GAMESSony Plans to Cancel Sega’s Dream(Cast)
When Sega’s Dreamcast launched Sept. 9, it sold a record $97 million in hardware and software in 24 hours. Then came the Dreamslayer: last Monday the world got its first peek at Sony’s PlayStation 2. It will make its debut in Japan March 4, 2000, where the company expects to sell 1 million units in a week (the U.S. launch is scheduled for next fall). The PS2 isn’t just a game machine: Sony stated that it will also play CDs and DVD movies out of the box–a big plus for college kids with cramped dorm rooms.
title: “Tech Notes” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-15” author: “Elaine Conner”
BROWSING One Step Forward… For those who wish navigating the Internet were as easy as reading a book, E-Book System’s new FlipBrowser 1.0 does all but provide a lamp and a beverage. The free software, available from flipbrowser.com, compiles Web pages into an on-screen book format so they “turn” rather than scroll. No longer do you have to rely on the forward and back buttons, which too often take you somewhere you don’t want to be. You can delete pages so that your Web book contains only what you want, tossing out reams of unread info. FlipBrowser is especially handy for online shopping, making virtual catalogs more lifelike. The pages “turn” in simulated 3-D, are numbered and can be bookmarked. A streaming function lets you view pages before they fully download, if you want to speed-read.
APPLE X Marks the Spot We always knew that Steve Jobs had Gaul. Now le roi de Pomme has proved it, by using the French Apple Expo 2000 to announce the grand debut of the first truly new Macintosh operating system since Jobs himself came up with the original, back in ‘84. That is, if you consider a $30 “public beta” to be a debut. (Expect the official version in 2001.) No matter–once they get OS X rolling, Mac fanatics will be blown away by the eye-popping Aqua interface (it’s like the groundbreaking Next desktop on acid), especially the cool animated graphics and the semitransparent menus. They’ll also want to try out the “dock,” a handy organizing space on the bottom of the screen–jazzier and more flexible than the Windows equivalent–as well as a bunch of new features, most notably a zippy mail program. Most important of all may be Apple’s promise of near freedom from crashes. Jobs also unveiled a souped-up set of desktop-movie-ready iBook portables, with some new colors. How do you say Key lime in French?
title: “Tech Notes” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-28” author: “Emma Nieto”
Filters: Flame Retardant for Hot E-Mail Messages Angry e-mail can really ruin your day, so why not flush it before it reaches your eyes? Now, you can. Eudora, one of the oldest and most popular e-mail programs, has added a new screening feature to its latest 5.0 version, out in mid-September. Based on rhetoric studies from Carnegie Mellon University, MoodWatch software analyzes your incoming and outgoing messages for sentence structure and word usage that looks offensive or aggressive. “It’s doing more than just filtering swear words,” says Eudora’s David Ross. It’s scanning for more subtle signs. For example, “You make me want to puke!” elicits the highest three-chili-pepper alarm, whereas “I’m sorry for subjecting you to this since I am full of s***” at the end of a long apology gets only one. How about UngrammaticalWatch and BoringWatch?
Green: Don’t Throw It Away It takes hundreds of years for ink-jet and laser-printer cartridges to decompose in a landfill. It takes 48 hours for webuyempties.com to send you a check for this would-be waste, paying an average of $1.57 per cartridge. Schools and nonprofit organizations can get cash for trash through recyclersusa.com. To help reduce the estimated 275 million tossed cartridges per year, schools can also register with fund ingfactory.com, and earn points that are exchanged for classroom technology. The program’s 10,000 schools recycle 295,000 cartridges per year. Stop tossing these plastic contraptions into the garbage and start piling up the recycling bin.
Encryption: The Code Still Holds Is computer code free speech? Fortunately for Hollywood, a New York federal judge says the answer is no. In a ruling handed down last week, New York district Judge Lewis Kaplan said that the hacker zine 2600 could not publish online a software program called DeCSS, which bypasses the encryption on DVD players so that people can watch DVD movies on their computers. “Computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement,” Kaplan wrote. The ruling also states that 2600 cannot even link to the program; attorneys for the zine say they will appeal.
title: “Tech Notes” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Gus Codner”
The basic hitch is that inkjet printers can reproduce more colors than your computer monitor. Digital cameras, in the interest of keeping photo files small, default to a range of possible colors that matches a monitor standard called sRGB. Epson’s new PIM standard lets camera manufacturers include more color information in photo files, and those instructions go directly to the printer. Eight major digital-camera makers including Sony, Olympus and Minolta have signed on. So far, Epson makes the only PIM-enabled printers on the market. Worth a look.
title: “Tech Notes” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-27” author: “Jessica Gahagan”
FUN; Amateur Game Design: It’s a Mod, Mod World In two weeks, amateur game developers will descend on the Third Annual Half-Life MOD Expo in San Francisco. This event showcases the best custom game modifications–or MODs–created by fans of the shoot-’em-up action computer game Half-Life. Essentially, MODs are all-new, original games built on the technology of an existing retail game. By creating new 3-D environments and new characters to control, devoted players can whip up their own custom game experiences with relative ease. Most of the tools necessary for this effort are either included with or built into popular games, so the only missing ingredients are a creative mind and a boatload of spare time. One MOD, a team game called Counter-Strike, was so popular as an online game that Half-Life’s publisher released it as a retail product.
TELEVISION; Now You Can E-mail ‘Friends’ to a Friend Most people who try out a TiVo or Replay digital video recorder fall in love with it. What could be better than a machine that records to a hard drive instead of tape, letting users record TV shows easily as well as pause and rewind live broadcasts? Yet so far, the hype has outpaced sales, which are estimated at well under 1 million units. So when Replay was trying to figure out new features for its latest model, the company was struck by research showing that 70 percent of its users have broadband Internet access, and 60 percent of them have set up a home network. That’s why the ReplayTV 4000 series is shipping with a built-in Ethernet connection to enable a host of new features. If a family has two or more ReplayTVs connected to its home network, someone can sit in front of the TV in the bedroom and watch a show that was recorded in the living room; the video just streams from one device to the other. The most interesting feature–and the most controversial–is the Send Show function, which allows users to “e-mail” a show over the Net to a friend with a ReplayTV unit. We suspect Tony Soprano and Carrie Bradshaw will have something to say about that.
