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East Lansing, Michigan
Beware the Microsoft Cartoon Censor

By Richard Wiggins

his week, as thousands gather in Pasadena, California for the New Animation Technology Conference and Exposition, attendees may want to ponder whether they want to use Microsoft technology in their animation projects.

General users of Microsoft products are familiar with some of their animation efforts. The Microsoft Office suite offers a little animated paper clip that comes to life at startup and offers you assistance in using the product. Most people I talk to find that they absolutely hate the little animated critter. It’s more of an annoyance than an assistant.

Even though some users recoil at Microsoft’s visible animation efforts, surely some people like animation as a user interface. In fact, early in 1997 I saw a demonstration of animated interfaces by Dov Weizman, a consultant in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dov is an enthusiastic evangelist for animated interfaces – so enthusiastic, that he convinced me that animated interfaces were the Next Big Thing. His company, Argo Technologies, has devoted a Web site to demonstrating what’s possible with Microsoft animation technologies and with one of their characters, the Genie.

I was so impressed by Dov’s presentation that I called up my editor at New Media magazine, and pitched an article announcing this important new interface paradigm. New Media is based in Silicon Valley, and my editor has seen or heard a zillion announcements of new technologies, whether via a PR agent calling on the phone, a live demo at a trade show or in company offices, or a fancy glossy press kit. She was skeptical as to the real potential for this technology.

"But Lydia!" I protested. "There are a lot of big players in this field! Microsoft has a large development staff working on this stuff! Just wait, in six months you’ll visit the Disney home page and Mickey Mouse will speak to you and listen to you, instead of expecting you to click on hyperlinks to static HTML pages!!!"

Lydia is wise to the excessive enthusiasms of authors and PR flacks alike. She agreed to a short piece describing work that Microsoft and other companies are doing. The article appeared in June 1997 under the title "'Toon In to a Friendly Interface." We agreed to a friendly bet, with me wagering that within six months the Web would be chock full of animated interfaces.

It’s been more than six months, and I’m sure I’ve lost my bet. But there’s a different twist to the story of Microsoft and animation. Microsoft provides some freely-available animated characters for experimentation or production use – and Microsoft retains control over what those characters can say.

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