Gadgets

Watches are hopping on the tactile bandwagon. With six electrodes in its sapphire face, the Tissot T-Touch puts smart functions at your fingertips: thermometer, altimeter, chronograph, compass, alarm, and weather. We'd like to see a larger LCD, but smarts and good looks make this watch appropriate for the office or the Appalachian Trail.


Price: $595
www.t-touch.com

If your cousin's cellphone is on Sprint PCS and yours is on Voicestream, in the past you couldn't send text messages. But with Intercarrier messaging, rolling out now, you can send text directly to any cell number. The service is limited to text for now. Enhanced Messaging Service, which supports graphics, and Multimedia Messaging Service (pictures, audio, and video) are still available only to intra-carrier subscribers.


—Suzanne Kantra Kirschner

For movie buffs, 5.1-channel sound makes sense. But what about 6.1 or even 7.1 channels, which are now hitting the home theater market? We say don't bother.

If you lived on a deserted island, would you buy a home security system? Consumers do the aquatic equivalent every day, purchasing water filters without knowing if there's anything worrisome in their water. So always test your water first.

"Vogue!" bleats Madonna's voice, and three robotic dogs stare straight ahead, slowly lifting their front paws above their heads to the '90s hit. Perfectly in sync, they flip their paws inward and, yes, strike a pose. The dogs (which can be seen at www.aibopet.com) are Sony Aibos, and they learned to vogue courtesy of a passionate hacker and robotics hobbyist known only as Aibopet.

From fishing villages on the coast of the Arabian Sea to New Delhi slums teeming with people and poverty, children are learning the basics of computing—all by themselves. It's an experiment in what Sugata Mitra calls Minimally Invasive Education. "We often make the incorrect assumption that a teacher is required everywhere," says Mitra. If he's right, it could be a boon in India, where more than 40 percent of 6- to 14-year-olds (some 79 million kids) are unable to attend school.

1. BUST OUT THE BUTTONS
Capcom's Steel Battalion, an irresistible giant-robot warfare oddity, comes with a more irresistible three-panel custom Xbox controller that's festooned with 40 buttons, two joysticks, a slider bar, and a trio of foot pedals. Available this fall for $150.

www.capcom.com

MICROSOFT XBOX
Availability: This fall
Price: $49.95 for a one-year subscription and headset
Access: DSL or cable
Player Matching: Included in subscription (with other services)
Titles Expected at Launch: Unreal Championship, MechAssault, Whacked, NFL Fever 2003, and Midtown Madness 3

Doom III (PC)

The next iteration of this venerable shooter title from id Software stole the show at this year's E3 gaming convention, with its gruesomely realistic graphics (courtesy of programming legend John Carmack) and convincingly creepy soundtrack from macabre rocker Trent Reznor.

The two most highly anticipated online games in history are just months away. And after getting a sneak preview of The Sims Online and Star Wars Galaxies, it's fair to say that both have a good chance of luring newbies into the online gaming arena-even at $10 a month.
Scheduled for November, The Sims Online is a wired adaptation of the bestselling computer game of all time (more than 6.3 million copies sold). It's like Tamagotchi on steroids, a contest in which

Harold Stibbins
This oddly named mod points to the next generation of hacking. Created for 2001's hit PC game, Max Payne, it's a sophisticated and literary spin on the work of real-life fantasy author Terry Pratchett.

The closed architecture of game consoles such as Sony's PlayStation 2 has made them almost impossible to infiltrate. Hackers hoped for a new playground, however, with Microsoft's Xbox console, which went on sale last November. That's because the Xbox is PC-based, with a standard Intel processor and a hard drive.

Once subversive, mod making has gone mainstream; some game companies even give players easy-to-use tools. Here's how Jordan Edelson, whose nom de guerre is Master X, turned a character from Half-Life into one for his mod.


1. Meet Gordon
An original Half-Life character.


2. Extract the Essentials
Using Half-Life's software development kit (SDK), Master X and his team extract the file containing Gordon's skeleton and form.

Most game hacking is fairly benign; some is inspired. But cross paths with the wrong hombre in Diablo II, a fantasy role-playing game that has spawned a large interactive community of online players, and you could find your game persona naked, penniless, or dead.


Like most role-playing games, Diablo II involves creating a character and then, through skilled play, acquiring special attributes and possessions. Most serious players spend hundreds of hours to enhance a character with skills such as spell casting, and valuables such as armor and weapons.

Consider whether you would hack a DVD of the film Gladiator so that Russell Crowe was relocated from Rome to, say, a Wal-Mart parking lot in Missoula, Montana. Perhaps substitute pickup trucks for chariots, grizzly bears for lions. Turn the emperor into Osama bin Laden-maybe with no clothes. You might not, but someone would. This is certain because, when it comes to the intricate worlds created for PC-based games, someone does. The difference between games and movies, of course, is that PC games are code worlds, hackable.