WIRELESS ACCESS IS IN THE CARDS

After two years in development, Silicon Valley-based startup Wireless Access unveiled its first-generation “all-in-one” PCMCIA card that can provide multiple communication services for personal digital assistants and mobile computing devices.

The AccessCard conforms to the form factor mandated for the PCMCIA card architecture — the credit-card-size circuit board that slips into electronic devices to add additional functionality and memory — but it packs some custom (patents pending) design concepts and technology that to date have left it without competition.

In its initial release, AccessCard will provide one-way messaging services and is the first such device to include a high-powered antenna inside the card to prevent breakage.

In addition, the card has what Judy Owen, president and CEO of Wireless Access, calls an “object-based communications design environment.” The company has developed an application-specific digital signal processing (DSP) architecture so that multiple communication services can be placed on the same silicon without compromising functionality. The DSP is designed so that these “communication objects” are only activated as needed.

Potentially this architecture will enable the company to provide multiple communication services running independently on one PCMCIA card. According to Owen, this will allow the company to help customers migrate to better solutions as communication infrastructures change over the years.

An additional benefit of the AccessCard’s ability to use only the services called upon is a power-conserving architecture and, therefore, extended battery life. According to Owen, the card has a battery life of about 30 days for one-way paging — better than most of today’s standard pagers. The card can be powered internally or by the machine hosting it.

AccessCard supports all 900-MHz paging carrier services and is capable of supporting 16 “cap codes” — a feat even its closest rival Motorola cannot match — which allows paging carriers to provide a wide range of information and communications services.

The AccessCard, which is expected to be available to consumers this December for about $400, is initially being licensed to mobile computer manufacturers and companies providing communication services. Wireless Access has received agreements from BellSouth MobileComm and SkyTel. Both companies plan to distribute the card — under their respective labels — and their paging services in bundled packages. Owen says the company will make more announcements regarding the support of additional paging carriers in the coming months.

The company has also won the support of two of the existing handheld computing devices: Hewlett-Packard’s HP100LX and the Casio Zoomer. Both manufacturers demonstrated the AccessCard running on their systems at the Telocator Conference in New Orleans last month and have publicly announced their support for the technology. Wireless Access says it is in discussions with several other mobile computer makers, including Microsoft and Apple Computer.

The company has received more than $6 million in funding from venture capital companies and strategic partners. They include Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; Hook Partners; Olivetti Ventures, the investment unit of Olivetti; and Mtel Technologies, a unit of Mobile Telecommunications Technologies Corp. Also included are three Japanese firms: JAFCO, Nippon Enterprise Development and Kawasaki Steel Corp.

BMG, ION JOIN TO FORM INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LABEL

In its first foray into the emerging interactive entertainment field, the Bertelsmann Music Group, the $3 billion-a-year company that is a division of Bertelsmann AG, the second largest media conglomerate in the world, recently announced that it has partnered with Ion, a small, interactive media startup based in California. The two companies hope to turn Ion into an interactive entertainment label on par with BMG’s traditional entertainment labels, which include RCA Records, Arista and Ariola.

The multimillion dollar deal — an exact figure was not disclosed — is the culmination of about eight months of discussions between the four founders of Ion (which we covered in depth in Vol. 2, No. 12, p. and BMG’s Christian Jorg, who is now vice president of BMG’s New Technologies division. The New Technologies group was founded in June with a charter to explore and integrate emerging technologies and cultivate talent through Bertelsmann’s worldwide distribution network.

The joint venture provides BMG with a 50 percent equity stake in Ion. In addition, it provides the music giant with a foothold in the emerging digital entertainment market. “Let’s face it,” said Jorg in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, “we don’t know how to program CD-ROMs. But we do have capital, distribution and access to repertoire.” (Repertoire in this case includes BMG’s music and video libraries — which include Elvis Presley’s recordings as well as access to individual recording artists.)

For Ion, which to date has no revenue and no product, the pact offers a much needed cash infusion.

According to John Eric Greenberg, president of Ion, the deal will provide the core members of the multimedia publishing startup with their first paychecks in a year. It will also provide them with access to BMG’s vast content libraries and its video and audio retail channels as they become more established as distribution outlets for CD-ROM. (Ion will initially distribute its interactive content through mail order software catalogs and direct mail.)

One of the most important aspects of the Ion/BMG joint venture is that Ion will remain an independent company from BMG.

While the two companies have formed a management committee consisting of two executives from BMG and two of the founding members of Ion, both claim Ion will ultimately be responsible for developing and implementing its own business plan. Ion will be free to work with media companies outside of the Bertelsmann family umbrella and can do work for hire on outside interactive publishing projects, according to Greenberg.

“If we don’t start producing [i.e., turning a profit] in the next few years, BMG is going to start coming down on us,” says Greenberg. “They are in business after all, but for the next few years we have a chance to prove ourselves and really try to make our mark in the new entertainment industry.”

Ion’s first title is expected to be released early next year. It is an interactive music CD-ROM based on David Bowie’s recent hit single, Jump They Say. The title, which was expected to ship in June, has been delayed because Ion is in the process of patenting technology it developed while creating the CD-ROM.

The company plans to release three or four additional titles next year, according to Greenberg. Although BMG and Ion will not discuss what those titles might be, Greenberg says an interactive compilation based on RCA’s extensive jazz library is not unlikely. In addition it makes sense that Ion would take advantage of RCA’s extensive Presley library.

Since the Ion announcement, BMG corporate has announced a deal with TeleCommunications, Inc. to form an interactive music channel that will enable viewers who have cable to buy music videos and related merchandise and services directly. Although details on the service were unavailable at press time, the national launch of the music channel is expected in mid-1994.

MCCAW’S CLAIRCOM SIGNS AIR-TO-GROUND SYSTEM DEALS

As promised by Craig McCaw at Seybold’s Digital World conference in June, the fully digital, nationwide, air-to-ground communications system operated by Claircom Communications, a joint venture of McCaw Cellular and Hughes Network Systems, now allows continuous call connectivity across the nation. This means that passengers on cross-country flights could be connected during the entire flight and never drop the call. The company has also recently signed agreements with five major international airlines for air-to-ground communications services.

By early next year, in-flight capabilities will include information services such as real-time stock quotes, news headlines, in-flight shopping services and arrival information such as weather connecting gates, customs clearance, airline, hotel and car rental reservations, according to the company. Claircom is not providing the in-flight services or even video screens. The company will look to other companies, such as Nintendo on Northwest’s fleet, to provide these services. (For more on Nintendo’s planned services, see Vol. 3, No. 3, p. 22.)

Claircom’s continuous call connectivity technology is made possible by software developed by Claircom and AT&T. Since Claircom’s founding more than two years ago, AT&T and Claircom have been close technical partners. In August, AT&T acquired McCaw and, consequently, 51 percent of Claircom. The two companies expect to continue working together much as they had before the acquisition, according to Todd Wolfenbarger, spokesperson for Claircom. (For more on AT&T and McCaw, see Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 3.)

Long-distance, in-flight calls using the Claircom AirOne system are routed through AT&T’s network. By employing a technology called call hand-off, calls are never cut off as they drift out of one service area. In addition, passengers using the AirOne system have access to the same AT&T calling services as they would on the ground, including calling card calls, commercial credit card calls, operator assisted calls, 0+ dialing and AT&T Language Line Service.

In order to increase call security, all calls and information entered on the phones (such as credit card numbers) are coded and encoded during transmission. The system is not foolproof, but Wolfenbarger says it is more secure than analog cellular systems. “The nice thing about running a digital signal is that you can continually upgrade the software to increase security,” says Wolfenbarger.

During the past year, Claircom has signed contracts with Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and, most recently, Air France and American Airlines to provide air-to-ground communications for passengers. Claircom will install phones in the seat backs and hand rests of more than 1,400 planes in the fleets of these airlines.

Claircom says its AirOne phones will be compatible with whatever in-flight entertainment service is chosen by the airline. AirOne phones include controls to work with these services. Flush-mounted buttons on the side of phones can control functions such as on-screen scrolling or video game action. Also, RJ-11 jacks for communications devices are being added to phones, according to Wolfenbarger.

3DO MAY PROVIDE TECHNOLOGY FOR US WEST ITV TRIAL

In a highly irregular move, 3DO made public its agreement with US West to supply its graphics engine technology for use in a US West interactive television trial that is still pending FCC approval. According to sources close to the deal, 3DO appears to have pre-announced that it will be a service provider — as a subcontractor to the actual settop terminal manufacturer — if the Federal Communications Commission gives US West the nod to move forward on its proposed video dialtone testbed in Omaha, NB.

Not surprisingly, the announcement came the same week that Panasonic released its $700 REAL brand 3DO Interactive Multiplayer into retails stores nationwide.

According to 3DO’s chief operating officer Hugh Martin, the company will supply its 32-bit RISC chip technology as well as its parallel processing technology for US West’s proposed two-way broadband trial in Omaha. The trial, if approved, will be the largest ITV trial in the United States, with the actual two-way broadband technology passing about 60,000 homes. US West expects that 9,000 homes will actually participate.

According to Martin, the strategy behind the proposed US West trial is to “prove out the technology and to understand the buying habits of the public.” He says US West selected 3DO because the platform exists and because developers are already creating programming for the player. To date, some 150 3DO software licensees are actually developing content.

“If you look at the economics of a trial today, it is really tough to justify developing interactive programming that will only reach 4,000 homes,” he says. “But in our case, we already have content [in the form of the] titles being developed for the Multiplayer.”

Martin says 3DO will create a file format conversion tool for the Multiplayer that will allow 3DO content to be accessed via US West’s ITV servers.

US West declined to comment on why the telco selected 3DO. “We do not make public the reasons why or why not we choose a service provider,” says Terri Howell of US West. “We explain the reasoning behind our decisions to each of the companies involved.”

In addition, US West declined to publicly name other service providers expected to participate in the Omaha test, since the two-way broadband trial is still pending FCC approval. It is rumored, however, that Scientific Atlanta will develop settop box technology and that Digital Equipment Corp. will supply the server hardware. (Martin says that the settop terminal will have a connector on the back to plug in a CD-ROM drive.)

For US West, FCC approval cannot come fast enough. Not only will it mean an end to the rumor mill — the telco says it will identify its selected service providers if and when the FCC okays the trial — but will also give it an opportunity to get to work before winter begins in Nebraska.

“Under the best of circumstances we would have liked to have begun work [laying cable underground] in July,” says Howell. “We do not want to disrupt the lives of the people involved in the trial by digging up the ground around them and leaving it like that until after winter.”

US West plans to initially conduct a technical trial in Omaha, which includes four to six months of developing and testing the hybrid, ITV system. Then the company plans to begin the actual market trial, which is expected to last about one year. The deal between 3DO and US West is non-exclusive.

SCHOLASTIC ROLLS OUT ONLINE SERVICE

Scholastic Corp., one of the nation’s leading publishers and distributors of children’s books, classroom and professional magazines and other educational materials, recently launched an online service called the Scholastic Network. The Scholastic Network, or SOL for Scholastic Online, provides education professionals in K–12 with access to curriculum materials, lesson plans, news and classroom-tested ideas and activities. Several hundred schools were members of the network at the time of the launch, according to John Lent, director of Washington, DC-based Scholastic Network.

The company’s foray into the online business was prompted by unsolicited input from educators. “We started to hear from educators saying, ‘Are you online? Can we send you an article online?’” says Lent.

Working exclusively with the America Online service, a test of SOL involving more than 20 educators across the U.S. has been in progress since February. Scholastic purposely enlisted people who weren’t familiar with online technologies because “that’s our marketplace,” says Lent. “Most teachers haven’t had experience with telecommunications.” The objective was to create a service that was useful and easy to use.

Lent said they quickly discovered that teachers most valued a high level of interaction on the network. By far the most popular feature of the service were forums in which teachers would exchange advice and offer support on issues ranging from the first day of school to ways to teach certain subjects and strategies for dealing with difficult classroom situations.

SOL says the network is designed primarily for educators, rather than students, because the installed base of computers in the classroom is very low. While in the 1992-93 school year, some 98 percent of the 103,000 public and private K–12 schools in the U.S. had computers in the classroom, the ratio of students to computers was 16 to 1, according to a study by Market Data Retrieval.

Despite the figures, several forums for kids exist on SOL. Once a week, the network hosts a forum with children and young adult authors. Kids are encouraged to ask the author questions and share story ideas. Other areas designed for kids include a kids publishing center for posting original poems, letters and essays, tag team writing projects to encourage collaborative work, and a “you gotta read this” area for book recommendations.

In addition, Scholastic sponsors nationwide student investigation projects in which classes across the nation team up to solve curriculum-based problems. Scholastic expects that teachers will monitor student’s use of the service.

Several different kinds of tiered accounts are available. Schools can buy a basic account with five hours free online time a month for $295 a year. The most expensive offering is 20 hours for $1,375. Each account allows five private mail boxes. Individual memberships begin at $16.95 a month for five hours of service. With a minimum of five accounts per school, schools can purchase a private area on the network for $6,500 a year. For school districts that subscribe to a minimum of 20 school accounts, the cost is $1,000.

“This is relatively inexpensive compared to what some schools have spent on technology,” says Lent. “We think this will bring some new life to old hardware in schools. Some people may dust off some old IBMs and Apple IIs which work with this service.”

Still, Lent admits, the cost may prohibit some schools from participating. He says Scholastic is working with experts in government to learn how resources such as chapter funding and federal grant money, frequently allocated to poor school districts, could be directed toward the network and other new technologies.

ZENITH DEBUTS HOMEWORKS FOR CABLE-PC CONNECTIVITY

Zenith Electronics Corp. recently announced a new interface for personal computers and cable television systems that uses the cable pipeline, fiber optic or coaxial, to send data to PCs. The system, called HomeWorks, is being tested by TeleCommunications, Inc. and Utah Valley Community Network in cooperation with Zenith.

HomeWorks is designed for home office computing, electronic resource services and distance learning applications that require large amounts of data to be sent over a network. Zenith hopes the technology will be adopted for use by business, in particular the finance, legal and medical communities, as well as schools.

Before consumers or businesses can access any cable-PC services, Zenith must convince cable companies to dedicate a portion of their conduit to the system. The system is being marketed to cable companies primarily as a way to expand their revenue and increase their service offerings, according to John Taylor, spokesperson for Zenith. Zenith has not announced any deals with cable companies.

With HomeWorks, a single cable TV channel can be split to carry four subchannels of data that can operate at 500 kilobits per second, according to Zenith. Its performance is faster than a 9,600 bits per second telephone modem or even ISDN at 56 kbps, claims the company. In addition, data can exist alongside regular cable TV channels without interference to either transmission.

TeleCommunications, Inc., Zenith and Utah Valley Community Network, a group founded to promote the development of community networks in Utah, are conducting distance learning trials of the technology in Provo, UT. The test, which has been ongoing since July, has involved more than a dozen institutions and individuals, including Brigham Young University.

In the home, Zenith’s new HomeWorks gateway product was used to provide access from a personal computer to a Novell-based learning server located in the TCI business office. The learning server contained files and data provided by schools and institutions involved in the test. For example, BYU used the system to allow its 30,000-plus students to access the school’s file server outside of the over crowded, on-campus computer lab. Other tests, with participants such as Salt Lake City-based System Integration and Analysis, involved sending video and multimedia data over the system.

“Most of the people who have seen it have been excited and said the quality was great, especially the data-transfer rates and the cost,” says Paul Venturella, general manager of TCI Cablevision of Utah. The goal of the test for TCI was to try out the system in a variety of settings. The groups involved did not conduct measured experiments or studies. Venturella says TCI does not have any immediate plans to implement the technology.

A HomeWorks PC gateway card and RF modem should be available by year’s end or early next year for $495, according to Zenith. A higher end system called LAN 4000, which is capable of operating at 4 Mbps, will be also available. The $895 system is intended for commercial applications.

C-CUBE SHIPS REAL-TIME MPEG ENCODER

C-Cube Microsystems has announced that production quantities of real-time MPEG digital video encoders will be available in the first quarter of 1994.

Though some are still trying to figure out what digital video is good for, others say that we’ve been held back from knowing by the lack of real-time compression technology. Scott St. Clair of Milpitas, CA-based C-Cube says, for example, that JVC — the company that did the first MPEG-based product in the world — designed non-real-time encoders to compress the 6,000 karaoke titles it offered with its Digital Vision product.

“It took them a year and a half to encode 6,000 titles; that’s too long,” says St. Clair. “It’s an enormous impediment — it takes 40 times as long as if you could just do it one-to-one. You just can’t make a business out of (digital video) without real-time encoding.”

The products, called CLM4600 and CLM4500, are based on C-Cube’s VideoRISC Compression Architecture and provides the same quality as an offline encoder. St. Clair claims the processor is “very programmable,” so much so that it can be used for MPEG2, MPEG1 and JPEG compression and decompression in real time.

“This is the first microprocessor developed specifically to process video as a data type,” says St. Clair. “There will be others that conform to the architecture, in the ‘better, faster, cheaper’ Silicon Valley paradigm.” But, he claims, they’ll all be backward compatible so that applications developed on today’s chips will run on C-Cube’s next generation processor.

C-Cube’s announced customers for the new encoder chips include Scientific-Atlanta, Compression Labs, TV/Com and Japan Business Television, which have designed the high-end chipset into satellite uplink and cable head-end encoders. Supporters of the consumer chipset, the CLM4500, include JVC, Commodore, Sony and 3DO.

MOXY, THE FIRST REAL-TIME CARTOON, UNVEILED

At an event that was surreal for the children in attendance and a thrill for those who’ve been waiting for the technology of real-time animation to hit prime time, San Francisco-based Colossal Pictures and the Cartoon Network unveiled Moxy — TV’s first real-time-animated cartoon character — late last month in New York City.

Moxy, a canine janitor whose distinctive voice and rabid personality is provided by comic Bob “Bobcat” Goldthwait, is powered by a Silicon Graphics computer and character animation software invented by Brad deGraf, director of new media for Colossal.

Though similar in concept to the VActor (virtual actor) system sold by Pasadena, CA-based Simgraphics, de-Graf, along with his former partner Michael Wahrman, pioneered the design and concept of performance animation software and showed it publicly for the first time at a computer graphics expo in 1988.

At the Moxy debut, Goldthwait controlled the character’s mouth movements through a special program while the designer of Moxy’s character, John Stevenson, “puppeteered” Moxy’s body.

The result — Moxy smart-talking to people in the audience from his monitor at the front of the crowd — definitely entranced the children in attendance. But it was doubtless a bigger thrill for those adults in the audience who’ve been looking for a way to lower the cost and time-to-market of animated figures.

Stuart Cudlitz, creative director of new media for Colossal, says that characters created with its real-time animation system were “designed to be performable. No matter what the character does, it’s acting,” he says.

That’s because, deGraf says, the animation software is designed so that any subtle motion by the puppeteer becomes expressive: the fingers of a hand at rest droop down, a raised knee drops the foot from the ankle.

Both De Graf and Cudlitz think performance animation has a future in the creation of CD-ROM content, since an actor could perform every iteration of a character in a fraction of the time it would take to animate manually. “It’s much better than using someone else’s authoring system,” Cudlitz says.

Moxy will make his public debut on Friday, Nov. 26 — a massive TV viewing day — as the host of the Great International Toon-In cartoon marathon, which will be seen on six different networks including the Cartoon Network, TBS Superstation and TNT. All six Turner Entertainment Networks will pre-empt their regular schedules for 14 hours of animation.

MEDIA VISION LAUNCHES FIRST TITLES

After five months of development, Fremont, CA-based Media Vision, a multimedia hardware company that founded a software publishing division this past May, is ready to release its first four titles.

All of the titles were developed for Media Vision by outside producers. The titles fall into two general categories: children’s educational and entertainment, and interactive videos and games. They are available on Macintosh and IBM-compatible platforms for $59.95 (Garden and Peak Performance) and $79.95 (Quantum Gate and Critical Path).

Quantum Gate, is the first in a series of science fiction adventure CD-ROM titles to be developed by Bellevue, WA-based Hyperbole Studios for Media Vision. Quantum Gate features more than 1,000 pages of text, almost two hours of video, as well as music and a multi-layered, 3D software interface developed by Hyperbole known as VirtualCinema. (For more on Hyperbole, see Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 49 and Vol. 2, No. 10/11, p. 17.)

The Forever Growing Garden, is an animated interactive title primarily for children ages 4–8. In Garden, which was developed by San Francisco-based C-Wave, players can plant and tend botanically correct gardens (which grow in real time even when the computer is off), play games and listen to music.

Peak Performance, the third title, features a race across the United States in which players earn points by answering trivia questions and participating in experiences such as hollering contests or a visit to the world’s smallest police station. The title, developed by Ken Bell Productions of Cambridge, MA, features video clips and still images from tourist attractions in the U.S.

The fourth title is Critical Path, an action-adventure game developed by San Francisco-based Mechadeus. Critical Path follows the adventures of Kat, a 24-year old renegade helicopter pilot who must navigate through dangerous terrain inhabited by a gang of thugs and an insane dictator. Video and animation are integrated into the game.

Based on the descriptions of these titles, they do not sound like breakthrough new media (we have not had an opportunity to review the titles). Stan Cornyn, founder and former president and CEO of Warner New Media and now executive VP of Media Vision, says these titles are the first offerings from a new and growing publishing division. His objective is to develop “intelligent” titles based on original content. The group will create a significant number of titles in house (with gestation periods of nine months or more), and will also maintain close relations with a number of outside content developers, according to Cornyn.

The Media Vision Multimedia Publishing group is headed by Cornyn and Min Yee, former publisher of Microsoft Press and VP of Microsoft’s multimedia division, now executive VP of Media Vision. Cornyn and Yee maintain separate offices of less than 10 employees each in the greater Hollywood and Seattle areas respectively. (Yee also coordinates development with Hyperbole Studios, a new media developer under contract with Media Vision to create several interactive titles for the company.) The two divisions of the publishing group function independently, but “not at odds” with each other, says Cornyn. “We individually create what we think is interesting.”

The first titles developed in house at Media Vision will be available in June, according to Cornyn. Cornyn says the content of titles from the group “will be all over the map.” Generally, though, they will leave the 8–14-year-old boys market to Nintendo, Sega and others.

Cornyn and Yee were lured to the new publishing division because it offered an escape from the “burden of content” that they had found in their previous positions, according to Cornyn. “Both of us knew the good conditions for doing [new media publishing] — to start fresh and not bring with you an existing medium, but to start anew,” Cornyn says. “There has been a lot of talk of content companies getting together with computer companies and that makes for a rather awkward pairing. That leads to adapting and not creating.”

Media Vision corporate in Fremont provides the publishing division with sales, manufacturing and testing resources. Approximately 10 Fremont employees work exclusively with the publishing division, according to Cornyn. Initially, the company will target proven channels for distribution, says Cornyn. Titles will be sold primarily in software retail outlets and by direct mail.

The company is keeping an eye on other distribution channels as well as developing for CD-I, 3DO and interactive cable. “When these mediums seem right to us, we will adapt,” says Cornyn. “We are future-proofing ourselves for these technologies.”

An additional six titles, including a series of multimedia daily planners, will be released by Christmas, according to the company.

INTERACTIVE TV SPECTRUM LICENSED IN NINE U.S. CITIES

The Federal Communications Commission has been busy this month. In addition to appointing Reed Hundt as its new chairman and announcing rules for PCS (see story, p. 21), the regulatory body announced tentative licensees for interactive video and data services (IVDS) in nine U.S. cities. An IVDS license gives the holder the right to operate a radio frequency-based interactive television service in a particular market or service area.

The licenses, selected by a random lottery, have not yet been finalized. For the next 60–75 days, the FCC will be reviewing secondary paperwork filed by the winners after the drawing. In this paperwork, the prospective licensees must show that they plan to meet the technical and engineering requirements as well as a rollout schedule for service established by the FCC. The FCC requires that IVDS licensees cover 10 percent of their service area in the first year, 30 percent in the third year and 50 percent by the fifth year. To deter speculators, the FCC has ruled that the licenses cannot be sold until the system is built.

The 18 IVDS licensees will have access to one-half megahertz of radio spectrum for broadcasting interactive data services in their market. The markets for IVDS include New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Dallas and Houston. The total number of television households served by these areas is 21,794,200, representing 23 percent of the 92 million households in the U.S., according to the FCC.

Although the applicant pool of more than 4,100 included major telephone, computer and media companies such as IBM, Bell Atlantic and NBC, the winners were primarily individuals and investor groups.

Several companies, such as Eon Corp. and Interactive Network (see Vol. 3, Nos. 3 and 4, respectively), say they are courting prospective licensees to adopt their interactive television technology and programming. Eon and Interactive Network provide data transmission via radio spectrum for interactive television programming. Neither Eon nor IN would comment on whether they had reached agreement with any prospective IVDS licensees.

So far, details about what the IVDS system will look like and the functionalities the sliver of radio spectrum will deliver are hazy. The winners of the lottery have not publicly disclosed their plans for developing the infrastructure or the content that will be delivered on the systems. However, the fact that licensees are capable of operating outside the yet-unbuilt interactive cable system may present some interesting opportunities for programmers who see ways to add value in the broadcast TV market.

MASSIVE LISTING OF PUBLIC DOMAIN MUSIC NOW AVAILABLE

As the cost of licensing intellectual property becomes an increasingly visible issue in the making of interactive media, developers may be happy to know that noted copyright and licensing specialist Barbara Zimmerman recently published The Mini-Encyclopedia of Public Domain Songs. Zimmerman claims this is the most complete listing of music now in the public domain. Any piece of music listed in this book can be used in any way free of charge.

Zimmerman is the president of BZ/Rights Stuff, Inc., a copyright clearance agency operating out of New York. She specializes in acquiring rights to music, public figures, film and video footage, literary works and graphic images for advertising, film and interactive multimedia projects.

Her book includes more than 600 listings of songs that are no longer controlled by copyright law. They are sorted by alphabetical listing as well as category, such as classical, traditional, children’s, holiday, etc. The catalog also includes composers and lyricists, as well as where the song originated, i.e., in a musical, movie or opera.

Some of the music listed include works of Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy; the music from The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan; “Meet Me in St. Louis,” by Andrew Sterling and Kerry Mills; and the traditional Irish folk song, “Molly Malone (Cockles and Mussels).”

A caveat: while the music itself is available for use, a particular performance may not be. Unless you make your own recording of a public domain song, you still may be required to clear performance rights and pay royalties. The book preface lists these “important cautions” detailing many of the copyright issues that still face users of public domain material.

The book will be available from BZ/Rights Stuff, Inc. for $299, which includes free telephone consultation on specific song usage questions. Every year, as new material enters the public domain, BZ/Rights Stuff publishes updates to the encyclopedia.

WINDOWS SOUND SYSTEM SUPPORTS TRUESPEECH

Just one year after Microsoft introduced its Windows Sound System technology, targeted toward business users who wanted to add voice annotations to their spreadsheets, the company has released a new version of the hardware/software audio computing tool that is designed to attract individuals outside of the business environment.

The system, which was made public in early October, is available in a software-only version that includes a custom-designed (and very cool looking) standalone directional microphone for $79. (A sound card is required to use this version.) The second version is a complete audio package that includes software, microphone, a set of headphones and 16-bit audio board for $289.

In addition to improvements in basic functionality, the new system has an advanced version of Microsoft’s Voice Pilot speech recognition technology. According to Bob McBreen, audio products group manager at Microsoft, Voice Pilot now includes the ability to switch from application to application, and easily create voice macros. Also new is a two-step confirmation process to deter cretinous coworkers from using a voice command to shut down your computer as they breeze by your desk, and expanded vocabularies.

Perhaps the most significant addition to Windows Sound System 2.0 is its integration of TrueSpeech, an audio compression technology developed by the DSP Group of Santa Clara, CA. The DSP Group developed the first chipset that could store messages on silicon rather than magnetic tape, and originally created the TrueSpeech algorithm for the digital telephone answering device market. DSP then licensed the technology to Compaq and Microsoft. Other licensees are expected to be announced during the next few months.

TrueSpeech compression is based on mathematical algorithms (patent pending) that are derived from the way airflow from the lungs is shaped by the throat, mouth and tongue when we speak.

According to the DSP Group, TrueSpeech converts these bursts of air, or words, into digital numbers that describe the bursts and the action of the vocal tract. Representing speech this way is up to 20 times more efficient than other methods of digital voice storage. For example, a one-minute long voice file that uses other PC audio technology would consume as much one megabyte, according to the company. With TrueSpeech, the company says the same file would be just more than 60 kilobytes with no noticeable degradation in sound quality.

The TrueSpeech technology was impressive in a demonstration we listened to. While certainly not matching audio CD quality sound, the technology offers sound quality that is more than adequate for voice mail, voice annotation, dictation and computer-based video conferencing and teleconferencing.

LAW LIBRARIES COPYRIGHT COMMITTEE EXAMINES NOTICES

As digital and interactive media commence to bend the definitions of intellectual property on an ad hoc basis, groups like Project Gutenberg — the not-for-profit, volunteer organization that hopes to distribute a billion public domain electronic texts, which it calls “e-texts,” by the year 2000 — and others who support more open access to information are paying closer attention than most to the letter of today’s copyright law.

For example, Project Gutenberg recently reported via electronic mail that the American Association of Law Libraries Copyright Committee is working on a project to collect examples of copyright notices that attempt to place more restrictions on use of materials than the standard “Copyright 19xx” statement does.

“Many Gutenberg volunteers have expressed ire in the past at particular notices,” said Mary Brandt Jensen, a professor of law at the University of South Dakota, in a news bulletin from Project Gutenberg’s headquarters in Urbana, IL. She asks that anyone with a favorite “abusive” notice send her a photocopy or fax of the notice, which she will forward it to the committee.

“I would tend to include all those that claim ‘All Rights Reserved’ when parts are obviously Public Domain material,” adds Project Gutenberg’s director Michael Hart. It would behoove hopeful multimedia developers who repackage public domain material for profit to be careful of how they relabel their new products.

Notices can be sent to Jensen in care of the University of South Dakota School of Law, 414 East Clark Street, Vermillion, SD 57069; fax (605) 677-6357.

WHITE HOUSE GOES ONLINE

Have an opinion on President Clinton’s health care reform proposal? Want to put in your two cents about the President’s plan to reinvent government? Among the many things the new presidential administration has tackled since entering office is the installation of an electronic mail system.

For the first time in U.S. history, the President and the Vice President can be reached via the Internet. Their addresses are President@WhiteHouse.GOV and Vice-President@WhiteHouse.GOV. You can also correspond with the White House via online services such as America Online (keyword Whitehouse or Clinton), Compuserve (go Whitehouse), The Well (type Whitehouse), Fidonet (see Echomail Whitehouse) and Peacenet or Econet (see pol.govinfo.usa).

But you may want to hold off on penning any impassioned political treatises or poison pen letters. Neither Bill nor Al reads the E-mail at this address. E-mail sent to the White House serves primarily as a source of immediate feedback on issues for the administration, much in the same way as calls to a senator or member of Congress does today. All E-mail messages are immediately acknowledged with a receipt, but are read, recorded and tallied by subject matter at a later date.

By the end of the year, the White House hopes the system will be capable of sending out tailored responses. For now, however, E-mail messages are printed out and responses are sent via U.S. Mail, so if you send a message to the White House, they ask that all communications include a return address.

HP, TIME WARNER TO DEVELOP PRINTERS FOR ITV SERVICES

As Digital Media went to press, Time Warner and Hewlett-Packard announced their plans to develop color printers that will connect to cable-TV settop boxes, allowing users of interactive TV services to print out sales coupons, advertisements, invoices, maps, magazine articles and color stills of TV shows (the potential copyright nightmares involved in the last two scenarios stagger the mind.)

Although neither company would comment, it is expected that the printer will be made available by April free of charge to 4,000 households in Orlando, FL, the site of Time Warner’s first interactive television trial. (The cost of the printer after that experiment has yet to be determined.)

According to Reuters, Hewlett-Packard says the service would be based on its Vidjet pro print manager technology, which is scheduled to be available in December. The technology permits video images from any source to be printed quickly on plain paper or transparencies.