HISTORY

A HISTORY OF INNOVATION

2011: O’WONDER is currently developing a number of innovative connected services and products. These draw upon our considerable experience in human factors (UX) and some robust unique approaches to location services.

2009: HEYYU Video Menu Box announced to the UK independent restaurant and cafe trade.

2008: O’WONDER proud to co-sponsor the 88th Oxford – VS – Cambridge Varsity Ice Hockey match.

1996: O’WONDER introduces THE ARTWALKER PROJECT, a unique award winning website that allows art lovers to explore the world through the timeless beauty of scenic paintings and drawings. Currently offline for redevelopment using the latest location based technologies.

August 1995
– August: Following its successful use on their Lollapalooza tour, BiT BOPPER generates the visuals at the Smashing Pumpkins 1995 European concert for another grunge-vision experience!
– July: BiT BOPPER on WHITE ZOMBIE tour. System being driven by Bob Rosenthal.
– June: BiT BOPPER installed to video light the dance floor of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL) cruise liner, Legend Of The Seas, with a second installation due on another RCCL ship. Both installations arranged by leading lighting designers, Wynne Willson Gottelier, (Sevenoaks, England.)

1993: Launch of the SONOVISTA video synthesizer, powered by our BiT BOPPER real-time video graphics technology. SONOVISTA (sound and vision) made its way into nightclubs in the US, Asia and the Mediterranean allowing DJs, VJs and light jockies to create live music animated multi-layer visuals to compliment their music, rather than rely on prerecorded or broadcast video. The intelligent ‘CyberWriter’ video titler allows written messages to be overlaid onto the visuals for promoting events and making announcements. SONOVISTA was distributed by High End Systems (Austin, Texas) until 1995, although even today there is continued demand for the software due to the unique retro visuals generated by SONOVISTA.

1991: Ten years ahead of the digital revolution, O’WONDER produced the UDiS Media proposal that called for a global standard range of storage media to make the exchange of digital information more convenient. The UDiS Media proposal included the world’s first conceptual design for a solid-state personal digital audio player/recorder. It also proposed a standard high speed interface for connecting digital devices, influencing the development of today’s FireWire standard.

1989: Launch of the Classic BiT BOPPER Digital Interactive Multimedia Entertainment and Sound-to-Light graphics system at PLASA Light & Sound Show ’89, London, England. Voted hit of two separate lighting and sound trade shows in same year. Blending a huge array of technical innovations into a single system, the Classic BiT BOPPER featured eye popping audio animated 2 & 3D real-time visual effects, the world’s first video sampler, a 3D character generator and a mass of other live visual effects. All controlled from a high-tech mouse driven user interface that featured ingenious bas relief effect sliding panels – often imitated by others since.

November 1988: Launch of GETSET TYPESET! Typeset, compressed clip-art and typeface utility for our Stop Press Desktop Publishing application. Acknowledged to be the best such utility on its platform.

Electronic Arts purchase rights to STOP PRESS from O’WONDER.

PCW-April-1988-full-page-2of2

Full page advertisement from Personal Computer World Magazine (UK), February & April 1988
(Tecnation became O’WONDER in 1997)

1987: O’WONDER provides software design specification for porting of Pagemaker desktop publishing application to the Amstrad CPC home computer platform.

1987: Developed AmigaMagic for Commodore Business Machines – custom demonstration software for the incredible Amiga computer. A fun user interface provided links to different real-time examples of the Amiga’s extraordinary capabilities.

1987: Featuring one of the world’s first Bas Relief* human interfaces, EXTRA! EXTRA! utilities, fonts and clipart library developed by O’WONDER for AMX Pagemaker.

*3D looking icons, buttons and windows that made the software attractive, intuitive and enjoyable to use.

1987: O’WONDER took the personal publishing concept to the next level with the introduction of STOP PRESS for the popular Amstrad PCW word processor. STOP PRESS is the only software application ever developed to feature an all-in-one direct access control panel that grouped all icons and menus into one large instantly accessible control area. This kept the work area free of floating pallets to make the composition of graphics and text convenient for the busy designer.

1985: Alex Blok and Neil Lee give up their day jobs and officially form TECNATION, that was renamed to O’WONDER in 1997 to better reflect our vision and mission.

1984: Conceived, designed and developed AMX Pagemaker for the 8 bit 32k BBC Microcomputer. Europe’s, if not the world’s first Desktop Publishing application. Press reviews and public response outstanding. Worldwide installations. Used by British Broadcasting Corporation, Independent Television, Members of UK Parliament, Educational Establishments, Public, Business. Featured on TV and in Superman IV in the offices of the Daily Planet. Pagemaker was not only an innovation in itself – allowing the user to blend graphics and stylized text on the same page – but introduced other radical concepts, such as an integrated font designer, real-time disc access, a friendly iconographical interface and more. Distributed and marketed by Advanced Memory Systems Ltd (AMS) of Warrington, England. AMS were subsequently bought out by Logitech.

AMX Pagemaker is not related to the Adobe product released in October 1985 originally by Aldus Corp. The products were conceived independently of each other.

1984-1985: D.O.R.I.S. Digital Operation of Rehabilitation and Independence System developed as a charitable endeavour. Details to follow in July 2010.

1984: Our first product, Artsystematic launched. An innovative consumer and educational computer aided design application developed for the BBC Microcomputer. Artsystematic featured dual-cross hair cursors for ease of creating technical drawings and a unique ‘perspective aid’ to assist in the generation of 3D looking objects and text characters. Artsystematic was released within the UK only although a far more sophisticated version was embedded within the operating system of our revolutionary Classic BiT BOPPER multimedia entertainment system.

O :: MAP :: HISTORY OF O'WONDER

A HISTORY OF INNOVATION