In Brief

By Jyoti Thottam

EYE SPY These days, employees who forget passwords or misplace ID badges are more than an annoyance--they're a security risk. Panasonic thinks it has a solution: the Authenticam ($240), an iris-scanning security camera that hooks up to a PC. Since it runs off the computer's horsepower, it's cheaper than door-mounted devices. You can even use it at home; it doubles as a webcam.

FORGET ME NOT Where do old Web pages go to die? If they're lucky, the Internet Archive, a nonprofit project to preserve the history of the Web. The archive recently marked its fifth birthday by launching the Wayback Machine web.archive.org) Type any URL into this free service, and you can see what the page looked like in the old days (1996). The archive has already devoted a special collection to the Sept. 11 attacks.

MONKEY BUSINESS Meet Aiai, Sega's newest superhero. Beneath that sickly sweet exterior beats the heart of a dangerously addictive video game. Aiai is the star of Super Monkey Ball ($50), Sega's first title for the Nintendo Gamecube. The game, which hits stores this week, sends Aiai and his pals through an endlessly shifting universe of tilting floors and floating bananas. Pikachu: watch your back!

--By Jyoti Thottam