@LARGE
Toy Story 2

By Scott Kirsner, 10/30/2000

After Disney pulled the plug on Toysmart .com last May, refusing to fund the Waltham e-retailer any further, CEO David Lord took the summer off. He spent most of it with his family, up in Vermont. He went fly fishing for the first time in a long while.

He also wrote an eight-page summary of his Toysmart experience. ''It gave me some closure, and helped me think about what I wanted to do next,'' Lord says. ''Did I want to go back into retail? That was a quick no. But at Toy-smart we built a great technology group and executed on a plan.'' The last two words of the summary? ''Bad partner,'' which referred to Disney's majority stake in the company.

Lord mulled dozens of job offers and finally accepted one from Intel Corp.'s New Business Group.

In September, he began building a new venture, majority-owned by Intel, with the provisional name NavLex Corp. The firm is still in stealth mode, but will reveal its plans in January.

NavLex's help wanted ads read like something pureed by the tech buzzword blender: ''NavLex is a fast-growing Internet application software and technology solutions company focused on delivering next generation interactive e-business systems.'' The only thing more specific that I've heard is that the company will focus on things like speech recognition and alternative interfaces as a way to improve the user experience.

At NavLex, Lord is assembling a team that already includes about 10 Toysmart veterans, including Jay Rollins, Dave Harrison , and Patrick Rafter.

Is he worried at all about Intel, with its big stake, turning out to be a ''bad partner''?

''That was certainly a concern,'' he admits. ''But I'm now with someone who plays this game, and knows the rules of this game. It's an opportunity to define markets, and you just have to go for it.''

Managing your messages

MessageMachines, a small start-up in the Leather District, wants to solve a big problem: knowing what information you want to receive on what device.

If you've got a pager with you and you're about to hail a cab to go the airport, for example, that's the best place to notify you about a flight delay.

At another moment, your Palm VII might be the best vehicle for letting you know that a limit order to buy stock has been executed. Or a message might pop up on your cell phone letting you know that an urgent fax has arrived, and offer the option to have it forwarded to the closest fax machine.

MessageMachines was founded by Pascal Chesnais, a recent PhD from the MIT Media Lab; Christopher Herot, formerly head of the mobile communications group at Lotus; and Imran Qidwai, formerly vice president of engineering at SoftLinx.

Early investors included the Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte, Wired Magazine founders Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rossetto, Perry Solomon of WordWave, and Howard Anderson 's YankeeTek Ventures.

The company just signed a term sheet for its Series A financing, but won't disclose the amount or the firms involved.

Two of the system's niftiest features: MessageMachine users can create groups of senders who have priority to reach them or types of messages (''your term sheet has arrived'') that should get through no matter what.

Every message sent through the system also gets a tracking number - a la FedEx - to let the sender know when it has been relayed. MessageMachines starts alpha testing its service in November.

Digital Downeasters

The bed-and-breakfasts of Camden, Maine, were packed to their rustic, exposed rafters last weekend for the fourth annual Camden Technology Conference.

It's one of my favorite tech conclaves of the year; not only is late October the perfect time to visit the coastal town of Camden (the leaf peepers have all departed, and pumpkins are out on every doorstep), but the speaker lineup and content are always phenomenal.

Presenters this year included Mike Hawley, Pattie Maes , and Rodney Brooks from MIT; BeliefNet founder Bob Nylen; and Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems. The theme was ''Being Human in the Digital Age.'' Archived video is at www.camcon.org.

Next year's topic is ''Online, Everywhere, All the Time - How It Will Change Our Lives.'' Conference president Anthony Citrano(whose day job is chief communications officer of R3Media in Andover) explains via e-mail: ''We want to discuss the social, interpersonal and cultural impacts of the always-on, available-everywhere, infinite bandwidth of the not-so-distant future. We don't want to talk about gadgets - [there are] too many of those conferences already. We want to talk about how this will change us and change the world.''

The conference sells out every year, so plan ahead: Oct. 19-21, 2001.

Who supports Microsoft more?

In Washington state, supporting Microsoft Corp. in its ongoing antitrust battle with the Justice Department is a key campaign issue for Senator Slade Gorton, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell.

I visited Seattle earlier this month, and it was impossible to watch 10 minutes of TV without encountering an odd Slade Gorton attack ad.

It accused Cantwell of wavering in her support of the Redmond, Wash., software giant while Gorton had remained loyal.

''Where does she stand? Slade Gorton takes on the tough fights and you always know where he stands,'' a narrator intones. ''He works for you.''

Huh? The senator who defends Microsoft is on the side of the average Joe?

Only in Seattle, where more than 20,000 Microsoft employees live and work, and where Microsoft millionaires have a huge impact on the state's cultural and economic landscape.

Cantwell, for her part, says she is adamantly opposed to a Microsoft breakup, even though she worked as a senior executive at Microsoft rival RealNetworks before launching her bid for the Senate. (She served a term in the House before joining RealNetworks.) Her campaign is largely being funded from a pool of $10.6 million - the proceeds from a block of RealNetworks stock she sold earlier this year.

Microsoft has been the top donor to Gorton's campaign, giving $103,000. RealNetworks is Cantwell's biggest backer, at $47,000, though Microsoft gave Cantwell $10,500. Will Washington state keep the Senator from Microsoft, or will it get a new Senator from RealNetworks (who insists she supports Microsoft)? It'll be a race worth watching next week.

Dertouzos publishes again

The latest book from MIT Lab for Computer Science director Michael Dertouzos will be out in February from HarperCollins.

''The Unfinished Revolution: Human Centered Computers and What They Can Do For Us'' will be one of the publisher's lead business/technology titles. The central theme: Computers should serve us, not the other way around. Hope Dertouzos sends a complimentary copy to his good friend Bill Gates.

You're invited

The Globe is holding a panel discussion at 7 p.m. Thursday that will address the future of wireless and handheld computing.

What are the coolest new devices and applications, and how quickly will they catch on? Will Windows be the dominant operating system here, too, or does Palm OS have a chance? How soon - if ever - will the cell phone and PDA merge? If you'd like to attend, visit www.evite

.com/ kirsner@att.net /nov

roundtable for more information.

Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Wired and Fast Company magazines.