Even after he became a multibillionaire, Microsoft’s Bill Gates could be seen rushing down the concourse at O’Hare with a coach passenger’s carry-on bag over his shoulder and a greasy food court burrito in his hand. But last week came word that the world’s richest man finally popped for a $21 million private jet.
If competitors think the notoriously competitive Gates is softening up in the wake of recent antitrust heat from Ralph Nader, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and the Senate Judiciary Committee, they might note the brand of plane Gates bought–a Bombardier.
GADGETS
VIRTUAL VALIUM
Mozart didn’t have to contend with the background noise from the fan on his computer, the click-click of a hard drive or the fridge humming in the next room, so why should we put up with such late 20th Century Nachtmusik while giving Wolfie a listen on our computers and stereos?
For $69 a Stamford, Conn., outfit, Noise Cancellation Technologies Inc., sells “Noisebuster” headphones that generate sound waves exactly opposite to those given off by background noise, canceling out that annoying clamor. How does it tell mush from Mozart? It filters out the ultra high and ultra low stuff, like rumbling jet engines and whistling wind. Even if you don’t use the gadget to block background noise while you play music, you’ll be stunned at the wave of blessed silence that sets in when you don the headphones and press the little white “on” button without music. Talk about an instant tranquilizer.
THE INTERNET
NOBODY’S LOOKING UP MOZART
What are people really looking for on the World Wide Web? Type in this bit of cybergibberish: voyeur.mckinley.com/cgi-bin/voyeur.cgi. Set up by managers of the Magellan and WebCrawler search engines as a tool for other Web experts, this site takes a random sampling of queries people are making all across the Internet every 15 seconds and then lists them as hot links.
As this is being written, the following search requests are being sent through cyberspace by inquiring minds: “old sluts” “european lolitas” “hot babes” and “gross national product.”
ENTERTAINMENT
IN YOUR FACE TV
Some Chicago marketers, the Ignite Group, are launching a national promotion blitz for a new toy for couch potatoes with too much money and too much free time–3-D television. The $600 box called C-3D from Utah-based Chequemate Technologies Inc. (CQMT on Nasdaq) plugs into your VCR and uses computer technology to digitize TV pictures and then play them back as rather stunning 3-D fare at least as good as we had during the 1960s at theaters.
You haven’t really seen the weather until you’ve plugged into this gizmo, put on a special pair of liquid crystal display eyeglasses and caught a three-dimensional senior meteorologist Valerie Voss tracing El Nino across a CNN map shimmering with peaks and valleys. (Check www.c-3d.com for availability.)
