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ExtraMedia USA the new studio provided technology consulting for Extramedia USA, a Singapore-based new-business originator. Through strategic planning and advice about emerging technical trends, the new studio assisted the firm as it developed a strategy for a new business, building interactive applications. The work included helping Extramedia establish a relationship with the MIT Media Laboratory to guide Extramedia's R&D efforts. |
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AT&T New Media Services This major on-line service provider hired the new studio for consulting on the technical development required to support new content providers and third party software services for inclusion in its newly announced on-line "Business Network". We evaluated potential partners, reviewed software and services, and suggested options for both technical and business decisions. We did this by learning the operation of the AT&T Interchange® system, used vendors' software, and worked with engineers on both sides, often under aggressive schedules. Technical reviews included software for document search and retrieval, location of business consultants and service providers, and on-line banking. We also worked on several AT&T Web task forces, first to plan and implement a Website for a potential publishing partner, and then for the AT&T MIS group as it planned its transition to support the Web-based Business Network (later merged with Nets, Inc.). This work included finding and evaluating third party software for services such as publishing content and tracking Website usage. We located, researched, and interviewed more than sixteen companies in order to make recommendations for AT&T's purchasing or licensing. |
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Radius Inc. Radius' VP and General Manager of Digital Video asked David to write the business plan for the further development of Radius' recently released "VideoVision" product. This included doing market research to define the opportunities in various market segments, evaluating competing products, working with product engineers to plan feature sets and schedules, and projecting price structures. |
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International Pre-press Association the new studio did research and writing for an extensive white paper report for the International Pre-press Association on strategies for "cross-media publishing". The report was commissioned to address the need for prepress shops and publishers to adopt new business models that would enable them to handle the changes from a mostly-print to a print-and-electronic mix. These new models plan for the capture and management of content so that it can be published across media formats, including print, CDROM, online services, Internet, etc. The report has been presented at the organization's conference, and distributed to the members. |
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Thomson Publishing, Inc. Thomson selected the new studio to participate in their Internet task force to help define and develop Thomson's corporate presence on the Internet in 1994 (www.thomson.com). Tasks included defining the user interface and functionality on Web pages, working with a graphic designer on a logo and other graphics, evaluating client browser software (Netscape, Spyglass, NCSA, Spry, etc.), and using HTML editors to create documents. More than 30 Thomson companies were represented on the taskforce, and each company was charged with providing data for a product information database that visitors could search and order from on-line. For the Thomson Multimedia Consortium, David Backer provided consulting advice for a dozen Thomson subsidiaries regarding their efforts to plan and develop multimedia products. |
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Agora Language Marketplace the new studio researched emerging Digital Video Disk (DVD) technologies in a report that identified vendors of the key technologies that are required to produce an interactive DVD-based application (DVD-ROM drives, MPEG-2 decoder boards, pre-mastering services, etc.), and provided a project plan for the conversion of existing laser-disc based language learning programs to DVD-ROM. |
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The Philanthropic Initiative We assisted The Philanthropic Initiative, Inc., a non-profit organization in Boston, with a study for a substantial new online center for the promotion of philanthropy. Our work included strategic planning for the project, technology research, and budget estimation. |
