When Bob Fay put up his Cave of Magic Web page, he thought it might generate a few chuckles. Instead, his Internet mind-reading act has drawn more than 600,000 visitors since early January, along with thousands of e-mail messages from the mystified, amused or chagrined.
Fay, a 44-year-old systems programmer for the Montgomery County Public Schools, is a fine amateur photographer and, more importantly for Web surfers, a magician who knows more than a little about showmanship.
His Cave of Magic (http:// www3.mcps.k12.md.us/users/rsfay/magic/) displays an animated wizard named Simeon, doors that open and close, a pair of rotating eyeballs, a pacing cat and, of course, a deck of cards.
Simeon displays six cards, asks you to choose one in your mind. Move to the next page and Simeon asks you to say the name of the card very softly (this is very important, he cautions). Another mouse click returns you to the card display. This time there are only five cards, and yours is missing.
I was amazed and tried it half a dozen times with the same results. I thought Fay might have created an embedded Java program that read subliminal mouse movements, so I kept the mouse as still as possible. Or maybe there was a function that listened for my voice over the computer's microphone -- although as far as I can determine, that's technically impossible from a Web page. But but when I kept mum, Simeon again guessed correctly.
Naturally, I showed the page to everybody within earshot, and soon we were all laughing and grinning like kids at a magic show. I was baffled and so were my colleagues -- except for one fellow who cogitated for half an hour and came up with the solution, which is so simple that I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it in the first place. But that's the secret of a good magician.
Fay says the Cave of Magic has been available on the Web for a year, but it wasn't until January that word of mouth began to bring in visitors by the electronic busload. A mention on Rosie O'Donnell's show brought even more hits last week. On good days, Fay says, the Cave of Magic gets more than 10,000 visits, and about 200 people a day take the opportunity to leave e-mail -- an amazing "click-through" rate by Web standards.
"I get mail from people who enjoyed it, from people begging me to tell them how I did it, and people who use all kinds of foul language when they finally figure it out and can't believe they wasted that much time on it," Fay says proudly.
Being an honorable magician, Fay never divulges the secret himself. He will only say that the trick, "The Princess," is well-known to the brotherhood.
In any case, if you want to brighten your day, stop by the Cave and see if you can figure it out. While you're at it, click over to Fay's home page, where you'll find a display of striking photographs that Fay took on hiking trips through Tibet, Nepal and Thailand.
While we're talking about Web destinations, if you're shopping for computer equipment online, there's a brand new superstore waiting for you. Dell, the world's No. 1 direct seller of computers, has opened a megastore (www.gigabuys.com) that offers a huge selection of related equipment, including printers, scanners, monitors and cameras made by other manufacturers.
For Dell, it's a chance to capitalize on a satisfied customer base and keep Wall Street happy by adding a new revenue source as margins in its traditional computer business are driven down by competition. Dell's largest competitor in direct-sale PCs, Gateway, recently took a step in the same direction by investing in NECX (www.necx.com), one of the Web's top online merchants.
Dell's new store is easy to navigate, and the company's reputation for delivering quality merchandise on time is enviable. But I'd still shop around, because a quick comparison of Gigabuys and other online stores shows that better prices for the same equipment are often available elsewhere.
As a test, I chose one of Dell's advertised specials, a Hewlett-Packard 895Cse inkjet printer priced at $399. My Web search turned up eight stores offering the device, some for as low as $360, and Dell's price was the second-highest of the group.
Dell did better with $437.95 special on NEC's E750 short-depth, 17-inch monitor. Gigabuys' price came within a couple of dollars of being the lowest in the search. On the other hand, Dell was the most expensive source for Casio's Cassiopeia E-11 hand-held computer at $339. Other vendors offered it for as little as $255.
The lesson here is that it pays to comparison shop, particularly for mass-marketed gadgets. Computer Shopper (www.computershopper.com) is a good place to start. It combines the breadth of the Ziff-Davis magazines' database of reviews and articles with a search engine that will display prices on an individual item from as many as a dozen online merchants.
This doesn't mean that the lowest price is always the best choice. A vendor's reputation for quick delivery and its system for dealing with returns of defective merchandise are just as important. But remember that these outfits aren't really in the business of selling printers or scanners -- they're in the business of shipping sealed boxes. All other things being equal, the guy who gets the box to your door on time for the least money is your best bet.
Pub Date: 03/08/99