Dimension X and Marimba Announce a Bundling Partnership to Bring Cross-Platform Multimedia to Bongo/Castanet Users; The Liquid Motion Pro, Castanet Edition Delivers the Only Point-and-Click Content Publishing for Castanet Channels.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 20, 1997--Dimension X, the market-leading provider of Java-based platforms and tools for interactive content creation, today announced a partnership with Marimba that will drive the broadcast of multimedia on the Internet.

This agreement will enable, for the first time, point-and-click multimedia publishing directly to Marimba's Castanet channels. Live interactive and animated content created with Dimension X's Liquid Motion Pro can be incorporated into presentations developed using Marimba's Bongo application builder and easily published directly to Castanet channels using the Liquid Motion Pro, Castanet Edition. This new functionality, now available, will be free to users of Liquid Motion Pro.

"With the announcement of this partnership, we believe Dimension X can significantly drive multimedia creation for push delivery on the Internet," said Danny Rimer, Internet analyst, Hambrecht and Quist. "Current Marimba channel creators have described the ease of authorship, delivery and dynamic updating capabilities of the Dimension X tool-creating an overall compelling multimedia content property."

Now Liquid Motion Pro will allow Castanet channel publishers to easily author, deliver and dynamically update compelling multimedia content.

"The Liquid Motion Pro, Castanet Edition will enable true point-and-click multimedia publishing directly to Marimba's Castanet channels," said Kim Polese, CEO and president of Marimba. "Without writing any code, Channel content authors can easily create live, highly-interactive animations that respond to users input dynamically."

The Bond, a live interactive Internet-broadcast comic book, was created by LaFong (www.lafong.com), the award-winning partnership of director John Sanborn, and writer Michael Kaplan, using Liquid Motion Pro.

"Picture dynamic characters and explosive soundtracks that interact with users to create a new story line every day," said Sanborn. "With Liquid Motion Pro, I easily took my ideas and converted them into an interactive-comic book Castanet channel without serious programming. Truly a `plug and play' experience. This will allow us, as developers, to create new genres of interactive entertainment."

EntertainNet has used Liquid Motion Pro to author and incorporate multimedia into their Disco-Rama Castanet channel. Disco-Rama takes a nostalgic look at the 70s from politics to pop culture. Disco-Rama is updated weekly, with daily updates beginning in February. Programming features music, film, sports and other popular topics. Every Friday, there's even a "Shake Your Bootie Trivia Challenge," recalling moments from the 70s that you might have forgotten -- or want to forget.

"EntertainNet delivers dynamic entertainment content over the Internet that needs to be 100% Java and work across platforms," said Steven Damron, CEO of EntertainNet. "Liquid Motion Pro is an ideal long-term animation solution for users who want highly interactive content. Our entertainment production staff can easily create dynamic Internet multimedia for Castanet channels that require only a mouse click to publish, and can be viewed by all users with no plug-in accessories."

Liquid Motion Pro

Unrestrained by platform dependency, Liquid Motion Pro is a long-term animation solution for creating highly interactive content in 100% pure Java. This tool enables users to clearly differentiate content and communicate ideas over the Internet with Java animations that come alive and respond instantly to users input. With Liquid Motion Pro, online multimedia presentations, Web advertising, financial data representation, personnel training, human resource information and corporate reports can captivate viewers through animation and interactivity.

Because of Liquid Motion Pro, artists and designers are not limited by technology in creating Internet content. Companies using Liquid Motion Pro to separate their content from the multitudes of static Web sites include: c/net, Organic Online, GNN/AOL, eMerging Media, R/GA, Zentropy Interactive, Spotted Antelope and Excite.

A Tool for Artists

Features include sprite and audio sequencing, motion-path control, direct scene manipulation and support for interactive behavior functionality. Liquid Motion Pro provides a visual hierarchy browser, called Structure View, for direct manipulation of scene elements. Each scene element is included in the browser hierarchy and the scene in its entirety can be viewed from the editor window to provide complete and easy cut-and-paste manipulation of components. Embedded scenes can be built modularly to create complex animation sequences. The timing control permits users to direct speed, pause, timing and direction of sequenced events. Specific user-defined events such as mouse-down can trigger behavior sequences. The highly interactive content created using Liquid Motion Pro is just one button-click away from publishing to the Net.

A Platform for Programmers

Completely coded in Java, the Liquid Motion Pro open architecture provides a powerful and flexible base for programmers to rapidly extend the functionality of the Liquid Motion Pro animation engine, Liquid Motion Pro Engine, to develop custom behaviors, sound and image libraries, as well as integrate database applications. Liquid Motion Pro takes advantage of all the features of the Java language, such as platform independence, object oriented programming and multithreading.

"Liquid Motion Pro is the first tool that gives Java programmers the power to create customized animation components, which can then be included in Java applications, applets and environments like Marimba's Bongo," said Arthur van Hoff, CTO of Marimba. "The Motion Engine lets programmers rapidly extend the functionality of the tool itself and then expose those custom behaviors to users through an intuitive point-and-click interface," van Hoff said. "Liquid Motion Pro is already being used by many of Marimba's customers, and has had a major impact on the quantity and quality of the content our customers have produced."

Liquid Motion Pro is available to purchase for $725 at http://www.dimensionx.com/products/lm on the Microsoft Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, SPARC/Solaris 2.3, 2.4 or 2.5 platforms. Suggested system specifications are: 486DX or higher processor, 8MB RAM (12MB RAM recommended), 5MB free hard disk space.

Dimension X plans on making the Liquid Motion Pro, Castanet Edition compliant with Marimba's forthcoming Publish Now SDK. The availability and pricing of the Liquid Motion Pro, Castanet Edition and Bongo Application Builder software bundle will be announced within the first calendar quarter.

Dimension X is a leading supplier of Java-based platforms and tools for multimedia creation and delivery on the Web. The company's products include Liquid Motion Pro for Java-based multimedia authoring and Liquid Reality (TM) for authoring and delivery of 3D interactive content. Dimension X (www.dimensionx.com) is privately held and based in San Francisco. -0-

For additional information about Marimba, please contact: Cindi Shandera, Neihaus Ryan Group Public Relations, 415/827-7038; [e-mail].

Note to Editors: Liquid Motion Pro animations can be viewed with both Netscape Navigator (TM) and Internet Explorer (TM) or any Java enabled browser.

CONTACT: Dimension X

Megan McFeely, 415/243-0900

[e-mail]