If you really, really want to protect your computer files during the Big Turnover from the 20th Century into Y2K, an outfit high up in the Idaho mountains called Subterranean Data Storage Company says they’d be glad to sell you Armageddon-proof data storage.
It comes as SDS Vault, a bomb-proof, flood-proof, earthquake-proof data storage device that you bury deep in the earth in your backyard or on your corporate campus. It protects all your files on hardened tape drives that run off an internal power system and rise from their silos on hydraulic lifters for updating. Cost is a mere $31,000 (plus shipping and installation) at www.sdsvaults.com.
BLOW-DRIED KEYBOARDS
MCGYVER FOR MACS & PCS
It’s undeniably fun, and most of the advice it gives is first rate, but one can only shake one’s head in wonder at other computing tips in “The Geek Guide to Solving Any Computer Glitch” (Simon & Schuster, $15) by onetime Waukegan Navy brat Robert Stephens, now a networking guru for corporate clients.
Consider “The Mcgyver rescue” for a Mac or PC keyboard that gets ruined by a spill of Diet Pepsi into its innards. “Place the keyboard face down in the dishwasher…do not add soap…make sure that it’s set to air dry…” On second thought, maybe you should stick to the Chicago Tribune’s excellent Ask Jim Why column.
SOUNDS OF SILENCE
YOU’VE GOT TTY
Sometimes you invent something and don’t even notice. So when BellSouth started doing a land office business selling interactive, e-mail sending pagers, few noticed at first that this network was delivering virtually all the services that deaf and hard-of-hearing people get using TTY-equipped phones (Traditional Teletype).
BellSouth’s RIM devices (fat pagers with a small LCD screen above a tiny but effective keyboard) allow users to exchange messages almost in real time by typing.
And so was born reachNet, a $35 to $50 per month service (www.reachnet.net), that not only delivers wireless versions of TTY exchanges but also lets hearing-impaired users use text-to-speech features to leave voice mail, and send faxes as well as traditional e-mail.
NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO . . .
. . . THERE YOU ARE.COM
Americans are discovering Mapquest.com in droves as people learn how to use Web browsers to quickly call up a street map and detailed driving instructions to anywhere in the U.S. Media Matrix now says that 20 per cent of all Web users called up at least one Mapquest map during June.
Y2KORNER
World Wide Watch Co. (800-535-0131) offers for $30 the ultimate Y2K compliant timepiece, a “1999 Forever” wristwatch on which the numbers appear counterclockwise and the hands move backwards.
