LiveStyles is a new real-time QuickDraw 3D plug-in that draws the key strokes of a 3D object in user-fine-art styles (Picasso, Klee, etc.) or cartoon styles. The artistic style of an image can be changed as easily as a font in a text document. Available 2nd Qtr of 1997, and later to be built into QD3D. ThinkFish Productions, Inc. (San Francisco) has also licensed the technology to Fractal Design Corp. (Aptos, CA), the leading Mac developer for advanced painting apps. Development of 3D content requires the ThinkFish Authoring Engine. [Bill Park , 18Mar97.] ("Another successful member of the Entrepreneur's Group of the MIT Alumni Club of Northern California!" Worth joining, if you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. ThinkFish was founded in 1994 by computer scientists from MIT and CalTech and artists from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).)

Eurocinema, Inc. (Boston) has launched Eurocinema Interactive Theater, offering selected European short-film titles by 28kbps streaming video over the Internet. The initial offering is four animated short films. . You can fast forward, rewind, stop, or pause the films, or can access any portion directly. Synchronized English subtitles are available for some of the films. The player was developed by VXtreme, Inc. (Sunnyvale). Some of the design work is from Argus Visual Communications (Boston), with Internet payment capability from Dr. William Bender's Online Development Corp. (Waltham, MA). Some of the Internet video technology is from Integrated Computing Engines, Inc. (Waltham, MA). [URLwire, 28Apr97.] (Improvement in video and audio quality is expected over the next year. It's interesting to see the parts from various companies being put together this way, like a main program calling subroutines.)

-- Ken