TESTIMONIALS: The World Wide Web Consortium Issues SMIL 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation

ACCESS · Bell Labs · CLRC / Rutherford Appleton Laboratory · CWI /
Amsterdam · DAISY Consortium · Netscape · NIST · The Productivity Works
· RealNetworks · Veon · 


         "SMIL brings the synchronized integration of
         video/audio broadcasting and WWW contents.
         ACCESS' NetFront Browser for TVs, Settopboxes, and
         other consumer appliances will support SMIL and
         enable the processing of a variety of synchronized
         multimedia applications for non-PC area. This will
         definitely be one of the key technologies in
         Internet-enabling home appliances."
         -- Dr. Tomihisa Kamada, Executive Vice President,
         R&D, ACCESS Co., Ltd. 

         "The adoption of SMIL is another step toward the
         development of truly transparent global multimedia
         experiences on the Web with no technical or stylistic
         barriers. Bell Labs is leading efforts to support
         multi-party multimedia communication on networks.
         SMIL will make the Web a richer environment for human
         communication - from speech recognition to video
         encoding to virtual applications - and will allow for more
         seamless integration of multimedia elements."
         -- Sid Ahuja, Director of the Multimedia
         Communications Research Laboratory, Bell Labs,
         the Research and Development arm of Lucent
         Technologies 

         "SMIL will provide a standard basis for integration of
         video and audio into the Web with support for
         alternatives to tailor presentations for maximum
         accessibility. CLRC is pleased to endorse SMIL, and
         as part of the European Chameleon project consortium
         we are proud that our GRiNS reference browser for
         SMIL has been made available to W3C members.
         CLRC believes that wide acceptance of SMIL will
         greatly facilitate the re-use of video material, thereby
         particularly enhancing the infrastructure for education
         and life long learning. We look forward to working on
         version 2.0 of SMIL when we hope that the alternatives
         mechanism included in SMIL will be made more widely
         available throughout W3C technologies."
         -- Professor F. Robert Hopgood, Associate
         Director, Department for Computation and
         Information, CCLRC 

         "The adoption of SMIL represents a major step in
         integrating multimedia applications within the Web
         architecture. SMIL's simple and declarative structure will
         allow developers to build flexibile and portable
         applications that can initially be used with stand-alone
         SMIL player and later integrated into standard Web
         browsers."
         -- Dr. Dick Bulterman, Head, Multimedia and
         Human-Computer Interaction, CWI / Amsterdam 

         "The SMIL specification is exactly what the DAISY
         Consortium needs to move forward with the
         developments of digital talking books for persons who
         are blind or who have other print disabilities. more than
         150 libraries from 19 countries, which currently make up
         the DAISY Consortium will start to use the SMIL
         specification in the production and distribution of our
         books. The W3C SMIL Recommendation advances the
         standards for the next generation of information
         technology for persons who cannot read standard print."
         -- George Kerscher, Project Manager, DAISY
         Consortium 

         "With much care and diligence, the W3C has created
         an important standard which provides a means for
         ensuring interoperability for rich content on the Web.
         Netscape is pleased to see SMIL become a W3C
         Recommendation."
         -- Jim Hamerly, Vice President, Client Products,
         Netscape Communications 

         "SMIL is the center piece of Web technology for driving
         the digital multimedia over the Internet. It provides the
         mechanism for content applications to interface with
         other Internet protocols such as IETF's RTP and RTSP,
         as well as being an easy-to-use, media-independent
         scripting language to synchronize any existing and
         future multimedia applications."
         -- Wo Chang, Project Leader of Streaming
         Synchronized Multimedia, Advanced Network
         Technologies Division, Information Technology
         Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and
         Technology 

         "The SMIL specification is a major step forward that
         allows for the creation of a new range of multi-media
         Web-based materials for education, industry, and the
         individual consumer. We whole heartedly support SMIL
         and we are in the process of bringing out products that
         support these new opportunities as well as providing
         links for SMIL players from our existing products."
         -- Ray Ingram, Executive Vice President, The
         Productivity Works, Inc. 

         "SMIL is a fundamentally important enhancement to the
         Web architecture and is the result of broad industry
         collaboration and support. Now that the industry has
         agreed on a standard for authoring and presenting web
         based multimedia, the flood gates on rich media
         programming are wide open. The W3C has once again
         demonstrated outstanding leadership and effective
         rigorous processes for extending the value and
         usefulness of the Web."
         -- Rob Glaser, Founder and CEO, RealNetworks 

         "Veon is enthusiastically supporting the W3C
         Recommendation for SMIL as a creator of tools and
         applications for the computer and TV convergence
         marketplace. SMIL provides an industry standard
         method for creating dynamic, "playable" content that
         can be scaled to meet the needs of streaming media
         whether its being viewed througha low bandwidth
         connection or through a wider broadband pipe. It also
         defines a new and exciting method for giving the Internet
         a TV look and for bringing Web-like interactivity to the
         TV. Veon is supporting SMIL both in its V-Active tool set
         and its Media Activation Server which creates SMIL
         presentations dynamically.
         -- Udi Peleg, Chief Technology Officer, Veon

Received on Monday, 15 June 1998 12:00:50 UTC