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1994-09-18
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***************************************************************************
********************* Wired InfoBot Copyright Notice **********************
***************************************************************************
************ All material retrieved from the Wired InfoBot is *************
***************** Copyright 1993 Wired, Rights Reserved. ******************
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**************************** G*E*T**W*I*R*E*D*! ***************************
_Wired_1.1_
FLUX
****
So no sooner do we settle into our boringly plain San Francisco
neighborhood of brick warehouses than it becomes the acronym de jour.
Our South of Market (SOMA, after TRIBECA, SOHO, etc.) neighborhood has
been dubbed "multimedia gulch" by the local newspaper in honor of all
the struggling start-ups sharing our nondescript flatlands. Then the
city's Board of Supervisors jumps in, voting "official support" for San
Francisco's nascent multimedia industry. To spruce the place up, the
Friends of the Urban Forest start planting trees everywhere, the not-
yet-trendy cafes start to open,and presto! Esquire's "House Hunting"
column christens a converted block of warehouses perched kitty corner
>from our offices the hottest buy in San Francisco. Really, we just liked
the low rent...
##
Low rent you won't find when browsing through the multimedia bookstore,
especially if the title comes from Neuromancer author William Gibson.
Agrippa: A Book of the Dead is Gibson's latest effort at blurring the
lines between currency - yours - and information - his. To get your own
copy of the very rare metal-jacketed self-destructing autobiography,
you'll have to cough up $450 to $7,500 worth of currency (it comes in
various flavors). Word is that the book will soon be hacked and placed
on the Net for all to browse...
##
Snick may not be art, but the two-hour Saturday evening programming slot
produced by Nickelodeon and MTV is worth checking out, if only to find
out what the post-MTV generation wants from life. Each week a lucky
winner of the Slime Time Sweepstakes (don't ask) gets the chance to be
publicly humiliated in his or her own living room via an AT&T videophone
link-up. Nickelodeon says sweepstakes responses from eager kids come in
literally by the tons...
##
If your Snick fan-to-be is still in the crib-and-crying stage, you can
always tune into the new "Baby Channel," which offers 24-hour parenting
advice. (With Telecommunications Inc. threatening to offer more than 700
digital cable channels by next year, we may soon have The Interactive
Baby Channel, but it still won't change diapers.)...
##
>From the build-a-better-mousetrap file: Symbol Technologies has come up
with a new bar coding system that can cram the Gettysburg Address into a
printed square the size of a Post It. Symbol's code portends a day when
the bar code holds more than jut a price tag...
##
And they've even digitized the compass: Wayfinder, from Precision
Navigation, is an LCD auto compass that remains unperturbed by minor
magnetic interference or a sharp right turn...
##
The best thing TV ever did (after The Prisoner), M*A*S*H, has been
digitally restored from 70s' film technology. All 255 episodes will be
color corrected and closed-captioned, at a cost of $1.25 million...
##
All is not lost in the world of kidutainment: Sega is premiering a video
game this March titled "Ecco - the Dolphin." One of the first 16-bit
home video games that doesn't use an anthropomorphic metaphor of some
furry creature as its hero/heroine, Ecco is a smart, quick-swimming sea
mammal whose goal is to navigate through a maze of coral and caverns
toward a passage to another world. A bit mystical in that respect, Ecco
- with its rich aquamarine colors, mysterious music, and realistic
swimming action - is sure to be a sensation among many who thought video
games were forever trapped in slash and hacks.
##
A 10 in the "warm-but-not-fuzzy" category...Prickly is how some insiders
are describing the legal salvos between Silicon Valley software giants
Borland and Symantec. You remember: Borland VP deserts to Symantec,
Borland cries foul after finding very sensitive e-mail allegedly sent by
the deserter to Gordon Eubanks, Symantec CEO. Some even claim Microsoft,
Big Brother of the software biz, is involved. (At a recent trade show
party, Bill Gates, who is not known for his love of rival Borland, was
standing around minding his own biz when a junior Borland executive ran
up to him and pinned a Borland button on his lapel. Enraged, Gates threw
the pin on the ground and screamed "You know that isn't funny...") This
all makes for one heck of a soap opera. Look for coverage from our crack
Valley reporter in a future issue...
##
Speaking of Silicon Valley, anyone within spittin' distance of digital
maven Ted Nelson (inventor of the term "hypertext") has a chance to star
in "Silicon Valley Story," his latest unfinished-work-in-progress.
Nelson is never without his video camera, recording everything from
casual dinners to product introductions. The film (we have a poster, so
it must be real) will star Nelson as a major nerd who can't quite make
relationships work and include Doug Englebart, inventor of the mouse,
playing Nelson's father. If you'd like to invest or see a 15-minute pre-
alpha version, call Ted at Autodesk...
##
Film maker Brett Leonard (Lawnmower Man) is working on yet another
this-is-your-future project: Sources tell us he's cutting a deal with a
major network to do a TV series about "our digital future." To be set
early in the next century, the series will appear this fall if
everything goes as planned...
##
OK, so CDs are passe, the next cool thing for musicians on the digital
edge is CD-ROM. Peter Gabriel is rumored to be producing a CD-ROM album,
and Todd Rundgren already has. Even U2 is getting into the act with a
CD-I-based image fest during its recent Zoo tour...
##
Quitaque, Texas, ("kit-a-quay" to you and me) has become the first
"wireless city," opting to replace its wire-based telephone
infrastructure with a digital spread-spectrum switch. Quitaque's 500
phone customers now chat via microwave, thanks to GTE and Interdigital.
We thought it might be neat to place a wireless call, so we rang up
Zeola Taylor, assistant manager at Allsup's, Quitaque's answer to the
all-night convenience store (it was late, okay?) Zeola reports that
while everyone knows about the new wireless switch, nothing much has
really changed. "No news vans yet," she said...
##
The world is ready for cheap science fiction classics in electronic form
at an "all you can read" price of 96 cents per week. You scarf the e-
books via a Clarinet service on the Internet or other on-line services.
##
Playboy magazine has embarked on a new sideline: suing small electronic
BBSes that allow scanned images of centerfold bunnies to be posted. And
Playboy is winning - all to clear the way for Playboy to debut its own
soft-porn BBS. The last BBS Playboy busted was racking in $3 million a
year...
##
While we're on the topic of technologically savvy magazines, we think
the recent ad in The New York Times for Forbes' ASAP (Forbes new
technology mag) deserves another look. The fact that Forbes folded over
its own cover speaks for itself...
##
And AT&T has developed an ATM card that can hold a digitized imprint of
your voice as a security feature. We knew the pin number was a
transition technology...
##
Speaking of codes and such, John Gilmore, our favorite anarchro-hacker,
is still battling the Feds after forcing the declassification of two of
four WWII cryptography texts he had discovered in a public library.
Seems that in a fit of secrecy, the NSA "reclassified" the 50-year-old
studies. Gilmore's basic point: anyone, not just the government, should
be able to use good cryptography. Sounds fair to us. Look for coverage
of the crypto story in future issues of Wired...
##
Up in Sonoma County, Calif., they don't get much computer crime, but a
recent case involving a systems analyst is worth noting: when asked by
his estranged wife to help with some computer problems, the systems
analyst gave her a disk that erased all the information on her hard disk
and left a bitter limerick on the screen. Yes, she is pressing
charges...
Copyright (c) 1993 Wired magazine