In Brief: Sep. 18, 2000

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GIGABEATS The next frontier in portable digital music players is space--storage space. You can't squeeze a rock epic like Kiss's Double Platinum into the 32 MB (an hour of music, at best) that is standard on such popular MP3 players as the Rio 600. But the new Nomad Jukebox ($499), due out next week from Creative, has a hotter-than-hell 6 GB of memory. That's enough to keep you rockin' all night.

SCOOP-FREE OLYMPICS Planning to watch streaming video of those tense synchronized-diving heats on the Net? Think again. The International Olympic Committee, at the behest of its well-heeled television licensees (principally NBC), has barred all video footage of the Games from the Web. Why? NBC won't be broadcasting any events live from Sydney, and the network chieftains don't want to be undercut by enterprising Webmasters. Now if only they'd ban those annoying Olympic mascots.

THE WEB AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Ever wonder how a hyperlink feels to the touch? With Logitech's new iFeel mouse ($39.95, for Windows only), you can find out. Through the magic of force-feedback technology, the iFeel actually creates the illusion that you are touching icons, links and menu items by bumping and vibrating when you move the mouse to drag your cursor over them on the screen. Let your fingers do the surfing.

--By Lev Grossman