Date: Thu, 17 Feb 94 09:40:35 -0500
From: amarquis@genome.wi.mit.edu (Andre Marquis)
Message-Id: <9402171440.AA29911@genome.wi.mit.edu>
To: rdshydur@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9402162008.AA05000@primavera.MIT.EDU> (rdshydur@MIT.EDU)
Subject: Re: thanks for your participation & help!

Thank you for putting me on the mailing lists.  I would definitely like to sit
in on the 095 seminar.  Would you put me on that mailing list also?  Also, is
it possible for me to copy the 10K kit and the other class handouts?  I can
make copies myself.

Here's the meeting review.  I wasn't sure on the best focus.  Your suggestions
are welcome.  I forwarded a copy to Eddie Elliot so he can add his comments.


Joost Bonseu started off the meeting by announcing that there were 33 entries
in the 10K competition this year.  That's up 6 from last year.  It may not be
too late to get involved.  Teams can add members until March 8th.  Send a
resume to Richard (rdshydur@athena.mit.edu) if you are interested.

After introductions, Eddie Elliott, a recent graduate of the Media Lab's
Interactive Cinema Group, showed a video tape that demonstrated his novel
video capture program for the Macintosh, Video Streamer, to group of about 14
attendees.  Video Streamer allows the user to view a live video image in the
center of the screen as the preceding frames go streaming off the corner of
the screen behind the live image.  It's kind of like fanning a deck of cards
down and to the right at a 45 degree angle with the cards face up.  You an see
all of the top card (the current video frame) and just the top and left edges
of the cards below it in the deck (the preceding video frames).  It's
difficult to do justice to the effect without seeing it.  The Media Lab has
applied for a patent on the technology.

The view of just the corners if the older frames is enough context to locate
transitions so it's easy to select a clip of video.  Clips can be copied to
another screen and saved.  The software has other segmenting and editing
capabilities.  

Mr. Elliot is looking for ways to commercialize Video Streamer and he has
talked to a several companies about his product.  The group's discussion
focused on potential applications as well as potential partners.  Possible
associates included video board manufacturers, video software developers,
software publishers and geophysical or medical imaging companies.  Suggestions
included creating a simple video capture tool for bundling with other software
or hardware, putting out a piece of shareware to build initial support and
selling the idea to a larger business for use in an in-house product.  Eddie
also had video tape of people playing around with the system a couple of
recent art exhibits and having a great deal of fun.

Mr. Elliot suggested that he would need about 6 to 9 months of full-time work
to create a sellable commercial product.  The participants were divided
between recommending immediately getting a product out the door to beat
competitors versus taking a long-term strategy and building a business around
the technology.  Input from marketing masters would be quite helpful at this
stage.

Andre

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|Andre Marquis               Center for Genome Research                      |
|amarquis@genome.wi.mit.edu  Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT|
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