Electric Eye Multimedia, a multimedia consulting company, has launched a site to lure Web crawlers to info about the many facets of multimedia. Multimediator, ‘your multimedia mentor,’ features The Essentials, a guide to multimedia associations, publications, Internet resources and employment; and The Canadian Developers Directory, a list of Canadian companies developing content. Multimediator’s Web site address is: //www. ideaguy.com

– TRLabs installs ATM switch

Telecommunications Research Laboratories in Saskatoon has installed a Northern Telecom Magellan Vector atm switch, the first of its kind to be deployed in Canada. atm technology is used for high-speed, simultaneous transmission of data, including voice and full-motion video over telecommunications networks and the Magellan Vector switch facilitates the process to the tune of 10 billion bits of information per second.

trlabs sponsors in Saskatchewan and researchers from the University of Saskatchewan will have primary access to the switch. Connection to the National Test Network of canarie (Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education) will allow access by researchers at other sites across Canada.

trlabs is the largest non-governmental, non-profit research organization in Canada.

– Monster spot

Northwest Imaging & FX breathed life into a 250-foot Godzilla for a Godzilla toy tv spot that features the wrathful beast stomping through a stock-footage New York City.

Northwest’s 3D animators Brian Moylan and Dave Laviolette designed and created the complete computer-generated image of the storied monster. The big scaly one’s fiery breath, spewed out at hapless tv watching consumers, was created with Paintbox 3D motion-tracking and online applications. The spot was shot in Vancouver by Apple Box Productions.

– Sacred Earth CD-ROM

Vancouver’s Motion Works Group, producers of multimedia software and content, and Gumboot Productions in Victoria are combining efforts to produce a cd-rom title based on Courtney Milne’s best selling book, The Sacred Earth.

The title will draw from Milne’s collection of over 300,000 photographs to present an interactive journey ‘to the spiritual power places of the earth.’

The Sacred Earth is the first cd-rom effort associated with documentary film producer Gumboot. British Columbia Film will be involved in financing the project as part of its Multimedia Initiative.

– New product watch

Lightwaves Systems has announced two new digital fiber optics transmission systems products, the Fibox dati-sl and dato-sl data transmitter and receiver modules, and the IMS Transmission Modules. Applications for the systems, which debuted at the Audio Engineering Society Convention (New York Oct. 6-9), include broadcast, video post-production, and film production.

– BTS Broadcast Television Systems, the professional television equipment division of Phillips Electronics and California-based Micropolis, have partnered to develop disc drive storage solutions aimed at the broadcast and professional video industries.

– Phillips Key Modules has developed two new sound enhancers, the IS 5021 and IS 5022, which offer a combination of audio functions and features such as a digital sound processor, a sample rate converter and a 20-bit a/d converter. The products, available from Mackenzie Laboratories and Superscope Technologies, retail for $1,500 and $2,400, respectively.

– Silicon Graphics and Netscape Communications will be making available at year’s end a family of turnkey software applications enabling electronic commerce on the Internet. The applications will be the first to integrate high-volume transaction processing, real-time data management, and encrypted communications for creating online services and large-scale businesses on the Internet.

– The Soundmaster Group has integrated the Otari radar digital hard disc recorder into professional sound post-production through the ION Studio Operating Environment. The integration means that random-access disc-based digital audio is now available ‘online,’ and capabilities normally ascribed solely to digital audio workstations are accessible in all aspects of post, including foley and adr recording and mixing.

– Utah-based Dynatech Video Group has released version 1.1 of its Antero Character Generator for the sgi platform, which allows stepping through font families via the keyboard and multilayering compositing effects with backgrounds through offline recording. TI