JUST OUTTA BETA
GUI: The Net Comes Home
Shootin' the Shirt with William
READMEOn the bookshelves of the digerati
Release:February
The so-called browser wars have become about as suspenseful as watching professional wrestling reruns on TV: the outcome doesn't really matter. While Navigator and Explorer ring up the press releases announcing new licensing deals, the battle for Net supremacy is being waged outside the confines of the Web - on the desktop.
Creative Labs, the Milpitas, California, company best known for making Sound Blaster sound cards, hopes that the rush to the desktop will open the doors for what may be the next online pot of gold.
Its product, Passport, is a specialty Net appliance that receives audio, video, and multimedia entertainment through a single interface running outside the browser. Passport can be used to browse the Web, but it also receives multiple streams of netcasted entertainment from other sources. No plug-ins, no URLs, no search engines - you just select the channels you want and enjoy them through Passport. Perhaps not surprisingly, its interface looks remarkably like - and is about as easy to use as - a car stereo.
While Passport is a relatively compelling app, it's important to remember that Creative Labs is squatting on real estate that Netscape and Microsoft will soon be moving onto. In the middle of this year, Microsoft will release Active Desktop while Netscape unwraps Constellation. All of these technologies seek to untangle the Web by turning the entire desktop into a push-media tuner.
In this bright push future, some companies will make money building components - PointCast on Active Desktop is an example. Others will seek their fortunes building architectures to house these components - Constellation and Active Desktop come to mind.
So, is Passport component or architecture? Much like the browser wars, it doesn't matter. Passport works as an audiovisual receiver within the desktop and as an architecture that streams the content. Either way, the browserless desktop is about to hit its stride, and even companies that make their money from hardware, such as Creative Labs, are looking for a piece of the action.
###### Release: February. Creative Labs: +1 (408) 428 6600.
Release:Spring
Part how-to and part why-not, Timothy Leary's posthumous tome, Design for Dying, outlines the high priest of psychedelia's plan for "directed dying." A complete guide to online tools and better dying through technology, Design for Dying urges readers to take control over - and ultimately enjoy - the trip to the great beyond.
HarperEdge: +1 (415) 477 4400.
Release:March
Collect data from any source - the Net, a CD-ROM, or an application - and send it to any output - a printer or a burnable CD - regardless of the file type, size, or platform. Anysoft's ANY Technology intercepts information as it goes from the operating system to the display and translates it, making all data universal and interoperable. Or so they say.
AnySoft: +1 (617) 868 3397.
Release:March
In their book Rocking the Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing, J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman divulge the firm's secret to successful marketing. From seniors to boomers to Xers, Yankelovich Partners has set the standard for targeting products to specific demographics - and now you can, too.
HarperCollins: +1 (212) 207 7000.
Release:April
Crafted by Prince of Persia designer John Mechner, The Last Express mixes art nouveau with a storyboard that features twice as many frames as a full-length animated film. Board a train and help Robert Cath find his friend's killer in what should be one of the most eye-pleasing titles ever.
Bréderbund: +1 (415) 382 4400.
Release: April
The ballyhooed storage medium of the future will hit the mainstream this spring when Sony releases its DVD Player. Assuming the format gains momentum (content companies must release titles, and prices must be competitive with other technologies), consumers can one day expect to watch the Godfather trilogy off a single disc. Now that's Italian.
Sony: +1 (201) 930 1000.
Release:Summer
Plastic toys come to life and wage war in Army Men, a game by 3DO. As commander of the Green or Tan army, you control tanks, deploy troops, and destroy enemy forces. Since the action is rendered in 3-D plastic figures, only the violence seems real. How cool.
3DO: + 1 (415) 261 3000.
Smaller than a big box of kitchen matches, Hot Little Therm is a nifty thermometer for your computer that can handle up to 16 independently readable low-cost temperature probes.
I found out about Hot Little Therm last summer, when I was worried that my Web server might be melting down. The problem wasn't that it was getting too many hits - I didn't have any air conditioning in my machine room. I got a therm with eight probes, set up a process on the Web server to record the temperature every five minutes, and now I don't have to worry:I know for a fact when my machine room is overheated. Check out gopher://www.vineyard.net:451/ to eavesdrop on my environment.
Hot Little Therm is the brainchild of two hackers. But their engineering project got a little out of control: HLT is now in its seventh circuitboard version. It comes with software for Unix and DOS. The code is kitchen quality, but hey, it comes with the source. And software is free.
So why did the hackers call their company Spiderplant? Because that's what Hot Little Therm looks like when you've got it all assembled.
Hot Little Therm: US$100, $15 for additional probes. Spiderplant: +1 (423) 525 3154, on the Web at www.spiderplant.com/.
While Bill Gates seems content to offer art-hungry consumers CD-ROMs of such classic artists as da Vinci and Cézanne, Rutt Video Interactive makes waves by offering a disc dedicated to cutting-edge digital artists. Expertly produced by curator and art historian Cynthia Goodman, InfoART offers a compact sampler of 14 multimedia works. Through interviews with artists, biographical details, diagrams, and video documentation, you're led through a bewilderingly sumptuous range of installations, many of which were originally on display at the InfoART Pavilion at the 1995 Kwangju Biennial in Korea.
Col de l'Iseran, Col d'Izoard, Col de Galibier, Mont Ventoux, and, of course, L'Alpe d'Huez - I can recite the name of every major climb in the Tour de France like a rosary of high-altitude pain.
While I can dream about dropping Italian supercyclist Marco Pantani on the climb up the 3,480-foot Alpe d'Huez, in real life I'm stuck with my local training rides in Ontario, Canada, nowhere near such famous heights. And, until recently, there wasn't a good way to find out just how big (ahem, or small) that climb was - other than, perhaps, standing near the top, tossing a rock over, and counting the time it took to hit the ground (hoping it didn't bean anyone or break any windows). But with Avocet's new Cyclometer 55, I don't have to toss any more rocks.
Avocet has long been one of the leaders in the booming business of cycling computers, those digital speedometer-odometers you see sprouting from cyclists' handlebars. And hikers and other backcountry types snatch up the company's nifty wristwatch altimeters. With the Cyclometer, Avocet has married these products, and we hill junkies are very pleased. It tracks vertical feet climbed; current, average, and maximum percent grade; and speed, lots of speed.
The Cyclometer works like a lot like an airplane altimeter, sampling ambient air pressure and from that deducing the current altitude, plus or minus 5 feet or so. The gauge can get confused by wayward high and low pressure systems - so watch out when entering or exiting cloud banks.
Without a doubt, Cyclometer is a serious cyclist's dream gizmo. Only trouble is, with my heart-rate monitor and new Cyclometer 55, handlebar real estate is getting a little crowded. I just hope I don't confuse speed with a heart rate and induce a heart attack the next time I'm outclimbing that phantom Pantani.
- Paul Kedrosky
Cyclometer 55: US$129.95. Avocet Inc.: +1 (510) 794 9060, on the Web at www.avocet.com/.
Burroughs
Lawrence, Kansas-based design and marketing house Exotica recently struck a deal with friend and neighbor William S. Burroughs, everyone's favorite postmodern junkie. Burroughs not only offers his visage and a quote for three T-shirt styles, he personally takes the shirts to the range, puts bullets through 'em, then autographs the smoldering cotton with a felt-tip pen.
This personal attention comes with a fee, naturally. The shot-n-signed shirts command fifty smackers: pricier than your average Gap Pocket T, perhaps, but more accessible than one of the author's original, firearm-enhanced paintings. Unshot Exotica designs are a more affordable US$16.
The bullet holes appear quite unsettling singed into the pure white background of "The Hat," a minimalist design featuring Burroughs's quote "Will he have 3-D in time?" This meme also figures prominently in the two other shirts, whose bright colors swarm psychedelically around images of the artist.
The quote might be inspired by the stereoscopic art Burroughs has been tripping on lately. Then again, it might be just a random phrase: Bill isn't telling.
- Tiffany Lee Brown
Burroughs Shirts: US$15.95 regular, $50 shot and signed (empty shells included). Exotica: (800) 952 8925, +1 (913) 597 5602, fax +1 (913) 597 5607.
Cartoonish and infused with devilish wit, Blazing Dragons is a fantasy adventure game set in a medieval kingdom populated by talking, mostly good-intentioned (if occasionally dimwitted) dragons. The hero, a dragon named Flicker (voice courtesy of Monty Python trouper Terry Jones), desires to marry the fair Princess Flame but, being a lowly squire, cannot. To obtain honorary knighthood, he sets out to seek the favor of the four bungling Knights of the Square Table.
You rove room to room or region to region, searching for clues on how to properly combine key objects found along the way. The kingdom and its neighboring territories are populated with all manner of characters afflicted with Python-worthy weirdness. Rapunzel, nerves frayed by countless requests of "Throw down your hair!" has taken a pair of shears to her locks and looks like a marine recruit on Prozac. And Dr. Sigmund Fraud has captured one of the hapless knights in an attempt to "cure" him of his delusions of dragonhood. Arcade-style challenges such as Dragon Thumb Wrestling and Cat-a-pult target practice (with a real yowling cat) add to the humor.
Follow the game's advice: "Forget the sword. Bring a psychiatrist!"
Blazing Dragons: estimated price: US$50. Mindscape: (800) 234 3088, +1 (415) 897 9900, on the Web at www.mindgames.com/.
William Randolph HEARST III, scion of the media empire, is a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California. Landmark Experiments in Twentieth Century Physics, by George L. Trigg. "This book is composed of excerpts from landmark papers in physics; when you read the words of the scientists you realize how exciting their discoveries must have been. It's hard to undo your knowledge of the world, to recall the world before these things were known. The uncertainty and struggle of these scientists' work is striking. It relates to my work, since I meet inventors who might change the world.""I always travel with a copy of Ulysses, by James Joyce, because it's the best book I know. Joyce invented modern literature. He was a writer of enormous insight, who had an incredible ability to penetrate the inner reality of his characters. The beauty of his world and the peak experience he creates lasts for hundreds of pages. Joyce is brilliant - a modern Shakespeare."Carver Mead, father of the VLSI chip, has been too buried in his Caltech lab to read much."What I have been reading is scientific literature from the late 1800s and early 1900s; stuff like Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein. Some of the most interesting scientific papers are written by researchers in the midst of discovery. Many of the theories we depend on today were formulated when scientists didn't have our advanced modern experiments, so their research carried with it a lot of confusion. Einstein's papers from the period when he was inventing quantum theory and the theory of relativity are deeply thoughtful. He recorded several encounters with colleagues including an enormous argument with Niels Bohr about quantum mechanics."Ernst Mach may be known best for the measure of speed named after him. But he also invented Mach's principle, on which Einstein based his theory of relativity. The world remembers Einstein, but many of the original ideas can be found in Mach's The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development."So that's what I've been doing for my light reading."Laura Miller, an editor at the literary webzine Salon(www.salon1999.com/), begins hundreds of books a year and finishes the good ones."Henry James is a long-term passion of mine. I like The Portrait of a Lady now more than I did when I read it in school, when I was too young to understand it well. James is eternally fascinating. He's the ultimate writer about choosing; this novel is all about wanting to make the right choice and making the wrong choice. The quandaries of making choices are essential to how people feel in the late 20th century. The Moor's Last Sigh, by Salman Rushdie. "Indian writers seem far more plugged into the tradition of great 19th-century storytelling than American writers. It's exciting to read a novelist like Rushdie who feels so free to enclose the whole texture of his social, cultural, political world in a story. Literary novelists in the US have a fear of writing beyond their own personal experience, of taking in the whole scope of their culture."
