It all began...

Two years ago on February 17th, in a three bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, Michael Bolanos and Jeffrey King found themselves at 4:05 am, launching the Entertainment Drive forum on CompuServe (see eDrive Chronology). The Astoria apartment was office, home, think tank, refuge and the birthplace of eDrive. Michael used one bedroom to sleep, occasionally, and one as an office. Jeffrey got the other bedroom, and used the living room as his office. With a computer, and a macrame chair complete with a worn brown corduroy couch cushion so Jeffrey could sit level with the desk, they took Michael's idea and ran with it straight into the then untapped world of multi-media entertainment coverage. Michael, the CEO and founder of eDrive, smiles and remembers the Astoria days, "We just kept telling ourselves, 'If we build it, they will come.'" They did come, and the world of entertainment would never be the same.

Michael, now 31 years old, has over twenty years of entertainment experience from performing professionally as a child in Southern California, Taiwan, and Taipei, Singapore to producing international concerts, Broadway theater, and managing a portfolio of stars. His entrepreneurial vision and stubborn determination landed him in a meeting with the News Director of KAMR-TV, an NBC affiliate in Amarillo, Texas, when he was 11 years old. Michael saw a roaming news reporter and walked up to him with a polite "Excuse me." The reporter looked at the little kid with a 'what do you want attitude'. Michael explained that KAMR's news coverage was high quality, but seriously lacking in stories of interest to kids. The reporter, not knowing what to say, told Michael to tell it to the station head. Which brought Michael into the news director's office, his parents patiently sitting in the waiting room. Kidcast was born with 11-year-old Michael as producer, and KAMR's ratings soared.

Michael started out using CompuServe merely as a consumer in 1993. His client, and good friend, Ben Vereen, had a car accident in Los Angeles. News of celebrities in Los Angeles hospitals will tie up every single phone line and crowd corridors with press -- Vereen's family in New Jersey was not able to get through. Michael logged on to CompuServe, was able to pull the AP wire service stories as the press was feeding them, and relay the updates to Vereen's family. Instant information from across the country to the world--Michael was hooked. He spent some time on CompuServe, and saw the opportunity to bring entertainment coverage to this powerful technology.

Enter Jeffrey King, 23 years old with a background in theater, had just moved to New York City from St. Louis to pursue acting. Despite the excellent feed back, call backs, an agent, and acting classes, Jeffrey was still bartending after 6 months, and not liking it -- at all. A mutual friend introduced Jeffrey to Michael, and the two, sharing the love of entertainment, soon became friends. Michael casually mentioned his desperate need for an administrative assistant. Jeffrey got up the guts, over lunch while staring down at a very large salad, to ask his friend for the job. "Now Michael, you can hire someone who already knows how to do all the secretarial work and will just keep doing that, or you can hire someone who will learn about your business as they go, and then be able to take on more and more responsibility." Jeffrey paused, and shyly ventured, "Someone like, you know, well -- me!" A month later, Jeffrey went to work for Michael. Jeffrey has a sharp intuitive business sense, the ability to take on major tasks from the ground up and run with ideas, and the capacity to see the 'big picture' and strive towards it, which set the foundation and tone for eDrive. Now as Senior Vice President, Jeffrey develops and embraces the eDrive community and is always looking to the future.

After Michael's information superhighway experience with CompuServe, he sat down and wrote the executive vice president a letter. Shortly after Michael was invited to a CompuServe press event to learn more about the company. Michael, in keeping the spirit of the 11-year-old kid who had the guts to tell the news director to include kids in story coverage, asked question after question until a meeting was arranged between Michael and the heads of CompuServe. Back in Astoria, Michael slaved over a 13-page proposal presenting his idea to bring full entertainment coverage to the CompuServe forum. CompuServe, so impressed with the proposal, hired Michael as their entertainment consultant. The hard work, sweat, time, dedication and excitement to build eDrive had begun.

This brought them to that February 17th morning, the launch of eDrive. Michael's vision did not stop there -- eDrive was to become the world's backstage pass to the entertainment industry -- a marriage between entertainment and technology.

The first major event to solidify eDrive was in March 1994. Only a month after the launch, Michael and entertainment columnists Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith, set out to do the first ever backstage, live online coverage of the Oscars. This was the first time in the history of entertainment that fans all over the world would get a chance to talk to, and ask the stars questions only minutes after the winners had been announced. Michael recalls the preliminaries of the event with the same anxiety that overtook him when it happened, "I was scared out of my mind, that whole weekend we couldn't get the laptops to log on -- and then we were informed that we couldn't enter the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion until a half hour before the show. A half hour to go live!! When we finally got in, I was sweating bullets, and shaking, and I took a deep breath and very methodically turned on the computers, and we got right online and were able to do it." eDrive reported live from the Winners Room. Stars like Tom Hanks, who won the Best Actor Oscar that year for his performance in Philadelphia, strolled backstage and over to the eDrive table to answer questions for the eagerly logged-on members. It was a huge success.

While Michael was in Los Angeles for the 66th Annual Academy Awards, another major turning point for eDrive occurred. Select media were invited to a sneak preview of "The Lion King." When Michael saw this Disney wonder he was enthralled with the animation, and began thinking of the technological possibilities of getting actual clips of the film to CompuServe members online. The question was to find an easy way to watch video clips on a PC. QuickTime 1.0 for Windows required a 15-step process, that included navigating through DOS, to install. Michael, coming from entertainment, knew they needed a more user-friendly way to get the video clips to the online members. Jeffrey, quite preoccupied with this dilemma, was observing a screensaver one night, and noticed it had very smooth motion with a QuickTime 1.0 projection. Intrigued by this, he found the programmer and excitedly asked, "Can I put a button on that?!?" Thus, the eDrive Movie Viewer was born, a one button install program that could turn a PC into a VCR. Michael was thrilled, "Simba was now able to dance and sing on computers all over the world." The minute it was available online, hundreds of thousands eager eDrive members said "yes." eDrive had arrived, and it was to forever change the face of online entertainment.

eDrive CHRONOLOGY

March 1994: eDrive went to Los Angeles for the 66th Annual Academy Awards, and did the first-ever backstage, live online coverage of the Oscars. eDrive returns to the Academy Awards annually with entertainment columnists Beck and Smith. Michael gets less nervous every year.

May 1994: eDrive went to the 21st Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, and became the first to cover the Daytime Emmys backstage, live online. eDrive continues this tradition every year.

July 1994: eDrive users were able to download an early look at clips from "The Lion King," "Wyatt Earp," and "The Shadow." This was the first time video clips were available for online download. The download demand for "The Lion King" overloaded the host computer at CompuServe for 48 hours.

July 1994: New Line Cinema and eDrive gave CompuServe members a sneak look at the movie "The Mask," offering nine film highlight clips.

August 1994: eDrive joined IBM, and conducted the first-ever live cellular online conference with Al Hirschfeld, the world's greatest caricaturist.

August 1994: the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) joined the online world with eDrive, giving CompuServe's then over 2.2 million subscribership in 138 countries a direct line to the world's largest performing rights organization.

August 1994: Compute Magazine, ranked eDrive among the 12 Great Online Places.

November 1994: eDrive found themselves backstage again for the Primetime Emmys. Users from all over the world logged in to ask the stars questions and get live online coverage. eDrive returns to the Primetime Emmys annually.

November 1994: Apple Computer Inc., Warner Brothers and eDrive joined forces to be the first to showcase QuickTime 2.0 for Windows, by offering the online community a sneak preview of "Interview With the Vampire."

November 1994: eDrive provided an all access pass to the most widely watched show in the world, "Baywatch." CompuServe members could download video clips, color pictures, behind-the-scenes information on the producers and cast, and post messages directly to the show.

December 1994: eDrive made its last commute from Queens and moved into the then raw 4000 square foot loft with the eDrive team on Manhattan's East Side.

February 1995: eDrive was nominated for the Smithsonian Computerworld Award for innovation in Media and the Arts.

February 1995: eDrive was featured on the cover of PC Magazine as part of "The Changing Face of On-Line."

June 1995: Ron Howard and Academy Award winner Tom Hanks, prior to the opening of Apollo 13, took a seat in eDrive's now famous Manhattan cyberstudio for a live online conference to chat with CompuServe's members. This newsworthy event was covered by CNN.

February 1996: Jungle Jack Hanna, while filming new episodes of "Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures," joined eDrive's Youth Drive, an online area for cyberkids and screenteens, and took kids all over the world on a virtual 18-day safari through South Africa.

May 1996: eDrive returned to the Daytime Emmys to bring live backstage coverage from the Radio City ceremony and took CompuServe members behind the velvet ropes to the post-Emmy party at New York City's hot downtown club, Webster Hall.

Welcome to eDrive, the world's All Access Backstage Pass to global entertainment.