 The need for speed: A virtual reality race car on the convention floor Photo by Steve Marcus REUTERS
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CHECK YOUR EMAIL DURING THE COMMERCIAL: Several big media companies (including TIME Warner) are working to bring the Internet to TV. Now Sony has done it by partnering with WebTV, a network service that provides unlimited Internet access and email in a newbie-friendly interface for $19.95 per month, for up to six people in a family. The startup package (the Sony box and a universal remote that runs both TV and the Net) costs $350, and it's in stores right now. Philips, another WebTV partner, is marketing a similar package. Why would anyone want to look at the Web on a TV screen? Hey, 65 per cent of American homes do not have computers, but they do have televisions, and many have more than one. And when was the last time you had to wait to use your own computer because your spouse or one of the kids was busy? WebTV understands Call Waiting: it will interrupt web access to allow the phone to ring, and can then return the users to precisely where they were when the call came in. And you can watch the football game in the inset screen while checking your email. LET'S GET SMALL: Personal Digital Assistants are back, but they're much more powerful now. These tiny pocket-sized computers from nearly a dozen manufacturers offer word-processing, calendars and other features. Motorola can hook them up with a 33.6 modem card that fits in its cell phones, for an Internet access, fax and email package that fits in a fanny pack, or the other pocket. "CALL FRANCE FOR A FRANC" Get rid of your phone with online telephony from AT&T, AVerMedia or CompuNet 2000, whose slogan is: "Call France for a franc, Russia for a ruble." With about $300 worth of computer attachments, it is now possible to phone around the world for about the cost of a local call. DON'T CALL ME, I'LL CALL YOU: Intermind offers a two-way personalization tool. While users can specify which Web information they would like to keep updated, from the Dow Jones close to the latest on the Lakers, online publishers can use it to create customized reports for different readers. Operating since October, Intermind so far has signed up PBS, Apple, Spiegel, Novell, Seybold, Group Bull and the GOP National Committee as partners. NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME LIKE MY COMPUTER: Using new speech recognition software from IBM, AT&T and Philips, you can confide in your computer, and it will understand you. Philips' Speech Magic and Speech Flow software take dictation, type it up and file the text document wherever you like, or relay your recorded voice to a more reliable human being for processing. While the idea of merging normal speech into distributed text has been around since computers were wall-sized and Bill Gates was a future technology, the field has now reached the point where the computer you talk to will not blow up Russia or transform your dictation into meaningless babble. It may even save you time, typing and the cost of phone calls and email. On the cacophonous show floor, all of these glimpses into the future were viewed through the usual tradeshow din. Samsung's fashion show featured glamorous models carrying hard-drives and muscular males toting trim little laptops. Over near the Hayes booth, Mr. Las Vegas was putting on his stage show, featuring the worst Elvis impersonator money could buy (though he did bear a resemblance to Saddam Hussein), and everyone was handing out free CD-Roms. Hussein was tossing tote bags to passing geeks. The Philips guy was handing out candy ("to help you stay awake for this presentation"), CompuServe was giving away $250 bomber jackets, and Apple was raffling off PowerPCs. Now, if they could just figure out how to handle cell phone calls for a quarter million people who blow into town overnight . . . BUILDING THE MASS MARKET: TAKE NO PRISONERS The sour note of the week sounded on Thursday, when CompuServe, located at the center of the Comdex Internet Experience, announced a major retrenchment. The reasons should give many Comdex participants pause when laying big plans for the online future. Once the largest online provider, CompuServe has seen subscribers flee in droves as Internet access has become easier as stronger competitors like America Online have taken center stage. Having lost a rumored 100 million trying to start it's family channel, Wow!, without building a sustainable subscriber base, the company is pulling the plug and folding the service in January. More troubling, CompuServe, now only half the size of AOL (7 million vs 3.5 million) is giving up the consumer market. CompuServe CEO Bob Massey Thursday described that battlefield as a "bloodbath." The 27-year-old service will now change its name to CompuServe for Business as it tries to hold on to its original user base: the business and professional customer that now increasingly prefers to go straight to the Internet.
those two out of three American households that do not have computers, and the rest of those who do but never go online. For those who know how computers work, that notion is a nightmare. The whole thrust of Comdex this week has been the great new technologies - music, voice, video, telephony, multimedia and other complex applications - that everyone is loading on the poor old Internet. Already, the Net is slowing: while Net capacity is doubling every six months, demand is growing far more rapidly. So far, that demand growth is being driven by the complexity of the tasks that users are trying to perform on the Net. But if the number of users explodes, there is no doubt of the result. The Net won't work. Your computer won't work. It won't help to buy a better modem. The entire system will be stumbling to a slow crawl, and dumping those who try to use it, like a good horse run to death. A small vision of that future was on view in Las Vegas this week. Between 6 and 7pm, you couldn't make a local phone call. Just about then, like clockwork, everyone attending Comdex finished up their gawking, hawking and schmoozing for the day and picked up a phone to check their voice mail. Digital gridlock hit Las Vegas: it wasn't just the cell phones anymore. It was the pay phones ringing nothing but busy, and even when the calls finally went through later in the evening, the system was dumping callers during peaks. Guys with cigars discovered the five underutilized pay phones in one elegant ladies restroom and moved right in. Digital buyers and sellers spent something close to $2 billion for the privilege of standing in line, 400 at a time, to wait for a taxi, or a $3.50 bottle of water, or a fax, in the ding-ding-ding clamor of blackjack machines. "I've had it," groused one software manufacturer. "There is very little product at Comdex that's new, but every tire-kicker in the world is here to try it out." For Chad Steele, a test engineer for MegaDrive, a West Coast server support firm, waiting in line for a drink of water reminded him of what he hates about the Web: downloading files. He won't do it, and he didn't wait for the water, either. But if a fraction of these technology dreams catch on anytime soon, most of us will. Count on it.
What you can't do is get online. Which is more than a little inconvenient for the estimated 300,000 laptop-toting geeks, deal-makers and digerati gathered here for Comdex, the world's largest Internet computer show. Comdex is held here, in part, because with more than 90,000 hotel rooms, and another 20,000 in the works, Las Vegas can sleep more conventioneers than just about any place on earth. In fact, the show draws participants from just about every place on earth - more than 100 countries. Trouble is, you can't go online using the ancient telephone equipment in most of the rooms. "Yeah, we tell them that every year," says the night manager at the Imperial Palace hotel and casino. Things were no better in the elaborately wired booths as the sprawling show hit full stride on Monday. CompuServe has 40 laptops set up and an army of technicians to help demonstrate "The Internet Experience" - but the T1 is kaput. Apple has set up an interactive booth where visitors can view a virtual reality movie of the show itself, which the company gushes is "almost like being there." Well, not really. Visitors stand transfixed, staring at the little Apple clock frozen in the middle of the screen; the lines aren't working. Even Comdex, the host, has no connectivity at its interactive pavilion, where visitors trying to access the Comdex website keep getting error messages telling them no dice. Every ten feet or so, a frustrated Comdex participant is getting the same message when he tries to use his cell phone: the lines are busy, overwhelmed by this army of the wired. And yet everything seems to be peachy over at the Microsoft Pavilion, where huge banners ask "Where do you want to go today?" How about online? Hey! Their lines are working! There's a rumor that Bill Gates has his own satellite setup servicing his Las Vegas crew, including more than 150 Microsoft Partners that range from SkyTel and General Magic to Motorola and Hitachi. Personal satellites? The Gates rumor mill is like that. Whatever the reason, Microsoft works. |
