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Software finds facts, then tugs at user's sleeve

By DAVE GUSSOW

©St. Petersburg Times, published November 17, 1997

LARGO -- At software company Kinetoscope, they think Star Trek.

Actually, they do more than that. They want real-life computers to act just like the ones in the popular science fiction series:

The computer learns what you want, finds it and then notifies you.

"You're actually delegating tasks to your computer," said Damien Miller, vice president of technology, calling it "computers being active assistants instead of just tools."

Kinetoscope's way of doing that is in a system it developed called Via, or Versatile Intelligent Agents, and unveiled this summer at the Java Internet Business Expo in New York. (Via can't be found on any software retailer's shelves; Kinetoscope sells it only to businesses.)

Kinetoscope started with six employees in April 1996. It did Web site consulting, developed corporate intranets (Florida Power was a customer) and worked on business software applications based on the Java programing code.

It now has 23 employees and expects revenues this year of $1.2-million, compared with $300,000 during its start-up year.

With the amount of information available exploding on the Internet, more people and businesses are looking for ways to sift through it and manage it.

Via has some similarities to Internet search engines and so-called push technology. But it goes further: It's automated and will notify the user when the information has been found, Kinetoscope officials say.

Internet search engines, such as Yahoo and Excite, will find specific topics for computer users, but it often comes up with thousands of references that the user has to wade through. Via will do the searching and sifting automatically.

Push technology allows users to request information, usually news, stocks or sports, from a content provider on the Internet, such as CNN. This content then can be displayed on a ticker along the bottom of the screen, or even as part of the screen saver.

Kinetoscope president Marvin Scaff says Via can be programed to get very specific information. While a push content provider may send all stories on technology to a computer user, for example, Via can narrow it to specific companies or issues.

Via also can search data bases on the Internet, content providers, Web sites and even selected electronic documents within a company. When it finds the targeted information, it can notify the user by pager, fax, e-mail or a pop-up message on the computer screen. So the user is not tied to a desk waiting for the information to appear.

For example, a stockbroker may want to know when a stock hits a certain price, or the price moves a set amount. Via can track that, and then notify the broker.

A company may want to keep tabs on its competition, and set up a system to be notified of everything from Securities and Exchange Commission filings to online classified ads.

Miller, 25, tells a story of how one company lost a deal because its sales team was unaware that new information had become available before a presentation. With Via, the team could have been notified before, even during, the presentation. That company is now a Kinetoscope customer.

Kinetoscope's roots go back to Scaff and Miller's days working at Hands-On Technology in California. Scaff, 31, was director of engineering, lead programer and architect of a program called Crush, which helps companies analyze competitors' strengths and weaknesses (as well as their own) and develop strategies to improve their position.

Crush is based on the ideas of Regis McKenna, a well-known marketing strategist in Silicon Valley. In a forum last year on real-time technology, McKenna talked about the need for business to get information quickly:

"The whole key is, how fast is your business at finding the answers and responding and turning it around? When new things happen at the speed they're happening today, you have to be able to gather and respond very rapidly. You have to have an e-mail religion. Companies that move very fast have e-mail as a religion."

Randy Hain, president of Real Time Knowledge Systems, which is working on Crush for Workgroups, says agent technology such as Via "certainly has potential." Its success may depend, he says, on whether the infrastructure of the Web can handle the tasks, tools and agents. The latest version of Crush includes Via.

The first version of Crush relied on companies to fill in the blanks for the corporate analysis, Hain said. Crush for Workgroups, expected to be released by January, will allow people throughout a company to collaborate in the process, and with Via have an agent to find information for the analysis.

"Ultimately, the object of the Real Time Knowledge System is to produce enterprisewide corporate knowledge," Hain said, and then help produce action from that knowledge.

When Scaff, Miller and director of marketing Gerry DeSeve, who is in Kinetoscope's New York office, decided to start their own company, they set up shop in Largo. Scaff's reason for coming to the Tampa Bay area: family ties.

Kinetoscope targets big companies in the Fortune 1000 for what it calls its knowledge discovery and management tools. It will sell a company software and the consulting services needed to use it effectively, or it will sell the system by itself. Kinetoscope also markets Via to other software developers that want to incorporate Via's features in their programs.

Kinetoscope's clients include Schlumberger, Media One, Gist Communications and Real Time Knowledge Systems.

Hain says Kinetoscope "has grown a great deal over the last 18 months" and is one of many engineering companies that haven't yet "made it to the next level."

To get to the next level, Hain said, a company needs to develop a winning product.

Kinetoscope hopes Via will take it to the next level, with Scaff saying the company hopes to attract some investors so it can market Via more aggressively and effectively.