Bootstrap Institute
6505 Kaiser Drive
Fremont, CA 94555


Date: 18 Jan 2001 17:53 PST


From:   Doug Engelbart
Bootstrap Institute
DOUG@bootstrap.org

To:     Adam Cheyer, cheyer@ai.sri.com
yimpp@cim-oem.com
Carla Woodroth, carla.woodworth@sri.com
Eugene Kim, eekim@eekim.com
Eric Armstrong, eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com
Grant Bowman, grant@suse.com
Howard Liu, hliu@verticalnet.com
Jack Park, jackpark@verticalnet.com,
jh@upsoftware.com
Joe Williams, altintdev@webtv.net
John Deneen, JJDeneen@ricochet.net
Lee Iverson, leei@ai.sri.com
Marcello Hoffman, hoffmann@sri.com
Nicholas Carroll, ncarroll@inreach.com
Pat Lincoln, lincoln@csl.sri.com,
reginald.ford@sri.com,
Rod Welch, rowelch@ATTGLOBAL.NET
Sheldon Brahms, snighthawk@aol.com
yeemailbox@yahoo.com,
earth@erowid.org,
mark@codesourcery.com

Subject:   OHS-Group Special-system demo for wk 4

Message 4-5 p.m., Monday 22-Jan, in SRI meeting room EK 255 (where we had many of our initial "OHS" meetings last Spring), we'll have a talk and demo to our OHS group by Alon Schwarz, President, CEO and Cofounder of "BrowseUp," an Israeli startup.

I promise you that what he'll describe and demonstrate is the most relevant thing to our HyperScope and OHS launch that we could hope to expect from any group "out there".

He was steered to me Wed. morning by Jim Spohrer; and Alon met me at my house that afternoon to describe and demo the system he dreamed up and which has been programmed by a group of "the best programmers in Israel."

A great deal of promising synergy here, to the HyperScope/OHS plan. They use an intermediary server, provide high-resolution linking among HTML files which are not disturbed by the links which however have visible presence when viewed by the enhanced (Microsoft) browser. An intermediary server and link db provide support for this, as well as added features sukch as giving "popularity" assessments to citations. And special views are offered of selected clusters of interlinked objects.

They have solved a number of basic design aspects of our proposed HyperScope, and added interesting and compatible extensions.

Alon is part way to getting regular VC funding, but also expresses basic interest in just getting these things out there helping make the world work better. (Sound familiar?) He seems very interested in our joining forces. I've explained that we're determined on Open Source development; and yet he still says he's interested.

I'm quite sure that Alon has obligations/commitments to a number of people who have been helping develop this system, and I'm quite certain that any deal which could produce even an open-source cooperative merger would need to be made by a well-established organization; in our case, the main visible candidate being SRI (perhaps with other cooperative entities).

So, follow-on meetings will be set up next week within SRI to consider this. But Monday is for everybody to come learn, ask questions, help us assess -- help Alon strengthen his brain child.

Appreciative of all of you.

RSVP to Mary Coppernoll: (510) 713-3550 Coppernoll@bootstrap.org,

Sincerely,

Doug

Douglas C. Engelbart, Ph.D.
doug@bootstrap.org
Bootstrap Institute


Copy to:

  1. Alon@BrowseUp.com,
  2. john.rothermel@trw.com,
  3. Coppernoll@bootstrap.org,
  4. vaneyken@sympatico.ca