The big dream of entrepreneurs in the high-tech industry is to
see an
idea transformed into a prototype, developed into a product, and
successfully marketed. The financial rewards tied to this dream
are won through an initial public offering or sale of the
company.
Eureka!'s
staff includes some of the most creative and innovative people
here in Silicon Valley.
By acting as a product company incubator, we are able to
help our employees realize their entrepreneurial dreams.
Once an idea evolves into a
prototype, we form a subsidiary business
to fully develop and market the product.
The key
contributors become the founders of the new business
and Eureka! becomes an initial investor.
When a successful business is established, we sell the subsidiary
or take it public.
As a service business, we see the problems our clients face
on a daily basis. Through the natural course of our
business, we are presented with an incredible product
marketing opportunity: constant communication with our
clients. This leads to product ideas that can be applied
generally rather than to the specific needs of one client.
We are currently developing prototypes for two of the many
ideas we've considered. The first is an extension of Java
work we have completed while the other brings together our
experience with Java, electronic commerce, and digital TV.
These ideas are described below.
The increasing popularity of Java along with the resurgence of
the client/server computing model has provided the motivation for a
product prototype we are creating. Our Java development tools
are written in Java taking advantage of technologies such as Java
beans and remote method invocation to provide a friendly,
graphical development environment that is fully integrated with
the tools required to produce professional products. We address
the complete product life-cycle from design, through development,
source code management, release control, and support. Our tools
are also fast: the user interface is Java code running on the
desktop, while the compute intensive tasks are implemented on
powerful servers.
We have developed an application framework for digital
television by integrating our experience with Java, electronic
commerce and digital television.
There are two digital television programs we are developing
to demonstrate our technology.
"A la Carte"
is a how-to cooking show with simultaneous
broadcast of multiple video and information streams providing
navigation paths through the program for the novice as well as
the most advanced gourmet chef.
"Multiple Dimensions"
is a
virtual nightclub allowing the viewer to navigate through the
club stopping to watch the band, music videos, people on the dance floor,
and even access places that are off limits when attending the
live performance.
Our digital TV projects bring a whole new meaning to the concept of
programming.
