Salon.com > Joe Ashbrook Nickell

Elvis, live on the auction block

Tue, 22 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Until now, fans of Elvis have had to rely on the array of lunchboxes, statuettes, and all-shook-up Graceland snow globes to beshrine their homes with reminders of the King. But, just in time for the millennium, the Internet is helping change all that, by letting regular Joes buy a piece of the Graceland archives.

While most rank-and-file worshippers won't be able to afford The Spangled One's custom Caddie station wagon, organizers of the Elvis Presley Archival Memorabilia Auction -- scheduled for October -- hope to use online bidding (with no preset minimum bids) to leverage more than 2,000 lots of Elvis' former possessions into a collectibles auction fit for both King and pauper.

"I think it's quite fair to believe there'll be quite a few items offered as bargains," said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's Auction, which announced the auction together with icollector, an online art and collectibles auction site. Icollector will host the catalog online and collect presale bids via e-mail.

Real-life “Truman Show”

Tue, 27 Apr 1999 16:00:00 +0000

In February, six Oberlin College students bought a Canon digital video camera, four Pentium III servers and a fractional T1 line and transformed their lives into the first-ever 24/7 streaming audio and video show. Now they're looking for sponsors.

The students are hoping to hit pay dirt by becoming the Web's answer to "The Truman Show." After all, if Tiger Woods gets paid to wear a Nike cap, why shouldn't the girl studying economics on the couch?

"I realized that the time would come when people would become famous not because they were born into it or they worked into it, but because of nothing other than the fact that they have a camera on them," says Erik Vidal, the 22-year old student (and nephew of Gore Vidal) who came up with the idea and funds for href="http://www.hereandnow.net">HereandNow.

The idea has certainly been explored by others. But, while sites like JenniCam offer periodic snapshots, HereandNow touts itself as the first to provide a 24-hour, live, unedited look into ordinary people's lives.