The Mac faithful were disappointed by Amelio's keynote speech at Macworld, but the event as a whole lifted their spirits. A waiter told Adam Engst that attendees this year seemed brighter and more upbeat than last year, when they were "literally crying at their tables." [, TidBITS, 13Jan97.]

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0 for Power Macs, with support for ActiveX, Apple's Java VM, and Microsoft/Metrowerks Java. Its just-in-time (JIT) Java compiler is the first for the Mac. Email and Usenet newsgroup reading have been broken out as separate applications, which keeps the browser under 7MB. Download from . [Geoff Duncan , TidBITS, 13Jan97.]

One of the coolest new products is SMART Board, a whiteboard that attaches to your computer serial port so that colored marker lines also produce traces on your computer screen. You can project your screen image onto the whiteboard and then mouse around by touching the board. SMART Technologies Inc., . [MN, TidBITS, 13Jan97.]

Another mouse alternative is the No Hands Mouse. Foot pedals provide joystick and button controls. Hunter Digital, . [JLC, TidBITS, 13Jan97.]

Sundial is a desktop pattern replacement that cycles through 288 full-screen frames in 24 hours. It comes with ten California landscapes that you can synchronize with the sun outside your cubicle. (Trust me, it's there.) John Neil & Associates is sponsoring a contest for new scene ideas. . [Adam Engst, TidBITS, 13Jan97.] (Engst suggests "A Day in the Life of Sarajevo," "Living on the Street," or "Hotel Lobby.")

If you're more interested in getting work done, MacVPA lets you connect to your office computer via AppleTalk over the Internet. It's only a local call from nearly anywhere. [ACE, TidBITS, 13Jan97.]

For routine search-and-replace processing of text files, PreFab Text Machine (in alpha version) offers a scriptable batch editor for regular expressions. . [MN, TidBITS, 13Jan97.]