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Java developers aim to get Web delivery clicking with Castanet

Marimba Inc. spins from Sun's orbit

Published: Oct. 7, 1996

BY JODI MARDESICH Mercury News Staff Writer

Personal computer users want click-and-go speed as they browse the Web. What they often confront is technology that moves at a click-and-wait pace.

All those snazzy audio and video elements that are attracting more people to the Web take time to download before they appear on your computer screen. And every time a personal computer visits a site, it makes separate connections to graphics, text and other applications that make up a Web page. Once you move on to the next page, those connections are gone.

Special delivery

New software to be introduced today by Marimba Inc. of Palo Alto promises to change that by delivering applications and data you're interested in directly to your computer.

Marimba's software, called Castanet, could change the Web experience from one of random surfing to one of efficient delivery. Using Castanet, once an application is downloaded to a computer, it's ready to run, and only changes to the site get downloaded the next time the computer is tuned into that site.

''It has the potential to be the next big thing,'' said Rob Enderle, senior industry analyst with Giga Information Group, in Santa Clara. ''It's got revolutionary potential. If adopted broadly, it could change a great deal of how we do things today.''

The potential also could put the company under heavy scrutiny by competitors.

''The idea they've come across with is a powerful one. That's dangerous for a small company,'' said Hubert Delany, research director of Internet strategies for the Gartner Group, in Stamford, Conn. ''The industry might run with it. ''

Castanet delivers Web pages and applications similar to the way a television set delivers movies. A TV set has a tuner that picks up signals sent from a transmitter. Castanet consists of tuner software that runs in your computer. The tuner receives Web pages or content, what Marimba calls ''channels,'' from a ''transmitter'' whenever there's something new to send.

In corporations, many users will often receive the same software updates. So Marimba offers a ''proxy'' that makes the way updates are broadcast more efficient. A ''repeater'' synchronizes information for a company that spans different locations.

Java vets

Founded in February by four members of the team responsible for making Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java language a household word, Marimba has been watched closely.

Until August, it was just the four founders: Kim Polese, Jonathan Payne, Arthur van Hoff and Sami Shaio. Since then, the company has tripled. It has moved to larger offices, where there will be room for about 10 new hires this year, and about 25 next year.

''We blow out the power about twice a day,'' Polese says. ''We're all crammed into this little space. It gets pretty crazy.''

Marimba has a different view of network-centric applications than that of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his network computer supporters. Applications don't just live on the network; they are downloaded once to your hard drive. When the application is updated, only the changes get downloaded the next time you connect -- not the entire application.

This makes it possible to have more lively applications that incorporate video and sound, as well as text. That capability has attracted some impressive partners, including Netscape Communications Corp., AT&T, MGM Interactive, Walt Disney Co. and HotWired.

For instance, HotWired plans to launch Talk.com, a chat service built with Java, next week. Ed Anuff, director of product management for HotWired, said using Castanet let HotWired build a much livelier chat service.

''There are a lot of limitations on what you can do within Java applets,'' he said. You have to be conscious of the size of the application you're building, so it doesn't take five minutes to download every time you launch a chat session.

Bigger is better

''The Marimba system makes it possible for developers like HotWired to build very ambitious large scale Java applications without having to worry that the user is going to give up on it because of all the headaches downloading it,'' he said. ''We were able to revisit a lot of the ideas wanted to put into the first version of the chat system that we had to cross off the list.''

The notion that software will be downloaded to your hard drive makes some users wary, but Marimba has limited Castanet in the beginning to delivering Java applications.

''Security is important because we're basically spraying code all over the place,'' Polese said.

While there have been a lot of scares about Java security, she said the talk is hypocritical. ''The fact is no one has hacked into a Java applet yet,'' she said.

Eventually, the Castanet system will be used to distribute applications written in non-secure languages, Polese said.

Excite Inc. is one of the early supporters of Castanet. Excite plans to publish its Channel Guide, which is a TV Guide for the Web, said Joe Kraus, the firm's vice president of marketing. The channel guide can help Web watchers find and preview channels that interest them.

Free distribution

In the tradition of Net start-ups, the tuner software will be free and can be downloaded. Trial transmitter software is free as well. But eventually, Marimba will collect revenues from businesses that use the transmitter, proxy, and repeater software.

The heart of Castanet is a protocol that coordinates the transfer of data from transmitters to tuners, and deciphers when updates need to be made. Marimba has filed for a patent on the protocol, called application distribution protocol, which lacks the catchy names that stamp most of Polese's projects.

Her inspiration for the names? ''Something that makes people remember it,'' she said. ''I don't like names with net and cyber -- that's overdone.''

Marimba's name came from ''rhythm and dynamic and energy and lively,'' added Polese, who keeps her sanity by taking dance classes. That started a theme for percussion instruments, so Castanet and Bongo fit right in.

Marimba's partners are full of praise. ''They have to run really fast to keep ahead of the competition,'' said Excite's Kraus. Kraus, who likes to create hybrid words to describe industry phenomena, thinks Marimba can do it because they have ''tech-mo'' (short for tech momentum).

''I think Marimba is going to come out of the starting gate running incredibly quickly and has a great shot at establishing a de facto standard within the next six to 12 months,'' said Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape. ''There's a whole bunch of products and services they'll be able to build around Castanet also.''

What Castanet needs are software developers making applications using Java before it will have a wide impact. To do that, Marimba decided they would have to make software transparent to the people using it.

''We need to make the focus what's going on, whether it's an online newspaper you're using or a game you're playing, and remove this lock that's historically been there between the operating system and the application,'' Polese said.

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