Aug 1, 1998 12:00 PM

Rocket Launchers

By Colin Berry

| NEW MEDIA

| Rocket Launchers

The Voyager Returns

We Interrupt This Call …

Synergy on the Silver Screen

Portals of Perception

International Hits: Surfing .ru, .br, .cn

Advanced Publications

Hollywood's Big Mac Attack

Raw Data

<h4>#### backing from Paul Allen, Res Rocket is growing from a low-key Web jamming club into a global music destination.</h4 FMIDI musicians who jam online, there's only one place to go: Res Rocket (<a hresrocket.com/</a>n the three years since its launch, the site has evolved from a low-key club for real-time collaboration to a global community of 14,000 musicians, including professionals such as Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame, a member of The Orb, and Ninja Tune producer Matt Black. Now, with backing from Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, the San Francisco-based shop is looking to go big time.

Ahe only dedicated jamming network, Res Rocket offers a free public-access area to amateur musicians worldwide. Using the site's software and improvisational skill, a blues pianist in Chicago, a bass player in Greece, and a drum programmer in London can play together live, 24 hours a day. For busy, geographically challenged professionals, Res Rocket has become a choice destination to record CD-quality sounds. Bands and commercial production teams lay MIDI tracks in the site's private recording areas, which rent for US$500 a year.

Fders Canton Becker and Matt Moller were Northwestern University grad students and Willy Henshall and Tim Bran were "shameless, mainstream" UK pop musicians when the partners met through email. "Our first connection was musical," CEO Henshall recalls. "We blew a pair of speakers, bought a leased line, and were off." British investors and sponsorships first kept the company afloat.

Tsummer, Warner Bros. is distributing Res Rocket's greatest-jams CD, a collection of online sessions. The site plans to upgrade to digital audio by early 1999 and integrate its technology with Vulcan companies, including the Experience Music Project museum, opening in Seattle next year.

"re investing our resources into digital audio so that the system works for everybody – guitarists, singers, didgeridoo players," Henshall says. "Res Rocket is a musical framework where things happen."

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As foer of The Voyager Company, Bob Stein helped publish some of the most critically lauded CD-ROMs, including Laurie Anderson's Puppotel an Spiegelman's Mausm> Cre genius and business acumen don't always mix, however (see "<a href=hings of Bob Stein</a>," <irem> 4.age 126), and in 1997 the partners liquidated the 13-year-old shop.

nback with Night Kitchen (<a href=tkitchen.com/</a>) anplan to tap what he sees as a large pool of potential multimedia creators attracted to computers but repelled by the lack of artist-friendly tools. He's building TK3, an "authoring tool for the rest of us."

Vger," he says, "we were always subordinating content to the tools. Tools are a really big deal." TK3 (for tool kit 3), scheduled for 1999 release, is an easy-to-use yet powerful program for creating documents, presentations, and other interactive works. But TK3, unlike programming-intensive tools such as Director, requires no scripting.

nhitting the growing PC multimedia market on the upswing. Even so, Quark recently discontinued mTropolis authoring software in the face of competition from entrenched players.

nson, production head at Hearst New Media Center, thinks the tool has a shot at success. "TK3 just feels better than any other authoring environment," he says. "It's way better than fucking PowerPoint."

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ing retered a worldwide patent for its system of free phone service that inserts advertising messages into calls, Swedish telecom GratisTel International is now heading overseas. The

ein use by 100,000-plus Swedes alone, allows users to place free calls by dialing a phone number and a GratisTel code. A 10-second ad plays before the call is put through, then another to both parties after one minute and at two-minute intervals. A beep signals impending commercial breaks. Sinc

dduals must fill out a questionnaire to use the service, advertisers get not only captive audiences, but also demographic data. GratisTel's system can't be used for free online access, but it does allow international and cellular calls. Flus

the success of recent licensing deals in Norway, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines, ongoing negotiations with 20 other countries, and a spanking-new US base, GratisTel is weighing a public offering. <str

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realm digital entertainment, aesthetics often plays second fiddle to commercial concerns. But with help from the likes of cult filmmaker David Lynch and game maestro Haruhiko Shono, Tokyo-based Synergy Inc. is walking the high-res line between art and profit. In sprin

9he company will début its first computer-generated feature film, Underworld,< by Shono, or of the top-selling CD-ROM epic Gadget. wherea>Gadget a longange trip on a train, Underworld</dives to tttom of the ocean, where an archaeologist discovers a hidden city at war. "Und

r/is based oas quite different from those of Gadget,"</emys Shonoormer video performance artist. "Nevertheless, you'll probably feel some similarity of mood in the atmospheres." Synergy'

ride has attracted David Lynch, who is scheduled to release his first new media effort, the Woodcutters Fiery Ships CD-ROM, in 1999. "In Holl

dou go to a movie because you like the artists," says Natalie Fay, Synergy's international vice president. "We think multimedia ought to be the same way. You're only starting to see the beginning of cults of personality for the artists." By R

lnberg (<a href="http://m</a>) is a Wiredtributing editor and the author of Where the Suckers Moon: An Advertising Story. |

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a dea#### ill you be Doorway Number One, Doorway Number Two, or Doorway Number Three?</h4> <h4>By Randall e#### g</h4> So I've dec tecome a portal. The reason i

m. My friends and family believe I've been drifting, resting on the boy-wonder thing long after both my hair and my career prospects have thinned. "What are you up thk, with obvious concern. The answer – "A little of this, a little of that" – doesn't satisfy them. I can't tell them the truth: In my field, communications, everything reeks of familiarity. Newspapers, magazines, books? Been there. Speechwriting, annual reports, graffiti? Done that. But to be a

aThere's something to wake the senses. People love portals. On the Net, everybody's got to pass through them. Companies are desperate to associate with them. Wall Street is valuing them at something like 27 times 1999 revenues – present earnings being a bit difficult to come by. At those ratios, I (who, like portals, also don't have much in the way of earnings) can go from making … well, very little, to a net worth of … boy, a whole lot. I willingly

ethat the idea isn't original. The theory that profits lie in serving as a gateway through which consumers must frequently pass throughout the day took off about last March – around the time Yahoo! affiliated with MCI. In Internet years (roughly dog years 3), that's a lifetime. Over the next few weeks, Disney bought the rest of Starwave to become a portal and Lycos did a deal with AT&T to become one too. In May, Zap Corporation, which was founded as a Texas wildcatter by George Bush and later turned to the seafood-processing market, said it wanted to buy Excite for US$1.68 billion, a mere six times its own market cap, to transform itself into a portal. That's when

gto think: If Zapata could rename itself Zap and go from oil company to fish-oil company to snake-oil comp-, sorry, to portal, then I could easily go from writer to editor to portal. As NBC and Disney showed by buying into, respectively, CNET's Snap and Infoseek in June, "Content is king" is for the hoi polloi. From now on, my mantra would be "Doorways are divine"! Here was the

arough: I realized that becoming a portal involved no special skill set. Let me expla

Leveryone else, I'd assumed that becoming a portal meant that people already had to be passing by me, or into me, or at least near me. And that required, at the least, heavy advertising expenditures, great looks, and – most important – a central location along the early-morning commute. After all, you just don't go around declaring yourself the new Lincoln Tunnel. You've got to dig the hole first. But it turne

t-front traffic wasn't necessary. The only thing I needed was a partner. Or two. Or three. Like Excite in its relationship with both Netscape and AT&T, I didn't have to be the first place people came to on the way to the office. I just had to be on the block. Even better, I didn't have to be a search engine like portaldom's Big Four (Yahoo!, Excite, Infoseek, and Lycos). According to Zona Research, portalnomics has grown so refined that it encompasses not only obvious gateways, like AOL, but secondary sites like Amazon.com and tertiary sites such as CDnow's Cosmic Credit. Business Week</eanaged to defortals four ways: as doorways ("major ports of entry to the Web"), channels ("akin to the dominant TV networks"), programs (Yahoo!'s audience is "just shy of the 33.3 million viewers that TV's Seinfeld cl"), and es. (Yahoo! also has "a lead-in brand recognition that's hard to beat.") "Portals is not an economic model," says Forrester Research's Chris Charron. "It's a descriptive term that has different interpretations. That confusion is to be expected." Where some s

osion, though, I see opportunity. To be a portal, you just had to call yourself one – the same rule most writers follow! So, followin

evice of the major consultants, I'm now out there, aggregating audience, directing traffic, engaging in commerce, and transferring personal communications. Do stop by. I'm the guy in Times Square wearing the IHOP sandwich board and handing out fliers for Hooters, Foot Locker, and Steve Forbes for President. I'll also get you your tuna on rye from the Greek place. And, if you want, I'll tell you what the woman in the next office has been saying about you. <str

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ne booublishing is still a fiction, but entrepreneurial activities are pushing it ever closer to reality. For would-be authors

rn cash and book deals, there's Xlibris. This isn't your average vanity press. By automating production, Xlibris (<a href="http://www.xlibris.s as little as U0, versus the $5,000 fees of its competitors. Publication takes mere weeks, and writers, who retain all rights, are assured their book stays in print. Professional-quality hardcovers, which sell for $25 – $4 goes to the writer – are printed and shipped in runs of as small as one. One-fourth of its 90

eare published writers, including Piers Anthony. Author of 21 New York Times sci-est-sellers, hned to Xlibris for an unconventional work about a Nazi love affair. High-speed, high-qua

ovation isn't just for the small-press crowd, however. New services and machines from Ingram's Lightning Print and Xerox can print and bind a different title every minute with stunning results. At $5 per book – versus $1 each for mass production – this economic model isn't exactly revolutionary, but it does promise a larger pool of older, less commercial books in print – and publishers are signing up in droves. Lightning Print's 36 customers include Random House, HarperCollins, and Bantam Doubleday Dell. By the end of the year, it projects 10,000 electronically stored titles will line its digital library. VIS

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e on srcomputers, effects houses are creating a commotion with the humble desktop PC. A Mac-based software package that creator Scott Squires describes as "somewhat like Photoshop for moving images," Commotion features frame-by-frame paint and digital manipulation. Its playback of uncompressed, real-time sequences is a feat previously possible only on workstations. Frustration with bottlen

pired Squires, an f/x supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic at work on the upcoming Star Wars prequel. ILM lers and tors hogged the SGI platforms, stranding artists engaged in the more mundane jobs of painting and rotoscoping. Why not empower the Mac? he thought. Writing code at home in his spare time, Squires made a tool that became a hit among colleagues. After considering offers from publishers, he formed Puffin Designs with ex-ILMers Forest Key and Dexter Dawes. Commotion is now used at

eof f/x houses, including Tippett Studios, Rhythm & Hues, and Western Images. "Some facilities have only high-end platforms," says Squires. "After they've seen Commotion, some of them have said, 'Hey, we should get some Macs so we can use this.'" Internet telephony will

et 5 percent of worldwide long distance traffic by 2002 (SRI Consulting) … Online gaming from US$13 million in 1997 to $134 million by 2000 (Datamonitor) … The Mad Libs eas sold 100 million copies since 1958 (U.S. News & World Report) … When faced wiis reports, 53 percent of Americans say they trust television over newspapers, radio, and magazines (Roper Starch Worldwide) … The top five the highest revenue ratio – box office dollars to production costs – were made for less than $6 million each (Variety) … The average cajor film in 1997 was up 34 percent from 1996, increasing to $53.4 million (Motion Picture Association of America)