Tania Hershman
Three Israeli start-ups are adding new dimensions to the Web. Geo Interactive has unveiled its streaming, no-plug-in-needed Emblaze multimedia player and accompanying Web-friendly Creator tool. V-Active, from Ephyx, adds interactivity to video films. And ICQ, from Mirabilis, lets you know when your friends and colleagues are on-line.
With the introduction of Emblaze, from Geo Interactive (Givatayim, Israel;
http://www.emblaze.com
), gone are the days of downloading special plug-ins and waiting endlessly for the grand appearance of multimedia. Using co
mpression techniques that Geo claims yield up to 400 percent improvement over standard data compression -- Internet traffic permitting -- the Emblaze Player Java applet starts displaying the frames on screen as they arrive. Animat
ion, at almost television quality, can include embedded hyperlinks. The applet also supports audio, video, bit maps, and vector graphics. Its partner authoring tool, Emblaze Creator, has two levels: a drag-and-drop interface for nonprogrammers and a deeper JavaScript level for programmers and Webmasters.
Taking video across the boundary from watch-only to interactive is Ephyx (Herz-liya, Israel;
http://www.ephyx.com
). The company's V-Active hypervideo (video hyperlinking) technology enables the addition of hotspots to videos; these hotspots hyperlink t
o other types of media, including static pictures, text, sounds, URLs, video sequences, and even executable applications.
Until now, the only way to create hypervideo was with a frame-by-frame definition process; the cost, in time as well as money, was simply prohibitive for most people. The secret to V-Active's simplification and speeding-up of the technique is a powerful object-tracking engine that automatically identifies the objects defined as hotspots in digital video files. In a single still frame, the developer picks the objects to be linked. The V-Active playback environment then synchronizes all the content. The V-Active 1.0 suite includes an authoring tool, ActiveX and Netscape plug-ins, and Director Xtra for integrating hypervideo content created with Macromedia Director. The software runs under Windows 95 and NT; a Macintosh version of V-Active is expected later in the year.
Finally, an easy way to find out who else is on-line for real-time communications. ICQ ("I Seek You"), develop
ed by six-month-old start-up Mirabilis (Tel Aviv;
http://www.mirabilis.com
), is a small piece of shareware.
Once downloaded from the Mirabilis Web site, ICQ allots you an ID number, then asks you to build up a contact list of friends' e-mail addresses. ICQ starts up automatically when you log on, then alerts you if one of your chosen pals is on-line or logs on while you are. You can then send a message, open a chat window, transfer files and URLs, or launch an Internet phone application.
Without any formal marketing except word of e-mail, the program acquired 400,000 users in just four months from its launch date, the company says.
Internet Innovations from Israel
