Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Voice Mail on Amiga Message-ID: <125829@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 4 Oct 89 23:12:12 GMT References: <688@orange6.qtp.ufl.edu> <1989Oct2.132314.12313@rpi.edu> <4481@wpi.wpi.edu> <15070@netnews.upenn.edu> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) Distribution: na Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 76 Ok, so Ranjit wins the prize for hitting a very big nail squarely on the head... In article <15070@netnews.upenn.edu> (Ranjit Bhatnagar) writes: >Never mind all that! What we really need to know is - how do we make >the Amiga as much fun as the NeXT? The topic under discussion: VoiceMail. Let's not limit ourselves, its official buzzword is "MultiMedia Mail" >It would be nice to have an IFF standard for multimedia documents: >documents which can include formatted text, sound, pictures, anims, >and such. Does there exist something like this already? I'm thinking >along the lines of: > > FORM MULM BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! I'm sorry that answer is incorrect. In fact IFF has a "concept" for this already, and they are called LIST's. LIST's collect FORM's and since we don't have a true "mail program" for the Amiga yet, why not just declare that all mail is "multimedia" then you can say "Oh, MultiMedia Mail, sure I got that on the Amiga. Never saw any 'text only' mail packages." So now we have List MAIL. Of course, this part is easy. We already have ILBM, FTXT, and ANIM. A short audio sample form (not 8SVX because it isn't an instrument) would be useful, anyone care to propose one? The tough part is coming up with the user interface. That will take some thought. And "printing" a message would be a real problem. (Walk over to the printer, pick up a box of 35MM slide, a videotape, some paper, and an audio cassette. ) Now of course we could "print to disk" and anyone with a multimedia compatible terminal (read Amiga) could view their mail. We could even make 3.5" disks with address stickers on them, get your "letter" from the post office, drop it into the terminal and "poof" kinda like FAX only better. One possible user interface would be analagous to something like "MailTool" one various UNIX workstations. Except that the command bar would include things like "View Image", "View Video", "Play Audio", and maybe "Print Text" Then when you read this document, you would see a little symbol [CC] or something that said "Something is attached here." And when you selected it the appropriate button would be unghosted or enabled or what have you. Or it could be as simple as an annotation See Figure 1, where you could then select "Show Figure 1" and the mail program would figure out what it was that needed to be done and then did it. If you put a built in ISDN/V.32 modem in the "terminal" one could sell as many of them as there are phones. (Can you say 100 MILLION ?) Anyway, here again is an insurmountable opportunity that Commodore could push through and make a zillion bucks on, however my money is on Apple. Fortunately we (the Amiga user community) can probably hack something together that is nicer/faster/less expensive and have the satisfaction of showing Commodore what they missed :-(. Last comment, and this is more serious than the previous one. I am *not* down on Commodore, truely. All the things about how not a single person at Commodore HQ could give a non-hacker *one* reason why they should buy an Amiga is true, but this lack of vision is hereditary and buried deep in their genesets. They are doing a lot of good stuff and the ads that are coming out this month should be phenomenal, unfortunately they are designed as a company to do two things, make it cheaper and make it cheaper. They rely entirely on third parties for giving John Q. Public any reason whatsoever to buy their product. The negative affect of this is that they are doomed to always follow on the trailing edge of application software technology. [They keep relatively up to date with their OS technology, which is a big step in the right direction.] Great box, great people, and a lot of fun to program. Let's just hope that nowhere in the commercials it says "...and the Nintendo isn't even a computer!" --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. "If I were driving a Macintosh, I'd have to stop before I could turn the wheel."