Gadgets

Files. That's what the mp3 format turned music into: digital files that are compressible, reproducible, sharable and, of course, stealable. The technology is no longer new—several generations of machines have yielded the nifty, powerful devices at right. But neither the music industry nor the government—whose copyright laws protected the industry through the analog age of cylinders, vinyl and tape—have adapted to the MP3 age. Now Congressional action looms.

Hummingbirds: Day after day in warm weather they would zing up to the feeder outside my office window, and every time I saw one out of the corner of my eye I thought how nice it would be to get some good pictures. Nice, but not quite worth sitting motionless behind a lens for great chunks of time to get the perfect shot.

Kathleen Budz had been at the slots in the New York-New York casino for only a couple of hours when the big money came along. The Chicago grandmother was seated at one of four chattering Wheel of Fortune games in the Big Apple-themed casino—a rococo affair with a mock Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and Coney Island roller coaster.

Take one digital video capture card, a big cheap hard disk, a home-brew infrared receiver, and a seven-year-old PC out of your nearest closet or dumpster. Add some free software and-voila!-you have a personal video recorder, your own homemade Tivo. As with Tivo, watch what you want, when you want. Thumb your nose at the head of Turner Broadcasting or whoever else is angry that you have broken your "contract" to sit through commercials and are "stealing" programming if you don't. Know that you have built this insidious entertainment appliance yourself.

Tony Rose

Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

All computers lock up or crash, and no operating system is immune (as a matter of fact, we crashed once as we wrote this answer), but singling out specific reasons oversimplifies the issue, explains Daniel Jackson, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The underlying cause, Jackson says, is that hardware and software developers are trying to bring products to market in "Internet time"-that is, hyperfast. The result: Quality and reliability suffer.

In Net-frenzied 1999, General Electric took the wraps off a pair of appliances—a refrigerator and microwave—that could be networked though the Internet. As the media (this magazine included) touted such "benefits" as Web-based microwave activation, the public yawned. It's little wonder.

The idea is simple: Take a full-fledged Windows XP Professional notebook and add a pen-shape electromagnetic stylus, touchscreen display, and the software to make it all work. This is the Tablet PC in a nutshell. The first generation, with models from Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Viewsonic, and others, will begin hitting the market this month.

Enter a showroom this fall and you'll find the widest selection of big-screen HDTVs ever, each incorporating different tech. There are hang-on-the-wall plasma and LCD sets, along with DLP (digital light processing), LCD, and LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) rear-projection TVs. Follow these guidelines: Look for a brightness rating of at least 400 candelas per meter squared (expressed as cd/m2), which is double the brightness of a typical direct-view set. Insist on a contrast ratio (the visual difference between the blackest black and the whitest white) of 400:1.

Nothing spoils the mood of a romantic dinner date like a jangling cellphone at the next table. But cellphone-proof restaurants could be on the way, courtesy of a team of engineers led by Hideo Oka of Japan's Iwate University.

Why does wine go bad once you've opened it? Do those wine-saver gadgets actually work?

Boris Rabkin
San Diego, Calif.




When a wine bottle is uncorked, its contents are exposed to air, causing them to oxidize. If you leave the open bottle out long enough, your once-tasty beverage could end up smelling like "sweaty socks or wet cardboard," says Philip Morace, president of the Sommelier Society of America.

Reports of the VCR's death were greatly exaggerated in the past, but all-new combo devices could finally put it out to pasture. This new class of video machines combines hard disk recording with DVD playback, covering all the VCR's bases. They have built-in TV tuners and timers, and you can start playback before they're done recording.In addition, the Panasonic and Toshiba machines not only play DVDs but record them as well-a handy way to archive from the hard disk. Here's a look at how these next-gen video machines stack up.

1. ONE CAMCORDER THAT CREDIBLY DOUBLES AS A STILL CAMERAWe're not convinced a single device can be great at both stills and video, but Sony's DCR-IP220-the first digital camcorder with a 2-megapixel CCD-is as close as
it gets. It's even packed with great camera features, including an intelligent pop-up flash and Hologram Autofocus and Night Framing for low-light situations. Price: $1,999. www.sony.com
2. FRIDGE MORE FROZEN THAN COLD

With digital cameras hitting 6 megapixels (see "Super Shooters"), this round of the resolution race is over. The new push is to more powerful optical zooms which, unlike digital zooms, enlarge images without degrading quality. Five new cameras now hitting the market offer optical zooms of between 5X and 8X-and at least one 10X is coming this fall.

Lead, barium, boron, cobalt-these are just a few of the toxic substances that make up the average desktop computer, 10 million of which will end up in landfills worldwide this year. To lessen the impact on the environment, NEC has developed the PowerMate Eco. It's made from 100 percent recyclable plastic, contains virtually no toxic substances, and requires just one-third the power of other PCs. An Eco with a 900MHz Crusoe processor, 20GB hard drive, and 15-inch display costs $1,599. www.nec.com

We've been burned before, but here goes: New York Research Frontiers' SPD electrochromic glass has a real shot at commercialization. Its benefit over previous attempts: Apply a voltage, and the glass goes from opaque to clear in seconds, instead of minutes. The key is a film coated with microscopic light-absorbing crystals. These crystals naturally shade the glass, but align to let light through when subjected to a voltage. ThermoView, of Louisville, has licensed SPD for home windows, while Fort Lauderdale-based InspecTech hopes to use it in aircraft cabin windows.