Curious what top Macintosh developers create when locked in a hotel for 72 hours? Adam looks at the winners of this year’s MacHax Best Hack Contest. Jeff Carlson weighs in with a look at VSE Link Tester, and in the news, electronic signatures become legally binding, Palm releases a fix for defective DRAM, Connectix scores against Sony in court, Webvan buys HomeGrocer.com, and we cover releases of MRJ 2.2.2, GraphicConverter 3.9, and Aladdin Tuner 3.0.
Clinton Signs Electronic Signature Bill -- Quoting James Madison, who called the contract clause of the U.S. Constitution "a constitutional bulwark in favor of personal security and private rights," President Clinton last week signed into law the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act
Tests & Fixes for Defective Palm DRAM -- Palm, Inc. has posted testing software for a problem caused by a batch of defective memory modules in Palm IIIc, IIIxe, and Vx handhelds manufactured between October 1999 and May 2000
Connectix Continues to Prevail Against Sony -- In the long-running legal battle between Sony and Connectix, makers of the PlayStation emulator Virtual Game Station, Connectix has scored two recent victories
Webvan Buys HomeGrocer.com -- The online supermarket industry has started its consolidation, with the California-based Webvan buying Washington-based HomeGrocer.com for about $1 billion in stock
MRJ 2.2.2 Available -- Apple Computer has released Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ) 2.2.2, its Java virtual machine for the Mac OS. Version 2.2.2 claims to improve memory usage and fix an unspecified security issue when used with Internet Explorer 5.0
GraphicConverter 3.9 Expands Image Support -- Lemke Software has released GraphicConverter 3.9, updating its impressive graphics manipulation program. The new version now opens and displays QuickTime files, imports and exports LuraWave (LWF) files, improves AppleScript capabilities, adds basic ColorSync support, and more
Aladdin Tuner 3.0 Connects to the World -- Aladdin Systems has released Aladdin Tuner 3.0, a utility for connecting to Internet streams from radio and television stations worldwide
Poll Results: We Live to Serve -- Coming on the heels of Ron Risley's article about turning a battered PowerBook 5300 into an Internet server, last week's poll asked which common Internet services, if any, you provide for other people from a Macintosh
Poll Preview: What a Tangled Web We Weave -- Jeff Carlson's Tools We Use column about VSE Link Tester this week started us thinking about other tools we use for creating and maintaining Web sites
Gone are the days when you could easily build and maintain a Web site using nothing more than SimpleText, NCSA Mosaic, and a rough mental image of how pages linked together
Although MacHack features sessions and papers and a variety of other events, much of the emphasis is placed on the annual MacHax Best Hack Contest, organized by the MacHax Group