CompuServe Thread

Mark, Your consulting business sounds interesting, Multimedia has great potential. The package was purchased at $243.76 from ComputerCITY (the new Tandy super-store in Dallas). CompUSA's price was $319. The actual retail is $495! You can also use Adobe's "PhotoShop" for the Mac ($675 from Programmer's Paradise). "Imagen" is $229 at CompUSA. "Corel Draw 3.0" is $399.99 on CD. Of course I blew up photographs to incredible size just to see what happens. At 2400% you start to see the grain a little. That enlargement takes approximately 1/4 inch square and blows it up to about 8"x10" which is far larger than you would normally want to do. I took a photograph of myself with face being less than 1/8"x1/8" and blew that up to cover my screen (it is now wall-paper on Windows–it keeps the damned cat off the keyboard). Kodak insists that it maintains all the detail of the negative. At the Kodak lab I saw an eyeball of a beautiful lady from a group photo blown up to fill a 27" screen. It is grainy because I saved it as a .BMP for only 100 lines of resolution to keep the BMP small enough to be used for wall-paper. You can actually take it up to 2000+ lines but then you get an 18MB file. I am not trying to publish my puss but if you like, I will modem that BMP to you so you can see it. I have a US Robotics 14.4 V.32/42bis with HyperACCESS software. If you have the same, I could modem it to you in about 1 minute (slightly less than 1 MB). The photos cover the Far East (where I lived for 30+ years), plus the rest of the world where I traveled too frequently. Rough idea on CD-ROM is probably 100 images in the same five resolutions that KODAK offers. Will probably include some sound tracks as well. Idea is to go for $50-$60 retail, distributor's price around $20-$25. There will be no royalty on photo or sound. Hope to begin releasing them within 45 days and plan to do one every two weeks if they sell. Jan

Mark (Continued) I just spoke with Kodak. They are sending me info on the Silver and Gold developer programs ($400 – $700). Will advise when I see what is in them. They said that my negatives must be very grainy. They are correct, the film I used was high speed and it had cooked in the sun for a few days also. I am taking some good fine grain film in for CD-ROM production tomorrow – will let you know how that works out. Yes, I've palyed around with fractals and compression. This is a red hot market also because of the interest in bringing 30 fps video to desk top systems. I heard there is a company on the East Coast that uses fractals in video and that they are achieving incredible compression ratios. Can't remember where I heard it. More on our CD-ROM photo project. The intent is that it would be used to produce presentations and educational material. I have some musician friends and we are coming up with some neat "co-ordinated" sound tracks that will provide an effect similar to sound tracks in movies. Will probably use Toolbook's new stuff for synchronization. What kind of customers do you service? Any interest in our vertical applications? Have JIT/MRP (manufacturing), banking (written for Chase Manhattan & BofA), Human Resource Management (for Lockheed), Traffic, Billing and Scheduling (For Storer Cable TV), and others. Another neat point on the Kodak Photo-CD, they provide a "thumbnail" directory in the jewel-case. This is small 3/4"x5/8" images of the photos. They have been printed with a hi-res color "transfer" printer and they look like photographs! Regards Jan

Mark, Prices on PHOTO CD: Per Image ——— 10 – 24 $ 1.79 25 – 49 $ 1.69 50 – 74 $ 1.59 75 more $ 1.49 Minimum Order (10) $17.90 Image Source Charge $ 2.00 Append to Existing Disk $ 2.00 Disk Mastering Per Disk Duplication $99.99 Max I am taking 100+ photos to be transfered today. Will let you know how they turn out if you are interested. Rgds Jan