Hello, I’m Joanne, and I may have a gambling problem.

I decided to write a story about all the gambling and lotto gimmicks that Web sites are using to lure visitors. I wanted to see if they were offering real money—never mind that I’ve never won so much as a school raffle—and whether the sites could keep people coming back.

I got a little carried away.

The first thing I did was dump the Wall Street Journal site (www.wsj.com) as my home page and replace it with iWon.com. Every time I read a news story on iWon I increased my odds of winning $10,000 that day, $1 million that month, or $10 million that year.

Of course, to win you have to read a lot of news stories. I found myself clicking on items I had no interest in reading, just to collect points toward the cash giveaways. It didn’t cost me anything—except, maybe, a little peevishness from my husband. One night, he said sarcastically that he’d grown accustomed to my presence at mealtimes. I told him I was working.

I soon found plenty of other places that promised me money. While companies have long been giving away free stuff on the Web or paying nominal sums to people who complete surveys, the freebie business has taken on a life of its own. There is even a site that tracks the freebie sites (www.free.com). It offers more than 6,000 links to everything available free on-line and lists 87 sites in its cash-giveaway category.

All the sites wanted personal information from me, but I had no real choice. How would I be able to get my huge award checks if I didn’t tell the sites who I am and how to reach me?

As I kept trying my luck, I soon swore off checking my stock quotes on Yahoo! The heck with making money the old-fashioned way. I needed the time to enter my quick picks on FreeLotto.com. Every time I chose my numbers I had to click on a banner ad to enter them into the system. Nearly all of those ads took me to new sites that were offering more money and prizes. How exciting!

I found a new site called iMustLotto.com that was offering the chance to win $50,000 three times an hour. That seemed like a good bet. After all, I wasn’t planning on spending the rest of my life trying to become an on-line sweepstakes winner.

But I was getting discouraged. The only thing I was scoring was lots of extra e-mail. E-mail proclaiming that "Joanne Kelley can win $1 million tonight." ("Can win," not "won.") E-mail confirming each of my lottery picks. E-mail listing the nightly winners on FreeStateLotto.com. (My name was never there.)

I also began hearing from a gambling site offering me free credits if I tried out its games. "Just open a free account, log into the casino, make your first purchase of $50 or more, and wager up to your purchase amount. Whether you win or lose, we will give you 25 free credits." I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I think it meant I’d been put on a sucker list.

Then I heard about MaxLotto.com, and I realized I’d been aiming too low. The site, which launched this spring, plans to offer a jackpot of $1 billion every single month. Forget being a millionaire; I wanted to be a billionaire!

There was just one catch. MaxLotto sells tickets for $5 a pop. Because many authorities say that Internet gambling is illegal for U.S. residents, MaxLotto will sell tickets only outside the U.S. I began thinking about a Mexican vacation.

I also hung out at eLotteryFreeWay taking quizzes to collect "e-points," which are redeemable for cash. While some of the answers eluded me, I was always given the correct ones at the end of the game. So I was learning something—not necessarily something useful, but something. When asked how many fights Muhammad Ali lost in his career, I had no idea. Five, I was informed, after guessing incorrectly. When I got the question again later, I was ready.

After playing 13 games—which, oddly enough, provide the same number of e-points no matter how many of the 30 questions are answered correctly—I had amassed a seemingly impressive 415 e-points. Then I found that I had to have 1,500 points before I could collect any cash. Playing a game is worth just five points—I had received 350 merely for signing up—so I needed to take 217 more quizzes to earn 1,085 points and reach 1,500. And all that 1,500 points would get me was $10.

So I figured my points had earned me $2.77. That’s the grand total, too, from my weeks of free-cash hunting because I never did win anything on any other site.

I had my answer: No, the free money isn’t terribly real. And, no, the dumb games and lottos on the freebie sites aren’t enough to keep at least this visitor coming back.

So maybe I don’t have a gambling problem after all.

Now I’m on to day trading. I figure that the $2.77 from eLotteryFreeWay will pay for about half the commission on my first trade.

TRICKS ARE FOR KIDS

These days, most of the really cool toys seem to be made for adults—Palm Pilots, Web phones, and all the rest of that stuff adorning the belts of your friends—but Hasbro is making sure that kids can do their share of tricks.

Starting in September, Hasbro will sell Lightning Mail, a small gadget that will let America’s younger set zap e-mails all around their neighborhoods. And, unlike in Finland—where kids swarm through Helsinki, directed by instant messaging on their Nokia cell phones—there need not be phone bills later for Mom and Dad.

Hasbro’s toy, powered by three AAA batteries, operates over a special short-distance radio bandwidth. Kids write messages with a stylus, either by tapping on a tiny keyboard or writing directly on the screen. Then, members of, say, Joey’s Super-Secret Club (No Girls Allowed) hit a button and send wireless messages to one another.

The one drawback: The device works only within a 50-foot range. Beyond that, kids will need to plug the device into a phone jack and send text-only e-mails over a local phone line.

Cybiko, meanwhile, is targeting preteens and teenagers with a slick handheld device that offers wireless instant messaging and interactive game playing.

Kids need to be within 300 feet of another user, but, with room in its wireless chat rooms for as many as 100 people at a time, Cybiko could render classroom note-passing obsolete. The device will vibrate when a friend—or someone who meets certain specifications—comes within range at the mall, movie theater, or anywhere else kids hang out. You can hook the gadget up to a personal computer to download software and games from the Cybiko Web site or to send e-mails to friends who are out of range.

Lightning Mail will retail for $59.99. Cybikos sell for $149.

For more information: www.tigertoys.com; www.cybiko.com.

CALLING ALL CARS

The next time you’re on your cell phone, stuck in a traffic jam and late for an appointment, you just might be helping some other driver avoid the mess you’ve gotten yourself into.

U.S. Wireless is testing technology that can help highway officials and traffic reporters monitor congestion by gauging the speed at which cell phones—and, thus, the cars they are in—are traveling on any given road. The system works by constantly locating all cell phones that are in use and then overlaying those locations on road maps. Seeing how those phones move, moment by moment, gives an extremely accurate picture of how traffic is moving and will let authorities spot a traffic problem almost instantly. This could be the end of local radio stations’ "phone forces," who call in accidents and report slow-moving traffic.

Individuals in distress can benefit, too, because the technology will help wireless carriers determine the approximate location of a subscriber who dials 9-1-1 in an emergency. Federal regulators will require that wireless carriers be able to pinpoint 9-1-1 callers by October 2001.

The new technology, called RadioCamera, determines a wireless subscriber’s location by measuring radio signals that bounce off buildings when a call is carried to nearby cellular towers. The system differs from some competing technologies because it requires no changes to either the cellular network infrastructure or to the phones themselves. U.S. Wireless says that its technology works even in dense urban areas where buildings tend to block signals from getting to towers. The company has been testing the system in a number of areas, including Oakland, Calif.; Baltimore; and Billings, Mont.

For more information: www.uswcorp.com.

UNWIRED

From the land of blondes and Volvos comes a short-range radio technology that promises to get rid of the tangle of wires in your computer bag and under your desk.

Dubbed "Bluetooth" and dreamed up by L.M. Ericsson, it soon will allow electronic devices within 30 feet of each other to transmit and receive data at high speeds without being linked by a mess of cables.

Why the Swedish phone maker picked the name is a bit of a mystery—King Harald Bluetooth was a 10th-century Danish monarch. But, whether it is called Bluetooth or yellow fang, the wireless communication standard will let your digital camera send pictures to your desktop computer, and let your computer forward them to a printer. Bluetooth will let your mobile phone call up phone numbers from your laptop or Palm Pilot, assuming the devices are nearby.

Ericsson expects household appliances will be built with inexpensive Bluetooth transmitters inside, so that they can send information about their status and can be controlled remotely, by a computer.

The first Bluetooth-powered devices are expected to be available this year. This summer, Ericsson plans to use the technology in a new type of wireless phone. Users will be able to keep the phone in a pocket, while wearing a headset that is linked to the phone without wires.

Ericsson developed the initial technology in 1994. Industry heavyweights Intel, IBM, Toshiba, and Nokia later joined to help craft a global standard, which was introduced in 1998. Since then, more than 1,500 manufacturers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent, Sony, and Motorola, have been working to build Bluetooth into their products.

For more information: www.bluetooth.com.

HOME SMART HOME

For a fraction of what Bill Gates shelled out to wire his digital dream house, two new products promise to turn more modest homes into high-tech adventures—or at least a virtual paradise for couch potatoes.

Smart America Development has introduced ThinkBoxx and HomeBoxx, two ways to program houses to do everything from starting the popcorn popper during a home movie screening to revving up the hot-tub temperature before you arrive home from a late night at the office. They also can take care of more pressing needs, such as keeping away intruders and regulating heat and lighting.

The systems work by linking appliances and other electrical devices in a network over a home’s electrical wires. Each device can be programmed to turn on and off at specified times or can be controlled manually through a PC, cellular phone, or special wall-mounted device provided by Smart America.

Thanks to falling prices on technology components, both of the home automation packages top out at less than $3,000, far less than it would have cost to deliver the same features a couple of years ago, according to Smart America Chief Executive Dennis Murray.

When customers install the ThinkBoxx system, they can program it for any number of possible scenarios. Each family member gets his own special code to unlock the front door. So, if your daughter hasn’t walked through the door by 3 o’clock in the afternoon, for instance, ThinkBoxx can call you on your cell phone to let you know.

ThinkBoxx, available in the U.S. since January, caters to homes that are already built. HomeBoxx, which will be available this summer, is being sold to developers and contractors building new homes.

For more information: www.smart-america.com.

VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN

Although it is always fun to read corporate proxy statements to see just how lavishly the chief executive and the other scoundrels have decided to pay themselves (we don’t mean our CEO, of course; he is hopelessly underpaid), voting via paper proxies remains a huge drag. No more. A number of Internet services are making it easier to participate in the annual corporate ritual of voting for (or against) company proposals by offering shareholders the option of casting their votes on-line.

Shareholder.com is handling Internet and telephone proxy voting for more than 70 companies this year. EquiServe offers electronic proxy voting as part of its investor-related services for corporations. E-Vote, a division of Thomson Financial, and Proxy-Vote.com offer similar services.

Shareholders still get their proxy materials in the mail from the company, but they have the option of going to the proxy voting Web site and entering in a code they receive with their paper ballots. That takes them to a voting page, where they can enter their choices and click a button to vote. Shareholders can opt to receive their proxy information electronically in subsequent years.

The on-line voting services figure that companies will be able to save a bundle by avoiding mailing costs and reducing the time and money it takes to process all those proxies the old-fashioned way.

The one wild card is that it isn’t clear how on-line voting will change the dynamics of proxy votes. At the moment, proxy votes usually are such desultory affairs that proposals by the corporation almost always win, while proposals from outside the corporation almost always lose. Bringing in lots of additional voters might change things.

In any case, you still will have to attend the annual meeting to hear gadflies ask their embarrassing questions.

For more information: www.shareholder.com; www.equiserve.com;
www.e-vote.net; www.proxyvote.com.

REVENGE OF THE NERDS

While the Internet has educated customers and given them leverage over sellers, the technologists of the world are doing everything they can to help companies reclaim some of that leverage. The latest attempt is known as "personalization."

Tian Software recently began peddling software that allows on-line retailers to adjust their marketing messages in real time to allow for "upselling." In other words, if a customer is interested in buying a ski jacket, for instance, the software will automatically update the page to show a matching pair of ski pants—hoping to get the customer to buy more than he originally intended, "upping" the sale. The software will collect information about how the customer reacts to this upselling technique. The company says consumer privacy is maintained because its "personalization scheme" operates without user identifications or even cookies—Tian’s software is reacting only to whatever is happening on the site at that moment.

Engage Technologies takes a more common approach. It builds on-line profiles of customers over time, so that someone who demonstrates a continuing interest in, say, golf will see banner ads for clubs, instruction books, and vacation packages. It is this sort of technology that ensured that Context writer Joanne Kelley, who did the lead piece on lottos for this issue’s Virtual Horizons section, will never again see anything but banner ads on gambling wherever she goes on-line.

Engage says its approach moves beyond what others have done, because it has found a clever way around the personal privacy uproar that has plagued DoubleClick and other on-line marketing and advertising firms recently. While Engage, a unit of Internet incubator firm CMGI, builds profiles and uses them to target advertising, it never collects any information on the identities of those users it is tracking, so no one can ever attach a name to a profile.

That won’t be enough to satisfy everybody’s privacy concerns, but it is a start.

For more information: www.tiansoft.com; www.engage.com.