New York – April 4, 1997 (Full Issue)
| NEW YORK | April 4, 1997 |
|
Commonwealth Network in Slick Soho The Myriad of people at 632 Multimedia demos @ Irving Plaza American Museum of Moving Image talks Tipping the Hat to Ms. Pirtle |
April 4, 1997
Commonwealth Network in Slick Soho
SUPER SLICK SOHO was the designated neighborhood for the Commonwealth Network party on March 26 @Wax. The packed, hot and smokey atmosphere created the perfect environment for mucho networking, martini drinking, and that giddy-headed experience of being in New York’s new media community.
Samatha Skey, director of PR for Interactive Imaginations, Inc. gave me the skinny on the event. Initially, Commonwealth Network was created to promote Riddler.com, through a network of 500 sites. The number of sites that wanted to get in on the Riddler craze grew to such a rate, CWN decided maybe they’d accept banner sales as well. Now, it’s is a network of 8,000 sites. They took the model of a full page ad and implemented it across the top 250 sites within this network. Users register one time and are served up a full page ad that would more than likely be of interest based on their profile. Skey claims a 15-percent click-through rate as well. WooWoo!
Surfing the room, I managed to talk with several people. Here’s just a few: The first person I ran into was my good ol’ friend Anton Self, now CEO of Telephant, a company in the business of selling T1s. When asked what he’s been up to lately, Anton replied: “selling pipes.” Go Anton!
The Myriad of people at 632
WHAT’S GOING ON AT 632 BROADWAY? Anton also informed me he’s working in close proximity to, and sharing lofty office space with Ed Bennett, former Prodigy chairman. I guess it makes sense that Ed is there, considering Myriad Agency took over the old Prodigy space. I spoke for a while with EVP of Myriad Agency, Ciaran Bossom. Myriad has been busy developing for Fortune 500 companies such as ITT, Sony and Apple. Dennis Adamo, now at ICon, was chatting it up with Denise Siedner, media planner at Young & Rubicam’s New Technologies group. I congratulated silver-tongued, Samuel Huxley (another Y&R|NTer) on his recent promotion to senior producer. As we clinked martini glasses he commented, “the crowd seems quite coated in a vermouth film of malaise.” (oh well)
I was off to chat with the charming Ted Werth of the Primary Group, who filled me in on all the exciting news that’s happened with TotalNY and Primary and their sale to Digital City, the AOL spin-off. Christian Uhl, an architect with Denson, photographed the event for his friends at Myriad. Amidst the revelry, though, comedian-cum-web producer Mike Potter took a few moments to issue words of warning. “All of this Web hoopla is just fine and dandy,” he said as he lounged on one of the velvet sofas in the back and sipped casually on his Cuba Libra, sandwiched between two long-legged model types, one blond and one redhead. “But unfortunately it just clouds people’s judgment and they fail to realize that the Internet is how the Federal Government keeps track of our every move by monitoring the electronic pulses emitted from the micro chips implanted in our necks at birth.” (A little too much CNN lately, Mike?)
Multimedia demos @ Irving Plaza
HELD AT THE EVER TRENDY, groovy Irving Plaza, the World Wide Web Artists Consortium meeting featured a big demo by Lara Stein and Madeline Kirbach from Microsoft Multimedia Productions, part of the Microsoft Network (MSN) and entertainment lawyer Jed Alpert, from the law firm of Rudolth & Beer. The demo went well but there seemed to be a bit of frustration from the crowd by the tone in which it was presented. Most people felt Microsoft was preaching “this is how you’ll need to present info to us, etc. if you want to do business with us” as opposed to a more “we’d love to hear your ideas and work WITH you” attitude. Obviously MS isn’t going away, and they do have some good products, but we are still in the collaboration mode and need to work together in developing standards, programs, and new technology.
Andrew Rasiej, who runs the show at Irving Plaza, filled us in on a very exciting event: NETDAY. Here’s your chance to help wire the public schools — starting with Washington Irving High School. This is an effort fueled by private companies and individuals. Using the “Adopt-A-Highway” metaphor, the goal for this particular school is to put in 54 work-stations; Andrew already has the T1 installed! Please come join the effort to enable our city’s youth to get connected and advance technologically. You can also contact: Cecilia Pagkalinawan, 212-886-3964, and Andrew at: 212-777-6817. E-mail or call them for more info!
American Museum of Moving Image talks
At the American Museum of Moving Image this past Saturday, March 29th, there was an excellent symposium featuring Sherry Turkle, noted author/digital culture expert; Linda Stone, Director of the Virtual Worlds Group at Microsoft‘s Advanced Technology and Research Division; and Scott Kurnit, Founder, The Mining Company. Following are some synopses of their presentations:
Turkle argued that computers allow us to assume several identities, explore other sides of ourselves, and have it be relatively safe. Our life on the screen is not “RL” (real life) so we can zone, role-play, release, gain perspective. Stone talked about avatar development–how what we put on the distributed network can, in some ways, “become us.” She showed us the demo of Microsoft’s V-Chat, which lets users make their own avatars or use one of the standard ones. Backgrounds are animated, for instance, in the “Fish Bowl,” seaweed swirls in the water, fish swim by, and bubbles move upwards. Another fun area is the Comic Chat. Here everyone’s avatar looks like a comic book character, the backgrounds and speech captions also have a comic book feel. Some people have begun using VChat as a lobby area on their web page. But the really cool part was the “Emotion Dial,” which allows the avatars a full range of emotions. Kurnit argued that “different people use the Net differently.” He said Mining Company has already hired 260 “guides” to more than 1,800 sites.
Tery Spataro of Stir.net and Chris McCarthy, Director of Strategic Planning for Avalanche were present. I also spied Jamie Levy, Ruth Shanen, former List-Mom of the WWWAC and Nancy Jaffe, Director of Strategic Planning at Oglivy & Mather.
Tipping the Hat to Ms. Pirtle
FINALLY, GIVING DUE CREDIT: I must tip my hat to Jennifer Pirtle who gave life to this column of which I am adopting. I can truly say I have reams of respect for a woman who writes so well, so frequently, and truly covered the @NY Scene column with incredible thoroughness. Thank you Jen for your inspired talents!