Something that shipped...

Here is an actual BeOS application that we shipped. Using the questionable "Ultra" branding, it was a nice, functional MP3 encoder. It offered some basic queue and notification features and exposed some encoder flags that seem pretty technical. I can't remember for sure, but it may have used various backends, including one written by Jon Watte. of BeOS MediaKit fame.

A large chunk of my music collection was encoded using this program. Some of the newer codecs make it tempting to go back and reencode at a higher bitrate though.

Lost History

My current job concerns the user interface design of creative applications most of the world will never see. They are used by highly skilled artists and programmers for the creation of feature length animated films. The final product, the film, will be viewed by millions, but the actual tools will only be used by a few hundred people. This is much different from most of the other products I have worked on. Finder, TimeMachine, Spotlight, Final Cut Pro, Encore, Mastertracks and others all had far larger user bases. I am estimating that there are at least 25 million users of Finder, as it is in use by every Macintosh sold. Having such a large user base means your product is well known, possibly famous and perhaps infamous.

In the case of the proprietary tools I am now creating, I am doing my best to keep a visual record of how the look and how they are evolving. This becomes difficult when the hardware required to run old versions is no longer available or running. Whole generations of software have gone extinct, leaving only memories in the minds of former users.

This leads me to Wavefront logo. Some of the early 3D software was so expensive and exclusive, there wasn't a large user base for it. The software exisited before the web and visual records may only exist in documentation that is also rare. It is a shame that we have no visual record of how these apps looked and behaved. It would be awesome to have a visual encyclopedia of these programs. TDI Explore, Wavefront Advanced Visualizer, Alias Animator are all commercial programs that seem to have left no visual record. There are also so many custom packages long gone that probably had great impact on todays 3D software that have left little or no record. Software by III, Digital Productions, MAGI and Abel all come to mind.

If anyone has any visual records of any of these, lets bring it to light and not forget about them.

Software Archeology

I was digging through some CDRs that are on the brink of dissolving and came across this screenshot of a BeOS application called UltraDV initially written by me. Mike Ost later joined the tiny mediapede startup and did a lot of great work. UltraDV originally started life as a multimedia authoring tool but became more specialized as a digital video editor.

It was a blast working on this application and participating in world of Be. There was a time when we actually thought it might all work out.

No copies of this application were ever sold, but chunks of the code we used by the BeOS MediaKit and some of the engine code continued to live on in a product made by Muse Research.