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Technology Stocks : Totally Hip Software Inc. (THW) - Just the Facts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gerry Merz who wrote (664)	1/7/2000 10:16:00 AM
From: Eric Weiner	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 704

Hip Software looks to QuickTime for success Small Vancouver company has been struggling to grab a foothold in the competitive multimedia world. Gillian Shaw Vancouver Sun SAN FRANCISCO -- A tiny Vancouver software company which came to Macworld to show its wares is hoping Apple's QuickTime multimedia software will give it a piggyback ride to the big time. Totally Hip Software, which has been struggling to gain a foothold in the competitive world of multimedia software with its QuickTime authoring solution, got a boost during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote speech, in which QuickTime played a prominent role. Quicktime is Apple's proprietary multimedia software, which allows visitors to Web sites to see moving video images and hear audio. It is distributed free of charge, and works in both Apple and Windows environments. Apple has been putting increasing emphasis on it for both home and business use. "We're really pleased with the show and the Apple announcements that raised the profile of QuickTime," said Randy McCallum, Totally Hip's CEO. "We are the only company creating a professional QuickTime authoring environment and with this focus on QuickTime by Apple, it really gives us a boost." It's a boost McCallum concedes the company could use: it has been plagued by persistent losses and has seen its stock plummet to an all-time low in the 30-cent range recently after it pulled out of its consumer line of software last year. Its hopes now rest solely with LiveStage Professional, which is aimed at Web site developers and Webmasters. Static Web sites are now considered obsolete, with interactive multimedia sites becoming the new norm, and McCallum said LiveStage Professional was well received when a beta version was introduced at Macworld in New York last summer. "We needed to see Apple do more and more marketing of QuickTime and now that's happening," he said. "We're selling our tools to video people and Web designers who are creating the content on the Internet. "We were ahead of our time, but now it is no longer good enough just to put static GIFs and JPEGs [photo images] on your Web site," McCallum said. LiveStage, which retails at $700 US ($1,000 Cdn) can be used in conjunction with such software as Adobe's PhotoShop and Apple's iMovie. Apple is heavily promoting the ease of use of its new DVD version of the iMac that allows anyone with a digital video camera to edit and produce movies in a matter of minutes. McCallum said Totally Hip changed its focus with LiveStage Professional, reducing staff from 23 to the current seven and dropping its consumer-software product. LiveStage Professional, which won a best-of-show award at the last Macworld, wasn't released until Nov. 8. An update for the software was released in time for Macworld. "People were telling us they couldn't find a tool like it, so they were willing to wait for it to come out," he said. LiveStage Professional uses simple drag-and-drop steps to edit video, adding words, music and other effects. McCallum said the company's customers range from developers of small Web sites to ones like Apple and Wal-Mart which use the technology in the development of their sites.