Document text
Fair abounds with tech stuff By David Preszler Sarah Bergren and Megan McClintock�s trip to the Jackson County Fair on Tuesday included a quick peek at one of the latest Hollywood blockbusters. The pair of 18-year-olds from Ashland watched an online video preview of the soon-to-be-released "Lord of the Rings" movie at the I-land Caf� in the US West Technology Pavilion. "It�s really nice," Bergren said. "The graphics are really, really sharp. It has pretty amazing flow." Wowing fairgoers with the latest in online audio, video and gaming options is the central mission of the I-land Caf�, which features a half-dozen iMac computers wirelessly connected to the Internet. It also attracts attention to a huge, often overlooked facet of technology: entertainment. While much of the Internet focus has been on e-commerce applications like online shopping, delivering entertainment � from online games to digital music and video files � is a popular online activity and a big business in its own right. According to research firm Jupiter Communications, 38 million people played games online in 1999 � a figure projected to skyrocket to 68 million by 2003. By 2005, Forrester Research estimates that online entertainment will be a $25 billion-a-year business. That will include advertising on entertainment sites and premium services that customers will buy "on demand," such as movies and games. The on-demand nature of online entertainment is clearly one of its biggest advantages. Take Jim Hellie. He took a break from working in the Rogue Valley Television booth on Tuesday afternoon to wander over to the I-land Caf�, hit CNN�s Web site and catch up on the news. The site offers video downloads of the same news stories broadcast earlier in the day on the cable television channel. "I don�t see regular TV hanging around very much longer," Hellie said, noting that having control over when you watch something is a big advantage. Especially when more people have the kind of technology featured on the new iMacs, which are designed to handle streaming audio and video. And especially when the kind of high-speed Internet connections offered at the technology pavilion become widely available. "This is a pretty cool system," said Hellie, noting that he�s downloaded video at home with less impressive results. "It doesn�t run as clear as this." The arrival of on-demand video, audio and games that run reasonably well is one of the most exciting things in technology today, according to Josh Bradley of Project A, who is running the I-land Caf�. "It�s starting to deliver the original promise of the Internet," he said. The caf�, which began to offer cold drinks to compliment its Internet offerings Tuesday afternoon, also plans to run group Internet games during the fair. For instance, it will hold group games of "You Don�t Know Jack," a trivia game, as enough people filter into the caf�. Digital video events and other showcases also are planned. For most of the early visitors to the pavilion, simply checking e-mail from the fair or chatting via the Internet with a buddy across the room was enough. Others discovered some of the Internet-based games, from traditional standbys such as chess to newer releases such as BugDom, which is loosely based on the movie "A Bug�s Life." "There are all kinds of Net games," said Bradley, pulling up an online version of Tetris on www.shockwave.com, one of the more popular sites. Many Internet sites already feature news clips and sports highlights and more are sure to spring up as people get faster Internet connections. There are sites such as www.napster.com where you can download music and Internet radio sites such as www.spinner.com that feature a wide variety of free music. Complete movies also are starting to spring up, mainly from independent filmmakers trying to make a name for themselves. 12:30 Update - If you're into high-tech gadgets, you can find plenty of kindred spirits in the US West Technology Pavilion. From cell phones and pagers to personal digital assistants and digital cameras, gizmos abound - and that's not even counting the ones for sale. While three cellular and paging companies have booths in the pavilion, it's the people staffing them and the other displays that are really packing the gear. An unscientific survey taken as pavilion opened Wednesday morning found that the 22 people working booths were packing 39 gadgets - cell phones, personal digital assistants (Palm Pilots and the like) and pagers. That's an average of 1.77 gadgets per person, according to some quick calculations made on a personal digital assistant. Only two workers, both from the Oregon Employment Department, were gadget free. So who was the most wired (or wireless as the case may be)? Project A's Jim Teece and InternetCDS' Doug Harris tied for the honors with four gadgets each. Teece was packing a cell phone, a pager, a personal digital assistant and a digital camera. Harris had a pager, a personal digital assistant and two cell phones. Two cell phones? "That way I always have coverage," Harris explains. Those figures don't include the demo models in the cell phone companies booths are the personal computers and laptops. As of 11:15 a.m., there were 63 laptops, personal computers or iMacs up and running. There are also another two dozen or so older computers - obsolete models from 1970s and 1980s - on display. For more on that computer museum, check out the Web posting at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday or Thursday's Mail Tribune. 4:30 Update - If you want to take a high-tech walk down memory lane, check out the so-called "Museum of Unnatural History." Actually, it's the personal computer collection of Project A founder and well-known technophile Jim Teece. The assortment of long obsolete computers includes everything from the Atari 2600 to the original Apple Lisa - the precursor to the MacIntosh. And it's sending plenty of fairgoers back in techno-time. Medford's Curtis Bost, 31, remembers working on the KayPro II in high school and says plenty of the other machines look awfully familiar. "We did have the Atari," he says. "I still have one of those somewhere around my house." Who didn't have an Atari 2600 - the pioneer of the home video game market for those young enough not to remember - back in the late 1970s and early 1980s? The old computer display started four years ago at the second edition of the technology pavilion, Teece says. Somebody noticed that he'd kept all the old stuff and thought it would be entertaining. It was and has become a tradition. "It's just my garage on display," says Teece. Nearly all the items - parts of all of 25 computer systems - are Teece's, though a few extra items have been donated as the tradition has grown. New to the collection this year is one of the first laser presentation pointers, donated to the exhibit by Rogue Valley Medical Center. While today's laser pointers are the size of a lipstick case or a pencil, the old one is a dead ringer for the light sabers featured in the Star Wars movies. It's about 15 inches long and connected by cord to a power box. For technophiles, the old machines are long lost friends. "I wrote a lot of software on these machines," muses Teece. And paid a lot of money for them. "$10,000 for a Lisa and they are buried in a landfill," says Ned Marr of Project A. "But for the time it was released, it was quite a machine." Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA