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Pleasantly Formless
If I have to fill out another online form I'm going to scream! Sign-up surveys, order forms, marketing questionnaires ... every ecommerce site uses them. But Novell's got a way to bypass the fill-in hassle and manage the data I may unwittingly be giving out while I surf.
The company's digitalme technology acts as a personal proxy server, intercepting information requests from Web sites. Forms are automatically filled out based on customized calling cards stored in digitalme's encrypted vault. For example, a shopping ID might include my home address and Visa number, while a personal ID could list hobbies and an email address. Finally, before sending my data off, the service double-checks to make sure it's not revealing anything I'd rather keep a secret.
Release: summer. Novell: www.digitalme.com.
Command Audience
When was the last time you caught the end of a good ball game but missed a crucial double play? An on-demand radio receiver from Command Audio lets you listen to entire programs anytime. "It gives you radio with a beginning, middle, and end," says company CEO Don Bogue.
Designed by San Francisco's Pentagram and made by RCA, the $199 wireless gadget lets you choose from a broad list of talk shows, local weather and traffic updates, sports shows, and magazines on tape. Then the device pulls in digitally compressed signals sent via leased FM subcarrier waves. Ranging from soap operas to NPR, the offerings promise to surpass local radio. Bogue hopes so; his revenues will come from a $15-a-month charge to get the service.
Like on-demand video (think TiVo and Replay), Command hopes to free you from the inconvenient schedules of broadcasters.
Release: summer (selected cities). Command Audio: www.commandaudio.com.
Adobe's Big Bang
QuarkXPress has long been one of the elementary particles of the publishing universe. But Adobe has a different theory: Blank pages should begin and end with a new layout program, InDesign.
According to Adobe, InDesign's edge over QuarkXPress is its object-oriented architecture. Just as Lego blocks can be easily reconfigured, object-oriented code can be rearranged with greater ease than procedural code, allowing for more rapid innovation and new features. But technology alone does not make a Quark killer.
InDesign also promises tight integration with its other must-have graphics apps, Photoshop and Illustrator. And it should save your company time with its ability to easily port documents bound for the print world into PDF files. The $699 price is tempting, as is its ability to open XPress files and ease the transition to the new publishing software with a template of XPress keyboard shortcuts.
The typographic controls are as flexible as a contortionist, with new optical kerning technology that better adjusts the distance between letters and a multiline text composer that ensures even spacing between words. It's smart, too - it won't let you bold a font that can't be printed that way. When you're ready for a serious close-up, make sure to try out the 4,000 percent zoom.
Though Adobe's reputation for attentive customer service is one of InDesign's strongest selling points, the program itself has beta testers salivating. A unified, extensible system for the assembly of print, Web, and dynamic media exists only in theory. InDesign may well be the proof.
Release: summer. Adobe: www.adobe.com.
STREET CRED
Room Service
Organize in Stereo
A Time to GrO
Many Unhappy Returns
The Wrath of You
King of Lost Vegas
Touchscreens Are Better
Urban Legend
Music
Just Outta Beta
ReadMe
Here to Reternity
Natural Selection
Exquisite Computing
No Village Idiot
High DRAMa
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