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__ Just Outta Beta __
__ The Net's Black Book __
When Rolodexes held paper business cards, you could simply change a phone number with a pencil. But today's digital address books exist across PDAs, smartphones, laptops, and phone-based assistants. TrueSync.com, a free Web-based service, connects to your PalmPilot, Rex, or WinCE organizer, making sure contacts, calendars, and to-do lists are up to date. Unfortunately, phone numbers on cocktail napkins still have to be entered manually.
__ Release: January. Motorola: www.truesync.com/. __
__ Roid Rage __
The new Asteroids may shock those who remember chasing after simple black-and-white polygons. After all, the 1979 coin-op version didn't have black holes, supernovas, or flaming comets accompanied by full-color alpha blending effects. Still, traditionalists on PCs or PlayStations can hang out in the Classic Zone and reap the benefits of a beefed-up old-school 'Roids.
__ Release: November. Activision: +1 (310) 255 4100. __
__ Browser by Worldwide Committee __
Communicator 5.0 is the world's first open-source consumer product. Last April, Netscape engineers made the browser's code publicly available on the company's mozilla.org/ site. Since then, thousands of ad hoc programmers across the Net have willingly fixed bugs and added improvements to the source code. While Netscape's final version won't be released for several months, the beta is available now.
The resulting browser benefits from the group rethink. A less cluttered interface allows you to drag just about anything on or off it - meaning you can, among other things, move unused browser buttons out of the way. You can also bring a surprising range of desktop items - your email in-box, files from a hard drive, or favorite games - to your bookmarks menu so you won't have to window-shuffle when you need them. The browser also sports fledgling support for XML, the ambitious successor to HTML. (Since few sites actually use XML, it's hard to tell whether this high-concept language will catch on.)
The best news is that the Net's hackers fixed Communicator's most basic barrier to adoption: certain Web pages crashing not just the browser, but also all other Netscape windows. Loyalists can now use Communicator's suite of office tools without worrying that a funky site will wipe out a crucial email message being composed in another window.
__ Release: winter. Netscape Communications: www.netscape.com/. __
__ Tube Tamer __
When you'd like to catch the late show without staying up till an ungodly hour, the common VCR often fails you. Just try taping Conan O'Brien night after night: Your videotape wears out, your machine's gears begin to whine from too much rewinding, and if your favorite Irish man-child comedian gets pushed back by impeachment proceedings, you're sunk.
ReplayTV is the solution. The equivalent of a hard drive for your television, the $995 black box digitally records up to seven hours of video and lets you jump instantly to any part of a program. You can also pause a live show any time and speed through commercials by watching footage that's lagging just a few minutes behind real-time broadcasts. And programming it is a snap: Just type in the name of the show you want to save. The device, which downloads television schedules nightly, checks local listings for you. Company engineers claim you can even program in keyword searches - "Harvey Keitel" or "animal husbandry" - to automatically record your own custom channel.
If ReplayTV fulfills its promise, you'll be able to watch any show whenever you want. This may upset your body clock if you're attuned to the rhythms of prime time, but you need only check the moon and stars for clues on when to sleep.
__ Release: winter. Replay Networks: +1 (877) 737 5298, www.replaynetworks.com/. __
__ Carnival Culture __
Gone are the days of scrimping all year to make the Magic Kingdom pilgrimage: Disney Quest miniparks are bringing Mickey to your hometown. According to John Hannigan's book Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis, such Baudrillardian simulated reality is part of a much broader trend in which our public space increasingly resembles a theme park.
__ Release: November. Routledge: www.routledge.com/. __
__ Lights, Camera, Action __
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes you need a minimovie to get your point across. Sony's MVC-FD91 Digital Mavica camera uses plain old floppy disks to store images, but the $1,099 device also shoots 60-second videos, complete with sound, that you can email to a friend. The standard MPEG files can be opened easily by anybody, from Grandma to the folks back at HQ.
__ Release: fall. Sony: www.sony.com/mavica/. __
