South Africa • R21.95 (incl. vat) - Watt Now Magazine

1996. He also predicted that the tablet PC would take over as thedominant computer design, and claimed that spam would no longerbe around in 2006. Sadly such star-gazing from industry boffins issometime utterly meaningless.So when Otellini said that he believes people will connect to theInternet not just to go through e-mails or chat on social networksbut will start to interact with people in novel ways. He introducedthe head of e-Jamming, which offers a network for musicians tocollaborate via the Internet. Low and behold, Otellini was joined onstage by Steve Harwell, lead singer of Smashmouth. Coincidentally,of course, Harwell’s band mates just happened to be online and so thegroup launched into its hit song Walking on the Sun and the audiencetapped their feet as Harwell and Otellini pranced around. Well scriptedbut is this likely to be widely used by musicians? One wonders?Another dude from BigStage comes out to join them both onstage and while the Harwell and his band are jamming, he createsan animated three dimensional avatar of the musician, but giveshim a Mohawk, sunglasses and a nose ring. Big deal, but what’s thepoint? BigStage says that such avatars can be embedded in all sortsof entertainment content and manipulated by moving normally usingOrganic Motion’s motion-sensing technology. Once again, who reallyElectric motorbike for $11 000Vectrix has introduced a zero emission motorcyclecapable of speeds up to 100 kilometres an hour whichhas a battery life of about 80 kilometres using batteriesthat recharge in under three hours. The motorcycle isso quiet that the manufacturers had to add an artificialhum so that people could hear it approaching. Itaccelerates to about 80 kilometres an hour in underseven seconds. However, it has a hefty price tag of$11 000.Gary ShapiroSony introduces MusicPassSony plans to start selling music downloads that are free fromcopyright protection and available in MP3. The downloadedfiles can be played on digital music players, including the iPodand can be stored on computers or even copied onto CDsor DVDs. Sony will charge $12,99 for a card that must bebought from a retail shop and then use the digital passwordon the card to enter a MusicPass site and download the audiofiles. It will offer 37 titles at first but hopes to increase thisdramatically in the months ahead. It seems a far cry fromApple’s iTunes store, which already has thousands of albumsavailable to users who purchase the tunes directly from theApple store.February 2008 18