Pseudo.com

Pseudo.com
Private
Founded New York 1994
Headquarters New York, New York, US
Key people
 Josh Harris, Founder
Website www.pseudo.com

Pseudo.com was a website for live audio and video webcasting. Founded in late 1993, its parent company Pseudo Programs Inc. filed for bankruptcy following the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000. Its assets were purchased by INTV in 2001.[1] Founder Josh Harris claimed in 2008 that Pseudo was a "fake company" and "the linchpin of a long form piece of conceptual art."[2]

History

Pseudo Programs Inc. was founded in late 1993 under the name Jupiter Interactive by Josh Harris. It was named after Harris' first company, Jupiter Research, to leverage the established brand name of the market research and analysis firm.

Programs

Pseudo programs included a computer animation called “Launder My Head” created by Josh Harris and Jaques N. Tege. Launder My Head was Josh Harris’ version of what future online interaction would be like and served as the genesis of Pseudo Programs Inc.. The computer animation featured a stadium with massive TV screens at the center and cartoonish people with TVs for heads which had the “online users” face being displayed in real-time singing the catchy jingle song “Launder My Head”. This was in mid-1993, before most even heard of “World Wide Web” and there were only two online services at the time (Prodigy and Compuserve) . Armed with the animation and his vision of future online communication along with the clout of Jupiter Communications, Jupiter Interactive landed a contract with the Prodigy online service to revamp their chat room offerings to reflect this avatar driven online chat room experience. At this time online services charged users by the minute; part of Jupiter Interactive's contract with Prodigy was to create and maintain, with full creative control a channel called “Pseudo”, as well as chat rooms on Prodigy for which they would receive a portion of billable hours from users of the Pseudo channel and chat rooms. Shortly thereafter Josh Harris leased the 10,000 sq ft (1,000 m2) 6th floor of 600 Broadway, a depression era sweatshop building in NYC. He built an apartment for himself and two cats in the back and moved Jupiter Interactive.

The Pseudo channel on Prodigy quickly became the most trafficked chat rooms and area on the service. The billable hour revenues generated by the chatters sustained Pseudo for the first two years with the occasional loan from Jupiter Communications to make payroll. The content of this new channel on Prodigy was created for the most part from parties at the company's new offices. After several over-the-top parties at 600 Broadway featuring the cutting edge technologies of Prodigy's online service, like the first progressive streaming audio over dial-up, chat rooms in which you could actually have cyber sex (like a chat room called “married and looking”), and also featuring networked gaming stations playing Doom II, up and coming spoken word poets from the NYC spoken word underground along with the super edgy performance artists and bizarre inflatable art installations. Jupiter Communications kindly asked that the name of Josh Harris' fledgling online entertainment company be changed for fear of being associated with the bohemian online party company. Josh acquiesced and settled on the name Pseudo.

Pseudo's name was taken from what France's Minitel online service called login names. Instead of asking for a "login name" or "nickname" when you logged in it would ask for your "Pseudo".

With the expansion of the Internet and the release of streaming audio technologies by RealMedia, Pseudo was made into its own company broadcasting audio only programs from its website at Pseudo.com. One of the most popular shows was Quakecast, a show focused on a growing videogame subsculture centered around 'first person shooter' games like ID software's Doom and Quake.

With the release of video streaming technologies, Pseudo evolved the shows to live streaming video with multiple cameras, broadcast graphics, interstitials and streaming video commercials.

In 2000, with the bust of the Dot Com Bubble, the bottom fell out of the internet market. With declining sales and a lack of investors willing to invest in Pseudo, the company was forced to file for Bankruptcy and closed operations in September 2000.[3] In 2001, its remaining assets were purchased by INTV.[1]

1994 to 1998

Pseudo's live AM radio show on WEVD in NYC

Weekly interview show covering the business of film and video, created and hosted by Julia Zborovsky (1997-1999)

1998 to August 2000

Pseudo Programs was the premier provider of Online Net-Television entertainment. Each week the Pseudo Online Network produced and netcast more than fifty different interactive Net-TV shows, representing over 200 hours of original live programming per month. Pseudo's shows covered a range of non-mainstream topics underserved by traditional broadcast and cable networks.

On July 14, 2000 SPACE.com acquired Pseudo Programs' SpaceWatch.com.

Channels and shows

Logo

Pseudo’s logo is called "The Pill."

Office space

The Pseudo office space was as much a part of the buzz and press mentionings as the business itself. Initially Pseudo's office space at 600 Broadway in SoHo, NYC was the entire 10,000 sq ft (1,000 m2) 6th floor but after several rounds of investment and the resulting hiring spree it expanded to the 3rd, 4th and the 5th floors of 600 Broadway as well as another entire floor of a building on the next block. The 6th floor was often the location for large parties and events including a live performance by Metallica, and many live online shows that were just short of all out parties.

Events

The QuakeWorld release party

The first version of QuakeWorld by id software was supposed to have been released on Sept. 19, 1996, to coincide with a QuakeWorld launch party at Pseudo in New York City. Although QuakeWorld itself was not released that day, the big party in Manhattan became legendary in the history of Quake as the first major gathering of players and id employees in a single location to play Quake.

The Manhattan Memorial (day) Marathon

M3 was the largest Quake LAN party to date which took place in NYC, May 23-May 26, 1997. Over 300 gamers from around the globe trudged to Pseudo with their own computers for this unprecedented event. M3 was free, and was held at Pseudo Programs Inc. (home of quakecast). Although M3 was a bring your own computer event, many quakers graciously left their computers on, explicitly allowing those without computers to play quake. M3 was sponsored by the cyberweb cafe, Pseudo, and Planetquake.com.

Coverage of the Mars landing

On December 3, 1999, Pseudo hosted streaming coverage of the Mars Polar Landing broadcast live from UCLA in California. In partnership with the Omega Watch Company and NASA JPL, the coverage was entitled "Live From Mars" and also featured an online video documentary series featuring short in-depth segments on each of the science instruments on the interplanetary spacecraft and included interviews with the scientists who developed them. Traffic to the Pseudo.com site set a record when AOL carried a link to Pseudo on its front page during the landing.

Coverage of the 2000 Republican National Convention

Pseudo received heavy media coverage in August with its painstaking coverage of the Republican National Convention. The site featured live video from five 360 degree cameras stationed throughout the convention hall, live interviews with newsmakers and 24-hour chatrooms where site users could carry on their own political discussions. The Smithsonian Institution acquired the panoramic camera from the Texas delegation for its permanent collection.

Teams

Founding team

After leasing and moving into the 6th floor of 600 Broadway in NYC, Jaques N. Tege was hired full-time by Josh Harris to head the programming department and to create the new chat interface for Prodigy. Among the first hires were Lou Velez (Programmer), Mike Ganesh (Programmer), Dennis Adamo (Operations and Executive Producer), Bari “Gecko” Sacomono (Producer), Spiro Panosopolous (Producer), JUDGECAL (Producer/Webmaster/Sys-admin), Keith Patchel (Producer/Sound Desiner) and Steve Fine (Art Department). (Bari and Spiro would leave within the first four months of Pseudo, Lou and Mike after the first year) Not long after the initial hires would come Robert “Galinsky” Galinsky (Producer), Thomas “T-bo” Linder (Sound Design), Janice “Girlbomb” Erlbaum (Producer), Jim Hall (Streaming Media Guru), Joey Fortuna (Producer/Programmer) . They are generally considered, along with Josh Harris the “founders” of Pseudo.com.

Executive team

Alumni

*Lance Harkins- Director of the Physical Manifestation Department

*Davidson Mulkey- Lighting Director

*Lazarus Nazario- Charge Scenic: www.lazarusnazario.com

References

  1. 1 2 Jayson Blair. Pseudo.com Sells Off Remains for $2 Million - Retrieved: August 5, 2008
  2. ↑ Jardin, Xeni (26 June 2008). "Josh Harris: "Pseudo was a fake company."". Boing Boing. Retrieved 17 June 2010.
  3. ↑ "Pseudo.com Shuts Down," Online Newshour,September 19, 2000.
  4. ↑ https://www.google.com/patents/EP1083686A2
  5. ↑ https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012135819A3
  6. ↑ https://www.google.com/patents/US7756720
  7. ↑ https://www.google.com/patents/US20100287136
  8. ↑ https://www.google.com/patents/US7624093
  9. ↑ https://www.google.com/patents/US8412571
  10. ↑ Entrepreneur

External links

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