TECHNOLOGY
INTERNET CELL PHONE
The boom of the Internet will be further fueled by newer, cheaper browsing devices soon to appear all over the market. New products, such as Nokia's (www.nokia.com) WAP-based mobile phone, may help get rural areas of developing countries, like India and China, on the Web. This cellular phone, using the "Wireless Application Protocol," allows the user to see information from the World Wide Web on a small display window. Predictions are that by 2003 there will be 600 million personal computers in the world. And there will be two billion handheld devices and many billions of cars, TVs, tools, appliances and vending machines all on the Internet, putting the Net within reach of people who could never afford a PC. Faster connections are also part of the innovation. That's a good thing because an estimated 2.5 billion hours were wasted in 1998 while people waited for web pages to download.
SCIENCE
ULTIMATE ZOOM-IN
Explore the cosmos in both its macrocosmic and microcosmic aspects. The site: www.wordwizz.com/pwrsof10.htm is a web copy of the fascinating book, The Powers of Ten. It takes you from deep outer space to the spacious world inside atoms. As you zoom in, each image is 10 times closer than the previous view, starting at 10.25 meters, all the way down to 10.16 meters. It's an entertaining and informative journey in appreciating where, mass-wise, we humans really stand in the grand scheme of things.
CD-ROM
ALL ABOUT ADI SANKARA
Learn the history of the Kanchi Peetam all the way back to the famous Adi Sankara in a graphically rich CD-ROM (us$20) produced in India by Hard 'n Soft Technologies. It is packed with informative movies and animated stories about the legendary founder and great saints of Kanchi monastery. Lots of pleasant devotional music uplifts you at every turn, including mandolin from the famous U. Srinivas. Kanchi Center,12637 Park Street, Ceritos, CA 90703, USA www.kanchikamakoticenter.org
COMPUTERS
SPEAK SANSKRIT
The best way to learn Sanskrit, according to the website www.Samskrita-bharati.org, is the "natural way," which teaches spoken Sanskrit as the first step, just as a child learns. It has all the tools you need: schedules of worldwide camps that teach spoken Sanskrit in "10 days," correspondence courses and links to other Sanskrit resources on the web. But don't expect to be reading the Vedas in two weeks – or two years for that matter