Pixel Inches In

While the Justice Department attacks Microsoft Corp.’s growing control over the computer desktop in a high-stakes antitrust suit, a small start-up here will announce today new technology that makes an end run around the software giant’s Windows monopoly.

Pixel Co.’s technology exploits the narrow strip of black space around the edge of the computer screen not used by Microsoft’s Windows software to paste in a quarter-inch “MySpace” bar that gives computer users direct access to dozens of applications on or outside the Windows operating system.

“Think of the computer as a six-sided cube instead of a flat space,” said Tom O’Rourke, chief executive of Pixel. “On one side you have Windows. Turn the cube and you get access to technologies that don’t work well under Windows, like DVD [digital videodisc] theater, compact disc players or Java.”

The strip at the bottom remains visible no matter what application is in use, and O’Rourke pictures consumers turning to the MySpace bar to run a CD album on their computer or open a new application rather than close or minimize an application and return to the desktop each time.

“With all of the recent focus on who controls the desktop, the timing couldn’t be better for a product that returns much of that control to the user and the OEM [computer manufacturer],” said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga Information Group, a Cambridge Mass.-based market research company.

The product will ship this month with every new Windows 98 computer shipped in the United States by Packard Bell and its Japanese parent, NEC. Pixel has already signed deals that give consumers direct access to Disney, Amazon.com, ESPN and other content directly from the MySpace bar.