Here’s something else you can do with your computer, a $100 scanner and a color printer: Make money at home.
Scan a sawbuck, fire up Word97, click “Print” 5 or 10 times and your day’s work is done.
Called P-notes by the U.S. Secret Service, PC-generated greenbacks accounted for a whopping $16 million of the $40 million bogus bills seized in 1998. By comparison, the feds say, in 1995 only $174,924 in PC-produced counterfeits were seized compared to $32.5 million counterfeited the old fashioned way using proper plates and printing presses. Before you try your luck, remember that almost every counterfeiter gets caught.
LADY OF SPAIN.COM
COMPUTER CONCERTINA
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Coming soon to a breast pocket or purse near you: Concertina Keyboard, a rather striking invention by New York gadget guru Robert Butler that uses a patented accordion scheme to create an expandable plastic keyboard. Designed for a pocket-sized computer — it’s only a prototype so far — the keyboard folds neatly inside the case but stretches out to the size of a proper full sized PC keyboard (www.concertinaPC.com).
Now all we need is a mouse that turns into a rat when you click it.
IF THE WEB WERE A DOG
IT WOULD BE DEAD
A new State of the Internet study by the United States Internet Council crunched the numbers and found that Internet usage is growing so fast that 1 year of Internet development covers as much ground as 10 years did during the development of other media such as telephones, radio and TV.
So we have Internet years right up there alongside doggy years at 10 to 1. By this count the Internet is 70 years old, which makes it pretty old hat already. Check it out at www.usic.org.
MICROSOFT EXCESS
DUMMY BOOK BLOWOUT
Christmas comes early for Macmillan Publishing USA in early June when Bill Gates will release Office 2000, the long-awaited Internet-centered update of the world’s best selling software suite of word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation graphics, etc. known as Microsoft Office.
The new software, which probably will soon be loaded on your machine at work, is so complex that Macmillan’s stable of techno authors already have penned more than 50 books explaining how to use the various programs before they’re even shipped.
Y2KORNER
To combat millennium bug panic Federal Aviation Administration chief Jane Garvey has booked a flight from Washington to Dallas on New Year’s Eve in order to be in the air when the Greenwich Mean Time clock that controls air navigation rolls over to the year 2000. So if Y2Kaos breaks out, don’t call her. If she lands maybe she’ll call you. Assuming, of course, that the phones work.