В) Touchy-Feely Computing

Imagine living with just two of your five senses: vision and hearing. That's the sensory.-deprived state of personal comput­ing today, PCs communicate with their users almost exclusively via images and sounds, ignoring all the other cues that humans rely on to perceive the world. Ad­mittedly, interacting with your computer through the senses of smell and taste may not be absolutely essential. But now PC users can try the iFeel mouse, a device from peripherals manufacturer Logitech that adds the all-important sense of touch to desktop computing.

The first tactile devices to hit the mar­ket were designed for medical training. Doctors-to-be use the instruments to virtually feel the right way to perform a catheterization or a spinal infection. Engineers and architects employ similar de­vices for computer-assisted design, al­lowing them to "touch" the contours of their three-dimensional models. And for a few years now, computer gamers have been playing with force-feedback joy­sticks that can simulate a machine gun's recoil or the stresses on an airplane's controls. But no touch-feedback device for general-purpose computing was avail­able until the introduction of the iFeel mouse last year.

The iFeel looks like an ordinary mouse (albeit one attractively finished in iridescent teal blue). And its retail price is modest—only $10 more than a compa­rable mouse without touch feedback.. There are two models available: a simple symmetrical design that sells for $39 and a $59 premium version that has a con­toured shape intended to fit the hand more comfortably. Both are optical devices that detect movement with reflected light rather than with a less precise trackball.

At the pulsating heart of the new mouse is technology licensed from Im­mersion Corporation, which pioneered the development of touch-feedback sys­tems in the 1990s. Louis Rosenberg, the company's chairman, says the key hard­ware component is a 25-gram motor that can move up and down, imparting about 150 grams of force against the user's hand. The mouse can also vibrate up to 300 times a second, enabling the device to reproduce a wide range of sensations. For example, Immersion's special-effects software library allows Web site devel­opers to enhance pages with simulated textures such as corduroy or sandpaper. When the iFeel user drags the cursor across such a page, the mouse rapidly jig­gles up and down, as if it were traveling over a rough surface.

Trying out the iFeel mouse for the first time can be disconcerting. The in­stallation is straightforward: just plug this USB device into an appropriate com­puter port and load the driver software from a CD-ROM. (Mac users are out of luck; so far the mouse works only with Windows.) Once connected, the iFeel fundamentally alters one's perception of Windows' familiar screens. If you slide the cursor across one of the desktop pro­gram icons, the mouse shakes like dice in a cup. If you glide the mouse over the se­lections in a menu bar, it feels like a set of chattering false teeth. Push the iFeel back and forth over the options in a pull-down menu, and it hums like an electric shaver. The mouse also shakes up Web pages (iFeel works with either Explorer or Netscape, but Explorer must be installed on the computer even if you use only Netscape). The most noticeable sensation is the bump that occurs when the cursor crosses a hot link or menu choice.

For anyone accustomed to an inert mouse, such physical cues may be distracting. Because people have different thresholds for sensing force, Immersion's software developers have provided access to an onscreen control for adjusting the strength of the feedback. Another control allows you to choose a different set of sensations. In addition to the default set­ting (which simulates the feeling of tap­ping a wooden surface), the iFeel offers six other options: crisp, metallic, spongy, rubbery, steel drum and sonic vibe.

With continued use, something unex­pected happens: the iFeel's twitching be­comes an organic part of the computing experience. The mouse's motions pro­vide gentle reinforcement when one is steering the cursor to a desired point on the screen. In poorly designed Web pages crowded with text, the iFeel can make it easier to find and click on links to other sites. And when a program crashes, the mouse's palpable shudder is considerably less annoying than the audible "bonk" with which Windows signals an urgent error message.

Currently most of the creative uses for iFeel are game-related. With the help of Immersion's special-effects library, the developers of computer games can sim­ulate the jolt of an explosion, the recoil of a gun, the zing of a crossbow and even the hum of a light saber. A handful of Web pages have been modified to take advantage of the iFeel's abilities, offering exotic effects such as lions roaring and auto engines starting. But these sites scarcely demonstrate the full potential of this technology. (Scientific American)

г) Текст “Powerful management capabilities for a variety of networks”

Nokia's OMC architecture is designed according to the ITU-T Telecom­munications Management Network (TMN) recommendations. The Nokia OMC can be scaled up from a small network configuration to a large configuration, and upgrading information processing power and storage capacity is a simple operation.

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