Logging on to the U.S. government’s massive new omnibus Web site after an hour or so on the advertising-drenched Internet gives you the same feeling you get after stopping hitting your head with a hammer. Blessed relief.
There’s not an ad in sight. Even the site’s logo whispers from a corner of the page on the order of a postage stamp.
And, my oh my, look at the content: The entire findings of the U.S. census are here, right down to who lives on your block; the records of the Supreme Court; satellite maps of your back yard; rules about Social Security, including an accurate estimate of your own awaiting pension; and thousands of federally owned art works.
It’s massive. And it’s ad-free. Hail to the chief!
MIGHTY MICE
THEY BUMP ‘N’ GRIND
Using Logitech’s just released iFeel mouse can be a real head trip. That’s trip as in hallucinations. This amazing gadget looks like any other PC mouse, but when you move its pointer over words and pictures and blank spaces on the screen the thing shakes as though you were running it over bumpy terrain on your desktop.
The mouse doesn’t actually move up and down, but rather it gives off vibrations. Company gear heads explain that the trick lies in sensing what’s under the pointer and then changing the tiny vibrations when the pointer moves over something else, giving that strange little bump in the night that makes one wonder if this is the best way afterall to spend between $40 and $60.
GETTYSBURG GUZZLER
ABE TAKES THE 5TH
Honestly, this month has been almost as bad for Abe Lincoln as that dismal April in 1865 when he went to the wrong play at Ford’s Theater. And it’s not just Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) using the filibuster to hold up federal funds for the Lincoln Library in Springfield.
Even worse is the “Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln” cartoon movie at www.icebox.com by old “Simpsons” hand Mike Reiss. The Great Emancipator gets lampooned in particularly galling bad taste as the Great Inebriator, with a jug of whiskey under his stove pipe hat, in a cartoon with guest voices from such television hits as “Rugrats” and “Pinky and the Brain.” Tasteless as it is, the site is a stunning example of new animation technologies that make far better Web movies than before.
TAKE YOUR AD
AND STUFFIT
Shout a huge “welcome to Windows” to Macintosh-compression giant Aladdin Systems Inc., with the debut of the PC version of its standout Macintosh file squeezer, Stuffit ($30, www.aladdinsys.com).
Aladdin also offers a download of a trial version of the superior software using the “adware” protocol, where the screen display is blitzed by advertising as you use it. Buyers get a keyword to stuff the ads and get down to business.
