When Kajiki asked her staff at Office Noa Inc. that question nearly 10 years ago, the conventional wisdom held that compression technology such as MPEG was too heavy to travel over phone lines. But the quest to find a way of getting that camel through the needle's eye marked the start of the company's Nancy project, in 1993.

This month, J-Phone, Japan's third largest mobile phone carrier, has started a video-mail service enabled by this light compression technology, using current-generation cell phones. South Korea is considering using Nancy for video distribution of the 2002 World Cup soccer games with Japan over the cellular phone network. And China is pondering Nancy as the basis for a video compression technology scalable from cell phones to digital high-definition TV.

Based on the proprietary Structured Meta Scale Polygon algorithm, Nancy does all video compression by means of the four basic arithmetic operations, comparison and bit-shift operation. Eliminating the motion-estimation and floating-point calculations used in MPEG compression makes for a light encoding load — far lighter than MPEG-4, Office Noa said.

Though the mobile phone industry expects video distribution to begin with third-generation networks — NTT Docomo's new 3G network uses MPEG-4 for the job — Office Noa is promoting Nancy's compactness as a solution for current second-generation and 2.5G phones. "MPEG-4 is heavy. It is difficult for MPEG-4 to do real-time encoding by software," said Koichi Kato, chief technology officer at Office Noa, an information technology venture with fewer than 20 staffers. By contrast, "Nancy can do all encoding by software," he said. "There are no competing video compression technologies that can do [the same]." Nancy enables a 130-Mips MPU to encode Common Intermediate Format (CIF) video data — 352 x 288 pixels — in 24-bit color at 30 frames/second. More practically for cell phone display, it can also compress QCIF video at 15 frames/s using a 17-Mips microprocessor.

In the vanguard

Kajiki, 41, majored in English literature at Otsuma Women's University, a junior college. Five years after graduation, in 1985, she set up Office Noa as a marketing consultancy and employment agency. Electronics was the furthest thing from her mind. "When beauty treatment clinics came into fashion, I made plans for it," she said. The same with chic restaurants and recreational spots. "I did whatever I felt was in the vanguard at the time."

Soon it became clear that electronics was the vanguard. "I thought we needed a strong technology" in which to specialize as consultants, she said. CTO Kato, a longtime friend and colleague, "said compression technology is it. At that time, eight years go, Kato was my tutor, so I said 'yes, sir,' " said Kajiki.

"Kajiki has a very unique talent in marketing. She is like a chess player who always reads 30 moves ahead," said Kato. He and Toshihiko Inoue, an Office Noa executive director, met Kajiki early in her career and were impressed enough to sign on when she launched her startup. Both were architects with computer backgrounds who had already done big projects, such as hotels and urban development.

Tables turned

"In the first few years, we taught Kajiki how to manage a company. We often abused her, saying this is stupid, don't you understand such an easy thing?" Kato joked. "But soon our positions reversed."

"I was mortified and made up my mind to overcome these guys," said Kajiki.

With no compression specialists on staff, Kajiki went to labs and universities, asking that engineers set aside the accepted beliefs to "develop video compression technology that does not depend on existing compression technology." In three years, she spoke to 275 engineers and "only three said that they would dare to contrive a new algorithm. They were not specialized researchers in this compression field, but were just [people] loving computers."

The key hire was Satoshi Tanabe, who developed the core of the Structured Meta Scale Polygon algorithm. In 1996, Tanabe's engineering team finished the algorithm and in 1998, with financial support from the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Office Noa completed Nancy.

"Researchers and engineers with higher degrees or higher positions . . . simply said it was impossible," Kajiki said. Those she hired felt "that if a compact compression technology is not available, let's create it."

If the idea was a hard sell at home, so it was abroad. "When we completed Nancy in 1998, I visited every major company in Silicon Valley, dragging a computer in a box," she said. Some told her that "the technology you demonstrated is really impressive. If you were a male [PhD] who had graduated from Stanford, we would make a contract with you immediately. But you have no technical background and you are a woman.' "

Moreover, she went on, "it was a PC-based world, and all surrounding core technologies are their technologies. Once we enter that world, we would lose our business independence." Rather than sell off the technology — or the company — Kajiki nixed the offers and opted to promote Nancy for cell phones.

Real-time rock

"Kajiki clearly recognized at that time that the first main applications of Nancy would be cellular phones and mobile gear," said Kato. In short order, Nancy won support in Texas Instruments Inc.'s and Hitachi Ltd.'s cellular phone platforms. And in December 2000, Office Noa wowed Japan by distributing a real-time rock concert live to cell phones in all of Japan's 2.5G networks.

Several companies in Japan are now preparing Nancy-equipped cell phones and PDAs, and China has shown an interest in the technology's scalability — it can work with everything from mobile handsets to digital TV broadcasting. Office Noa is now in discussions with China's State Administration of Radio, Film and TV about its possible use for Chinese HDTV.

"Technology does not create a market," said CTO Kato. "With adequate marketing, [the technology] flourishes."