Hi-Tech on the Net

By Tave Fitzpatrick

Staff Writer

odays technology on the internet has grown so quickly and in so many directions that it never seems like you have enough plug-ins to run anything now-a-days. "If you dont have so-and-so get it HERE!" has become standard on many sites across the internet. In my many hours aimlessly (sometimes) pluggin' and chuggin' through the 'net I have come across some very interesting plug-ins for Joe Netscape; some usefull, some just funky.

Shockwave is, without a doubt, the most usefull one I have come across. It's kinda' like an applet only faster and a helluva lot more interactive. Get it below and give some of the shocked sites a try.

Another plug-in I found which you might have heard of is Real Audio. It allows you to hear (and see with the new beta version) anything you would be able to hear or see. Just a quick note- If you have a slow connection you may want to forgo some of these downloads unless you have time to burn. Go out and grab a bite to eat somewhere or a couple of beers. Serria Nevada Pale Ale tends to setele the stomach well after a few system errors.

P.S.-Before you do anyting, bookmark this page to come back to it once you have done all the downloading you wish to do.

Shockwave-------

Shockwave is a powerfull plug-in devloped by those geeks down at Macromedia. Its a bit beefy size-wise but once you see what it does, you will be impressed. One glitch that I have notices is that Netscape (or Internet Explorer) tends to run outta memory if you jump between different pages that have "shocked sites." It's easily fixed if you can beef up the memory allocated in the "get info" window to, oh, say about 20 megs; or as much as you can spare.

The download site is self-explanitory and does not take that long. Click the button to get Shockwave for either Windows or Mac.

After you've gotten done with that visit somer of the "Editor's Picks" for great shocked sites.

Here's a cool puzzle game for you to give a shot at.
Two games from Escape from L.A.
Like to gamble? How 'bout-
Remember Pachinko? (sorta)
A classic luner lander redone for the 90's.

Macromedia also has a fairly complete listing of most sites which provide shockwave you can go to it here.

Realplayer-------

Realplayer is an application which runs concurrently with Netscape (again a fair amount of memory is needed) and is able to play both streaming video and audio.
However if you don't have a Pentium or Power PC chip I don't recommend doing the instalation.
Get it here. (For both Mac and Windows)

The Time Cast people have put together a list of all the sites which offer RealPlayer vids. This is a relatively new technology, so some of the videos aren't so creative. But any way you can check it out here----->

So, you might be saying "only two plug-ins?" Well, everything else is just too unstable to throw on your hard drive. These two are on their way up, and I think they are here to stay. So get 'em and start surfin' the net like a pro!