Macromedia And Spiderdance Co-Develop Interactive TV Using Shockwave And Flash

19-Apr-00

Macromedia, Inc. and Spiderdance, Inc. announced a strategic partnership to develop Internet/TV convergence technology based on Macromedia products.""This is a revolutionary step forward for interactive television. By building Macromedia technologies into our system, we open up interactive TV programming to hundreds of thousands of Macromedia developers,"" says Steven Hoffman, CEO of Spiderdance. ""This means anyone who is familiar with Macromedia Director and Flash will potentially be able to leverage their skills to create new types of interactive TV content.""Spiderdance's sync-to-broadcast system already incorporates Flash animation, and Spiderdance is currently developing a Shockwave client for its system. ""Our mission is to enable convergence programming for all platforms that support Shockwave, including Internet-connected PCs, set-top boxes and handheld devices,"" says Tracy Fullerton, President of Spiderdance.Spiderdance's proprietary sync-to-broadcast system can provide fully integrated online/on-air content to more households than any other convergence technology. According to a Showtime/Kagan study, 18 million US households currently surf the Web on a PC while watching TV. Spiderdance sees its partnership with Macromedia as key to extending its reach to wireless devices, set-top boxes, PDAs and virtually all devices capable of interacting with the Internet.With the release of webRIOT, an interactive music trivia game show on MTV and MTV.com, Spiderdance established itself as the market leader in convergence. Since its launch, webRIOT has attracted over one million registered users.About MacromediaMacromedia's mission is to add life to the Web. Macromedia's products empower developers to provide experiences on the Web and enable e-business. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Macromedia is available on the Internet at http://www.macromedia.com.About SpiderdanceSpiderdance provides convergence content services to television broadcasters and advertisers. Using its proprietary client/server technology, Spiderdance delivers interactive content over the Internet that tightly integrates with TV broadcasts. The Spiderdance system can be deployed for personal computers, set-top boxes, Internet-ready televisions, Internet appliances and wireless devices. Information about Spiderdance is available at http://www.spiderdance.com.

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http://www.spiderdance.com
http://www.macromedia.com