Hello Everyone,

I hope this email finds you well and in good cheer.

I've just posted the interview with Graham Nice,
Commercial Director of Tao on Tech Head Stories. This
is the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) video conducted
hours after the 8 Jan Amiga/Tao joint announcement.
Its called The Search for Tao.

In it you will see the Boing Ball bouncing on an Intel
powered laptop running Elate and Intent. In that image
you can see the Amiga future. It looks pretty good.

This is the url:
http://tech-head.com/emblaze/taoces.htm.

Alternatively you can reach the streaming video off
the home page of Tech Head Stories tech-head.com.
As well it is hot linked off the current Amiga Watch
communique http://tech-head.com/amiga.htm.

The project is encoded with a Java streaming video
solution. Alas it will not run on the current Amiga.
But it will run on the New Amiga. But for today you
will need to access The Search for Tao on Windoze,
Mac, or Linux platforms. Because its Java there is no
need for a browser plug-in. I have set the video to
auto-play after 24% (1423 kb) have downloaded. The
entire file is 5823 kb in total. The playing time is
a bit over 14 min.

I will be at work on a more Amiga friendly format, for
the near future. Stay tuned.

You can help me.

I would like to know your streaming experience of
viewing this project. The file streams pretty well.
I live in upstate New York, near Canada. The Tech Head
server is about a thousand miles away. It streams
well, ie smoothly with no interruptions, thru a 56k
modem. Is it the same for you?

It plays back well on Win98. Some Mac playbacks have
picture, but no sound. I don't know why. Let me know
if you hear sound.

This is the first version of the project. I had lost
so much time with recovering from my computer crash of
a few weeks ago, that I wanted to move rapidly. It was
Wintel of course--bad hard drive too, a complete
reinstall to a new hard drive. What was driving me mad
was a missing codec. I had encoded all my digitized
video in it, ie the raw materials. Of course the files
wouldn't play without the codec.

Aaaarrrggghh!

It took me over a week to track it down. The codec was
in an ATI video player upgrade, supporting my graphics
card/digitizer. Frustrating, but a typical day in the
Wintel life. With an Object Ocean approach a lot of
this Windoze foolishness goes away. This is also why I
will be very interested in migrating all my digital
video production to New Amiga when a video
production/streaming solution, or a Java one for that
matter, emerges.

There will be an upgrade to this project. The next
version of the project will have redone titles, a bit
more color correction, and more audio. I may
experiment with different compression settings. That
will be done this week.

I hope you enjoy the video.

Regards,

Roger