Pseudo.com
Encyclopedia
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. Founder Josh Harris
claimed in 2008 that Pseudo was a "fake company" and "the linchpin of a long form piece of conceptual art."
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.
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 10000 sq ft (929 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 companies 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 Real Media, 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. In 2001, its remaining assets were purchased by INTV.
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)
On July 14, 2000 SPACE.com acquired Pseudo Programs' SpaceWatch.com.
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.
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.
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), 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) and Bonnie "Bluesy" Weinstein (Producer "PseudoChat"/Chatmaster). They are generally considered, along with Josh Harris the “founders” of Pseudo.com.
Josh Harris (internet)
Josh Harris is the founder of JupiterResearch and Pseudo.com, a live audio and video webcasting website founded in 1993, which filed for bankruptcy following the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000....
claimed in 2008 that Pseudo was a "fake company" and "the linchpin of a long form piece of conceptual art."
History
PseudoPseudo
The prefix pseudo- is used to mark something as false, fraudulent, or pretending to be something it is not.-See also:*Falsehood*Pseudorealism*Deception*Mimicry*Pseudo.com*Pseudo: Blood of Our Own...
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.
Pseudo Programs
Pseudo programs included a computer animation called “Launder My Head” created by Josh HarrisJosh Harris (internet)
Josh Harris is the founder of JupiterResearch and Pseudo.com, a live audio and video webcasting website founded in 1993, which filed for bankruptcy following the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000....
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
Prodigy (ISP)
Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features.Initially subscribers...
and Compuserve
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
) . 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 10000 sq ft (929 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 companies 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
Doom II
Doom II: Hell on Earth is an award winning first-person shooter video game and second title of id Software's Doom franchise. Unlike Doom which was initially only available through shareware and mail order, Doom II was a commercial release sold in stores...
, 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
Minitel
The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982 by the PTT...
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 Real Media, 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. In 2001, its remaining assets were purchased by INTV.
1994 to 1998 on Pseudo
- Pseudo On-line Radio
Pseudo's live AM radio show on WEVD in NYC
- QuakeCast
- Go Poetry
- FILM BYTES
Weekly interview show covering the business of film and video, created and hosted by Julia Zborovsky (1997-1999)
- The Cyber City News
1998 to August 2000 on Pseudo
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
- ParseTV
- =JUDGECAL's= High WeirdnessCal ChamberlainCal Chamberlain , born Mark Chamberlain, was an artist and Internet pioneer based out of New York City. He was among the first journalists to achieve notability through online media.-Early life:...
- Parse
- =JUDGECAL's= High Weirdness
- 88 Hip Hop
- Beatminerz Radio
- Queendom
- 88 Soul
- The Sounds Of Gospel Hip-Hop
- FILM BYTES
- All Games Radio|AllGames Network
- Game Time
- Shooters
- Lilith and Eve
- Cherrybomb
- Fresh Advice
- Different for Girls
- Sex on the Sidewalk
- Romp/Tanya TV
- Static Channel
- Minx
- Hot Box
- And Justice for Brawl
- Rock & Roll Hangover
- Star Freaky
- The Near Death Experience Show with your host SheBeast, Producer and Host: Julie Covello, Description: Extreme Metal, 1 hour format (76 episodes produced), music / interviews / concert clips
- ChannelP
- Koolout
- Dub Spot
- Risky Advisor
- Reaction Soundsystem
- The Buggout
- The Scat Show
- StreetSound
- Freq
- Velocity
- Global House
- DesiVibes
- SpaceWatch
- Cosmic Visions
- Deep Sky
- Mission Control Over
- PseudoPolitics
- Campaign Dope
- Biztech 2000
- Wonks
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 10000 sq ft (929 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.Pseudo Hosts the QuakeWorld Release Party
The first version of QuakeWorld by id softwareId Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
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.
Pseudo Hosts the Manhattan Memorial (day) Marathon
M3 was a the largest Quake LAN partyLAN party
A LAN party is a temporary, sometimes spontaneous, gathering of people with computers, between which they establish a local area network , primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer computer games. The size of these networks may vary from the very small to very large installations...
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.
Pseudo's 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.Pseudo's 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.Founding Team
- Josh HarrisJosh Harris (internet)Josh Harris is the founder of JupiterResearch and Pseudo.com, a live audio and video webcasting website founded in 1993, which filed for bankruptcy following the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000....
- (Founder) - Jacques N. Tege - (Founder/Programmer/Animator)
- Lou Velez - (Founder/Programmer)
- Dennis Adamo - (Founder/Operations)
- =JUDGECAL= - (Founder/Producer/Webmaster/Sys-admin)Cal ChamberlainCal Chamberlain , born Mark Chamberlain, was an artist and Internet pioneer based out of New York City. He was among the first journalists to achieve notability through online media.-Early life:...
- Steve Fine - (Founder/Art Dept.)
- Robert "Galinsky" Galinsky - (Founder/Producer)
- Janice "Girlbomb" Erlbomb - (Founder/Producer)Janice ErlbaumJanice Erlbaum is an American slam poet from New York City who is the author of GirlBomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir and Have You Found Her: A Memoir...
- Thomas "T-bo" Linder - (Founder/Sound Design)
- Jim Hall - (Founder / Programmer / Tech Wizard)Jim Hall (programmer)Jim Hall is a computer programmer and advocate of free software, best known for his work on FreeDOS. Hall began writing the free replacement for the MS-DOS operating system in 1994 when he was still a physics student at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls...
- Michael Rinzel - (Founder/Producer)
- Joey Fortuna - (Founder/Programmer/Producer)
- Nueffy and Louie The Cats - (Founder/Cats)
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
Prodigy (ISP)
Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features.Initially subscribers...
. 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), and Steve Fine (Art Department). (Bari and Spiro would leave within the first four months of Pseudo
Pseudo
The prefix pseudo- is used to mark something as false, fraudulent, or pretending to be something it is not.-See also:*Falsehood*Pseudorealism*Deception*Mimicry*Pseudo.com*Pseudo: Blood of Our Own...
, 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) and Bonnie "Bluesy" Weinstein (Producer "PseudoChat"/Chatmaster). They are generally considered, along with Josh Harris the “founders” of Pseudo.com.
Alumni
- Dan "The Man" Melamid - Video Producer and Director. http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/183137113.html
- David Borhman - VP & Washington Bureau Chief at CNN America
- Katrina del MarKatrina del MarKatrina del Mar is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York City. Her films have been screened at numerous festivals and del Mar has received several awards and fellowships, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Video...
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1205629/ - Jacki Schechner - http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/schechner.jacki.html
- Jessica Zaino - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0952089/bio
- Joe Lynch - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1362570/
- Julia Zborovsky - http://www.pseudonetworks.com
- Orlando B.Boy Omega Rodriguez - http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/nyregion/south-bronx-journal-a-walking-tour-of-fascinating-rhythms-and-gritty-rhymes.html?pagewanted=1
- "DieHard" Derek Gordon - http://www.diehardprowrestling.com
External links
- New York Times Article about Pseudo Assets sold - http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/24/business/24CND-PSEUDO.html