Summer 1998
Which Disc?
As if the sagging DVD market needed more problems, along comes Divx, which plays digital movies that expire after two days of viewing. While Divx can read standard DVD discs, DVD machines can't decipher Divx discs. Digital Video Express, the company behind the new technology, claims that consumers love the convenience of a one-way trip to the video store. In reality, it's Hollywood, enticed by the ultrastringent intellectual property safeguard, that really gets off on Divx.
Fall 1998
DTV Daze
The consumer electronics industry holds its breath as digital TVs get a tepid welcome from shoppers -- even the ones who don't mind dropping US$7,000 or so on the newfangled boob tubes. The picture is sharp, movies look authentic in a 16:9 picture size, and data broadcasters have a new conduit into your living room. Yet, DTV forces manufacturers to negotiate the perilous transition away from the familiar analog TV market to an uncertain digital future.
November 1998
Not a Toy Story
The curtain raises on A Bug's Life, the latest movie from director John Lasseter and the folks at Pixar. The computer-animated film follows a loner ant who saves his colony from scheming grasshoppers. While it's difficult to match the windfall generated by Toy Story -- which grossed $192 million at the domestic box office -- A Bug's Life is buttressed by Pixar's growing experience in the CG genre plus the voices of Kevin Spacey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
January 1999
Euro Cash
Want to know how much a flight to London or Lisbon costs? Time to get out your dollar-to-euro conversion chart. On 1 January, 1999, the EU reaches a major milestone in its quest for a unified monetary unit, when conversion rates are irrevocably fixed and foreign exchange operations take place in the euro currency. If you have a few old pounds and escudos lying around, don't worry; you have until 2002 before the EU issues hard currency and your old bills are voided.
2001
Revenge of the Netheads
Level 3 Communications, a telco founded by former MFS executives, completes the first nationwide end-to-end IP network. With 50 cities interconnected and 20,000 miles of fiber-optic cable, Level 3 offers local and long distance service at a fraction of the cost of traditional phone networks, pitting the company against the likes of AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and Qwest. Level 3 then begins international expansion, leading to the first end-to-end underwater IP network.
Summer 1998
Appliances Unite
ShareWave, a hot company funded in part by Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, releases its first product and ushers in the age of wireless home networks. The idea is simple: take a home PC and hook it up to chip-based appliances through a radio-frequency network. Then you can distribute information culled from the Net (say, a recipe), negotiate access to peripherals (send the information from your Kitchen Assistant to your printer), and share your PC's processing power with other appliances (help your microwave tabulate food calories).
Fall 1998
Baby Bells Strike Back
The arduous process of dismantling the Telecommunications Act of 1996 gets underway when AT&T v. Iowa Utilities Board reaches the US Supreme Court. The case is an appeal of Iowa Utilities Board v. FCC, which ruled that the FCC -- by creating uniform pricing structures for leased local network wires and switches -- violated the rights of state utility regulators. No doubt this is the first of many Supreme Court challenges to the Telecommunications Act.
1999
Bathroom Reading
Be careful what you flush. The health-management toilet, a smart john built by the Japanese company Toto, contains a diagnostic system that uses biosensor input to examine your, uh, output. Networking technology then sends the data to your doctor. Those in need of daily monitoring -- people with liver, kidney, and other health problems -- will have to shell out $3,000 for the peace of mind afforded by the remote-diagnostic potty.
Fall 1999
Sega 64
Sega releases its next-generation gaming console, though arguably two years late. Code-named Katana, the new box is rumored to be the fastest gaming platform around. Saturn's lack of titles was its primary shortfall, so the company recruited Microsoft to create the tools that developers will use to program games for Katana. While this should make it easier for software firms to build killer games for the new console, Sega has a long way to go before it outsells Sony and Nintendo.
2002
Asteroids
NASA's Muses-C blasts off for the milewide, near-Earth asteroid Nereus. The following year, the craft lands on the celestial rock and a 2.2-pound rover pops out to gather samples from the surface. Of course, space enthusiasts will have to wait until the rover hops back into Muses-C and the craft returns home in 2006 before the specimens can be analyzed. Scientists hope asteroid analysis will lead to insights about the composition of the early planets in our solar system. No disrespect to the Mars Pathfinder, but the Muses-C probe puts the Martian microbe collector to shame.
This article originally appeared in the May issue of Wired magazine.
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