factor of six. This would enable the storage of four gigabytes of data on one disc.

Irister works with whatever laser technology is being used (i.e., red or blue), as it isn’t specific to wavelength but to how and what the laser reads off the disc. Therefore, blue laser-based erasable MO discs would show even greater improvements in data densities utilizing Irister, estimated by Sony as 20 times the density currently available.

Sony has applied for 35 patents for this technology. As for when we will see products based on the technology, Jonathan Hirshon, a Sony spokesperson, said, “to say that the technology is in the prototype stage is pushing it.”

NEW APPLICATION FOR PHOTOCD

Kodak’s PhotoCD technology has picked up a new application. MCI, one of the largest long distance telephone carriers, will offer to its largest corporate customers the option of receiving their long distance phone bill, along with graphs, charts and diagrams about their phone usage, on a compact disc.

MCI will not be distributing photographs; it has developed software that makes complex telecommunications billing more understandable and accessible to its customers.

Called “MCI Perspective,” it takes the raw billing data and creates customized graphic information. Previously, this type of information could only be distributed on huge amounts of paper, or mainframe computer tapes.

PhotoCD players, when introduced in mid-1992, will display photographs on a television set, but the discs will also be playable on CD-ROM/XA and CD-I drives for use with computers or in publishing applications. Integral to the scanning and playback of the information is the ability to produce economically a single, write-once CD-ROM. The latter development attracted MCI.

Kodak expects PhotoCD to be the catalyst to the development of many non-photographic applications that make use of the technologies developed for the system.