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Exploring the Web as a New Medium of Communication
3D Content: Visionaries & Evangelists
By
Debbie Weil
MARK PESCE: VRML EVANGELIST
Mark Pesce, co-creator of VRML
(Virtual Reality Modeling Language),
is about as _live_ in a face-to-face
interview as a Net nerd can be.
Six-foot-plus and hunched over a
table in a New York City coffee
shop, Pesce sports a buzz cut and
the zealous look of an over-eager
grad student.
We’re on 7th Avenue across
the street from the Sheraton Towers,
where Web Interactive 96 (he was
a keynote speaker) is in full swing.
Pesce’s got on a stylish loose-fitting
suit, as befits an increasingly
well-known author and consultant.
He’s messianic in his passion
for three-dimensional content. "I
make a little money," the 33-year-old
says modestly."I get to write and
travel and speak. And I get to help
perceptualize information." No laptop
in hand, Pesce carries a book with
blank pages to record his notes
and ideas. "There’s a whole
sensual thing about the interface
of the pen and paper," he says earnestly.
"We’re not familiar with 3D
environments as a medium of communication,"
Pesce explains, speaking rapidly
and articulately. "We’re not
taught 3D as children. If you’re
a set designer, an architect, or
a sculptor you have learned a language
that most of us know only unconsciously."
"500 years ago books were decried
from pulpits... this is characteristic
of a new medium," Pesce says, suggesting
why there is still some resistance
to incorporating 3D content into
Web sites. In the meantime, he "gives
in"occasionally to surfing addiction,
in order to see what’s out
there. "Every couple of months,
I take a few days off and surf,"
he says. "Then I say, ’No more’
and turn off the faucet."
Pesce is careful to give equal credit
to the co-creator of VRML, Tony
Parisi, (also 33; although Mark
is seven days younger). The two
are no longer working together;
Parisi has gone off in a different
direction, as an entrepreneur and
now chief technology officer of
Intervista.
But Pesce’s consulting & authoring
gig is clearly a success. Not bad
for a guy who was thrown out of
MIT in 1982 for poor grades. "I
wasn’t studying," says Pesce
with a grin. But he was exposed
to MIT’s Net visionary Nicholas
Negroponte, and one thing led
to another.
3D
VISTAS
Pesce sees lots of possibilities
for 3D content on the Web. "We’re
in the first year of a three-year
development period," he says, pointing
to "the two things" that put designing
with 3D content within reach: both
Netscape
3.0 and Internet
Explorer 3.0 are being bundled
with VRML 2.0(the new spec which
Pesce describes as a "marriage of
VRML and Java").
At my prompting, he lists his favorite
3D applications, several of which
he is working on: a Kitchen Building
Demo could offer customers a walk-through
of a company site (Home
Depot, for example) where customers
would pick out components in a 3D
environment. You tote up your purchases
at a virtual cash register, the
order is placed, and the actual
appliances are delivered to your
door. Pesce calls it "build and
buy."
Another application Pesce is developing
is a 3D stock portfolio, which could
include data going back 15 years
and broken down by company name,
quarterly price fluctuations, price-to-earnings
ratios, etc. "Put the numbers and
graphs in a three-dimensional rendering,"
says Mark with a gleam in his eye,
"and use real-time data." Now that’s
value-added content. He thinks Charles
Schwab and other discount brokerages
might be interested."The financial
community is playing catch-up,"
Pesce says. "They’ve been using
3D internally but they’re just
now beginning to offer it to their
customers."
A third application that excites
Pesce is the use of 3D in sophisticated
interactive games like MYST (now
on CD-ROM). "Product placement,"he
says flatly; i.e. ad money. It means
putting Coke cans and Reebok sneakers
in three-dimensional environments
where VRML "flyers" can’t miss
them.
Another pet project is WebEarth,
which Pesce describes as a VRML
model of the earth, updated hourly
by satellite images. "You’ll
be able to zoom in down to street
level," he explains. Still under
development,he declines to give
out a URL. But check out Pesce’s
Web site (he calls it: "Outside
the Light-Cone") for some wild &
woolly authoring.
PESCE’S
FAVORITE VRML AUTHORING & BROWSING
TOOLS
Pesce’s favorite VRML authoring
tools are, from high to low-end,
Cosmo Create (for UNIX workstations);
3D Studio Max (Windows only); Virtus
3D Web Site Builder (for both PC
and Mac); and Paragraph’s Virtual
Home Space Builder (for PC). "I’ve
taught eight-year-olds how to use
Paragraph," Pesce says.
As for VRML browsers, Pesce favors
Intervista’s WorldView and
Netscape’s plug-in Live 3D.
A
NEW LIFE FORM... WITH APOLOGIES
TO TED LEONSIS
I think it was AOL’s
Ted Leonsis who used the term "a
new life form" to label the content
being created for the online medium.I
don’t agree with everything
AOL does, nor am I enamoured of
the culture of this chaotic company
(whose headquarters are just outside
Washington D.C.) but Leonsis turns
a good phrase.
Enter Jack Hidary, an entrepreneur
and another keynote speaker at Web
Interactive, with an equal talent
for Web-word coinage. Hidary’s
company, EarthWeb,
started two years ago as a sophisticated
Web site developer. EarthWeb now
specializes in contentware, which
Hidary describes as "software that
enhances the functionality of a
Web site."
EarthWeb has developed Gamelan,
the largest repository of Java applets
and documents, along with freeware
and shareware and has cleverly obtained
sponsorship for the site from Java
creator Sun
Microsystems. In adddition,
EarthWeb has developed its own line
of software, including a Java-based
chat technology.
DEVELOPING
A ’QUALITY’ BIZ MODEL
FOR NYTIMES.COM
Perhaps the most provocative speech
at Web Interactive was given by
Martin Nisenholtz, president of
The New York Times Electronic Media
Company and ultimate honcho of nytimes.com.
Unfortunately, Nisenholtz was awarded
the 8 am time slot on the third
and final day of the conference.
Not a lot of Net types were up in
time to hearhis remarks. MecklerMedia
promises to post the full text of
his speech to the archived Web Interactive
96 site. Nisenholtz outlines in
some detail five avenues that The
Times’s online venture is pursuing
to lure customers - and establish
a growing revenue base.
In the meantime, here is the final
piece of advice he offered to online
publishers: "As some of you may
know, 1996 is the 100th anniversary
of Adolf Och’s purchase of
The New York Times, which at the
time was a dying newspaper. Since
that time, Mr. Och’s newspaper
has not only survived, but excelled
and prospered through the invention
of radio, television, the VCR and
now the Internet.
"The reason, I think, was put well
by our chairman, when he said, ’In
the end, you’re back to basics.
I don’t care what you run,
a magazine, a television station.
If you have high quality, you do
well. Quality pays.That’s been
proven over and over again at The
New York Times.’"
3D
BYTES
Lots of neat products for injecting
live, on-the-fly, jazzy, audio &
video content into Web sites were
"demoed" at Web Interactive. One
of my favorites was MacroMedia’s
new BackStage Studios, a Web site
design, development and management
package that, among other things,
can create an attractive front-end
for a database. The tool includes
Shockwave applications and Java
applets.
Another new product is StreamWorks2.0,
an upgrade of a streaming audio
& video product from XingTechnologyy
Corp. Less well-known than Progressive
Networks’ RealAudio,
StreamWorks is said to have CD-quality
sound. You can decidefor yourself,
by trying it out on Capitol Records’
site. (The player is downloadable
for free, as is Real Audio’s).
If you’re interested, you can
read my review of StreamWorks 2.0
in the Aug. 19th issue of WebWeek.
THIS
JUST IN
I can’t resist passing this
on. I’m an East Coaster living
inside-the-beltway - a state-of-mind
as well as place that I’ve
criticized in past columns. I pointed
out that Mike Kinsley is drawing
on a surprising number of inside-the-beltway
pundits to write & think for SLATE.
Still, I manage to stay _wired_
tho I often wish I were out in Silicon
Valley where things seem to be really
cool.
Well, it seems those California
net-heads could learn a thing or
two from us D.C. grrls with our
own domains. It turns out, according
to a recent study, that "the nation’s
capital has the largest number of
commercial Internet addresses per
capita in the country." Read the
whole story in washingtonpost.com.
FEEDBACK
I love it - positive or negative.
Send to debbie.weil@gmail.com.
Seeya
Debbie Weil is president of WordBiz.com,
a publishing and consulting company based
in Washington DC.
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This column
was originally written for Editor
& Publisher Interactive.
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