CARTOONSAnime Mania
If you’re a fan of that always wild, often racy form of Japanese animation called anime, fire up your Web browser. Central Park Media (www.centralparkmedia.com), one of the largest U.S. distributors of Japanese videos and comic books, is teaming up with broadcast.com to show 125 anime programs on the Web. Each clip will be viewable at multiple speeds, so if you have access to a T-1 line or a cable modem, you’ll be able to see full-screen, full-motion images. Watch out for the flying fists.
SOFTWAREDigital Music Jukeboxes Duke It Out
In our May review of realjukebox, we said that its competitor, MusicMatch Jukebox, had an awkward interface “designed by geeks for geeks.” Last week MusicMatch (www.musicmatch.com) released version 4.0. It’s much better, with a graphic equalizer and AutoDJ, which automatically creates playlists based on your preferences. But RealJukebox gets our vote because we like the way it organizes our music for us.
E-MAILHow Much Spam Can You Stand?
A new survey confirms what many of us suspected was true about junk e-mail, or “spam”: the longer you stay with an Internet service provider, the more spam you get. The GartnerGroup survey also found that while nearly all the 13,000 e-mail users surveyed received some spam, fewer than half ever complained. One surprise: invitations to porn sites count for only 25 percent of all spam.
