Integrated plug-ins now include RealNetworks RealPlayer 5.0, Macromedia Flash, and Headspace Beatnik for listening to music and other audio files.

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The company, later renamed Beatnik, developed RMF (Rich Music Format), a file type with a small footprint that brings synthesized sounds to a web page.

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In the first two minutes of The Nextnik (a word that is meant to riff off of the term beatnik), the fictional lead character, Larry Zimmerman, 55, gets fired, after 25 years on the job.

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Everyone called him Mike until some way into his studies at the LSE when, in a sudden change of style, he swapped his grey suit for sharp beatnik attire and insisted on being called the rather more working class-sounding "Mick".

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As Flynn, Bridges acts very beatnik Zen, like a weary cyber version of the Dude, and Michael Sheen is on hand as a sinister nightclub impresario who primps and soft-shoes like an albino Davy Jones wearing David Bowie's Aladdin Sane shag.

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