OTHER TECH

Family Ties

Now that Chris doesn't have to share a DSL connection with the rest of the gang, she can get her work done faster. And if she needs to access the Internet while on the road, she uses her Dell notebook to sign on to the T-Mobile hotspot found in most Starbucks. Those hotspots and the Samsung cellphones allow everybody in the family to keep track of each other's activities by accessing the family calendar stored on Microsoft's MSN.com Web site. Chris laments that she's been so busy that she can't keep the calendar up to date. Even so, it's still full of vents.

And this is one busy family. Combine work with school, after-school, athletic, and church activities, then multiply by four, and locating each other can become like a game of Where's Waldo? Instead of having to run downstairs to look at the paper calendar, now everyone can find out who's where on a PC, cellphone, or one of the TVs.

When she has time, Chris wades through shoeboxes filled with forgotten family photos. She digitizes and organizes them on her PC, using a copier/scanner/fax machine, and then displays them in supersized mode on the plasma set or any other TV or PC screen in the house. Their sheer size enhances the experience. "They're so compelling," Chris said, "that people actually look at them."

Chris scans family photos into her PC and organizes them for "supersized" display on the Gateway plasma TV.

Digital image capture isn't new to Max, who's been using a digital camcorder for a few years. An avid amateur filmmaker, he loves to chronicle family events. But showing his creations meant plugging the camcorder into a remote TV.

When several friends recently came over prior to the school prom, Max recorded footage, edited it on his Dell PC, and then wirelessly streamed his masterpiece to the downstairs plasma screen directly from his computer, while also burning copies onto DVDs to give to his friends before they left for their big do.