On the other hand, this company has been working on this idea since 1981. That’s a long long time.

The other small bits ‘n pieces in Red Herring were also very entertaining. There was a profile on Stan "the Man" Lee and his online effort to create a new comic book universe. While the writer of the piece lamented that Lee wasn’t going to be using interactivity, it slipped out that Lee plans to hire real actors to voice the characters. Unknown is how much he’ll be using quasi animation programs like Java applets or shockwave. Should be fun to check out there. Related to that piece was a short by Alex Gove who thinks the intenet could and should revive comics. He’s obviously a fan.

Yet another interesting short piece was done on Israeli hacker Eden Shochat. He sounds like the guy who was in the news awhile aback for organizing some notable hacks here in the US. Can’t remember that guy’s code name. Anyway, Eden is here in the USA and he’s translating his hack expertise into IPO territory and apparent big money.

There were also not one, but two profiles of companies with a conscience. One company, run by Atul Jain, is employee owned and is inordinately ethical—a phrase that I thought I would never use to describe a corporation. But what would you call a company that allows its employees to take as many vacations as they want, vote on policies as a committee, and gives discounts to its customers if it bungles a part of the job. I’ve worked for bleeding heart left organizations that wouldn’t give me a sniff of any of those rights—thus my disillusionment with the American Left.

The other ethical company is called Wcities.com, which the developer Tan Rasab hopes to develop into an international City Search. His goal, according to the story, is to help impoverished people all over the globe by "paying locals an above average fee to produce their own web site content."

Hate to keep repeating myself but there was yet one more very interesting short piece on a company called Disappearing Inc. Ever wonder why companies like Microsoft would allow their old emails to just kind of sit around and be used against them in court someday? Well, this company makes emails that automatically encrypt themselves after a certain time period. That way a company or person can keep their secrets to themselves.

There were more cool articles—a new company that would allow less prosperous investors to buy parts of more expensive stocks, a book review of how China is using Capitolism to promote its ideology (Just like us!!), and an interesting profile of the new Hong Kong among others-but you should just go out and read it yourself.

One other cool thing: It was well designed this month. It looked really really good. Great photos and art.

The story in itself was sort of interesting. The creators make this argument that smell is a missing ingredient in cyberspace. Personally, I’m looking forward to touch more. Preferably in the form of my trembling, submissive fembot slave version of Peta Wilson, who plays Le Femme Nikita. Just waiting for that suit to come online.

Meanwhile, back at the Wired article in question, DigiScents’, the creators, invention seemed to pass the mustard with Wired journalist Charles Platt (always a sure bet by the way). He described it as looking like a pencil sharpener. Scents of orange peels, bananas and incense were clearly delivered by the machine, according to Platt. He does ask an interesting question as to whether people would be as interested in this as, say, MP3. I would have to answer with a definitive probably not.

I wonder if you could pick the scents to go along with the websites? I’d choose the fragrant aura of moldy books whenever I hit Amazon or a grungy sweaty hat whenever I accidentally click on the Drudge report. I wonder if there’s a scent for politically motivated slander.

The other significant big piece in this month’s Wired is a photo spread of 10 of history’s most significant computers, everything from Eniac to the Altair. The groundbreaking computers and parts were shot in a way that kind of reminded me of pornograpy shots. Who knows. Spreads of Eniac might be hot stuff for the seriously geek.

And meanwhile, back at the rest of the magazine, a somewhat uninspired issue this month. But chockful of pages and ads. You could take this month’s Fast Company and this month’s Wired, place one in each hand and get considerable resistance by way of arm curls.

Lots of small interesting pieces however, which sort of makes the whole stronger. There was a small bit on the electric paper that Xerox is developing, which was reported on the wires a lot over the last two weeks. There was also a very small piece on a plastic display developed in Britain that could be as revolutionary as that paper. Imagine people walking around with video displays on their backs. I sort of wish Wired had done a bit more with this story, even though there had already been a story done in MIT Tech Review some months ago. I guess that’s why I think the MIT review is now, page per page, wild notion after wild notion, the best science mag on the market now.

There was also a very interesting graphic that compared Jerry Hall boyfriends Mick Jagger against Paul Allen. Examples: Mick jagger: Dabbled in Satanism during "Sympathy for the Devil" period. Paul Allen: Longtime friend of Bill Gates. Mick Jagger: Many still consider him sexy. Paul Allen: Cofounder, Microsoft.

Aside from the smell story, I didn’t think that most of their lead stories were that interesting. The stories feel slightly overedited. And while I remarked earlier that I thought that Red Herring was better looking this month, which should never happen, there were some stunning visuals in Wired this month. Namely, some progressive architecture and a select scene from Toy Story II.

Overall, though, Wired should always be more ambitiously designed than Red Herring. Very disappointing. Sure, it was a little hard to actually read in the old days but I could feel the passion as it were…Just couldn’t make out all the words is all.

He bases his speculation on a Chinese program called Hopen, which is taking on Windows CE and apparently has already been adopted by Motorola. He speculates that "one must assume that there are other more elaborate software systems being developed in China, wouldn’t you think?"

Dvorak strikes again in his same Inside Track column and this time he hits close to home. He leads off the column by noting that White Box manufacturers, which I just happen to work for, are tired of getting inferior Windows pricing. As someone who works for one of those "no named" companies as Dvorak affectionately describes us, I can say that he’s right on the mark. Dell and Gateway have to be getting better deals, or else they’re getting huge discounts because of their massive volume buying and can afford to lower their software costs.

Yet even though he sticks up for white box manufacturers, he also blames them for cowardice in not promoting cheaper alternatives like Red Hat and Star Office faster. Of course, Dvorak might not realize that Microsoft has a way of penalizing those distributors who use non Microsoft products. That’s why IBM found it cheaper to sell Windows and not OS/2.

But interesting stuff none the less.

In other stories, there were also some interesting pieces about the recent developments in quantum computing. It gives a short theory about the technology and what it would mean in terms of a great leap forward in terms of computational advances.

The lead story on distributed apps was also interesting. In case you don't know what this means, it's yet another plan to topple Redmond that probably won't work either. Its primary proponents include Sun's Mcnealy and Oracle's Ellison. But there's lot of free stuff out there that 's cool. Seems like theres lots of decent business apps out there if you're into "work" and all. Curious as to how secure those sites are though. Wouldn't be good if they weren't.