INNOVATIONS
There’s long been software available to do personal make-overs – hair, make-up and so on – but like many software applications, this one has now found its way online, at www.makeover.com. You can upload your own photo (or use that of a model with similar looks) and try out different hairstyles, different make-up combinations and so on.
They don’t offer different nosejobs or facelifts yet, but surely it’s only a matter of time.
South African online computer store etenga now allows you to pre-order new products, meaning that if you’re dead keen on getting the very latest game, you don’t have to wait for the CNA to pull finger.
Just place your order at www.etenga.com and get contacted just before shipping, presumably for confirmation.
D-Link (www.d-link.co.za) have brought their MP3 players, the catchily named DMP- 90 and DMP-100, to South Africa. At R1E800 for the 32MB DMP-100, you might want to stick with that portable CD player for just a little longer.
However, the DMP-100 does double as a digital voice recorder, with an impressive 2,5-hour capacity. And of course, MP3 players are smaller, take your own customised medleys and don’t skip when you hop. You can also use them to transfer non- MP3 files between computers.
Memory is expandable to 64MB. The DMP- 90, presumably with 16MB of memory, costs R1E000.
Google, already the Net’s prettiest and best search engine, has switched to a new index containing a billion Internet addresses. Chief executive Larry Page said it was equivalent to searching a stack of paper more than 100km high in half a second. Excite has also improved its service with Precision Search, though it doesn’t cache pages like Google. AltaVista’s Raging Search and All The Web are the main competitors.
The Tour de France began on July 1, and the official website at www.letour.com is open for business in English and French. Intel is the site’s new media sponsor so some high-bandwidth trimmings have been added. Race data will also be available on Wap (wireless application protocol) phones.
Chicken Run, Nick Park’s new animated feature, now has an eggsciting website at www.chickenrun.co.uk, complete with slideshow, clips and trailer. For the background, however, see www.corona.bc.ca/films/details/
chickenrun.html.
There’s also a humorous site for the script of Curse of The Bog Women, written as a student assignment and now being turned into a $4,5-million movie. The home page looks as though it could be really good if it ever finishes downloading.
Sony has unveiled a prototype of a new Palm-like gadget (using the Palm operating system), which will be the Japanese company’s first move in the fast-growing handheld computer market.
Details are scant. However, according to the Wall Street Journal it will weigh 148,4g, be narrower than the Palm V and thinner than the Palm III.
Both colour and black-and-white versions of the machine will be available, and they will all feature slots for Sony’s Memory Stick technology.
There should be a ready market for a thin (25mm), light (1,3kg) notebook PC with a battery life of about eight hours, and IBM hopes to add that type of machine to its ThinkPad line by the end of the year. It showed prototypes at the PC Expo exhibition in New York this week. The system is the familiar ThinkPad 240 with its Intel processor swapped for a Transmeta Corporation Crusoe chip, a new design that needs little power.
Emulation software enables the chip to run Microsoft Windows and other operating systems, including GNU/Linux – which is not a coincidence, because Transmeta’s main claim to fame so far has been that Linus Torvalds, keeper of the Linux operating system kernel, works for the company.
ENDS