Your Technology Aug. 16, 1999

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TRAIN YOUR BRAIN Now that bathing-suit season is almost over, you can ease up on the stomach crunches and focus on a decidedly more important part of your anatomy, your brain. Mind Gym, from Simon & Schuster Interactive ($30), aims to boost your mental agility with a series of fun, silly games. Begin by answering a few odd questions: Could a trout be mayor? Would you read a book called, 10 Steps to Health, Wealth and Happiness? If you answered no to both, you may not be very open to new ideas, scolds the CD-ROM's sarcastic, British-accented narrator. To fix that, he takes you through a series of playful exercises to make you more experimental, proactive, empowered...You get the idea. In one exercise, you're asked how a cucumber might bring world peace. Ridiculous? Well, "sometimes you have to contemplate the crazy to come up with a really buzzy idea," says the narrator. Even if you decide that Mind Gym is just a game, it's an engaging little game--and that's the idea.

SHARP AND STYLISH For years, digital camera owners have lived like second-class citizens, settling for grainy pics while they waited for prices to fall on high-res models. The wait paid off this spring, when Ricoh, Sony and others introduced the first sub-$1,000, 2-megapixel cameras with near film quality. Now Yashica is improving on the standard with its Samurai 2100DG, which boasts the first 4X optical zoom for sharper pics, and a one-hand design to help eliminate blurring caused by accidental shaking of the camera. Due out Aug. 20, the Samurai weighs in at a still hefty 14 oz. and $900.

--By Anita Hamilton