Talking Heads

Why settle for text versions of the day’s news, sports and financial events when you can get it TV-news-style from photo-animated anchors Vera and Ava.

V-Star Inc.’s quasi-realistic computer news show went wireless last month, enabling users on the go to view the company’s 1KTV daily news on laptops and Pocket PC-based hand-helds.

The 1KTV shows are free and designed to download fast. Because they use animated characters instead of video, the shows run fine with connections of a mere 1 kilobit to 4 Kb per second. Vera and Ava deliver the headlines with their mouths and eyebrows moving to the sound of their voices.

The technology is neat, but today’s version of 1KTV is mostly for tech junkies with time on their hands. First, you have to load a special viewer on your personal digital assistant or laptop. And playing its meager bits of news takes far longer than getting the same information in plain old text. It will also eat your PDA’s battery alive.

Bottom line: cool idea but best viewed on a desktop or through Ricochet or other high-speed wireless connections for now.