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AUGUST 18 , 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 32 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK Cutting Edge
Every supermodel has had her image downloaded from the Internet a million times or two. But only one has had a piece of hardware named after her. Catwalk queen (and aspiring actress) Claudia Schiffer is lending her name to a special edition Palm Vx that has a shiny blue case and will be sold exclusively through www.claudiaschiffer.com. An "avid" Palm user, the German beauty will also be "personally selecting her favorite software applications" and making them available on a CDROM, says Palm. The move is part of a revamp of Palm's product line designed to fight back against Handspring, whose Visor PDA is eating into Palm's market share. Palm has also launched the $149 m100, which replaces the entry-level IIIe. Small and curvy, it allows you to scribble notes and jottings directly onto the screen, left, in addition to Palm's standard handwriting recognition. Let's hope the new models do more business than Claudia's Fashion Café. The Net: Thailand Gets Online Slot Machines No PC? No Problem. Wannabe surfers in Thailand will soon be able to go online using coin-operated Internet kiosks. South Korean firm RITS Communications is investing five million baht ($122,000) to introduce pay-as-you-go multimedia booths that will offer Internet access, games and music videos on demand for just a few cents a minute. The terminals will use wireless keyboards and support 14 different languages. RITS introduced similar booths in South Korea in June, where punters pay around nine cents for three minutes of online time. Prices in Thailand have yet to be decided, but RITS predicts that the number of Internauts in Thailand will hit two million over the next two years as interest in the Web grows. The firm sees parallels between Thailand now and Korea five years ago, with most people wanting to go online to send e-mail and chat with friends. Video: It's a Wrap for the VCR Only a year ago, manufacturers were still struggling to sell DVD players. Consumers were put off by the high price of both the machines and movies to play on them. But now the humble VCR has been put on deathwatch. Researchers at Strategy Analysts predict that DVD will almost completely replace videocassettes within five years. Sales of DVD players will hit 46 million this year, a 300% increase on 1999, and the average price is falling toward $200 — with hardware made in China driving costs down. The big winner? Movie studios. Viewers are expected to go out and buy their favorite films all over again. Write to Asiaweek at mail@web.asiaweek.com
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