FC: Clinton does Comdex, plays with gadgets, talks up "digital divide"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35752,00.html

   Clinton Does Comdex
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
   3:00 a.m. Apr. 19, 2000 PDT

   CHICAGO -- Here's some free advice for companies hawking their
   products at trade shows: Before handing it to the leader of the free
   world, make sure it works.

   When President Clinton was strolling through the gargantuan Comdex
   trade show on Tuesday afternoon, he took a few minutes to stop by
   Motorola's wireless booth.

   Motorola executive Janice Webb showed him Mya, a sexily packaged
   product that's supposed to read the content of websites to you over
   any telephone.

   The problem: Mya got a bad case of laryngitis, choking up halfway
   through the demo, and the panicked Motorola representative had to
   start over.

   Motorola's two-way message pager had similar problems. Webb couldn't
   send anything -- perhaps because the crush of Comdex-bound geeks had
   overloaded Chicago's wireless network -- and ultimately gave up.

   [...]

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