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Recently in Salon Technology

Direct mail double cross?
A fight over opt-in marketing has anti-spam activists crying foul.
By Deborah Scoblionkov
[11/12/99]

You're_a_Loser.com
Behind (and beneath) every Internet gazillionaire is an army of downtrodden "NetSlaves."
By Janelle Brown
[11/11/99]

The consumer's always wrong
Why else would visitors to consumer rating sites like Deja.com rank Rolling Rock the second-best beer and Alan Keyes the top presidential candidate?
By Mark Gimein
[11/10/99]

Books
The Internet illusion
The Web pretends to broaden our worldview, but really, says "The Control Revolution," we use it to segregate ourselves.
By Thomas Scoville
[11/09/99]

Technology: View from the top
GM's e-mobile magnate
Mark Hogan is in the "Web on wheels" driver's seat, trying to put GM on a collision course with Gen X.
By Janelle Brown
[11/08/99]

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The Internet has not had the kind of playback capabilities needed to create a rich entertainment experience. Everybody wants music, but nobody wants shitty sounding music. Everyone wants to see cartoons or games, but nobody wants to wait a week to get them. Nobody wants video that looks like a cheesy little security video. What's different now is that new technologies like Flash and MP3 can deliver a broadband experience over today's Web. The fidelity of a Flash cartoon now rivals cartoons you might see on television. Add the fact that -- according to NPD, the parent company of Media Metrix -- there are now 190 million Flash players and 100 million Shockwave players out there.

So now we've got the reach in terms of audience. The technology allows artists to express themselves effectively. Now we're galvanizing the writing -- getting the best storytellers of our day to focus on this new medium. We've just done a huge deal with StanLee Media. Seventh Portal and a bunch of other Stan Lee series are going to be coming out exclusively on Shockwave.com. We've made an investment in StanLee Media as well. There'll be a lot more deals like that happening.

The main selling point for Flash is that it allows you to download richer animation through slow Internet connections. But isn't Flash just an interim technology? What happens to Flash when broadband is more ubiquitous?

Oh, Flash can use as much bandwidth as becomes available. What we can do today with current slow connections is more simple animation -- the kind of stuff you see on Saturday morning cartoons on television. But we can't do "The Lion King." That requires so much more fidelity and bandwidth. I often say there are just two uses of broadband: Transferring big files and multimedia. So with greater bandwidth the programming will get richer and richer.

What is Macromedia's broadband strategy? What kind of tools will we need in a broadband environment?

We're always looking two or three years out, speculating about what kinds of connections people will have, and building tools in anticipation of that. There'll be much more video, much better audio, and you won't have to be so concerned about the initial download time. When you watch Ted Koppel, you don't want to download ABC. There'll be passive delivery techniques so that you won't be so burdened by the weight of a piece of software. It'll all happen silently, so you'll only be concerned about the programming instead of doing back flips to see it.

Last month Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks, Ron Howard's Imagine Media and Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures announced formation of Pop.com, a Web entertainment company that will offer short films, animation, games and other interactive fare. What are the implications for the online entertainment space -- and Shockwave.com?

I was down in L.A. when Pop.com happened. Everybody is looking for a dance partner. I think there's going to be a whole bunch of companies like Pop.com. Anyone who is doing animation and games will be using our products -- Shockwave and Flash. It's been building and building. Pop.com was one of those announcements where people say, "Jesus, online entertainment is not going to happen -- it is happening!"

What will be the role of the Hollywood studios in the online entertainment space? Are they your main competitors?

The studios are masters at figuring out how to entertain people. It'll be "co-opetition" with those folks. I see a lot of things we're doing technologically as being of a lot of value to the studios. They're going to want to harness some of the technology we're building. There are lots of opportunities for both collaboration and lots of places where we'll be competing -- for the artists and the audiences.

It used to be that the networks and studios were the only companies with the capital and the eyeballs. That's not true anymore. What we're creating here at Shockwave.com is the United Artists of the Web. We provide artists with eyeballs, capital, promotion and an e-commerce infrastructure. We have a business model that allows them to keep creative control and have long term financial participation in their creations.

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