Service Compiles Artists' Work, Displays Portfolios on Internet

Picture a service that budding authors, artists, musicians and filmmakers can hire to showcase their work for potential buyers.

Now picture such a service on the Internet, and you have the general idea behind Kaleidoscope Media.

The Los Angeles company, along with several other online software and service ventures, was one of the most interesting information-age specimens on display at the New Media Expo in Los Angeles last week.

Kaleidoscope is the creation of Internet entrepreneurs Jeannie Novak and Peter Markiewicz and this is how it works: Artists pay a monthly fee. In exchange, Novak and Markiewicz create an electronic portfolio of the individual's work using Mosaic, a hypertext software for the Internet that links words in one document with thousands of others. Kaleidoscope compiles individual portfolios into an online catalog that's accessible to anyone on the network.

-Michelle Vranizan and Liisa Puckett, ONLINE