Ego Gaming

THE LATEST RAGE is called "ego gaming," which is the use of your own 3D face on characters in violent networked shoot-em-up games. 

The leader in this brave new world of self-obsession is a company called Digimask, which will soon offer a product called phizz-zone. You send in front and side views of your face, and Digimask will create a 3D head and place it on a Quake III model for you to download and install. When you play over the network, your enemies will see your face on the game character you've chosen, right before they blow your head off. 

Dangerous Dogs Get Upgrade

The Chicago Sun Times reports that the Chicago City Council passed a law last week that orders dogs deemed dangerous to be implanted with I.D. microchips. They would also be forcibly spayed or neutered. Terrorists are next.  

Who Says You Can't Buy Tranquility?

Isuzu is showing at this year's Tokyo Motor Show a concept-car called the Isuzu ZEN. The steering wheel, gear lever and all four seats fold out of sight, and the interior transforms into a traditional Japanese tea room with tatami mats and bamboo flooring. The car, which features deeply traditional Japanese details like a rear horizontally split tailgate screen, fan-shaped windows and tea symbols on the controls, was designed and built not in Japan, but in Birmingham, England. 

Cell Phone Shutdown (Not Yours -- Theirs)

The Norwegian company ICE International has invented a gadget that uses Bluetooth technology to shut down nearby cell phones. Unlike cell phone jammers (which I wrote about in Mike's List 15) that block phone signals, the ICE device transmits a shutdown command to all Bluetooth-compatible cell phones within range. Obvious uses include shutting down phones in airplanes, hospitals and anywhere cell phone haters seek peace and quiet. ICE will reportedly begin trials within the next few weeks. It's the best reason yet to never buy a Bluetooth-compatible phone!

Hooliganism for Dummies

Run amok with Europe's worst in a new PC game called Hooligans from DarXabre. It's not a virtual soccer game, but rather a soccer hooliganism simulator. If you're too lazy to go out, get drunk, scream obscenities at international soccer matches, then riot and loot after your team loses, you can now do it all from the comfort of your own home. The game's slogan? "The only thing to fear is running out of beer." Charming. 

Hacker Redirects Sewage

49-year-old Vitek Boden from Brisbane, Australia, was sentenced recently to two years in prison for hacking into a local waste management computer system and directing raw sewage into local rivers, parks and even onto the landscaping of a Hyatt Regency hotel. Boden had previously been fired from the company that installed the waste management system, and vandalized the public waterways as an act of revenge. When waste-management engineers feel dumped on, watch out! They can dump back. 

Proof You Can Buy Anything On the Web

If you're tired of being outgunned in those cubicle rubber band fights, get a rubber-band shotgun. If your office opponents get the shotgun, buy a rubber-band gatlin gun! Where will it end? 

Cell Phone Follies

Cell phones are killing ghosts, Tony Cornell of the Society for Physical Research told the U.K.'s Sunday Express newspaper recently. (Wait a minute. I thought ghosts were already dead...) Cornell says ghost sightings started to decline 15 years ago, about the time cell phones started becoming widely used. 

Shameless Self-Promotion

Listen to Mike's List every week on the Radio! Now Craig Crossman's Computer America features Mike's List content on every show (and I join Craig live on the first broadcast Sunday of every month). You can hear Computer America on your local Business News Network radio station or over the Internet each Sunday from 1pm to 3pm Silicon Valley Time. Don't miss Computer America!

Ad Creep

ABCNews.com signed a deal recently with PointMedia, which makes interactive kiosks, to supply news and -- surprise! -- advertising (which they call "point-of-purchase promotional incentives") to gas pumps. As you fill your car up with gas, ABCNews.com will fill your mind up with ads. There's nothing like a captive audience. 

Have you seen advertising in a completely new context? Let me know! 

Follow-Up

In the last issue of Mike's List, I told you about a top-secret C.I.A. operation during the 1960s called "Acoustic Kitty," in which cats were wired with recording devices and released near the Kremlin in Moscow to spy on the commies. The Sunday Telegraph published additional details this week on the caper, such as a description of the surgical implantation of batteries and electronics -- including an antenna in the cat's tail! 

Have you seen additional coverage of a Mike's List item? Let me know! 

Reader Web Site o' the Week

Check out reader C.N. Le's fantastic web site, Asian-Nation. It's by far the best and most comprehensive resource for Asian Americans I've ever seen. If you're one of thousands of my American readers with ancestors from China, India, Viet Nam or anywhere else in Asia -- or just want to learn more about Asian American issues -- you'll definitely want to bookmark Asian-Nation! 

Get YOUR web site on the high-traffic Mike's List Reader Links page. HERE'S HOW! 

Gotta-Get-It Gadgets

If you're tired of using a joystick or one of those steering wheel-and-gear-shift input devices for playing racing games, here's one solution. It's the Hyper Stimulator racing simulator. Just plug it into your computer -- or, rather, plug your computer into the Stimulator -- and you're off to the races. 

If you're tired of losing at paintball, it's time to stop messing around with that rental paint gun and get serious. You need a Tippmann Hellhound, an urban assault vehicle specifically designed for total domination. It features such necessities as a dash-mounted, ten-barrel, 50-rounds-per-second paint canon; a high-capacity, 600-round ammo loader; a catapult-style paint grenade launcher; and a winch. Unfortunately, the Hellhound is not currently available for purchase. 

Have you seen an amazing new toy? Let me know! 

Wacky Web Sites

REACH OUT AND REJECT SOMEONE: The Rejection Line is a web site that gives people the brush-off -- New York style! The site gives you a phone number, which you can hand out as your own to people  pestering you for your phone number. When they call the number, a recorded interactive voice response system tells them where to stick it. 

MYSTERIOUS WAYS: The Reverend Brendan Powell uses Legos to tell bible stories.  

OFFICE SUPPLY WORSHIP: Do you love staplers? Neither do I. But apparently some people do. That's why someone created VirtualStapler.com, featuring a gallery of staplers, letters about staplers from visitors, and even stapler poetry!

PRESERVING ENDANGERED WEB SITES: The Ghostsites web site captures screenshots of dying web sites, and keeps a visual record of them after they crash and burn. 

QUICK DRAW: The Etch-A-Sketch Art Gallery features drawings made the hard way.

DO IT YOURSELF: What? You don't think drawing on an Etch-A-Sketch is hard? Try it yourself!

HEAVY SECURITY: One creative enthusiasts documents his idea for making PCs hard to steal: Fill the case with cement. 

Last Week's Mystery Pic

No, it's not an ATM, newspaper dispensing machine or even a DNA analyzer, as suggested by some readers. It's a $5,699 sewing machine called the Husqvarna Viking Designer I, with ten times more computing power than you had on your desk five years ago. It even sports a 3 1/2-by-4 3/4-inch color touch screen on the front and a 3 1/2-inch disk drive. It's programmed with 600 kinds of stitches, 19 kinds of button holes and three alphabet fonts. It even offers more sewing tips than your Aunt Mabel. Congratulations to reader Russell Gilbert for being first with the right answer. 

 Have you seen an amazing, hard-to-identify picture? Let me know!

Mystery Pic o' the Week

What is it? Send YOUR guess to [email protected]. I'll publish the name of the first person who gets it in the next issue of Mike's List.