In Brief

By Lev Grossman

MOVE OVER, MARIO Meet Conker. He's a squirrel, he swears a lot, he has a drinking problem, and he's the star of Conker's Bad Fur Day ($70), a new video game for the Nintendo 64. Conker is Nintendo's attempt to shed its wholesome image (think Super Mario Bros.) and pull in some grownup dollars. In one scene Conker defeats his foes by drinking beer and then--cover your eyes, kids--urinating on them.

FROM AD TO WORSE Things are tough all over in cyberspace, but websites that rely on advertising for their dollars, such as news and magazine sites, have been hit especially hard. Why? Because no one--stop us if we're wrong here--cares about those annoying, ubiquitous banner ads. The solution? Bigger ads! A coalition of websites, including AOL and Yahoo, has agreed on standards for larger, harder-to-ignore ads that will supplement the much maligned banner ad. For a glimpse of things to come, check out the tech-info site News.com which is already running the new ads. Let's hope they have a banner year.

MUSIC TO YOUR EYES For the past 77 years, the Photo Marketing Association has met annually to gawk at the latest high-tech cameras. Among the standouts this year was Kodak's mc3, a digital camera that takes pictures, records video and plays back up to 1 1/2 hours' worth of music in the MP3 format. The mc3 will retail for $299 and will be available in mid-March. Also on display was a nifty thing called (e)film. Load this electronic film into (most) old-fashioned 35-mm cameras and--click--take digital pictures.

--By Lev Grossman