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June 16, 2000 VOL. 29 NO. 23 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK
FLASH Handheld Cameras Palm computers initially won kudos, and 80% market share, by keeping things simple. Now it seems they are getting more complicated by the day. The latest use for the ubiquitous handhelds is as a digital camera. The $150 eyemodule, left, snaps into a slot on the new Handspring Visor (which uses the Palm OS). The slim unit adds just 15 mm to the length of the device and turns the screen into a viewfinder, so you can point and shoot from the hip. A Visor with 8MB of memory can store 500 black and white pictures or 25 color ones (you won't see the hues until you upload the snaps to a PC). For Palm III users, Kodak has the Palmpix ($179), which is chunkier than the eyemodule but offers twice the picture quality, as well as a 2x zoom and self-timer. POLITICS.COM Surf's Up For Netizen Kim Is there no end to Kim Jong Il's talents? Already renowned throughout North Korea for his exceptional skill at everything from composing operas to telling jokes, the Dear Leader reportedly demonstrated "a thorough knowledge of personal computers and the Net," while on a recent visit to China. No mean feat. Tempting as it is to picture the hermit-like Kim cloistered in his bedroom, surfing the Net for days on end, North Korea is one of the world's least wired countries and has zero Internet service providers. Even Pyongyang's own website, Choson Infobank (www.dprkorea.com) is run from Beijing. Still, Kim took home over 10 PCs as a gift from China that should help kick-start an IT revolution. Just as long as Jiang Zemin doesn't expect a thank you e-mail. GAMES A PlayStation in Every Home? Sony lost the VCR war by not licensing its Betamax technology to other manufacturers, and the Japanese electronics giant seems determined never to make the same mistake again. Even though its PlayStation videogame console has dispatched its competition with the ruthless cool of Tomb Raider Lara Croft, Sony wants more. The corporation has announced plans to sell the chip that powers the PlayStation 2 to other companies, meaning a whole range of appliances, such as TVs and set-top boxes might one day double as games machines. Sony will reap its reward in increased software sales.
FROM THE WEB Mac Users Finally Meet Their Music Match While PC users have been making a lot of noise about MP3, Apple Macintosh fans have been suffering in silence. The reason: a lack of software. Or at least a lack of free software. The makers of the handful of MP3 players available for the Mac have been teasing users with limited demo versions of their software, then (the horror!) trying to charge around $30 for the real deal. No longer. MusicMatch (www.musicmatch.com) has launched the first Mac-compatible version of its highly popular jukebox program, with all the features PC users enjoy, for free. Your iMac will never sound the same again. e-mail: stuart_whitmore@asiaweek.com Write to Asiaweek at mail@web.asiaweek.com Quick Scroll: More stories from Asiaweek, TIME and CNN |
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