GOLDHABER THE LIKELY KALEIDA PICK

Though the rumor has been widely assumed to be true for much more than a week now, at press time (Monday, May 18) Berkeley-based venture capitalist Nat Goldhaber still had not been officially named CEO of Kaleida, the joint multimedia venture between Apple and IBM.

At this point, Goldhaber is still the president of Cole Gilburne Goldhaber & Ariyoshi Management Inc., which manages the Cole Gilburne investment fund. But he’s got a far more interesting background, strangely suited to the requirements of a chief executive for Kaleida.

From the mid-1960s to 1975,
worked with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In 1971, he established the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, IA. Meditation has been proven an effective antidote for stress.

During his time in Pennsylvania state politics (first as special assistant to Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton, also as interim director of the State Energy Agency), his biography states Goldhaber worked “to successfully end political cronyism in hiring and grant making.” During this time he also coordinated civil defense evacuation efforts during the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in March 1979. Both of these administrative skills are likely to be required at some time during a tenure at Kaleida.

In 1984, after starting one networking company (for CP/M computers) in Pennsylvania, Goldhaber returned to Berkeley, CA and founded Centram Systems West — by 1986, the first and only local area network to interconnect Macintosh and IBM computers. Such impartiality makes him instantly attractive to both parties.

A year after Sun Microsystems bought Centram, Goldhaber joined the Cole Gilburne venture fund, which had helped launch Centram West. Two successful companies on whose boards he serves are Mitch Kapor’s ON Technology and the networking company Shiva Corp. Someone who knows how to make money, not just dream up nifty products and technology, might prove useful at a company such as Kaleida.

So after all this time searching for, and, it seems, finding, the perfect person — what’s the hangup? A couple of sources say the powers that be don’t want to give Goldhaber a percentage of the startup.

If true, it would be interesting to meditate on the logic behind asking a venture capitalist to start a company and not offer him an equity stake.

OPENING THE RANDOM HOUSE ARCHIVES

As part of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of Random House’s Modern Library, the New York publishing giant announced a program that will allow The Voyager Company of Santa Monica, CA, to publish electronic editions —Expanded Books, in Voyager terms — of America’s most famous classic book series.

At a luncheon held in Random House’s Manhattan offices, some Random House executives — including Harold Evans, president and publisher and Condé Nast Publications (owner of Random House) chairman S.I. Newhouse — joined Apple Computer chairman John Sculley and Voyager’s co-founder Bob Stein for the announcement.

Evans said the first book to be “expanded” will be Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, also the first book to be published on paper under the imprint of the Modern Library. And to cap the announcement, he also announced the appointment of Christopher Cerf as chairman of the Modern Library.

Cerf is the son of Bennett Cerf, beloved American author and founder of Random House. But choosing the young Cerf is far from a sentimental gesture. He spent eight years at Random House as a senior editor before becoming editor-in-chief at Children’s Television Workshop Products Group, and is an Emmy and Grammy award-winning contributor to Sesame Street.

He’s also won several awards for software he’s co-developed with Apple Computer and Jim Henson, and his new position bodes well for those who would like to see more books published in electronic form. In fact, 10 Modern Library titles will be available from Voyager by year’s end. They’ll include classics by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Eudora Welty and Ralph Ellison.

As computers like Apple’s PowerBook — for which Voyager specifically designed its Expanded Books series — get smaller and more useful as readers, expect to see many more traditional publishing houses overcome their jitters about the digital format and start releasing “ebooks.”

CABLELABS TALKS DIGITAL DATA DELIVERY

Not one to let grass grow as the Baby Bells gear up to compete in information services, CableLabs has launched a program to set recommended guidelines for digital delivery of data and other services on cable TV systems.

CableLabs is an R&D consortium of cable TV system operators, representing more than 85 percent of the cable subscribers in the U.S. and almost half of those in Canada. The guidelines for data services will cover a wide range of capabilities, from one-way, narrow-bandwidth channels to two-way, interactive high-speed services.

In addition to the announcements of upcoming guidelines, CableLabs also announced that it’s teaming up with Xpress Information Services, based in Denver, CO, to work on recommended practices and procedures for cable delivery of news and information services. Xpress claims more than 800 cable systems in the U.S. receive its news feeds.

Even more interesting is CableLabs’ partnership with Vidéoway, the Quebec-based subsidiary of Le Groupe Vidéotron Itée, the largest cable company in Canada. Vidéoway is an interactive multimedia delivery system that’s available in almost a quarter of a million homes in Montreal and Quebec City.

The consortium’s move toward standards for data delivery isn’t much of a surprise. Nearly a year ago at the Seybold Digital World Conference, a Digital Equipment executive outlined a plan to telecommute via Ethernet over cable coax. As recently as last week, cable was being touted on business broadcasts as a way to telecommute efficiently from home offices.

USING CELLULAR VOICE NET FOR DATA

Competition is heating up in the cellular data network world. As you’ll recall from last month’s Digital Media, Motorola announced that it would open the protocols used in its ARDIS nationwide radio data network to spur the adoption of wireless communication by mobile workers, as well as to encourage vendors to manufacture compatible terminals and/or modem devices.

The benefit for users is the ability to transmit both voice and data from inexpensive cellular voice-type equipment.

ARDIS is a joint venture between IBM and Motorola, which manages the largest wireless data network in the country, covering 80 percent of the population and 90 percent of the business activity in the U.S.

And just after we went to press last month, a sweeping cooperative effort between a group of cellular carriers — and, surprise! IBM — was announced to support development of an open industry standard for wireless data communications.

Under the deal, nine major carriers — Ameritech Mobile Communications, Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems, Contel Cellular, GTE Mobilnet, McCaw Cellular Communications, Nynex Mobile Communications, PacTel Cellular, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems and US West Cellular —will work to develop IBM’s CelluPlan technology.

CelluPlan allows data to be transmitted across existing cellular networks without disrupting or degrading voice traffic, without requiring additional system capability and without requiring more bandwidth on the spectrum.

The benefit for users is the ability to transmit both voice and data from inexpensive cellular voice-type equipment without having to buy more expensive equipment. Field trials will start in midsummer in San Jose, CA.

SPIGOT A GUSHING SUCCESS FOR ADOBE AND SUPERMAC

Word on the street is that SuperMac Technology’s VideoSpigot digital video capture cards are a runaway success for the Sunnyvale, CA-based company, accounting for about 25 percent of the firm’s revenue as it launches into its first public stock offering.

The bundling deal with Adobe Systems, which bought the Premiere software (formerly known as ReelTime) from SuperMac last fall, has been so successful that the two companies plan to continue it “on a long-term basis.” VideoSpigot alone sells for $599, Premiere for $495. But the software is now included free with all Macintosh NuBus and IIsi versions of the video capture board.

SuperMac claims that it sold more than 18,000 VideoSpigot units in the first 100 days of shipment, which it says by sheer volume makes it the “worldwide standard” for digitizing video.

This, however, is a dubious distinction, since as yet there is no facility for output.

JAPANESE MOVE ON VIDEO PHONES

Communications Tokyo ‘92, a moderate-size exhibition about a half-hour out of downtown Tokyo, recently highlighted how far Japanese companies have come in developing video phones.

Using the international video codec (H.261) standard, most major companies exhibited small video phones using 56-kbs (kilobit per second) ISDN protocols to provide not quite full-motion color video on a small screen.

Hitachi’s version, which has been shown in the United States, was priced at $6,000 to $8,000, typical of the offerings from both NEC and OKI. More advanced versions that utilize the full 2B+D ISDN capacity (two voice-grade 56-kbs lines, plus a 9,600-baud data channel) provide higher resolution and full-motion video on a 13-inch monitor, and include the capability to simultaneously send Group 3 fax and data from computers.

Such systems continue to cost more than $20,000, but expectations are that 56-kbs phone systems would drop to less than $2,500 in two years, and full-motion systems with 13-inch monitors would come down to less than $10,000.

PACBELL PLANS DIGITAL MOVIE DELIVERY

Every once in a while, a story captures the imagination of the business press and it spreads across the country like a firestorm. That’s what happened at the end of April when regional Bell Operating Company Pacific Bell cut loose with the news that it was planning to develop a system, and accompanying service, to transmit digital video over fiber-optic phone lines to movie theaters.

The system “could,” of course, eliminate the cost of duplicating film — with digital, it’s stored on a server and the movie house of the hour dials up and downloads it into the theater, allegedly saving movie studios some $500 million per year, according to PacBell.

But the system, demonstrated at the Texpo trade show in Anaheim, CA, earlier this month by PacBell and Sony Pictures Entertainment, still has one slight hurdle to overcome: there’s no way to project digital movies onto a screen. Many companies, PacBell says, are working on the light-valve problem. But industry observers say the technology is not much past the demonstration stage. Image quality is said to still be “horrible” compared to film.

However, to be fair, it really is only a matter of time before this type of distribution is feasible from a quality standpoint. Then, of course, comes the next set of problems: how movie studios protect these massive data streams from pirates, for example, or from the digital graffiti artists who might want to divert a data stream and insert a scene or two of their own.

WHEN DIGITAL MEDIA COLLIDES WITH LAW

It is actually possible to lose sleep over certain questions if you’re someone who has been a pioneer in conducting commerce across the data networks. For example, is an electronic signature legally binding? Can you admit a computer message into courtroom evidence? Why does electronic data interchange raise evidence and recordkeeping issues?

Though he has not yet started to deal with the ramifications of data types other than text and numbers, Dallas attorney Benjamin Wright has done many year’s worth of research into the issues surrounding what’s called EDI, or electronic data interchange.

He’s written a book on the subject called, The Law of Electronic Commerce: EDI, Fax and E-mail: Technology, Proof and Liability. Since many of the legal questions around new technologies have yet to be proven in the nation’s courtrooms, Wright’s book — which is concerned with technologies decidedly less sexy than digital video and interactive multimedia — may be one way for companies to do a little advance preparation for what’s to come as far as doing real business online.

20,000 ONLINE CONSUMERS RESPOND

The Interactive Services Association of Silver Spring, MD, has just released results of the first “cross-system” national consumer online survey — for sale to members only, sorry — that shows a 20 percent increase in consumer online users.

More than 60 percent of the survey’s respondents said they use online services several times a week, and said they’d only begun using online services in the past three years.

Nearly a third of the 20,000 respondents said they’ve been using an online service for less than a year —an impressive showing of new users, which shows that the growth of online services certainly is not confined to technical types on the Internet (see Digital Media, Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 19).

The survey allowed users to identify ten different categories of services that they regularly access, including software downloading, computer services, E-mail, discussion, general news, financial information, education, games, travel reservations and shopping.

Interesting note: In all categories except games, says ISA, there was an increase in interest and use after users began logging on regularly.

The ISA is a nonprofit trade association for interactive service vendors in the cable, consumer electronics, computer, online, newspaper, broadcasting, direct marketing and telephony industries.

MORE ABOUT THE INTERNET

For those still hungry for information on the Internet, even after last month’s piece on the subject (see Digital Media, Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 19), SRI International has released the first two volumes of the Internet Information Series.

The first volume, Internet: Getting Started, is a comprehensive overview and describes what the Internet is and how to join it, various types of access and procedures for obtaining a network number and domain name.

The second volume, Internet: Mailing Lists, helps users contact others with similar interests. Complete information on how to subscribe to each of the 700-plus electronic discussion forums is included.

For more information, contact SRI’s Network Information Systems Center, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025; phone (415) 859-6387, fax (415) 859-6028 or E-mail to nisc@nisc.sri.com.