@LARGE
Animation innovations
By Scott Kirsner, 04/08/02 
The grade-school set doesn't tend to fire off many dyspeptic letters to the editor, so let's come right out and say it: Buzz Lightyear, Shrek, and all of the furry stars of "Monsters, Inc." are essentially pretty stupid.
Not the animation. The animation is brilliant. It's just that every computer-animated character you've seen on the big screen is brainless. Without millions of specific instructions from animators, they wouldn't be able to rescue damsels from dragons or sing along to Randy Newman songs.
Two Boston area companies think they're on to the next big breakthrough in animation: characters with minds of their own. Newton-based Zoesis Studios and Ingeeni Studios of Cambridge have developed artificially-intelligent animated characters that live on the Web, and react realistically to what users do and say.
"This field is where Disney was back in the 1930s, when he moved from making short, gag-oriented films to making `Snow White,"' says Joseph Bates, president of Zoesis. "Deeply interactive characters are somewhere in that early phase. After all, it took Pixar 15 years to get to `Toy Story."'
The raison d'etre for these smart, interactive characters, thus far, is advertising. Zoesis has created a spunky, anthropomorphic ketchup bottle for the Heinz Web site, and McDonald's is testing the company's technology at Ronald.com, where kids can play games with an animated cheeseburger and french fry.
"Interactive characters are going to be important to advertisers," says Michal Hlavac, CEO of Ingeeni Studios. "Everyone's attention is so fragmented. We don't look at banners on the Web anymore, and once you've got TiVo, you don't watch TV commercials. We think we can solve some of those problems with intelligent, entertaining characters that people want to interact with again and again."
This week, Hlavac is in Europe presenting to a supermarket chain that's interested in using Ingeeni's technology on its Web site, to build loyalty among its younger customers. The company's roots are in the MIT Media Lab, and Media Lab professor Cynthia Brazeal is on Ingeeni's board.
The characters are still rudimentary, and they sometimes react in ways that are unrealistic, but they can also be engaging. Mr. Bubb, a character created by Zoesis as a demo (see www.mrbubb
.com), can play a game of keep-the-balloon-aloft with a user; he grows increasingly downcast if you hog the balloon and don't give him a chance to bounce it.
Neither company will have an easy time raising money from traditional sources, but they're doing exciting work that could have a major impact on the entertainment industry. "Little kids want to go on an adventure with Elmo, or Winnie the Pooh," says Bates. "And people have been dreaming about the ability to step into a movie or a novel and interact with the characters for a long time. Our dream is to build the characters, make them intelligent, and eventually get to our own `Toy Story' or `Snow White."'
Broadband for boaters
Software entrepreneur Paul English has strong ties to Boston Harbor. The start-up he sold to Intuit in 1999 was called Boston Light Software, after the historic lighthouse on Little Brewster Island. Every summer, his family goes on a camping trip to the harbor islands. His second home is in Hull, and he keeps his Boston Whaler at the Spinnaker Island Marina there.
Now he wants to provide free wireless Net access to boats in the harbor, through a pet project called Boston Wireless. "I've really become fascinated with [WiFi, a standard for wireless networking], and trying to push it out from use in the home or a coffee shop or a hotel lobby," English says. "Taking it and broadcasting it out is technically hard, but I want to learn what's involved."
English says many boaters already employ on-board laptops for charting and navigation; free broadband Net access would be a nice bonus. "Right now, I'm figuring out what kind of equipment would work best," English says. "I want to cover a lot of territory, and push the limits a little bit." He's posting progress reports and technical information on his Web site, www.bostonwireless.org, which he hopes will be useful to others who want to set up open wireless networks of their own.
English resigned early this year from Intuit, where he'd been vice president of technology and strategy, supervising operations at the software company's East Coast office in Waltham. "I wanted to do something from scratch again," he says. "I just have the bug."
So in addition to setting up a wireless network for seafarers, English is busy helping his brother Ed, the president of InterMute Inc. in Braintree, develop a new spam-blocking product. (InterMute already distributes a popular program called AdSubtract that removes ads from Web sites.)
Prodigal Sun
Despite shelling out $1.8 million recently for a new condo at the Ritz-Carlton Towers on Boston Common, Sun Microsystems president and COO Ed Zander isn't relocating to Boston. "He's still based [at Sun headquarters] in California," says a company spokeswoman. "He's got multiple homes, so this isn't an indication that he's spending any more or less time in Boston."
Zander, who once served as an executive with Data General and Apollo Computer on Route 128, and earned his MBA at Boston University, joined Sun in 1987. Sun has several outposts in the Boston area, including the company's data storage division, which is based in Burlington. The purchase of a Boston pad has been in the works for a few years, according to someone who knows Zander.
Found: customers
Endeca has hit the trifecta, selling its navigation software to three Boston-based financial services firms. Today, the Cambridge company announces that Commonwealth Financial Network will join a client list that already includes Fidelity and Putnam Investments. Endeca CEO Steve Papa says financial services companies are among the few eager adopters of new software.
Endeca's software automatically builds tables of content in response to search queries, so that the seeker can get a sense of the full range of information available in a database. "With most databases, you have to know what's in them to find what you're looking for," Papa says. "We show you."
Last week, Papa was down in Washington, talking to congressional staffers about the technology's potential uses in tracking the data trail of terrorists.
Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Wired and Fast Company magazines. He can be reached by e-mail at kirsner@att.net
Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Wired and Fast Company magazines. He can be reached by e-mail at kirsner@att.net
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