RELEASE: SUMMER
Harmonic Convergence
Noodle Party lets the dissonant masses jam together from their desktops. Logging on to the beta version via a point-and-click interface, Ifirst expect pure cacophony. Instead, I join a mesmerizing four-person trance groove. Noodle Party is like sitting in with Afro Celt Sound System on IRC.
The application starts you in Noodle's main lobby. From here, I can select from a list of current sessions and participants, or launch my own. I choose a session called Nusrat - as in the late qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. My machine synchronizes with the host server, and a multicolored circle appears, representing the stage. Musicians show up as geometric animations surrounding a central sun graphic that stands in for the microphone. Then the music begins. I'm not literally playing notes, but I'm affecting the patterns and parameters of sounds that fit together no matter what I do.
By moving the animated instruments around and selecting from their ring-shaped pop-up menus, I can change volumes and choose different beats and tunes. Other players can see and hear these changes, so we all share the same group experience. I bask in the New Agey feel as other jammers fire up the Darbuka drums, flute, and sitar. For now, I'm hooked on Nusrat, though there are other choices, and more instruments and styles are in the works.
Noodle's not the only site you can go to for online music-making. There's Ikoino, a similar setup featuring psychedelic animations. Players collectively control the sights and sounds with gestures from a mouse or other input device; Ikoino creator Warren Stringer likens the groovy experience to group-dancing around a fire. Serious music producers can also use mH2O.com, a $2.99-a-month subscriber community that lets you mix and share with a huge library of music samples, open-source style, using proprietary versions of tools like Sonic Foundry ACID and Sound Forge XP. There's no real-time jamming, but studioheads and novices can find plenty of royalty-free mixing material and get their creations engineered at famous-name studios like Electric Ladyland at discounted rates.
Noodle Party: www.realworld.on.net/rwmm/noodle.
Ikoino: www.ikoino.com.
mH2O: www.mh2o.com.
RELEASE: JULY
Under My Thumb
Forget passwords! Now you can unlock your laptop with a fingerprint, thanks to Ethentica's hot-swappable PCMCIA card. The flat sensor pops out like a modem jack, and you respond to password prompts by touching the surface with your thumb. Unlike optics-only systems, the e-thenticator tests for the electrical properties of human skin, so a wax or metal cast won't fool it. The $199 card's internal processor converts your thumb's loops or whorls into a unique 300-character profile, providing considerably higher security than passwords.
Ethentica: +1 (949) 837 5353, www.whovision.com.
RELEASE: SUMMER
Marketing Muscle
The smackdown meets the pop-up, courtesy e-Media's BAM3 system. While you're watching the Undertaker and other World Wrestling Federation combatants on pay-per-view webcasts, you can point and click on time-synced ads for related merchandise - think satanic pendants, sleeveless T-shirts, et cetera. e-Media is adding similar point-of-purchase punch to online broadcasts of Evander Holyfield and Oscar De La Hoya fights.
e-Media: www.e-media.com.
RELEASE: SUMMER
Listening Post
Feeling left out of the Great Conversation? eNow's ChatScan lets you power-eavesdrop on thousands of discussions, then drop right in the middle of the hottest talk in the ether. Enter a phrase - say, "molecular computing," or "Corey Feldman" - and ChatScan searches IRC channels and other community chat rooms to unearth all its appearances during the last five minutes. From there it's up to you and your fingerquips.
eNow: www.enow.com.
RELEASE: AUGUST
Green Giant
One look at this lean clean driving machine will make other 4x4 drivers green with envy. The $35,000 Acura MDX exceeds ultra-low emission standards for light trucks nationwide - there's no need for a special California version. A vapor-recovery gas tank reduces fume emissions at the pump, and the Alpine GPS navigation system eliminates the utter waste of getting lost - even off-road - by letting you save checkpoints during excursions in unmapped areas.
Acura: + 1 (310) 781 4655, www.acura.com.
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