Mark Thursday in big letters on your Palm Pilots, boys and girls. Sept. 14 is launch date for Microsoft Windows ME (Millennium Edition), the long-awaited (in computer years) upgrade to the Windows 98 operating system.
In Chicago, a battalion of Microsofties flown in from the mother ship in Redmond, Wash., plans a blowout of demonstrations starting at 10 a.m. at Woodfield mall to introduce hypertext heartlanders to what Bill Gates considers the multimedia marvels of ME.
A $70 ME upgrade adds features such as a self-healing module that kicks in when you mess up and restores the operating system to the way it was before the trouble set in. Drop by your software store with a $50 and a $20 bill and hear Bill say “GimME, GimMe.”
FILTER-TIP PHONES
CALGON IN YOUR EAR
Those charcoal filters that were supposed to make cigarettes safe in the 1950s didn’t work. We’ve got the body counts to prove it. Now, experts seem to agree that a thin barrier of activated charcoal between one’s ear and the ear hole on one’s cell phone filters out 99 percent of possibly harmful microwaves emitted by mobile phones.
So Pittsburgh-based Calgon Carbon Corp. says it will flood the Chicago market with its new $8 WaveZorb product that it promises will absorb microwave emissions for at least 6 months. The $8 gets you a stamp-size pad of charcoal with adhesive on the back. Stick it on your phone, not in your ear.
FROM A TO ZYZZYVA
CDICTIONARY-ROM
Mark Twain said that the difference between a word that is merely appropriate and one that is exactly right is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. So maybe Thursday will be a turning point as Houghton Mifflin Co. becomes the first dictionary company to simultaneously publish ink-on-paper and computer-searchable electronic versions.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language costs $60 in the drab type-only version and $75 bundled with the computer searchable CD-ROM version or $25 for the CD alone.
RUE BRITANNICA
E-NCYCLOPEDIA-COMMERCE
Chicago-based Encyclopaedia Britannica’s free-of-charge Web site grows in controversy with its latest addition. The new feature not only lets you look stuff up, it also lets you buy stuff online associated with your reference search. (www.britannica.com)
Type in Adolph Hitler, for example, and you get more than just the encyclopedia’s superlative coverage of World War II and the horrors wrought by the German dictator. You also get a chance to click and order Hitler’s hateful book “Mein Kampf” from the Barnes & Noble Web site (www.bn.com). Type in car bombs and you also get a click-and-order offer for a book telling how to build them. Oh, Britannica!
