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A L S O__T O D A Y Internet activism, Czech-style By Mark Schapiro The Communists are yesterday's target -- today, it's the phone company's Net-access rate hikes 21st Log Palm Pilot-assisted auto theft - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Love, sex and relationships via e-mail: Share your tales of romance and loss in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Event Horizon's Web gamble By Patrizia DiLucchio Can a publisher of blue-chip science fiction for smart readers make it online? (12/07/98) IMAX mates with T. Rex By Michael Joseph Gross These dinosaurs are big and cool -- but they could use a better movie to star in (12/04/98) Spin sisters By Janelle Brown Why is PR the only high-tech field that women run? (12/03/98) The father of Mario and Zelda By Moira Muldoon Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto creates the world's most popular video games (12/02/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Block those pundits: AOL-Netscape isn't like an NBC of the Web -- and can't be (12/01/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST REVIEWS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

Microsoft puts Windows on a diet so it can fit in your car radio -- and hold a conversation. BY CHIP BROOKSHAW | Microsoft doesn't woo customers so much as overwhelm them. If the company were a lover, it would be the kind who sends three dozen roses but spells your name wrong on the card. That's what made last Friday's "soft launch" of Clarion's new AutoPC, a Windows-based in-car computer, so odd. By letting Clarion take the lead at the event and, apparently, in the AutoPC's engineering, Microsoft showed it may be learning a little of the art of seduction -- or at least how to get out of the way. The latest front in Microsoft's "Windows Everywhere" crusade, the AutoPC is a car stereo on steroids -- with contact management, voice recognition, wireless messaging and a global positioning function (GPS) to help you find your way. If you use a hand-held or palm-top computer based on Microsoft's stripped-down Windows CE operating system, which powers the AutoPC, you'll be able to swap data with the AutoPC via its infrared port. Setting aside the issue of whether or not we really need our e-mail to follow us in our vehicles, the AutoPC is an expensive replacement for your paper address book and Thomas Guide maps: It costs $1,299, or more than $1,600 for the GPS-enabled version, plus installation. Clarion and Microsoft are clearly hoping it will appeal to geeky audiophiles or stock-option-rich gadget lovers. Case in point: Microsoft says its own employees preordered 90 of the units. If you already talk to your car, you'll have a head start getting accustomed to scanning the radio dial, loading compact discs and looking up names, all using spoken commands. The AutoPC talks back too, reading e-mail and directions and responding to queries such as "What time is it?" It's not KITT, but then you're not David Hasselhoff, are you? Aside from the gee-whiz factor, the AutoPC is interesting for another reason: It's the first version of Windows that feels coherent rather than stitched together from ill-fitting parts. Not coincidentally, it's also the first Windows product whose direction was set by a hardware company rather than Microsoft itself. AutoPC was Clarion's brainchild, not Microsoft's. (Ford's Visteon unit says it is also developing a similar in-vehicle computer based on Microsoft technology.) But Microsoft hasn't forced Clarion into bad design decisions or otherwise gummed things up as it's so prone to do in other product categories. Microsoft's imprint is on the AutoPC, but it's a surprisingly light touch. N E X T_ P A G E .|. If Microsoft can design a decent interface, maybe "Windows Everywhere" won't be so scary