Fewer than 60 people now use Jupiter, mainly researchers at PARC and its sister lab in Grenoble, France, as well as Xerox engineers in Rochester, New York. But for this core group, the system has become an essential part of their day-to-day work experience. A team of engineers reports that Jupiter played a major role in how they prototyped a new product, an Internet billing and credit-authorization system. Most everyone uses it for routine activities like tracking down hard-to-reach colleagues. And people look forward to the brainstorming serendipity Jupiter enables, like bumping into a friend taking a break in the "lounge" -- a friend who happens to be on the other side of the country.
Jupiter is still an experiment, not quite ready for prime time. But its technical headaches are becoming less painful every day. Meanwhile, the demand to be part of Jupiter continues to grow. "We've never tried to get users," Curtis says. "Instead we've had the 'success disaster' problem -- people keep coming to us and saying they really want to use it."
So Curtis and his colleagues are working on rollout strategies. This fall, PARC plans to release a version of Jupiter designed to run on personal computers -- opening it up to a much larger population inside Xerox. Curtis is looking forward to it: "That's when we'll learn what these systems are really good for."
Debra Feinstein (debra@loop.com) writes on technology and innovation from Topanga Canyon, California.
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