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Technology Stocks : Echelon Corporation (ELON) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: unclewest who wrote (415)11/30/1999 3:27:00 PM
From: Manx  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 3076
 
FROM Raging Bull:
By: Noimporta
Reply To: None
Tuesday, 30 Nov 1999 at 3:09 PM EST
Post # of 1171

MM's shaking the tree. DIRECT news from the front:

See Yahoo! board:

messages.yahoo.com

See last 10 trades:

host.cnbc.com

MM's walking down ELON hitting the bid on 100 shares. We still have more news coming from
HomeNet99 coming out and with the news today, who is going to believe ELON should be going
down?.

Easy Going the ELONg Way

(Voluntary Disclosure: Position- Long; ST Rating- Strong Buy; LT Rating- Strong Buy)



To: unclewest who wrote (415)11/30/1999 6:45:00 PM
From: jopawa  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 3076
 
Interesting post from Yahoo from one of the few sane and knowledgeable posters. He seems to have attended the little coming out party today at the Woodside home of co-founder Markkula:

messages.yahoo.com

Fellow Longs,

General Comments:
This summary includes quotes, which are best viewed in the context of this event. Any forward-looking statements should be verified with official investor relation's channels. I could have misunderstood some points, misspelled names and misrepresented or omitted other important information.

The quoted comments that I've provided are not necessarily the most important points of the speakers. This is my unofficial opinion of this event so read and invest at your own risk. Read the official PR.

Also please save any personal attacks about speakers and quotes etc. I have a great deal of respect for all the folks who were in attendance and wish to honor them with our courtesy.

It was a good event!

Set on the park like grounds of the Markkula's Woodside estate (Northern California), in a special place know as the "Little Theater". The Press Event was like a peek into the future for all except the technology literate. The show included audio and video clips giving it the feel of a mini concert. It was captured on video and there may be a streaming video feeds available soon.

I talked with several folks and found two themes. There were big money long time investors that were not familiar as to the extent of what Echelon has accomplished and were quite impressed. There were also media folks and design representative from various companies who heard of Echelon but were not familiar with their vision. (Partial list: Yahoo, Cypress, Toshiba, Microsoft, Cisco, Sun, OpenTV, Business Week, Wired Mag., Knight Ridder, Local News stations, Analysts etc.)

As staygold_77 mentioned, the focus was educating a new group of folks about Echelon, not introduction of the i.LON or any other new products. That means PR is still due for first customer shipments of i.LON so stay tuned. By the way Mr. Oshman had an i.LON on hand. It was much smaller than the photos imply - that's good!

Mr. Oshman gave a context for LonWorks at…

Metcalf's law,"… the value of the network grows according to the square of the number of devices on the network. … it is important to think in terms of the number of the devices and the potential applications."

For every computer that we interact with there are probably thousands of devices that we interact with… thermostats, light dimmer, fire detector, microwave oven, refrigerator.

(There is more but this gives a flavor)

"We've opened new channels… Embraced by thousands of companies… I think of Echelon as the Cisco Systems of connected devices." After showing some props and mentioning the places where the millions of LonWork devices were installed - including the Eiffel Tower Millennium clock - a series of demos were presented.

THE FIRST DEMO:
The first demo focused on the theater itself. There are over 700 LonWork devices included in the design. The levels were changed with the touch of one switch - folks were taking notes.

He gave the example of an Australian company that installed LonWorks in their emergency backup lighting systems to monitor batteries - saving time and making the system more reliable and efficient.

He gave the example of a parking garage in Italy that is controlled by LonWorks - automatically parks your car, requiring less space. He gave the example of Texaco's use of LonWorks to monitor filling stations.

THE SECOND DEMO:
The second demo was a micro production line (e-cones.com - soccer cones mfg.) with a back end tie to an inventory control system. They actually had part of a conveyor belt with orange soccer cones lined up on it and one of those red rotating warning lights - plus an alarm bell that sounded when the order was initiated - cool demo. With the projection screen showing a browser based inventory application an order for 6 cones was placed and the conveyor belt started moving. As the cones dropped into the shipping box the inventory information was updated - real time. He mentioned factories like Audi, Mercedes, Proctor and Gamble were using LonWorks.

(Judy Estrin, Cisco Systems CTO)

The Internet changes everything. It was focused on wires and protocols but is now focused on information services.

(I'll include a few highlights only)

New World Catalysts:

1) Convergence: Many services on network (voice, data, video etc.)

2) Internet Paradigm,
Internet Advantage: 1) Commerce, 2) Content, 3) Community, and 4) Control

3) Mobility: Being connected and allowing the remote user the same level of access

4) Entering the home: She mentioned this as "obviously the most relevant"

She commented that this has been talked about for a long time. She mentioned "I like to tease Ken that one of my hallmarks has always been being ahead of my time and I think one of the things I like about Ken is that he is one of the few (people) that I've met that's almost or even more ahead of my time than I have been. … But Echelon is not ahead of it's time anymore … its actually true..".

There are three aspects as to why…

The always on connections into the home (bandwidth - a whole new set of applications), 2) the networking technology within the home (networked appliances, simple functions) and 3) the devices that require that technology.

Partners in connecting devices (importance of relationship is connecting these devices)
Delivering joint solutions

THE THIRD DEMO:
They connected to a home in London (the Eneger? home). Talked with a person live and controlled the home via the i.LON server. The fellow was just arriving to the home. Mr. Oshman checked on the heating in the home office and noted that it's a bit cool outside. The fellow mentioned a problem "I seemed to have left my keys in the car". The video showed a picture of the person at the front door, talked about the authentication algorithms and opened the door.

Mr. Oshman turned on the lights for him and lowered the blinds. Most of this presentation was greeted with laughter and punctuated with applause.

(Bill Joy, Co-founder of Sun)

Three generation of computing.
1) Computers that had disks and local data
2) Focus on the web (email, servers etc.)
3) Pervasive computing and networking with everything with electricity (or a batter)

Talked about Java and the goal of host independent SW. Also talked about Jini. The idea being the ability to define software that doesn't change based on where it is moved.

A summary of some of their work
www.rtj.org

"Think of controlling a bunch of device as manipulating objects rather than speaking a lot of protocols"… "We've invented this technology called Jini which works over LonWorks which is really in our minds is kind of a vital for distributed computing, a very thin layer above which takes this attitude that these devices should be thought of and spoken to in this way that is very natural and gives us a nice way of modeling what they do."

"We are at the beginning of this pervasive computing age…"
"The first step is getting everything connected…"

He went on to talk about the ability of devices to have context. For example a cell phone would know when to ring. "But that's been provided for us by the inadequate cellular coverage in this area" - laughter.

He talked more about context and devices having more awareness and even emotion. The general idea of having some rule based SW that knows where it is and can act with some common sense.


"We are really proud to be here today"
"The Echelon vision is not a small vision"
"This pervasive computing thing is a big wave… this company is a leader in I think is the next big wave, were glad to be working with Echelon … and ah sure we will have more to say in the future."
Mr. Oshman's wrap up.

Today we think of the network as a bunch of computer with some devices attached. In the not too distant future we're going to be thinking of the Internet as device networks with a few computers attached.

"Those device networks are going to be run by LonWorks. With Internet connectivity what we are really doing is…"

"Bringing the Internet to Life."

This appears to be the new slogan.

(the new beginning)