The 80-gigabyte drive has Eustace Tilley, the magazine's top-hatted symbol, engraved on the case. It connects to Macs or PC's using a USB cable and contains 4,164 issues of The New Yorker, dating back to 1925. The drive has 20 gigabytes set aside for updates that will be available online.
The US$299 device is available at www.thenewyorkerstore.com. Installation is simple: plug it in, allow it to install a special reader on your computer and then search or browse issues by author, date or content. Each article appears just as it did in decades past, and the archive includes all the advertisements, cover art and, of course, the cartoons.
You can even personalize your drive with two lines of text, creating an heir-loom to be passed on from cyborg to cyborg, far into the future.
IT'S NOT HOW MOZART STARTED, BUT IT MAY AMUSE THE CHILDREN
Electronic piano lessons have not posed much of a threat thus far to your neighborhood piano teacher. I Can Play Piano, an US$80 device from Fisher-Price that is intended for children four to eight years old, is no exception, but it could generate some musical fun.
The three-octave plastic keyboard, which plugs into your TV, uses an adaptation of the teaching methodology from an older PC-based piano system called the Piano Wizard.
Children can peck out the melodies to one of eight songs, including Fur Elise or The Entertainer, by matching moving colored dots on the screen to the color-coded keys on the keyboard. If the note is played at the right time, the melody plays and your score improves. You can buy additional songs on cartridges with various themes, including holiday music, pop hits, Scooby-Doo and Barbie.
The keyboard, which is powered by either four C batteries or an included AC adapter, has controls for adjusting the music's tempo. A freestyle mode lets children jam along with background chords. The package also includes a car-racing game and a game of dodgeball to add some variety to all the music.
RSS