DIGITAL L.A. : AND THE WEBBY GOES TO ...

Byline: David Bloom 

The Webby Awards, which fancy themselves the online equivalents of the Oscars, are making a rash (but probably quite profitable) move: They're going to take nominations from the general public, instead of relying on a relatively narrow panel of plugged-in experts to choose honorees.

The move was perhaps inevitable, given that the awards honor the best of the relentlessly grass-roots World Wide Web.

But with the number of Web sites rocketing toward 1 billion, and Web sites struggling to find new ways to become known, the judges shall be busy.

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, which runs the awards, is charging an entry fee of $50 per nomination, which should eliminate at least a handful of would-be applicants for the 24 categories ranging from ``activism'' to ``weird.''

Oh, and if you win, don't count on a lengthy acceptance speech. They're limited to a blissfully short five words, forcing an economy of speech that would be the envy of Calvin Coolidge and haiku masters everywhere. If all that still hasn't daunted your dreams of Web eminence, go to www.webbyawards.com for futher details before Sept. 16.

Jumping ship

It takes a brave man to leave behind the comforting bosom and very deep pockets of AT&T for a relatively little-known competitor. And it takes a brave and crazy work force for 13 of his colleagues to come along with him.

But Larry Miller and many of the key people with AT&T's digital music subsidiary, a2b, did just that about two months ago, leaving the Death Star for the entrepreneurial haven of Reciprocal Inc.

It was a somewhat curious time to move. AT&T had gone on a massive buying spree, diversifying itself from the nation's biggest long-distance phone company, with one of the biggest Internet service providers, into the nation's biggest cable TV operator with a piece of both cable-modem service providers, Home and Roadrunner.

Given that wide-ranging Net presence, a2b's audio encryption and compression technology was suddenly much more central to AT&T's Web dreams of making money selling music and much else online.

But Miller wanted to go with a smaller, more entrepreneurial company, so he, chief technology officer Howie Epstein and 12 others jumped to Reciprocal.

Where he landed wasn't well-known outside the nascent digital music business, in part because Reciprocal has gone through a couple of name changes since it was founded by Japanese giant Softbank.

But the big boys knew the company well, and have been lining up to cut deals and buy a piece of Reciprocal when possible. Softbank still owns a chunk, but so do Microsoft, Reuters and a couple of prominent venture capital firms.

And since the a2b crew joined, Reciprocal has made a flurry of notable partnerships that will help it shape the future of music online.

Reciprocal, like a2b, creates software tools that allow a music maker, such as a record company or band, to control how digital versions of their songs can be distributed over the Net.

``You need to allow the content owners to establish the rules,'' Miller said.

With those software-enforced rules, for instance, a band could let fans download a song for free, as long as they gave the band their e-mail addresses and other information. The band in turn could use that information to sell their fans other releases and merchandise and to notify fans of concert and television appearances.

``In the record business, the biggest reason why fans of a particular artist don't have new music from that artist is they don't know about it,'' Miller said.

Or the band could let a fan listen to a downloaded song three times, or for a month, or six, before Reciprocal's encryption software locked up the tune until the fan paid for it.

These kinds of software controls are a record-company response to the widespread popularity, particularly on college campuses where music-mad students have access to high-speed Net connections, of pirated songs compressed with the MP-3 standard. Without such controls over digital copies of music, no one in the multibillion-dollar business can make money.

``It's becoming mainstream,'' Miller said. ``Can we turn it into a business? We think so. If we make it easy, and provide a vast repertoire, I do believe it could be the best thing to happen to the record business since the advent of the CD.''

Reciprocal and a2b aren't the only companies creating these tools. In the past six months, a series of companies large and small have jumped into the digital music business, including such heavy hitters as IBM.

And on the other end, the record business is slowly embracing the idea of digital music as more than a way to pirate good-sounding tunes. Several of the major record labels, and many small ones, have begun selling music in some way online.

And another big step took place this week, when the industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative released its final technology specifications, detailing the security features that need to be on the gadgets and gizmos you'll buy this holiday season, so they can listen to legal copies of the digital music you download from your computers.

``What it means for normal human beings is that this announcement will make music much more easily available from artists that people have heard of and might be interested in buying,'' Miller said.

The initiative was the record business's response after losing a pivotal lawsuit last winter against one of the first handheld MP-3 players, the Rio PMP-300 from Diamond Multimedia.

Since that lawsuit in Los Angeles was decided (and the appeal lost a couple of weeks ago), things have changed a great deal. Diamond even signed a deal to use Reciprocal's technology on the next version of the Rio, the PMP-500, which is slated for release in several weeks.

``This is about turning the corner from conducting a series of responsible experiments,'' Miller said. ``I'll be interested in what happens when interacting with the technology just disappears, when getting the music is as easy as picking up the phone and getting a dial tone. We have a ways to go.''

Home of the future

As our world gets more heavily populated and polluted, one likely source of future conflicts will be over access to drinkable water and other basic but endangered resources, the United Nations says.

A Woodland Hills-based company and related nonprofit organization are trying to find ways to help head that off, selling modular housing that uses environmentally friendly and self-contained technology, then plowing part of the profits back into the foundation, which will do research and help advise less-developed countries about how to deal with resource problems.

Aquarius EcoSystems Inc. is the for-profit company, selling modular structures that use some of the geodesic-dome construction techniques developed by Buckminster Fuller, and outfitting the structures with such Earth-friendly technologies as solar panels to cogenerate electrical power, said Aquarius CEO Dave Sanders, a former government engineer.

The housing also is tied in with a broader self-sufficiency approach that encourages organic farming and soil-building techniques, Sanders said. The company advises buyers on how to use those techniques as part of creating a self-contained life that treads lightly upon the planet.

``I suppose the easiest way to state the goal is we're about raising consciousness that sustainable technology is the direction we need to move to ensure the health and well-being of our progeny,'' Sanders said.

The company plans to establish a demonstration community built around its housing and utility systems in Hawaii, and to move part of its operations there. For more information, check the company Web site at www.aquarius-es.com.

In turn, the company's founders also have set up a nonprofit organization, the Light of Life Society, which will research sustainable technologies, and consult with countries and regions that are facing resource shortages, Sanders said. The society's Web site should be up soon, but hasn't been completed.

Notes from underground

Nintendo's stock prices have soared in Japan on word that the Game Boy Color  may get an attachment, perhaps through a cellular phone, that will allow it to get e-mail and download games from the Internet, according to reports in a Japanese paper and the trade publication MCV.

This is getting a little wacky, but perhaps no more so than using your Palm Pilot or other handheld PC to access the Web (or using it to play games).

Nintendo isn't announcing any specific add-ons for Net access yet, but consider this another devolutionary step for the mutating PC, as it becomes part of everything and not just a separate box on a desk at work or in the back bedroom.

Anime plug of the week

Two thumbs up (I get to use both hands) for ``Queen Emeraldas,'' the latest from Leiji Matsumoto, who previously created ``Starblazers'' and ``Galaxy Express 999.''

Emeraldas is a scar-faced space pirate queen with an engaging gravity and style about her. The driven young boy who is something of a protagonist is somewhat annoying, but the animation has great style and a rich visual texture that I liked a great deal.

For more information, check out A.D. Vision's Web site at www.advfilms.com. They have a ton of other Japanese animation titles as well, including films based on such games as Tekken, Sin, Sonic the Hedgehog and Panzer Dragoon Saga.