Street Cred
An ATM For Drugs
The hospital where I work has a new machine, called the Pyxis Medstation. It's an ATM for drugs. Before we got it, we had to go through several time-consuming steps to give narcotics to a patient. Nurses had to check the patient's charts, get keys, unlock a cabinet, and dig through bags of drugs. The transaction had to be recorded on a paper form. The cabinet was then locked, keys returned, and finally the patient, who was often in pain, got the drug.
At the end of each shift, the nurses would take inventory of all the drugs. If the inventory didn't balance against the forms, the nurses had to spend time backtracking to account for the missing drugs - time they'd rather spend providing care to the patients.
But now we have the Medstation. Medication is dispensed in much the same way an ATM dispenses money. In fact, the machine looks a lot like an ATM, but it doesn't require an ATM card. Instead, the nurse enters an ID number and a password. The nurse then enters the patient's name and chooses from a menu of available drugs. One of six drawers pops open. The selected drug is in a pie-shaped wedge within the drawer. All other drugs remain inaccessible until selected from the screen.
There are no forms to be processed, and there is no longer a need to take inventory at the end of the shift; the pharmacy receives a daily report via the Medstation's modem. Billing information is sent to the main hospital computer.
Our nurses and patients like the Medstation because it speeds things up. The pharmacists like it because they no longer have to fill out and enter data. And the hospital administrators like it best of all because they never forget to bill a patient for a single pill.
Rodney Bianco
Medstation: Lease at US$500 per month. Pyxis Corp.: +1 (619) 625 3300.
Dear Penthouse
I'm a California writer who never thought - until recently - any of your stories were true. But one day, working at home, I discovered Penthouse's Virtual Photo Shoot in my stack of CD-ROMs for review and booted it up, bringing three Pets to my desktop in fuzzy 8-bit color. "Hi, I'm Dominique," said the first, a redhead in a black bra barely containing her fresh vegetables, "let's get interactive." Hey, I felt like I was in a Budweiser commercial!
Gripping the soft curve of my mouse and clicking an icon subtly labeled "Top Off," I watched as the Pet dutifully peeled her Spandex in the first of a series of 30-second QuickTimes, spilling her moneymakers onto the screen in time to a basement budget soundtrack. As she strutted her silicone topography from progressively racier angles, I snapped "photos" (this was, after all, an interactive CD), choosing the winkingly titled "Play W/Butt" and "Play Lower," stopping once to catch my breath until Dominique pouted, "What am I, a screen-saver?" After shooting a roll or three, I clicked into the "Darkroom" where I could delete or add poses, view a slide show of my work, or, in a fit of creativity, actually title the shots - though how could I beat the default "Wipe Sweat" or "Gyrate?" I needed a faultless portfolio because a simulacrum of the man himself, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, would evaluate my work onscreen at program's end and make his pronouncement. "Don't quit your day job," he suggested after an early session, and, later, "You're showing promise." This wasn't good enough for me. I wanted better.
In fifteen minutes, I had it: I had successfully disrobed the blonde, redhead, and brunette, toggled the slow-motion feature, practiced hitting the panic button - and grown thoroughly bored with Virtual Photo Shoot's cliched cheesecake. When I signed off the last time, Guccione swelled with pride: "I'm very impressed," he said, "and look forward to seeing more." Yo, Bob - I'll call you – know what I'm sayin'?
Colin Berry
Penthouse's Virtual Photo Shoot: US$99.95 plus $4.50 shipping and handling. Penthouse: (800) 466-9435.
Software Shop
The Electronic AppWrapper is truly the greatest way to distribute software. I recently got a subscription to this quarterly CD-ROM-based catalog of software for NeXTStep computers. It has listings of more than 250 applications you can browse through while listening to a cappella music, with renaissance art as a backdrop.
To buy some of the software offered for sale, copy it from the CD-ROM to your hard disk, fill out the electronic order form and e-mail it to Paget Press, which will supply a license string that unlocks all of the application's features. Simply copy the license string from the form and paste it into the application's license window. Boom. You now have software. No store. No hassle. Takes less than a day. This method saves a great deal of paper (packaging, invoices, printed manuals - although you'll get them if you ask for them).
Robert A. Wyatt
Electronic AppWrapper: US$48 per year (four issues). Paget Press Inc.: (800) 733 2031, +1 (206) 448 0845.
Program for the Power Caller
Sprint has launched an ambitious new service called Priority Gold. The service's most prominent feature is the new Voice Foncard. With the voice card, you can make a credit-card call by "simply" dialing Sprint's 800 number, then speaking your 10-digit voice Foncard number and the words "call home" or "call office." Sprint then automatically connects you with the appropriate number that you've pre-programmed into the system. I tried it, and the voice recognition works. Sprint's recognizing the numbers zero through nine isn't that impressive, but doing it when I'm at a telephone in a noisy airport is pretty cool.
Sprint's theory is that this modicum of voice recognition gives its new Voice Foncard improved security, since no two people have the same voice. That might be the case if the company hadn't decided to use people's social security numbers for their Foncard numbers! Better make sure that nobody is listening too closely when you speak those digits for the computer. Or better yet, just give Sprint a phony social security number.
In addition to the voice-recognition feature, Sprint automatically gives you 1,000 "Bonus Points" each month for its Sprint Priority Rewards program (sort of like a frequent-flyer program for people who let their fingers do the walking). Once you reach 15,000 points, you can cash them in for three movie tickets or three compact discs.
You also get a residential 800 number (so friends can call you and have you pick up the tab), GroupCall (to set up your own three-way conference call), and Accounting Codes (so you can send an individualized phone bill to each of your clients - normally this costs an extra US$5 per month, but you can have it free with Priority Gold).
You can also put your cellular telephone on the same Priority Gold bill as any other phones you might have. All this is just a measly US$5 per month. They waive the fee if you have more than $50 in billings. If you depend on the phone for your livelihood (and who doesn't?) Priority Gold is the way to go.
Simson L. Garfinkel
Sprint Corp.: (800) 877 4500.
Sleeping with the Aliens
The Alien Dreamtime video, produced by Rose-X Media House, is Terence McKenna's "Greatest Hits," spoken to the rhythm of the rave, live in San Francisco. Call him unscientific or intellectually lazy, but Terence McKenna's brand of psychedelic blarney - always more fun to hear live than to read - is so beautifully phrased that it transcends the historic and anthropological bean counters who dis him. In this video, Terence gets off the basic themes outlined in his three books: True Hallucinations, Food of the Gods, and The Archaic Revival (updating McLuhan, McKenna claims that postindustrial cyberculture is leading us back into the future toward archaic prepatriarchal modes of living - witness the rise of Modern Primitivism), the oppressiveness of "mono" culture ("monopoly, monogamy, monotony"), and the place of tryptamine hallucinogens in human evolution ("the psilocybin mushroom is the catalyst of human evolution and language").
Alien Dreamtime is the second video Rose-X has produced with ethnobotanist McKenna. (The first, Experiment at Petaluma, was a 30-minute rap on the possibilities of visual language.) Rose-X's two-person team - Britt Welin and Ken Adams - cut their special-effects teeth on visual effects for San Francisco's Toon Town Raves. Alien Dreamtime stretches the duo's psychedelic computer effects to new limits, and Stephan Kent's didgeridoo adds a note of primitive intensity to the techno-rave soundtrack. The high point of the 60-minute Alien Dreamtime is the entrancing dance and sway of psychedelic love goddess Kim Kyle. The presence of the feminine form in all of its grandeur provides a humanizing touchstone amid the abstract imagery. (In fact, my only complaint about this video is that we should have seen more of her. But that's a minor quibble.) Fans of a good psychedelic rant must run out and purchase this video right away!
R. U. Sirius
Alien Dreamtime: US$20. Backroads Music: (800) 767 4748, +1 (415) 924 4848
Ultima For The Rest of Us
Ultima has long been one of the most popular adventure series for computer gamers. In the past, warrior wannabes who yearned to hack and slash their way through Ultima's world of castles, battlegrounds, and caverns had to have access to a fairly powerful PC.
Ultima for the masses has arrived via Super Nintendo. The first title, Ultima - The False Prophet, is a fairly straightforward translation of the PC-based original. Same story line. Same characters. But this time, a better interface. A long-life battery saves your play position at the end of the day. All this role-playing goodness for under US$200! (That is, when you add the cost of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System player to the price of the cartridge). Try that with a PC.
Videogame maker FCI has done a glorious job translating the look and feel of Ultima to affordable game cartridge for the rest of us, and they promise to keep up the great work, with more Ultima for Super Nintendo carts. Coming soon: Ultima - The Black Gate, and Ultima Runes of Virtue II.
Joe Hutsko
Ultima - The False Prophet for SNES: US$69.99. FCI: +1 (212) 753 8100.
Whither Russia?
The mathematics of chaos say that small initial changes in a turbulent system can divert later events along vastly different pathways. Russia is a continentwide system teetering on the edge of chaos. Tiny changes in its dynamics in the next few years will determine its course for the next two decades.
The two authors of Russia 2010, one an expert on Russia and the other a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, employ an exercise known as scenario creation to make four formal guesses as to where Russia might arrive in the year 2010. A scenario is not a prediction, rather it is a short narrative containing its own internal logic that helps sort out crisscrossing influences.
According to their stories, the four paths that Russia can follow are: 1) "Muddling Down" - the slow unwinding of the Soviet state ("Since the government cannot collect more than about half the taxes due to it; it runs severe deficits, which it covers by printing money and expanding the money supply. Only the government's partial control over hard-currency revenues, plus the undervalued ruble, keep it more or less afloat. But taken together, the economic consequence of political weakness and legal vacuum is high inflation."); 2) "The Two-Headed Eagle" - a resurgent central government backed by the army and police ("Thanks to the government's full-employment policy, the population, though acutely dissatisfied with its low living standards, gives strong support to the new government. The government moves quietly to quell extremist groups"); 3) "Time of Troubles" - Either chaos or the violent return of the Russian Bear ("On the GUM building across the street an enormous banner proclaims, Hail to Our Supreme Commander and the Glorious Russian Army. It is May 17, 2010, the eight anniversary of the army coup."); and 4) "Chudo" - the Russian economic miracle ("The Russian president presses a button and dozens of computer screens spring to life. The locations and status of all Western Missiles and warheads - in real time? No - prices and trend analysis of currencies and securities at major markets all over the world.") Each of these scenarios is run out in great detail, always with the same forces at work across all four, so that by the end of the book the reader is very familiar with the current driving influences (persons as well as ideals) in Russia today. The social dynamics range from high education to rampant mafias to rising nationalism to a religious vacuum.
In reality, the destiny of Russia will not land on any of the four stories exactly, but the parsing of the present (which this book does so well) is the best capsule overview of where this tumultuous continent is headed.
Kevin Kelly
Russia 2010, by Daniel Yergin and Thane Gustafson, US$23. Random House: (800) 733 3000, +1 (212) 751 2600.
Masodisc
Imagine someone smacking the back of your head - you turn around and no one's there. Another smack, you turn around fast - and still no one. Now you're pissed and you wonder, whose buggin' me? The smacks continue, but there's no person to vent your rage on.
Now imagine a CD-ROM in a stark black and white package. You slide it unwittingly into your Mac, expecting your standard entertainment or education experience. Right away you are subjected to some of the most annoying content ever mastered to disc. BLACKWHITEBLACKWHITE art strobing incessantly. Bad sound samples blaring with the volume yanked from your control. Clicking is no use; Blam! has you at its mercy. Text and speech are spewed in all directions, pointing nowhere, yielding nothing. This just might be your multimedia nightmare. Perhaps you are a victim of a trap or a joke.
Blam! attaches itself to you in the guise of a CD-ROM magazine, but once purchased devolves into an assault on the consumer. Fans and victims of the work of folks like Lydia Lunch, Georges Bataille, Kim Gordon, Howard Rheingold, and Tom of Finland can indulge in their masochism with repeated perusals of Blam! Two dudes who call themselves Necro Enema Amalgamated put out this magazine because it gets them off, they say. But be careful, they might get off on you.
Blam! leaves me asking myself the age-old question: Is there really anything of worth in shock value? Do outrageous images and sounds impart any special information? I'll allow myself to be provoked with imagery, hoping it will spill some of what it knows; I'll endure it for its promise of some new clue. But I don't have the patience to be played with. Blam! presents itself as a crack in the wall, Blam! says, "take a peek, oooh, that's freaky, that's weird." But Blam! is what kids in dormitories get off on, congratulating themselves on how hip they are. Ignorant juvenilia.
Fuck with me, Blam! threatens, and I'll kill you. But, as usual, it's all talk and empty promises.
Steven Speer
Blam!: US$25. The Voyager Company: (800) 446 2001, +1 (212) 431 5199. Necro Enema Amalgamated: blam1@mindvox.phantom.com.
Swinehunde in Cyberspace
'Zine publishers have been citizens of paper and snail-mail-based virtual communities for decades, so while the technology that brings them together now on the Net may be new, many of the concepts of virtual communities are old hat. One of the better 'zines that serves as a travelogue of Net trips is called Pigdog. Issue 3 has a color photo of Frank Sinatra on the cover, but it's full of news and opinion from the front lines of the Net - with a decidedly weirdo bent. There's an essay on how commercial online services killed BBS culture, and how that same culture has been resurrected within the murky spaces of the Internet: MUDs, Usenet, gopher, ftp, and the World Wide Web. Also lifted from the Net is some of the strangest "art" you're likely to see in a 'zine. The latest issue also offers tips for cracking the few remaining indie BBSes, music reviews, and the strange sex habits of Leonard Nimoy.
Jerod Pore
Pigdog: US$5, US$22.50 (4 issues). T. James Madison: 1563 Solano Ave., Box 248, Berkeley, CA 94707, e-mail: tjames@netcom.com.
The (Almost) Total Heart
If it's a question about your heart," says the box for Mayo Clinic - The Total Heart, "you'll find the answer right here." True, unless you want to know if a very low-fat, near-vegetarian diet might help prevent or reverse heart disease (as Nathan Pritikin and Dr. Dean Ornish have demonstrated). A search of the CD-ROM's built-in dictionary for the words "vegetarian," "Pritikin," and "Ornish" yields no hits. All right, I'll give them Pritikin and Ornish; the heart establishment has adopted many of their once-heretical assertions without exactly embracing them. But no hit for vegetarian? This is despite massive evidence that if you're really serious about reducing cholesterol, one way to start would be to eliminate it completely from your diet.
The program does advise a "low-fat" diet, but defines low-fat as 30 percent of total calories, and then shyly suggests 25 percent as a goal for those with cholesterol problems. At 30 percent, alas, if you don't have arterial buildup yet, you will. Studies show that at the 30 percent level, which is also the Heart Association's guideline, arterial deposits continue to be made. Mayo's recommendation of a cholesterol level of 200 or lower is also conservative; at 200, damage is still being done. Reversal kicks in at 160.
The Mayo disc does note that "reversal" of cholesterol buildup can take place "sometimes within two years," if low-fat diets and exercise are tried, but doesn't mention that reversal requires the 10 percent fat-calorie level and near-vegetarian diet recommended by Pritikin and Ornish. (An article in the New York Times recently quoted a heart specialist complaining that the 10 percent guideline wasn't reasonable because it was too hard to follow. Would this specialist have advised, 30 years ago, against quitting cigarettes for the same reason?)
Apart from its reluctance to embrace more aggressive approaches to prevention, reversal, and nutrition, The Total Heart is actually quite a good product. Lots of drawings and animation show how the heart and circulatory system work, and extremely detailed lessons show how to administer CPR (and when not to). The box claims 48 videos or animations, 145 color illustrations, and 60 minutes of audio (including heart sounds). There is also an extensive text, from the Mayo Clinic Heart Book, including the hypochondriac's dream: searchable lists of symptoms and medications. You can print out anything or keep notes in a scrapbook. Because of the narration and animation, the CD-ROM is more accessible and useful than the book. But if you're really serious about atherosclerosis, read Pritikin and Ornish; the Mayo 30 percent guidelines will have you spinning your wheels.
Roger Ebert
Mayo Clinic - The Total Heart: US$59.95. IVI Publishing: +1 (612) 686 2600, fax +1 (612) 686 2601.
Disclosure
Over a four-day period in Seattle, Michael Crichton's latest book, Disclosure discloses: 1) many e-mail messages, 2) technical details about how to build CD-ROM players in Kuala Lumpur, and 3) lots of short, breathless chapters that all end with a "what's-coming-up-next" crescendo.
With utmost consistency, Crichton's portrayal of women is decidedly misogynistic. Tom Sanders is the hero of Disclosure. The division head of a high-tech company called DigiCom, Tom gets sexually harassed by his former girlfriend (who happens to be his boss). On the second page, Tom's wife (a lawyer, of course) tries to get him to feed their children breakfast before he goes to work. As part of her strategy, "she ruffled his hair, and her bathrobe fell open. She left it open and smiled. 'I'll owe you one...' " What a working mother won't do for child care!
By the end of the second chapter (chapters run from two to five pages) we learn that pinup calendars must be removed from the men's areas in DigiCom, whereas female workers are allowed to keep their male pinups in the powder room. Just another incident in which "pale males eat it again!" Pretty soon, in fact on Day One, Tom's boss tries to rape him: " 'Oh God, I've wanted you all day,' she said intensely. She kissed him again, rolling on top of him, lifting one leg to hold him down."
Crichton is a master of cranking up the angst, playing on our primal fear of women dominating the world by using the very technology that men have created. After the good-guy-beats-bad-girl ending, Crichton tries to redeem his misogynistic creation by comparing sexual harassment to virtual reality: Both are still changing.
Let me guess - Michael Crichton's next book, tentatively entitled Exposure, will follow the travails of Clarence Thomas as he is sexually harassed by Sandra Day O'Connor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Janet Reno, while in the background, secret feminist agents try to take over the fast lane in the new information superhighway.
Sylvia Paull
Disclosure, by Michael Crichton, US$24. Knopf: +1 (212) 751 2600.
Power Tool for Digital Homesteaders
Down a bit on the information superhighway, the road ends. Nothing out there but wide open data space. Blue-collar digital workers are moving in to build a life, a place to call home. They hack out that chunk of space using whatever tools they can make or afford. Those who know their tools use Autodesk 3D Studio.
Although earlier versions had a weak renderer, Release 3 is an integrated animation-production studio, complete with broadcast-quality modeling, rendering, and animation that seriously competes with much more expensive, high-end programs, such as Alias and Softimage, which run on the pricey Silicon Graphics platform. 3D Studio runs on DOS machines, opening up the field of professional computer modeling to anyone who is willing to make an investment equal to the cost of a cheap car.
Even on 3D Studio, rendering is a time-consuming operation that always takes too long. One very cool feature of 3D Studio is its ability to "network render," which means you can harness the processing power of all the personal computers on a local or wide area network to get the job done.
Also included with 3D Studio is the World-Creating Toolkit, a CD-ROM with 500 Mbytes of building materials that you can use without having to pay royalties: texture maps of woods, skies, rocks, and animated flics that tile seamlessly; models of buildings, landmarks, plants, trees, people, animals and monsters; 100 custom-designed PostScript fonts; and a portfolio of prebuilt 3D Studio creations.
3D Studio developer Gary Yost is bursting with pride over his latest creation. To him, it's not just a big chunk of code, its a magic carpet that can fly animators to a new life: "The bottom line is that with 3D Studio, visually creative people who are trapped in boring jobs can quit, get a small loan, and go into business for themselves. They can make more money than before, live freer lives, and stop playing the corporate bullshit game. There are hundreds of these new mutants online in the CompuServe asoft forum every day, and they all help each other. Log in and hang out."
Sound like bullshit? It worked for me - I make my living with 3D Studio.
Right now developer Yost and his gang are working hard (and these guys do work hard) on Release 4, to be available in a year or so.
Steven Speer
3D Studio: US$2,995. Autodesk: (800) 879 4233, +1 (415) 332 2344.
Street Atlas USA
Finally, a CD-ROM worth buying. Packed onto this one disc are all the streets in the US (including Alaska and Hawaii). What you get in this 5-inch circle of plastic is a seamless map of the entire country resolved at many levels. Starting from the continent scale, you can zoom down in increasing detail of highways until you get to neighborhood streets. Or you can search for a street by its name, or find the streets in a particular telephone exchange or ZIP code. Street Atlas USA contains street maps of not only cities and towns, but rural areas as well, something that many digital maps don't cover. Also included are over one million rivers, ponds, lakes, parks, mountains and railroads. Navigating is easy (and not too slow on fast machines) and yes, you can print out the results to fold into your pocket. Some users have found the accuracy of the street-level maps a bit fuzzy, but in my searches and ramblings, it's been right on. This is one case where a CD-ROM blows the paper equivalent out of the water.
Kevin Kelly
Street Atlas USA: US$169. DeLorme Mapping Co.: (800) 452 5931, +1 (207) 865 1234.
These are the Games of the Starship Enterprise
This is a great Romulan ale-and-pretzels game for the armchair starship captain. From the makers of the award-winning Out of This World comes Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. You take the role of Captain James T. Kirk, leading the Starship Enterprise and crew through a series of pleasingly episode-like adventures, opening titles and all. The game doesn't waste a nanosecond - from the get-go, your first task is to participate in war games with another Federation heavy cruiser.
You give the bridge personnel their orders; control shields, phasers, photon torpedoes, and damage control systems; and access a computer with a database of terms, races, machines, and worlds. The attractive graphics, digitized sound effects, and level of detail here are wonderful. (For example, I checked the computer for references to Tholians - sure enough, they were there, and I haven't even run into any yet!) And that's before you've even left the bridge. There are planets to explore, mysteries to solve, alien civilizations to seek out, red-shirted security guards to kill off, and crabby ship doctors to argue with. As an added bonus, you get a "special feature" they don't tell you about. My advice? Don't mess up; it just isn't logical.
Chris Hudak
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Mac version: US$59.95, DOS version: US$49.95, DOS CD version: US$64.95. Interplay Productions: (800) 969 4263, +1 (714) 553 3530.
Japan's Interesting Characters
The kanji of Japan are the complex pictographs imported from China. Some of the characters are stylized representations of real stuff - you can see the trees, rivers, and ice in them. When a kanji character comprises more than one pictograph, it often makes sense, such as the ideograph for "firefly," which combines the pictographs for "fire" and "insect." Others are obscure, such as the character for "lunatic," which is made up of pictographs for "dog" and "king." (This probably comes from the mad emperor who built numerous temples to dogs and made everyone in his kingdom bow to canines and address them as honorable spirits.) "Government" is "roof" and "buttocks" (the earliest form of the phrase, "Cover your ass," I'll warrant).
It's only natural that books meant to teach kanji to English speakers often try to take advantage of the symbolic aspects of the characters. Most books that use this method fail miserably. The pictures are not consistent, and they don't use enough of them to illustrate anything beyond a few basic ideographs. Kanji Pict-O-Graphix, by Michael Rowley, is a wonderful exception. Working from the proper forms of kanji and the phonetic hiragana and katakana characters, Rowley has created a visual vocabulary that is striking and, most importantly, memorable. A friend of mine said she wished she had a book like this when learning kanji in school. Rowley's drawings capture the same intellectual spirit that gave birth to characters that are sometimes humorous: The character for "outside" and "undo" is comprised of "evening" and "crack," Rowley's drawing is of a man urinating at night. The mnemonic phrase is "He went outside and undid his pants when nature called." And, ironically, the Japanese use the same character for both "rice" and "America," so the mnemonic phrase is: "Japan won't buy American rice."
Kanji Pict-O-Graphix won't teach you Japanese, but as a companion guide to whatever you are using, it will make learning the written forms much easier. By itself it is an entertaining and insightful book for the serious and nascent Japanophile.
Jerod Pore
Kanji Pict-O-Graphix: Over 1,000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics, by Michael Rowley, US$19.95. Stone Bridge Press: (800) 947 7271, +1 (510) 524 8732.
Junghans Desk Clock
The strains of "Lilibullero" come to an end, and the time signal of the BBC comes on: beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep. Precisely as the long tone signals the hour, the second hand on a handsome analog clock on my shelf points to twelve. There is something very reassuring about a clock that always has the right time and date, one in which you can have near-absolute confidence, despite power failures, leap years, and the start of daylight savings time.
Made by the innovative German clockmakers Junghans, the self-setting desk clock runs on a single C-cell. It operates by tuning into the low-frequency (60 kHz) time signals broadcast by WWV, a service of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. The only visual hint that the clock is something out of the ordinary (besides its sleek, granite-monument look) is a liquid crystal display window with the date, just large enough to be read from across the room. (The Heath company makes a preassembled clock that listens to WWV, but it looks like it belongs in a lab rather than a home. And you still have to manually adjust it for daylight savings.) This clock is the perfect office or home timekeeper for the punctual.
Jef Raskin
Junghans self-setting desk clock (Item 45750X): US$249.95 Hammacher Schlemmer catalog: Orders: (800) 543 3366, +1 (513) 860 4570. Technical Questions: (800) 227 3528.
The Music of Manipulation
Joseph Lanza's fascinating book, Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and other Moodsongs, is a history of the tabloid side of music: music as mind and mood control. But there's more than Muzak here: Lanza ties the ambient sounds in supermarkets and malls to all those demo records from the '50s, produced to show off hi-fi systems (and later, the ill-fated quadraphonic systems). It's the message tailored to bring out the best of the medium - wasn't CD technology responsible for bringing about new popularity for Holst's The Planets, with its surging dynamic range?
With whimsical chapter titles such as "Probing the Jell-O," "Lullabies from Heaven and Hell," and "The Push-Button Ballroom," Elevator Music traces how music was used to simultaneously soothe and inspire office workers and shows the kinship of the FM-lite radio format to Wyndham Hill. He also follows such highbrow incarnations as Brian Eno's Ambient Music series and the work of such contemporary "moodsong" musicians as The Space Negroes and Morgan Fisher, whose Echoes of Lennon comes with this plug from Yoko Ono: "By slowing down the music to its extreme limit, Morgan Fisher has allowed the musical notes to float in a space the size of the universe." Just what, exactly, is the size of the universe, Yoko?
Lanza's book reminds us to be aware of the music that serves as a soundtrack to our lives: "Along with Muzak and elevator music, there is moodsong to accompany our favorite music scenes, tickle our subconcious fantasies on television and radio commercials, alert us to the next network news station break, and lull us in our home entertainment centers."
With the new 100-CD carousels, Lanza notes, you can have the equivalent of Muzak at home. By arranging and programming the play order of the songs you can use your system "like a thermostat."
Phil Patton
Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and other Moodsongs, by Joseph Lanza, US$22. St. Martin's Press: 1+ (212) 674 5151.
Converter Kit for Sunlight
If you're a Newton owner, by now you're wondering why you didn't buy stock in Duracell or Energizer. Those AAA batteries are hard to find, and the Nicad batteries are good for only 20 recharges.
That's why I'm glad I got my hands on a solar solution, the SunPack. It's a flexible solar panel inside a rip-stop nylon portfolio with lots of pockets. There's a letter-sized pocket as well as zippered pockets where you can stuff a Newton while it recharges. The solar unit has one mode to run the Newton and another to juice rechargeable batteries. Just set the switch, plug in the Newton, and flip open the folder so the panel gets light. Simple.
Here's why I like it: It works well for travel, especially if you're heading to places where the electrical outlets require converters. The solar panel is detachable, so you can stick it near a window for recharging. And some smart cookie made the cord 6 feet long, so you can set the SunPack in sunlight while you work in the shade.
It's so PC (politically correct, that is), you'd think it came from Berkeley, but actually the SunPack is from Keep It Simple Software in Helena, Montana. They've recently introduced a SunPack for PowerBooks, too.
Betsy Brazy
SunPack: US$199 retail, US$149 direct from KISS. Keep It Simple Software: (800) 327 6882, e-mail kiss4@aol.com.
A Book, A Disc, and Thou
With all the books purporting to teach interactive multimedia, it's a gas to find one practicing what it preaches. Multimedia Power Tools is one of those new hybrid books. It hooks up 640 pages of witty, well-informed, and illustrated text to an interactive CD-ROM jammed with cool media.
The book is exhaustive and impressively up to date. The whole of multimedia (its history, project development process, necessary tools, and techniques) is explored in depth with a side of wry humor. It details the nitty and the gritty issues of production: project planning and design; cross-platform issues; creating media artifacts with sound, animation, and video; and melding all the pieces into an effective and elegant whole. Each subject is keyed to a real-world application. The book and CD-ROM are integrated through "power codes" - first read about a project in the book; then, enter the code, and what you've been reading about pops up on the CD-ROM. Wow, it's a gen-u-ine multichannel learning experience! On the CD-ROM, the application producers (front-line fighters in the media wars) introduce themselves, the project, and then lead you step by step through their hard-won design experience. I know my inherent geekiness is showing through, but it's a thrill to meet these fellow toilers in the vineyard, face to QuickTime face.
The CD-ROM is living proof of what the book teaches, which is about what I'd expect from the team at Verbum, a group well versed in the interface between computers and fine art. Take the tour to get up to speed, then explore the main topics: Sample Projects and Power Tools. Power Tools gives a free taste of the variety of clip media - art, sound, video, etc. - on the market today. Also included are a number of handy utilities useful in multimedia work. This is one Power Tool well worth the time and the money.
Peter Sugarman
Multimedia Power Tools, by Peter Jerram and Michael Gosney, US$49.95. Verbum Inc.: +1 (619) 944 9977, fax +1 (619) 944 9995; Random House Electronic Publishing: (800) 345 8112, +1 (215) 586 3232.
The (Interactive) Underground Empire
Infocom's newest interactive adventure, Return to Zork, updates the Zork mythos and brings the classic text-based adventure game fully into the multimedia present.
Return to Zork's animated, graphical interface lets you grab objects with your mouse and choose actions from pop-up menu buttons. Alternately spooky/goofy MIDI music and sound effects underscore the game's many moods. You don't need a CD-ROM to play Return to Zork, but you'll miss out on digital video interactions with characters (played by real actors), 3D walkthrough animations, and a CD-quality orchestral soundtrack. For best results, you'll need a double-speed CD-ROM drive and a 16-bit audio board.
The plot starts out by sending you into the Valley of the Vultures to participate in one of those bogus sweepstakes giveaway promotions. All you have to do is attend a presentation about E. Rufus Rooper's new timeshare vacation resort (built atop the newly discovered ruins of the Great Underground Empire of Zork), then enjoy a free four-day stay in fabulous West Shanbar. When you get there, however, Rooper is gone along with most of the town's buildings and inhabitants. Rumor has it some of that old black magic may be filtering up from the caverns.
To get to the bottom of things, you'll have to explore every corner of this bizarre underworld in search of clues; find and use important game-solving tools (such as bat guano and a frozen steak); interrogate, flatter, and threaten characters; and generally kiss your real-world productivity good-bye.
If you're a veteran adventure game player, or just brilliant and very patient, you may be able to penetrate the various conundra that litter the Valley of the Vultures and its nether regions without assistance. The rest of us need the US$9.95 book of hints, or several calls to the 900 number hint line. But even if you read and reread every hint in the book, Return to Zork is still a challenge, and you'll spend days or weeks navigating its dangerous byways before discovering the Exciting Conclusion (or at least what to do with the bat droppings).
Scott Spanbauer
Return to Zork: US$79.95. Infocom/Activision: (800) 477 3650.
Street Cred Contributors
Patrick Barber wrote 50,642 words in 1993. He is also a bicyclist.
David Batterson is a writer from Portland, Oregon.
Colin Berry writes about music and other things for Ray Gun, Puncture, bOING bOING, and SFWeekly. He's probably waited on you in some San Francisco restaurant.
Rodney Bianco has been an independent computer consultant since 1988. He's trained as an emergency medical technician and works part time at the UCLA Medical Center.
Betsy Brazy (BzMouse@AOL.com) is a freelance writer, editor, and quilter. She judges the quality of a newspaper by its comics; her personal hero is Mighty Mouse.
Roger Ebert's film reviews appear in the Microsoft Cinemania CD-ROM, which recently added a Mac version.
Simson L. Garfinkel (simsong@nextworld.com) is a computer consultant, science writer, and senior editor at Nextworld magazine.
Peter L. Herb (PLHerb@aol.com) is an attorney, occasional musician, and writer who tries not to dress in black too often.
Chris Hudak writes fiction and tech reviews. He currently resides in planes, trains, and scuzzoid industrial clubs.
Joe Hutsko (76703.4030@compuserve.com) lives in San Francisco and writes all over the place. ...
Alastair Johnston is a letterpress printer and a teacher of graphic design who broadcasts over the San Francisco radiowaves as "Dr. Rhythm."
Phil Patton is a contributing editor to Esquire. He is the author of Made in the USA.
Sylvia Paull is an agent provocateur, party thrower, and ever-willing co-conspirator.
Jerod Pore (jerod23@well.com) publishes Poppin' Zits!, Factsheet Five Electric and is a contributing editor to Factsheet Five; he also programs mainframes in a trance state.
Jef Raskin (raskinjef@aol.com) created the Macintosh computer project and plays the Contrabass recorder in F.
Stephen Reese (heinzr@tvo.org) spends his free time working as a writer, filmmaker, electronic musician, DJ, and graphic artist.
James Rozzi is a freelance writer, woodwind musician, and teacher in the Orlando, Florida, area.
R.U. Sirius is co-founder and current icon-at-large for Mondo 2000 and lead theoretician and a vocalist for Mondo Vanilli.
Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC World magazine and a frequent contributor to New Media magazine. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Steven Speer is a computer animator. He voted for Bush, lives in New York, and remains in shock.
Steve G. Steinberg (tek@well.sf.ca.us.) is a computer science student and the editor of Intertek, a technology and society journal.
Peter Sugarman (peters10@aol.com) is a multimedia developer and the co-creator of Beyond Cyberpunk.
Dean Suzuki, PhD, is a professor of music history at San Francisco State University.
Robert Wyatt is a freelance writer and NeXTStep nut. He's also a partner in a gothic/alternative record label.
