Memories are made of this

You've probably never heard of Ignaz Semmelweiss, an Austro-Hungarian doctor who, in 1850, discovered that the spread of infection in obstetric wards could be dramatically reduced by washing one's hands.

He died soon afterwards - through an infected handcut.

Equally, I suspect you didn't know that the last words of unionist General John Sedgewick, as he derided the sharp-shooting abilities of Confederate troops during the American civil war, were:

'I tell you men, they couldn't hit a barn at this dis ...'

It's bad enough that I should meticulously record such bits of nonsense.

At least I get paid to do so, though PC disk space is running out as I archive each nugget of text with all the fervour of a lobotomised squirrel.

It's a compulsive disorder, of course. But with DVD-Ram storage now coming on the scene I will be indulged beyond my wildest fantasies: just think, nudging five gigabytes of space on a single side and offering the promise of hoarding not just scraps of text, but whole reams of internet pastes and complete movies if I want. Re-runs of Baywatch, old TV clips from Watch with Mother. I'm nearly out of my pram with excitement. As Billy Bunter is to food, so I am to collating pointless information - quality of input obviously doesn't count for much, but velocity does. And once Microsoft's NetShow 3 comes on stream, probably sometime this month, I can start creating one huge ziggurat of trash built around a DVD-Ram library.

For PC dealers, of course, I and the legion of lost causes like me are a godsend. Multimedia archiving is destined to become a mainstream hobby, like train spotting or collecting bus tickets, with the new version of NetShow - so word has it - overcoming all the previous problems of sending and storing clips via the internet thanks to intelligent streaming technology that adjusts on-the-fly to changing network conditions, such as traffic bottlenecks.

By all accounts, it works well even on a 28.8Kbps modem. NetShow's server version is also being bundled with NT, making it easier in future for your average board chairman to broadcast his annual drivel via the corporate intranet - with orders to the troops to save his address on their DVD drives, of course, so they can repeatedly savour his thoughts during their lunch break.

Meanwhile, another launch milestone this month will be the introduction of Toshiba's new DVD drives, a move in turn prompted by the imminent release of Windows 98 and its built-in Web delivery mechanisms - US Justice Department permitting.

Throw in the advent of Web TV, where your humdrum telly is metamorphosed into an all-singin', PC-cum-entertainment console, and it's easy to see how the opportunities for selling DVD devices are almost limitless. As it is, I've already started using my old, obsolete CD disks as tea mats.

Chrome-side up, they go perfectly with the silver service.

Dave Evans is a freelance IT journalist.