DIGITAL L.A. : NO DOUBTING THOMAS ON WEB AUDIO.

Byline: David Bloom 

Sixteen years ago, he blinded music fans with science. Now, Thomas Dolby wants to bewitch Web users with sound.

Dolby, born in Cairo, the son of a British archeologist, has had a lengthy career in the music business as a producer, performer, songwriter and session musician, working with everyone from Lene Lovich to Def Leppard.

Best-known for his quirky, video-driven 1983 hit, ``She Blinded Me With Science,'' he's mostly been behind the scenes since, particularly this decade where he's been focusing on what new technologies such as the Internet can mean for music.

Now Dolby is the public face for Beatnik.com, which has created an aural equivalent to the Web-friendly low-bandwidth animations of Macromedia's Flash program.

``Flash is great technology for using animation over the Web,'' Dolby said. ``Instead of sending a movie, you send instructions to the program. We're the audio equivalent of Flash. We just send sonic instructions over the Net.''

The Beatnik Player (recently released in Version 2.0 and available at www.beatnik.com) gets around the limitations of transmitting good-quality sound on the Web by using a built-in sound synthesizer.

When a user, say, moves her cursor over a specific spot, the program on the Web page's end sends an instruction telling the synthesizer software on the user's end to change the key from C to F, or make some sound choice available, such as remixing a song from old collaborator David Bowie, Dolby said.

A $19 upgrade adds ``a few more sound banks, a few more frills'' to the basic software, which is available for most major platforms and is incorporated in Sun Microsystems' Java language, the Netscape Navigator Web browser, WebTV and NCI's set-top boxes, among other places.

But Beatnik's focus is different from other Net music companies, which are creating file formats that allow people to listen to the computer equivalent of a CD or radio. Beatnik is more interested in the ``soundtrack'' for Web sites, which Dolby said is often overlooked.

``My concern was as a composer who has in the past been asked to do TV commercials, etc.,'' Dolby said. ``When I was asked to do (sound for) Web sites, there was no appropriate way to do it. When I speak to this, there's a whole community of professionals in your city that would resonate with this. Hollywood has had several decades to appreciate the importance of sound.''

Beatnik has a gallery area where people can upload their music files created with the software, or listen to others. The company is also developing an e-commerce area, so music creators can make money off their products through sales at the site.

``When MTV came along, it really changed the way I wrote music, because I knew there would be a video component to it,'' Dolby said. ``This is the same thing.''

The company itself, Dolby included, will create soundscapes for major Web clients, but Dolby said he would like to see dozens of competitors also helping create the soundtrack for the Web.

``I just wanted to make sure music would play a part in the entertainment to come,'' Dolby said. ``I would like what I do in this space to be part of a movement to revolutionize the medium.''

Refugee Net

One of the thorniest problems of the Kosovo conflict has been reconnecting the swell of more than 800,000 refugees with family members who may be sprinkled across several countries awaiting repatriation.

``There was no communication at the very beginning, and it was very difficult to connect families back together, even in camps only a few miles away,'' said Peter Zimble, president of InterPacket Group Inc. ``It was just zero communication.''

For the past month, Zimble's Santa Monica-based company has been helping ease those communication problems using its satellite technology to link a refugee camp in Macedonia with the Internet.

InterPacket already provides such satellite-Net connections to Internet service providers in about 50 mostly lesser-developed countries whose antiquated phone systems can't handle heavy data demands.

``A couple of employees in InterPacket identified a need for connectivity to help the aid organizations helping the refugees,'' said InterPacket president Peter Zimble. ``They said, `Is this a good idea?' We said, `Yes.' We talked with the government and the aid organizations. Then our employees went to Macedonia a couple of times.''

InterPacket set up an ``Earth station,'' or satellite dish and related electronics, at a camp in Macedonia, helping the International Organization on Migration and the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees share family information with Kosovo Albanians sprinkled throughout the region and numerous NATO countries.

Donors, including an ``unnamed family foundation,'' helped pay the cost of the equipment and satellite transmission time, and Gateway donated computers, Zimble said.

In Dreams we Cast

Sega's big push on its next-generation Dreamcast gaming console is proceeding apace, with a few interesting wrinkles expected to come out this week.

The company is scheduled to announce a deal Tuesday with Hollywood Video that will make the 128-bit machines available for rental as much as two months before they hit U.S. stores for sale on Sept. 9.

The video-gaming trade publication MCV said three games, including the superfast Sonic Adventure, would also be available. Sega representatives declined comment, other than to say an important announcement would be made by the top executives of the two companies on Tuesday.

You should start seeing a more direct ad blitz in coming weeks, too, going from the entertaining but cryptic teasers of recent weeks to more upfront ads touting the 25 games the company says will be available this fall.

Sega says more than 100,000 Dreamcast machines have been pre-ordered through a handful of major retailers, such as Toys R Us and K-B Toys. The machine has done well, but not extraordinarily so, since being released in Japan during the holidays.

If waiting until Sept. 9 is unbearable, and you don't want to rent, there's always the gray market in downtown Los Angeles' toy district. One shop owner there told me Japanese versions of the machine are going for around $170 wholesale (Sega cut the cost of its Japanese machine recently from about $245 to about $165).

While the gray market isn't illegal, there are downsides. English-language games and manuals aren't available, and you'll probably get a slower modem than the 56.6 kbps device planned for the U.S. version.

Meanwhile, Sony says it will show off its next-generation PlayStation 2 in relatively market-ready form this fall in the Tokyo Toy Show.

The box of blinking lights that I saw at May's Electronic Entertainment Expo was a long way from a finished product, however impressively it handled daunting graphical challenges.

Sony also is sending signals that it knows how to get its costs down. Observers have said the machine, packed with a DVD drive, powerful graphics and central processor chips and a wide array of peripheral connections would cost more than $400, way beyond the price most folks want to pay.

But Sony said it invited a new kind of digital light oscillator that will read both DVD and CD discs, allowing it to cut the number of chips the machine needs from 11 to four, saving a big chunk of production costs.