On the other hand, how about the side that provides content? Digital Bridges based in Scotland supports distributing gaming content on the mobile phone. They support technology and infrastructure to create a stable distribution of gaming contents on both WAP and i-mode (expected) and support productions and creators to distribute them.

In Japan, people tend to probe each other’s mind, but those who attended this year’s Milia were trying to draw possibilities from the words of potential partners, while they were talking to them frankly about their plans and ideas. One of the special questions in their minds is a game that allows users to raise pets on WAP. It’s not just an imitation of PostPet nor Roborobo (Cybird), but it's created naturally with their original idea. With an open conversation like this including 'still more' possibilities, we can get another idea on how to develop the initial idea from each other.

What about about digital TV broadcasting? Vivendi, a huge media company in France merged with Universal. Jan Mary Major, CEO/president of Vivendi Universal, announced that they would start the interactive broadcasting and the semi-ondemand using the next generation setup box loaded with hard disc recorder this year. It is based on the digital satellite broadcasting of Canal+, a very popular TV station in France. A hard disc recorder could accumulate compressed visual information in a hard disc and display it. With the development of digital compression technology, visual information could be accumulated more than the amount of information we get in realtime, and that information could be taken out anytime we want. Canal+ will transmit the content, for example, films, into hard disc beforehand and enable a system that allows users to remove the locked key and see the contents according to how much they have paid.

In Japan, digital BS broadcasting which includes interactive functions started last year. In Europe as well, Sky TV (England) has started interactive digital broadcasting. I’m sure there still should be ‘much more’ possibilities in services and contents of digital broadcasting. Software houses and productions can promote the sales of their products freely in Europe and each TV station is willing to get their ideas.

Software companies that provide authoring tools that make digital TV broadcasting interactive and provide the operating systems within setup boxes have been actively promoting themselves. Given the current situation that the way of broadcasting has been standardized, how to showcase the content will depend on the software. Open TV that is loaded on a setup box to use the digital broadcasting efficiently and interactively, and idp adopted as an authoring tool to create the digital broadcasting for Canal+. (authoring tool in this article means a software that includes a function to give interaction to contents like Dream Weaver and Golive, rather than a digital image editing software like Premiere.) It’s only the beginning that these systems have been adopted by major companies’ TV service. They’re eager to control the creation of interactive TV contents and a number of undeveloped setup boxes all over the world.

Then, how about creators of contents for broadband internet, digital broadcasting and mobile phone?