How does this sound for a tension breaker? Hop into a cab, dash down to Midway airport and climb into the cockpit of a Mach 2 Concorde jet for a flight buzzing pedestrians up and down Michigan Avenue.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000, the just-shipped Y2K update of the world’s top-selling virtual flying software, adds the British Airways supersonic passenger plane and a Boeing 777-300 to the simulated aircraft that users “fly” using their PCs. This software started back in the Dark Ages of DOS with a simple Meigs Field simulation and now offers 20,000 airports.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
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BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A MILLION?
If finding venture capital were this easy, we’d all be living in 45,000 square foot mansions on the shores of Lake Washington along with Bill Gates. Nevertheless, the unbelievably optimistic software writers at E-Z Legal Forms offer a pretty credible package of advice and sample documents. “Raising Venture Capital Made E-Z” probably won’t put you on the road to Gates-sized riches, but it will at least aim you toward the right on-ramp. So venture a look/see at www.madee-z.com.
HONEY, I’M HOME.COM
T-1 FOR TWO
If you just can’t wait for the fiber optic future to run the highest speed infobahn through your living room, Grand Videre Estates (www.grandvidere.com)) beckons you to come to Janesville, Wis., and buy a condo wired to the gills. Put between $380,000 and $1,000,000 into your pocket before you leave home.
Developers say each home connects to high speed Internet lines through its own wiring system and that the condominium board acts as your private unlimited Internet Service Provider.
Condo owner meetings will be done over fiber optic video conferencing and every unit will get piped-in cable and broadcast channels and local and long distance phone service through the same hybrid wires in all the walls.
BACK TO MAC
STATISTICS APPLE LOVES
Chicago’s SPSS Inc., maker of some of the most powerful commercial data mining software and statistical analysis programs on earth, finally has returned to the Macintosh platform after a long dalliance with Windows-only products.
SPSS engineers, who did much of the early work that made the company a category killer on Macs, gleefully announced that because of Apple’s stunning comeback, the showcase SPSS 10.0 will be produced in a Macintosh version by next summer.
Y2KORNER
Not since “Santa Claus Versus the Martians” has there been a B-movie dog of an idea to match NBC’s two-hour hypefest/thriller “Y2K” to screen Monday night replete with planes falling from the sky and Los Angeles in flames. Talk about public service.