Toying With Computers

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"We feel we've invested in a stream of ideas," says Karen Camp, a vice-president at Palmer Organization, a venture capital firm in Boston.

Also appealing to the investors was the Doyles' unusual -- and perhaps inimitable -- point of view. "As the Doyles thought about microcomputers in toys, they thought about how children play," says Howard Anderson, president of Yankee Group, a Boston electronics research firm. "To be accepted, those toys had to be touchy-feely and warmy-fuzzy with lots of audio feedback." Anderson bought a piece of IXO in the belief that "the Doyles understand software better than anyone else in the country."

With IXO off and running, the Doyles know competition will intensify. A company called Axlon Corp., of Sunnyvale, Calif., has entered the market already with a low-cost terminal designed to communicate in specialized computer dialogues. To think IXO can find any meaningful protection under patents on the design of the modem or the display, Bob Doyle notes, would also be naive. "We intend to be a moving target," he says. "By the time they've got the first thing copied, we'll be on to something better."

IXO already has launched an aggressive cost-cutting program, and it is designing new telecomputer models to speed into production at the right time. IXO's roots in the fast-turnaround toy industry, says Alan Secor, "give us six months on most other companies." But in contrast to most high-tech companies that strive to be state-of-the-art, IXO is committed to waiting for cost-effective technologies before integrating new components into future products. "Our main aim is to be one inch behind technology," Michael Suchoff says."Anything less would cost too much."

The Doyles aim to do almost all they can to encourage competitors entering the business to build products like the telecomputer. To speed the development of remote applications and services, they hope all terminal makers will adopt the IXO keyboard format, and to encourage this they intend to license features like the "yes," "no," and "help" keys for a token fee -- perhaps as little as $1 per year.

In a few years, in fact, they say IXO may abandon the terminal business altogether to concentrate on the English-language services the company intends to offer over the phone lines through its own access, or service, center in Culver City. "If all we had was a low-cost miniature terminal," says Bob Doyle, "we'd be in for a real dogfight. But, if everyone uses the same keyboard, the market for services will develop a lot faster."

In large companies, lots of potential applications for small terminals such as the telecomputer exist today. As part of its business development effort, IXO plans to help large commercial customers develop custom programs for their computers to facilitate intracompany transactions, such as sales order entry and access, using standard English. The rationale is simple: Without new software programs to enable the computer to translate English into its own language, telecomputer users would have to learn the same idiosyncratic computer language commands used by computer operators at any other terminal -- a direct affront to the Doyles' way of thinking.

The big companies may have their own specialized applications, but within the year IXO plans to start offering its own fee-based services through the access center. All of them will be in English, of course, and will be available to those with IXO telecomputers as well as to users of competitors' terminals. At one end of the spectrum, the access center is likely to offer personalized financial information. One of its services, for example, might give an investor up-to-the-minute performance reports on his or her own investment portfolios, comparing the value to, say, the major stock market averages or other financial yard-sticks. Another might be a customized news-clipping service that would collect items on any subject named, perhaps sending everything to a personal electronic mailbox. Still another might tell the least costly way to fly between two points.

But the imprint of Bob and Holly Doyle is likely to be most obvious at the opposite end of the spectrum. While they don't openly discuss the details on specific products -- few, in fact, have been worked out -- the Doyles are confident that the IXO access center will become a kind of on-line funhouse for the electronic age, involving nationwide participation by television viewers of events ranging from football games to Academy Awards. IXO might also design games based on manipulation of data such as stock quotations. One possibility can only be thought of as an elaborate version of Monopoly -- with the game lasting perhaps weeks or even months. At the beginning, players, operating out of homes and offices around the country, would be given a fund of play-money with which to "buy" stocks at their actual trading prices. They might match wits with Wall Street's best-known and highest-paid money managers. Whoever amasses the greatest fortune would be the winner, and IXO might give out fancy prizes.

Whatever games and services the Doyles end up offering through the IXO access center, they are certain to have one thing in common: They will all be conducted in everyday, conversational English -- a language engineers and even computer operators should, with a bit of practice, be able to master.

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