Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 39

Wisconsin State Journal 1D WWW UNINVITED CALLERS: Now, whether your family has one or not, you can say the butler did it. The Phone Butler, that is. With this device, sold through Morgan-Francis of Fort Meyers, when an unwanted salesman calls, a press of the star button on the phone pad brings the butler to life. The recording, in a gentle-but-firm British-accented voice, says: "Pardon me, this is the Phone Butler, and I have been directed to inform you that this household must respectfully decline your inquiry. Kindly place this number on your do-not-call list.

Good day." And with that, the caller is NEW, ON VIDEO: Learn about how Oprah won the fat fight in the privacy of your own home. Story, 100 HOW DOES IT FEEL? A Baby Boomer's fantasy: An Illinois reader wrote to the editor of Interview magazine praising a recent story on Bob Dylan. "In a few months, I will be a grandfather," writes B.P. of Island Lake, "and I'm already looking forward to the first time I drop the needle of a dusty phonograph on a piece of vinyl and let my grandson hear the song with what is arguably the finest opening measure in rock 'n' roll Dylan's like a Rolling YOUNG BUT NOT STUPID: The ABC kiddie show, "Brand Spanking New Doug" offers kids a chance to think about body-image and who really are the beautiful people. On the episode to air Saturday, Doug's chum, Patti Mayonnaise, decides she's too fat and overdoes the dieting regime.

It's a worthwhile subject, seldom tackled on children's shows. September 26, 1997; Features Department: 252-6180 a weekly DAYBREAK production ui PUS ml 1NUEITI EMOEUOPE mi -I DAVE BECKER MEDIA BYTES i A 25 years later, Tils, celebrates By Connie Lauerman. Chicago Tribune Old machines, young users One man's trash is another kid's treasure. That's what the local used computer retailer Computer Renaissance is discovering with a program that takes machines that are too old to sell and donates them to child-care centers. The program started with a call from Community Coordinated Child Care, a referral service, asking for help in equipping child-care centers with computers for children to use.

Hank Kaminski, owner of the Madison branch of Computer Renaissance, rounded up and refurbished a batch of Apple He, Mac Plus and IBM 286 and 386 PCs ma-. chines that are too old to have any resale value but still have plenty of life left in them. Kaminski already has donated more than 30 computers through the "I'm just pleased that we have become part of the education process," he said. hen Ms. magazine de-I buted in 1972 with the premise that "women i 3 if By the numbers State Journal photo illustrationJOSEPH W.

JACKSON II Cell phones are giving yet another meaning to the phrase "Know when to say when." Or "hello," as the case may be. By Dave Becker Wisconsin State Journal Review ell phones are indisputably convenient. Sleek and reliable, the latest versions of the wireless wonders ensure Einstein convenient? It's all relative was bumbling around the Internet when doing so required using cryptic UNIX commands, and I migrated to CDs soon after quette International, a New York consulting firm that counsels business on matters of manners. "They weren't around even a couple of years ago, except in very clunky and expensive forms, and now they're all over. Unfortunately, as fast as the technology is changing, we're not keeping up with the skills to use them courteously and effectively." Questions of cell phone etiquette fall into several categories.

At one extreme are the places where one normally expects silence and freedom from interruption, particularly performance spaces. Arts groups in urban areas where cell phones are rampant have had to adopt increasingly stringent measures to ensure silence, but Madison remains fairly innocent of such violations. The programs for both the Madison Symphony and the Sunday concert series at the Elvehjem Museum now include notes advising patrons to leave cell phones off or with ushers. Symphony spokesman Craig Robida says he can't recall the orchestra having any problems with cell phones, but a little preventive medicine doesn't hurt. "This is pretty common now for any Please see PUSHING, Page 3D E-mail etiquene6D that you can stay in touch with friends, family, clients and associates wherever you go.

It's that same convenience, however, that's making portable phones a growing annoyance in public places, from exclusive restaurants to crowded street corners. Welcome to the latest frontier of etiquette, where the big question is not which fork to use but when it's appropriate to make and receive calls on a mobile phone and when it isn't Cell-equipped folks now have to make a complex series of judgments about accessibility vs. privacy, convenience vs. rudeness every time they leave their desk or home. And such decisions are becoming less and less a matter of personal choice.

Movie theaters, concert halls and entertainment venues now commonly post pleas for patrons to turn off their cell phones before the performance. Several East Coast commuter rail systems have established cell-free cars for passengers who prefer a quiet ride. Upscale restaurants are searching for polite ways to limit or curtail at-the-table phone conversations. "These are all fairly new devices," observes Hilka Klinkenberg, president of Eti are full human beings," the naysayers were plentiful. One of them, syndicated columnist James J.

Kilpatrick, called it a "C-sharp on an untuned piano. This is the note of petulance, of bitchiness, of nervous fingernails screech- ing across the blackboard." Others predicted that the magazine would quickly run out of steam. They were wrong! Ms. is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a big special issue that just hit the stands. It reprises some of the best of the magazine's past while focusing on feminism's future.

But the Ms. of today is a different, even more unfettered publication from the one early subscribers remember since it doesn't depend on advertising. Ms. took advertising in the beginning, but it challenged I advertisers' expectations that their ads would run adjacent to "complementary" editorial content. In most women's magazines, fashion and beauty stories tended to promote the kinds of products that adver- tisers were hawking on nearby pages.

Well, Ms. wasn't running the standard women's fare od fashion and beauty and how to catch a husband. And it re- fused to run ads deemed in- suiting or demeaning to women. When the first issue hit the newsstands, women, who then were earning less than 60 cents for every dollar a man i earned, responded by the I thousands. And as the years pro- gressed, Ms.

became a land-1 mark institution in women's rights and a magazine that defied the odds in a fiercely competitive industry. Ms. offered the first covert stories on such topics as do-1 mestic violence and sexual harassment and identified i women's different voting pat; terns long before "gender gap" became common par- lance. It was the first to report on alternatives to mastectomy and to document flaws in re-; search on silicone breast im-' plants. Skittish advertisers ac- counted for much of the magazine's shaky financial history.

In 1987, it was sold to an Australian media firm, which glitzed Ms. up but couldn't stem the flow of red ink. In 1989, Ms. was again sold, this time to Lang Communications, whom the magazine's co- founder Gloria Steinem per- suaded to take a very uncon-i ventional approach I dispensing with advertising altogether and relying solely on Please see Page 7D they became mass-market items. But in at least one area, you can call Mr.

Click a technological laggard portable phones don't work for me. That point was driven home recently when I became a "beta tester" for Einstein, the new local mobile phone system based on PCS technology. PCS promises to replace cellular technology by offering all-digital connections that are more reliable and secure than cellular and can convey much more data, allowing a PCS unit to handle everything from paging to E-mail. To allow me to evaluate the new system, Einstein gave me a phone and service for a month, at the end of whi ch I intend to gratefully return the thing. Please see EINSTEIN, Page 3D A recent survey conducted by Wisconsin Interviewing Services includes some interesting data on media habits.

While primarily targeted at gauging opinion on various Downtown development and State Street issues, pollsters also asked 400 Dane County residents, "Where do you get most of your news and information about Dane County and the city of Madison?" In the TV category, WISC (Ch. 3) predictably came out on top, with 32.8 percent selecting the perennial ratings leader. WKOW (27) came in a solid second, however, named by 30.5 percent of respondents, with WMTV (15) named by 25 percent That goes counter to recent Nielsen ratings showing WMTV a solid No. 2 in the local news market (The survey has an error margin of plus or minus 4.88 percent) Even more inexplicable, a full 2 percent of respondents listed WMSN (47), which carries no local news programming, as their main local news source. I know, sometimes confuse those "Mad About You" reruns with real life ourselves.

Among radio stations, WIBA-AM (1310), WERN-FM (88.7) and WTDY-AM (1480). were the news leaders, selected by 9 percent, 6 percent and 5 percent of respondents, respectively. Perennial ratings leader WZEE-FM (104) was down at 2.3 percent, behind even the decidedly non-newsy WJJO-FM (94.1), ranked as the news leader by 3.3 percent of those surveyed. You make the call Life just keeps getting better, thanks to modern technology. For proof, we point you to that most cherished of American journalism institutions, the "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" column in Ladies Home Journal, Please see BYTES, Page 3D Game Boy has a rival now OaiTK.com SI ixsr.A Review Nintendo for years has cornered the market for portable video game systems with its Game Boy units.

The Japanese giant now faces some serious competition, however, from Illinois-based Tiger Electronics. The company has entered the market with game.com, a hand-held console that offers shrunken versions of games such as Duke Nukem and Wheel of Fortune and some of the same features as the new breed of hand-held computers. As a gaming unit, the Tiger machine offers some serious advantages over the Game Boy, including a touch-sensitive screen that makes it easier to get around and an eight-bit processor that brings marginal improvements in speed and graphics quality. The unit comes with a built-in version of solitaire and a cartridge for Tiger's popular Lights Out game. Additional cartridges let you play other games.

I tried Wheel of Fortune, which was fun and easy to use, and Arcade Classics, a collection of arcade games such as Defender that are as addictive as they are eye-wearying to watch on the unit's tiny, somewhat blurry screen. Where game.com really departs from Game Boy is the addition of several productivity features, including a calculator and a phone directory that lets you enter several dozen names and numbers. You can also retrieve E-mail, provided you have a separate Internet cartridge for the unit, an ex- ness productivity needs. I know I'll be lugging game.com along on my next extended trip it should be a fine time-killer for those long airport layovers. Game.com sells for $69.95 at toy and electronics stores.

Game cartridges go for $19.95 and $29,95. Dave Becker ternal modem and an Internet account that supports text-based access. I didn't even bother trying. None of these features is robust enough that game.com is likely to replace a laptop computer for the average traveler, as the company suggests. Teen-agers, however, may find them adequate for their busi i 4 Crossword5D Cryptoquote4D Horoscope4D Jumble5D Landers5D TV listings9D 4 i 1 ui ii-ir "fSaiM-1 An iiilTt AiitY Jh ft i i -ff- ft i Hfc iifl fl i nil ft ft il flm i Ifc Ml lift ft fllm Ifi i frr At i tt jft i tlfi Itf i ft i ifc fth rfc fH'mfH i fVjn Ifrrtitrifr-Iftllt iiff -Jt fltr 1ft ttr fri itt Hr ftin ftiifr i t'ltiflrn tfii 4'i i i ifflim fr Bin tli iBl If i Amfta tiJti fV.