Why worry about getting a life when you can run the lives of others? Behold The SIMs, the latest $50 offering from computer simulations genius Will Wright, whose original SimCity let computer users create their own virtual city complete with aldermen, school boards, greedy precinct captains–and then run the place as mayor.
SIMs, by Electronics Arts, are simulated human beings that computer users program with qualities like laziness or ambition, greed or tolerance, love or hate and then turn loose in simulated homes with other SIMs to build simulated relationships and lead artificial lives. Be the first kid on your block to create your block.
OLD DOGS
OLDER TRICKS
South Side cyberspace boasts a spanking new www.whitesox.com Web site that weds the Internet with one of the oldest tricks in sports coverage, “diamondcasts” where fans gathered at the newspaper office in the days before radio to watch a copyboy reading wire copy and recording play-by-play developments on a blackboard laid out like the ballpark diamond.
When the 2000 season begins at Comiskey, deskbound fans will get a window with constant play-by-play diamondcasts showing each pitch.
JEEPERS CREEPERS
THERE GO MY PEEPERS
You’ve got to see it in person to believe it, and when you see it, you will really see it. A Merrick, N.Y., outfit, ASF Lightware Solutions (keyboardvision.com) solves the problems of uncounted weak-eyed computer users by the brilliantly simple trick of creating big fat yellow-on-black letter decals to stick over each key on the keyboard.
This $12 decal set makes it far easier to see keys not only in a lighted office but on laptops in dimly lighted airplanes.
WINDOWS 2000
OR 2000 WINDOZE?
Bill Gates says he’s betting his company on the Feb. 17 launch of Windows 2000, the dull but hugely improved successor to the business-strength Windows NT 4.0 now playing on a boring business desktop near you.
Later this year ordinary people will get a taste of the Year 2000 wave of Microsoft operating systems when Windows Millennium Edition ships to the consumer market. The single best feature: self-healing powers to automatically restore all those inexplicably corrupted software modules that so often make using Windows a crash-and-burn experience.
BINARY BON BON OF THE WEEK
The AltaVista search engine (www.altavista.com), which has been eclipsed lately by the likes of lycos.com, yahoo.com and excite.com, deserves a revisit and a bookmark list thanks to a huge new addition–more than 1 million MP3 music files.
