CYBERSPACE : He Meant Their ‘Net Boxes’ Were a Stupid Idea
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has often ridiculed the notion that a cheap, stripped-down PC or “Internet Box” will ever find a market. But at the company’s annual hardware developers conference today in San Jose, he will describe Microsoft’s version of just such an appliance.
Gates is expected to portray Microsoft’s proposed “Simply Interactive Personal Computer” as the answer to every technophobe’s prayers. The machine, which would tie together TVs, VCRs, stereos and upcoming digital video disc players and could surf the net, would be quick to boot up and a snap to use.
With PC sales slowing and new growth opportunities focused in the consumer and Internet areas, Microsoft must do something. But the company’s record when it ventures beyond the traditional PC is poor: Efforts to set standards for office machines, game systems, hand-held devices and interactive television have all failed.
Microsoft today will also be trying to make up ground by announcing a much-delayed product called Exchange that has evolved, chameleonlike, from an upgraded e-mail system to a Lotus Notes killer to an Internet product as the company’s perceived threats have changed.
THIS WEEK * Celebrate April Fools’ Day with a visit to NetWits ’96 (https://www.tiac.net/users/ebbjr/netwits.html). Relive legendary pranks--such as the one in which Sun Microsystems employees took apart their boss’ Porsche and reassembled it inside his office--read ridiculous newspaper headlines (“Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers”) and revel in other humor at the site.
* The boys of summer are back, and they’re in cyberspace. Rookie MLB@BAT (https://majorleaguebaseball.com) features standings, box scores and all kinds of statistics. Instant Baseball (https://www.InstantSports.com/baseball.html) returns for its second season with up-to-the-minute scores and play-by-play coverage of major league games.
ON THE NET
* The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just opened a Web site that contains information on endangered species, fisheries and much more at https://www.fws.gov.
* If you missed seeing Comet Hyakutake, you can still view it in cyberspace at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/hyakutake/.
* The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has posted addresses (electronic and snail mail) for dozens of media companies so that activists can praise or pan their representations of gays. https://www.glaad.org
* Want to beef up your computer skills? Consider taking a community college class in computers or one of 300 other subjects. Course listings and registration and enrollment instructions for the Los Angeles Community College District are at (https://www.laccd.edu). For a statewide listing of two-year schools, visit https://www.sp.utoldeo.edu/ca2yr.html.
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It should come as no surprise that Dr. Avrum Bluming, president of the Los Angeles Free-Net, says his favorite site on the World Wide Web is the home page for the nonprofit online service (https://www/lafn.org) he worked for eight years to launch.
When the practicing oncologist is looking for a decidedly nonmedical way to spend his time, he visits the Columbia University Bartleby Library (https://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby), where visitors can browse the poetry by Walt Whitman, use an online version of John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations or read transcripts of the inaugural addresses of American presidents going back to George Washington.
