From: rick@...
To: laporte-report@eGroups.com
Subject: Where's Dev-Null
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 21:23:16 -0800

Leo, I loved Dev and I always wondered what happened to him, of course I
was saddend by "the site" being dropped but when I heard they were
forming ZDTV I was ecstatic. But why didn't Dev make the trip at least
for a little while..?

Now I have been told that Tilde & her brother are his offspring....well
then bring dad back for a visit......people would love it...those of us
who know...

Thanks Leo I do think you are 1 of the best tech-spec guys out there
and I have followed your career for quite sometime.....thanks for all
the good stuff

Rick
www.ricksstory.com

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Leo's answer:

You have a good memory, Rick! In case others are interested, here's the Dev
story. Grab a cup of cocoa and put your feet up, it's a long one.

My history with ZDTV goes back to 1994 when I was hired to do a show for
them with Gina Smith called "The Personal Computing Show." It aired for
about 10 minutes on CNBC in the Fall of '94 before being cancelled. Good
thing, too. It was godawful.

After that I continued to work for ZD developing show ideas that would never
see the light of day. Late in '95 I got a call from my boss saying that we
might be able to do a deal with a new channel that NBC was starting with
Microsoft. They were looking for a daily hour long news magazine on
technology. I wrote a 90 page treatment which we pitched for the NBC bigwigs
at 30 Rock in a meeting that looked straight out of a Seinfeld episode. NBC
loved it and agreed to co-produce the show with ZD. We went into development
and launched "The Site" when MSNBC launched in Spring, 1996. I had hoped to
be a regular part of the show - ZD had promised me a role as chief
correspondent and weekend anchor - but the NBC execs decided they didn't
much like me on the air. I think the exact quote was, "Leo? Bleech!"
Needless to say, this was incredibly disappointing. In fact, at the time, I
felt like it was a career ending blow.

The coordinating producer took pity on me, however, and offered a way to get
on the air without anyone at NBC knowing. The show was to feature a virtual
character and the fellow they had been using to play the part wasn't working
out. Would I like to try out?

Virtual reality characters are essentially cartoon characters that are
animated in real time using monster computers from Silicon Graphics. An
actor wears a sensor suit that records his movements and relays them to the
SGI Onyx which animates the character in real time based on the actor's
motion. In the case of Dev, puppeteers animated his head and facial features
at the same time. Because it happens live the character can interact with
real people. The notion was that our human anchor, Soledad O'Brien, would
spend a few minutes each night talking with an animated coffee bar hipster
who had his finger on the pulse of Silicon Valley.

One of our producers, Matt Hawn, came up with the clever name of Dev Null -
a play on the UNIX term for a non-existant device. I wrote (or more often
ad-libbed) the copy and danced around in the suit, and puppeteers Karsten
Bondy and Kristine Moss arched his eyebrows and spun his purple hair. The
combination was a success. I think Dev was one of the best parts of The
Site. He was mentioned in the New Yorker as Soldedad's "purple pineapple
haired" sidekick, praised in the New York Times as "the real stand-out on
The Site," and even won an Emmy award in 1997. And best of all, he is
immortalized as "Zev" MSNBC's idiotic animated pundit in Al Franken's book,
"Why Not Me?"

When MSNBC cancelled The Site in November, 1997, Dev died with it. The
rights to Dev were split between ZDTV, MSNBC, and the company that designed
his appearance and software, Protozoa
(http://www.protozoa.com/studio/dev/dev.html). His software still lives, I'm
told, on the SGI Onyx in our studios - the same machine that runs Tilde -
but the technology used to create Tilde is very different. We've talked
about a Dev reunion, but the technical hurdles are pretty steep, and the
demand is not particularly great.

I loved doing Dev, and I appreciate the opportunity it offered to do
something entirely new, but I doubt Dev will ever come back for real. His
day is over. For a year and a half, I was the only person in the world
working daily on TV as a virtual character. It was great fun: I got to say
things no real human would ever be allowed to say and I flirted like the
dickens with the gorgeous Soledad O'Brien. And we were inventing a totally
different kind of TV. But just like Pinocchio, all I ever wanted was to be a
real boy. Fortunately, the death of The Site made the birth of ZDTV
possible. Puppeteer Karsten Bondy continues to do great things with the
virtual characters on ZDTV; watch for revamped Dash and a brand new
character to appear soon. Meanwhile, I have found new and wonderful
opportunities in front of the camera, but I'll always be grateful for the
chance to have been a small footnote in the history of television.

Leo