With sports teams and free-agent stars leaving cities almost as frequently as Sammy Sosa’s line drives leave stadiums, the phrase, "Going, going, gone," has taken on a harsh new meaning. With fans moving around, too, as America becomes more mobile, the result has been a mix-and-match culture of changing sports loyalties.

That may be ending. Because of advancements in information technology, a fan can now simply "follow" a player or team—electronically—no matter where the fan, player, or team goes.

Think of this as the moment when fans became free agents.

Web sites give anyone, anywhere, access to, say, extensive local newspaper coverage of the Chicago Cubs. Satellite television makes many more games available nationally—even internationally. Real Audio and other Web technologies make it possible to hear local radio broadcasts over the Internet.

"There was a time when the old fan on the couch was forced to watch only the home team. Those days are moving into the past," says Matthew Lubman, an avid baseball and football fan who is a junior at Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Conn. "Younger fans, especially, are starting to associate more with players than teams."

The service is expensive, at 50 cents a minute for the first hour and 20 cents for each subsequent minute, but cheaper approaches seem to be on the way. Penguin Radio says that in late spring it will offer a device that will use the Internet to offer broadcasts from about 5,000 radio stations from all over the country. The device is expected to cost less than $200, to hook up to a stereo system, and to let listeners find a radio station just by punching in a number. Another Internet start-up, Kerbango, is reportedly working on a similar gadget.

Actually, the change in the way sports are followed is more dramatic than even the idea of free agency suggests. A host of mostly Web-based services let fans follow games and stars—even local ones—more closely than ever before (which is saying something).

ESPN.com offers pitch-by-pitch and play-by-play updates, letting fans keep up with games even in offices where a radio wouldn’t be appropriate. CBS SportsLine (www.sportsline.com) provides detailed player-injury and weather reports. FOXSports.com, and CNNSI.com—like ESPN and SportsLine—provide daily e-mail news updates and hold chats with players and commentators. The sites have video highlights from various games, just in case someone missed them the first time around. Athletes Direct (www.athletedirect.com) allows fan interaction with more than 150 players from various sports and includes journals written by the athletes (oh, OK, maybe with a little help).

So-called fan sites provide a gathering spot for those obsessed with a team. For instance, Kev & Scott’s AstrosConnection (www.astrosconnection.com) is a conglomeration of statistics, trade news, and chat devoted to the Houston Astros Major League Baseball team. As a bonus, the site includes "links to the latest local coverage of National League opponents."

Not that everything is perfect about how the new technology is being used. John Pickering, an editor at Bloomberg News in London, says it can be disconcerting to watch baseball on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV. British broadcasters provide the commentary for the U.S. video feed, and "they see fit to offer much more than you want to hear," Pickering says. "For example, they address such sophisticated baseball questions as ‘why hitters drop their bats before running to first base.’" (Cricket players carry their bats as they run after striking the ball.)

A similar problem occurs with broadcasts of professional football in Mexico. The Spanish-speaking color commentator actually has NFL experience. But he was a placekicker. Placekickers, of course, aren’t known as students of the game, at least not since Miami Dolphins kicker Garo Yepremian declared, "I keeck a touchdown." The Mexican announcer usually limits his analysis of a great play to repeated shouts of, "Incredible! Incredible! Incredible!"

There also is the inevitable problem: Just because someone can watch his sports team from the other side of the world doesn’t mean he’ll like what he sees. Pickering, a Cleveland native, says his subscription to Sky TV meant that he could watch his beloved Indians play the Florida Marlins in the 1997 World Series—and see in excruciating detail just how the Tribe lost.

"I was sitting in the dark on the couch of my London home at five in the morning," he says, "when the Indians brought in Jose Mesa to blow the seventh game."

'LET’S E-MAIL GRANDMA A GIANT GRASSHOPPER HEAD'

"Collect a bunch of insects and look at them up close." For parents with small children, these may be chilling words, but Intel and Mattel are using the idea to promote the new Intel Play QX3 Computer Microscope for kids—and they may be on to something.

This first product launched under the Intel Play brand is a unique science toy. The microscope can be linked to a personal computer, meaning the product combines the magnification of a microscope with a computer’s ability to manipulate images. The device, aimed at children age six and older, can magnify objects from 10 to 200 times actual size. It comes with video capability that can capture still, moving, and time-lapse images. The QX3 even can be removed from its base, unlike a traditional microscope, so children can use it as a sort of hyperpowerful magnifying glass to "explore the world around them," Intel says. (That’s true as long as the microscope is tethered to the mother computer, using a five-foot long cable. That’s incentive enough to fire up the laptop for the kids to use outdoors so they can view their enlarged images of squiggly, crawly things au naturel rather than bring them home in their pockets.)

The microscope/computer combination can produce blown-up images of grasshoppers, fly faces, and other unspeakable small things. The images can then be printed as wall posters or small stickers or be e-mailed to family and friends.

The microscope comes with such accessories as containment dishes, plastic tweezers (for sissies), and an activity guide.

Intel, in its promotional copy, encourages young scientists to pursue fairly routine experiments—look at a ladybug or a blade of grass—but then ventures into territory that one might associate with The Island of Dr. Moreau. For example, children are told they can create a species of their own by combining images.

The real problem is that, for those of us who used to throw worms at screaming girls on the playground, the technology has arrived too late.

The suggested retail price for the QX3 is $99.95. For more information: www.intelplay.com.

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

In 1997, Virtual Ink took a look at the clumsy attempts to electronically capture the writing on whiteboards and, well, went back to the drawing board. Today, Virtual Ink has a set of components and software that can record in a computer the writing and drawings from any old whiteboard.

Virtual Ink’s product, called mimio, works through a Capture Bar, a device that resembles a big, blue lobster claw. It opens up and is hung on the left side of a standard whiteboard. Then it’s connected to a PC with a cable. Through the mysteries of Stylus Tracking Technology, it uses acoustic and infrared sensors to capture all the words, squiggles, and doodles that get written on the board.

As ideas, diagrams, and charts are jotted down on the board, they can be saved instantly on the computer. Writing also can be erased on the board and simultaneously deleted from the computer; standard dry erasers are inserted into special jackets that relay information to the sensors to tell them what is being wiped away.

So, no more waiting for Thumbs Handleman, the designated scribe, to write up the notes from a meeting and send them around two weeks later. Instead, whiteboard hieroglyphics are ready in real time for printing, e-mailing, or exporting into any standard Windows application.

Mimio’s advantages over standard electronic whiteboards are considerable. It weighs only 2.5 pounds, and its Capture Bar, which measures 24 inches when mounted, can be stuck into a standard briefcase when folded in half. While Virtual Ink’s convoluted instructions make it sound as though only computer scientists can assemble a mimio, actually, even an English major can do it. You just install batteries, plug a couple of things in, and then let the software install itself.

Mimio is selling for a suggested retail price of $499, considerably cheaper than regular electronic whiteboards, which cost thousands of dollars.

For more information: www.virtual-ink.com.

CHIP IN YOUR SHOULDER

Canadian Mounties may always get their man, but they may not be able to outdo a microchip that can be implanted under people’s skin. The Digital Angel chip, which is smaller than the little beeping device in James Bond’s shoe heel, is a transceiver developed by Applied Digital Solutions that could prove unerringly accurate in locating missing persons.

The transceiver, which can constantly transmit and receive data, seems likely to work so well because it can be continuously tracked by Global Positioning System technology. When implanted within the body, it is powered electromechanically through the movement of muscles, letting it function for years without maintenance. The Digital Angel can be activated either by the wearer, to signal a need for help, or by a monitoring facility trying to find a lost person, ADS says.

The tamper-proof chip is small enough that it could, in fact, serve in a host of applications. It could, for instance, be implanted in valuable belongings, such as works of art, and used to track them if they are stolen. Because the transceivers uniquely identify each user, they also could be used instead of passwords when people log on to their computers and buy things on the Internet. The transceivers not only would reduce fraud, because they are much harder to steal than passwords, but also would be more convenient. Digital Angel has potential medical applications, too. The device can be modified to monitor certain biological functions—such as heart rate—and send a distress signal to a monitoring facility if it detects a problem.

While a number of other tracking and monitoring technologies have been patented and marketed, many pose problems, such as unwieldy size, burdensome maintenance requirements, insufficient or inconvenient power supply, and activation difficulties.

ADS is seeking joint-venture partners to help develop and market Digital Angel. It expects to create a working prototype by year end.

For more information: www.adsx.com.

THIS THING SMELLS

For those of us who’d rather endure a root canal than rummage around in the refrigerator hoping to find the origin of that god-awful stench, help—in the form of a handy new gizmo called Cyranose 320—is on the way.

Developed by Cyrano Sciences (named after Cyrano de Bergerac, the fictitious, long-nosed, 17th-century French poet, soldier, and Roxanne-lover), the Cyranose 320 is a hand-held, two-pound device that resembles a cell phone, complete with antenna. The Cyranose 320 enables users to easily characterize the state of "chemical systems," the company says. What it means to say is that, with a Cyranose 320, you can tell if the milk has gone sour without sticking your own schnozz into the container.

The Cyranose 320’s antenna is a probe with a small nodule at the tip. The probe can be placed above substances while the nodule absorbs vapor for measurement. Results appear on a small screen on the device and can be transmitted to a PC.

The device has to be trained, through repeated exposure, to recognize whatever smells, such as spoiled milk, may be important to the user. The company is pursuing three initial markets: chemical and environmental, food processing, and the medical industry, where the device could identify chemical components in breath, wounds, and bodily fluids to diagnose a host of illnesses.

The Cyranose 320 costs a hefty $9,995, but Cyrano is working with Hewlett-Packard to develop an inexpensive chip that could be used in appliances such as refrigerators to detect when food has spoiled. The company says the Nose-Chip will be its high-volume, low-cost product. It could cost less than $20 when it reaches the market in 12 to 24 months. The device will use a red light or a buzzer to alert a user that a given food item probably shouldn’t be consumed.

For more information: www.cyranosciences.com.

HEARING VOICES

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab say they have a technology that can focus sound beams in narrow rays, much like a laser. From more than 200 yards away, they say, they can shoot a beam at someone, who will hear the sound while all those around hear nothing.

Joseph Pompei, a former musician who is developing the technology in the Media Lab’s Machine Listening Group, says the technology, called Audio Spotlight, uses high-frequency ultrasound waves. The waves travel in straight lines, rather than spreading out the way sound usually does. Once the Audio Spotlight hits a surface, such as a person, it generates normal sound. Until then, silence.

The Media Lab says airlines, including British Airways, are interested in using Audio Spotlight to replace those hollow, plastic, airplane earphones that produce more perspiration than music and have all the acoustical precision of a shout down a pipe. Audio Spotlight would probably be positioned right over you along with the directional reading light. (Just don’t lean too far over or you might pick up the grunge music of the kid from Seattle sitting next to you.)

In entertainment, the technology could create the audio equivalent of 3D. "You can use it to create the effect of birds chirping around you, or bullets whizzing by your head," Pompei says. In museums, Audio Spotlight could provide historical information on works of art, directing a soundtrack only to the person standing in front of the painting or sculpture. In corporations, announcements concerning only certain individuals could be aimed only at them. (Just imagine, everyone working around you oblivious to the boss’s angry voice in your ear: "You’re fired.")

The device is about the size of a traditional stereo amplifier. Commercial versions could ultimately be bigger or smaller and more or less powerful depending on their use.

Audio Spotlight is in development, and the first commercial application is probably about a year away, Pompei says.

For more information: sound.media.mit.edu.

WHISPER CAMPAIGN

Wall Street analysts’ expectations aren’t always what they appear. That’s because there are published earnings and revenue estimates—and then there are the all-important "whisper numbers," which are the real expectations but which are typically provided to just a select audience of valued customers and reporters.

Entrepreneurs Paul Hauck and John Scherr hope to stop the whispering and shout out the numbers for all to hear, through WhisperNumber, a free on-line investor service.

Why the difference between the real, whisper numbers and the published ones? Because securities analysts sometimes use the published numbers to curry favor with the companies they follow, especially as analysts try to help win investment-banking business for their firms—and collect seven-figure bonuses in the process.

While analysts may "whisper" their real expectations, most investors have relied on the published numbers and have been left vulnerable. For instance, when 3Com recently reported per-share earnings of 37 cents, well above the published average estimate of 34 cents, many small investors presumably wanted to buy the stock. But the price fell. Why? Because the whisper number was 39 cents, and those in the know started selling.

The site derives the numbers by relying on contributions from users and by having proprietary "spidering" software search daily through hundreds of thousands of data sources to grab relevant information about market expectations. "We are showing a 74% rate of accuracy in predicting stock movement" after financial results are reported, Hauck says. He says they leave their data on the site for 30 days after financial results are reported, to let others test their accuracy or do analysis on the information.

Hauck and Scherr are expanding their service to include whisper numbers on initial-public-offering prices and on government economic indicators.

For more information: www.whispernumber.com.