FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

APPLE, VW TEAM UP ON THE iBEETLE, COMBINING TWO GREAT TRENDY PRODUCTS

Cupertino, CA -- Those who love the new Volkswagen Beetle and the new Apple iMac computer can have their cake and eat it too (and hope it doesn't crash) with the new iBeetle, a car that goes from 0 to 60 in the time it takes to download a Pamela Lee nude pic. Apple and VW combined their cutting-edge design to create a car/computer combo, with see-through hood, aqua accents, and a stick shift that will give you carpal tunnel faster than you can say "Hello."

Design guru Cement Mock had a revelation when he picked up a discarded iMac on the side of the road while driving his new Beetle. "The thing really smelled, and was probably thrown away because the monitor couldn't be upgraded," Mock says. "When I saw the iMac in my Beetle, I had a Reese's Cup revelation. Why not combine two great tastes in one handy car?" The rest was history.

After minutes, even hours, of road-testing using likenesses of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer as crash test dummies, Apple's pseudo-CEO Steve Jobs promised to make the ultimate iBeetle demo, driving the car from the Detroit Auto Show to Comdex in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the beta test backfired, when Jobs tried to reboot the car while going 70 in Montana. "It has insanely great handling," an unfazed Jobs said.

Rabid car and computer aficionados are expected to get on waiting lists for the car, which boasts the following features:

* AM/FM/cassette/CD-ROM player built-in

* Absolutely no Windows

* Power locks, password-protected glove box, Norton Antivirus and Windshield Bug Killer

* 233MHz HorsePowerPC engine, with 4GB hard drive-train

* Voice of Steve Jobs warns you if the door is ajar, you're running out of gas, you have no style, and that he's still considering becoming full-time CEO

* Choice of 2-wheel drive or 4-wheel drive, but no floppy drive

Apple and VW are gearing up for the car's unveiling with a series of ads showing a chimpanzee easily learning to drive the iBeetle while a smart-aleck MBA has trouble getting a Mercedes to start. The tagline: "Drivers wanted who think different (and have bad grammar)."
 

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3MR Deemed Cool

Though we were convinced that "Cool Site of the Day" was sooo 1995, and had gone the way of the cybersoap, we were wrong. Turns out that IDG's TipWorld still bestows one of these "honors," and even had the gall to give it to the 3-Minute Roast.

Here's part of their description: "One of the funniest and most barbed spoofs comes in the form of the bi-weekly Three-Minute Roast. As the name implies, these sendups are quick and merciless."

Read the whole glorious homage (if you dare) at:
http://www.tipworld.com/tiparchive/tips/coolsites-html/sep98/30Sep98asap.html
 

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DeathRace 2000(tm)

[We highlight the lowlights among three online ventures that are struggling: Slate, HotWired, and Snap!]

Lycos Swallows up Wired Digital

DeathRace is slowly turning into BuyoutRace, with NBC snapping up Snap! and now the news that Lycos is picking up the last pieces of the Revolution, Wired Digital. Cheeky British e-zine "Need to Know" put it best:

"Why did Lycos feel it had to spend $83 million buying Wired Digital, when their own patent lawyers say that the only profitable bit of it - HotBot - is in breach of Lycos's own search engine patents? We reckon that, like almost everyone else connected with the last days of Wired (including us), they're just doing it for revenge. For that "Wired: Inktomi, Tired: Lycos" dig in Wired 3.12. For 4.09's prophetic recommendation to sell Lycos short ("The search engine market is ripe for disaster"). For... oh, what's the use."

Though Mass.-based Lycos says it will stay hands-off, you have to wonder how long they'll subsidize competitor HotBot and put up with losses from across the country.
 

"3-Minute Roast" is a bi-weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.

Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert

* If you hate our rantings, send a reply message: "My other car's a Pentium II LX" and we'll take you off the list.
* To see all our back issues, link up to 3MR on the Web at: http://www.mediawhore.com/3-minute/roastarchive.html
* This material is copyrighted by iBeetlemania, the first user group for a car. It's also a riff from a small item in Yahoo! Internet Life, one of Ziff-Davis' remaining "key" properties.
* Feel free to forward this to three friends or enemies. Some call it a pyramid scheme; we call it distribution.

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