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Comdex in Las Vegas is a paradox. On the one hand, Vegas is the worst possible venue for the bloated monstrosity that Comdex has become. Unlike real cities, the whole point of a hotel here is to keep you in the casino. Thus, unless you want to mortgage your first-born, the lodgings are small, cramped, and often actively loathsome to keep you out of your room, and traffic is in permanent gridlock, to keep you off the streets.
On the other hand, Vegas is the perfect setting for Comdex: both are an amalgam of fantasy and greed on a grand scale, a perfervid scrambling for the jackpot that's ever around the next corner. That is why the hardest task for any Comdex attendee is separating fact from fiction: figuring out what's real and what's just the hyperactive imaginings of a marketing enthusiast or jumped-up technodweeb.
MULTIMEDIA SMOKE AND MIRRORS
This year was no different. Bally's was devoted to the celebration of a marketing category--multimedia--that is basically nothing more that a bunch of technologies in search of a market. There will be a multimedia revolution someday, but not until it's as easy to use as a television. Right now, the only 'multimedia' that's any use in the average business environment is voice-annotation of business documents, as exemplified by SoundWave, from Mouse Systems Corp. (Fremont, CA). SoundWave is an 8-bit input/output ISA card that enables PCs to accept and play back realistic speech, music, and sounds effects, as well as converting text into speech. Its voice annotation feature lets users adds voice notes to spreadsheets and word-processing documents under Windows (MSRP $199).
Of much more significance, although based on the same low-cost DSP technology, are the new 'home office' cards. Examples included Home Office from Prometheus Products Inc. (Tualatin, OR) and the TyIN 2000 from National Semiconductor (Santa Clara, CA). These are integrated PC communications cards that include a data modem, send/receive fax modem, digital voice mail, and voice annotation of business documents, for under $300.
The TYin 2000, for instance, automatically distinguishes between incoming voice, fax, and data calls and responds appropriately via the integrated application software provided (other packages can easily be integrated via Windows DDE). Instead of requiring a separate speaker and microphone (these...
