P3D Re: Magic eye marketing

[wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Bob Wier)]

>letter wasn't really a surprise. That Patent DID have a very serious
>negative impact on how the *popularity curve* took place in the USA. It
>reduced book choices, persuaded the best artists in the medium to quite
>working in stereograms and resulted in the poorer quality books from ME
>being about the only ones available anymore. Their images were consistently

This puts me in mind of the photo-cd situation from Kodak - when it was
first announced (what? 7 years ago) there was considerable excitement
in the computer/graphics community. Technically it looked very good 
indeed, being a progressivly detailed image format. But an EXTREMELY
poorly worded official note from Kodak on the internet (I suspect
it was written by a lawyer) was effectively a "cease and desist" 
warning to ANYONE who was thinking of adopting it. As a result, it's
moribund at this point. It REALLY irritated a LOT of graphics 
professionals at the time.

A counter example of this thinking is the Philips compact audio cassette.
Before they developed it, it was clear that the audio equipment manufs
really NEEDED a standard to avoid another debacle of the Quad- Stereo
type (and to a lesser extent the VHS/Beta war) where competiting formats
killed (or at least significantly retarded) an entire industry. It's my
understanding that Philips pattented the hell out of the compact cassette
design, and than made it available basically for free (maybe a few
cents per unit) to anyone who wanted to use it.

If Kodak hadn't adopted this stance, maybe their fortunes would be 
better today (who knows?). However, I now have a perfect application
for Photo-cd, but there's no way in the world that I could afford to
use it (nor would I be inclined to do so due to it's past history).

THANKS - Bob W.

   ====== wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ======
  5:14 AM Saturday, January 3, 1998
   keeper of the Photo-3d and Overland-Trails
       mailing lists and other stuff
     (currently in Ouray, Colorado)



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