December 25, 1988

MERRY Christmas to all you Christmas types, and happy extra day off to the rest of youse.

WHAT’S UP? Newshound Ken Siegmann found this gift of a joke (slightly altered by me) on an electronic bulletin board called TREX:

Steven Jobs’ Next Inc. is readying a new, upscale version of the Next Computer System called Next UP. This new model, which boasts the Ultimate Processor, actually houses a micro version of the Cray III supercomputer and will be available only to Nobel Laureates at a price based on 50 percent of their government contracts. The system comes with a wireless, reverse-infrared cooling system which links the box to a refrigeration plant in your backyard. The plant also serves as an artificial snow machine and is ideal for turning the hills in your back 40 acres into your own private ski slopes (skis not included).

How would the ever-theatrical Jobs present this product to the public? A friend figures he’d hire Yassar Arafat and Yitzhak Shamir to ski a Next UP-created ski slope, holding an olive branch between them.

SHO FUN: Industry types do neat things other than computers. Take, for example, Howard Barney, founder of Barneyscan in Berkeley. He designed and tooled the bizarre cone-stage for George Coates’ Actual Sho, which is still getting rave reviews at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. (Coates also had unusual staging — a big ramp — for his last San Francisco hit, Rare Area.)

Howard’s significant other, Mary Frank (art director at Barneyscan), is friends with Berkeley artist Coates and his s.o. “George came over one night, and he was describing his vision of what his next performance would be,” Barney said. “He wanted a moving stage. He liked the idea of a cone and made some models out of Styrofoam, but they always fell over.”

So Barney stepped in and helped design a 5-foot high fiberglass cone that stands on its tip, doesn’t collapse and breaks down into enough pieces to fit on an airplane. He used Barneyscan’s CNC (Computer Numeric Controls) machine tooling system, controlled by a Macintosh, to cut the original die. A 20-foot-diameter stage sits on top of the cone. Barney designed a little end-piece for the tip that keeps the whole contraption standing. “The cone acts like a pendulum” and pivots with the actors’ movements, Barney said. “They get it rocking pretty far,” as far as 20 degrees from center in all directions.

BY ANY OTHER NAME: Although I can’t find out much information about the situation, TOPS, a Mac and PC local area networking company in Alameda, may be the object of a lawsuit by the makers of TOPS Business Forms, for the obvious reason — its name.

Wallace Computers of Chicago, Ill., which makes TOPS Business Forms, has already instigated some legal action against TOPS, which is owned by Sun Microsystems. At least one potential witness subpoenaed by Wallace spent most of a working day talking about how networks are different from paper.

Though TOPS would not comment even on the existence of such a lawsuit, and Sun Microsystems did not respond to inquiries by press time, my source, Deep Node, says the company is spending “a ton of money” fighting the suit, and Wallace already subpoenaed many other TOPS employees, some of whom had only worked at the company for a week. Is that a perk or what?

FOLLOW THAT RUMOR! The voice on my answering machine said, “This is Peter Norton, I’m returning your call. I’ve heard the rumors that I’m being bought, too. I’d sure like to know by whom and for how much.” Then Fifth Generation Systems, who in last week’s column was rumored to be buying Norton’s Santa Monica company, called from Baton Rouge. Spokesperson Cheryl Ploegstra says she knows how the rumors started. “We engaged in some strategic discussions about joint marketing, but we never discussed acquisition,” she said.

DOIN’ BIDNESS: People do use online services to do business. Chocolate Software Co. of Los Angeles left messages in CompuServe’s International Entrepreneur’s Forum and “within days I was contacted by distributors in Quebec, Ontario, Paris, Chile, Peru and others,” said Chocolate Software founder Michael Cahlin. “I was also contacted by people in the U.S. who wanted information about the product line to include in their mail order catalogs, newsletters, etc.”

Cahlin’s company manufactures chocolate computer accessories. His first product, the Original Chocolate Byte, is a 5¾-inch chocolate floppy disk that comes in a re-usable case. He’s got 3-1/2-inch disks as well and other goodies.

“What was interesting was that every (online) contact was intelligent, asked the right questions, and requested the right information. In addition, all were knowledgeable about computers and were using computers to sell their wares and make money,” said Cahlin, who is investigating similar services on The Source.