PLUGGED IN : NEWS BYTES.

IN TOUCH: Your pager is your mobile link to the world. Now, it's also your link to CNN. PageNet offers a unique service of letting members read the latest headlines on their alphanumeric pager. Headlines in world and U.S. news, show business, sports, weather, business and features are updated every 30 minutes during the week and hourly on the weekends. The service is free to all Pagenet alphanumeric subscribers, but local paging service for the L.A. area ranges from $12 to $15.

ACER BUYS MOBILE COMPUTING BUSINESS: The Acer Group, the world's seventh-largest PC brand and fourth-largest PC manufacturer, and Texas Instruments Inc. announced a definitive agreement for Acer to purchase the assets of TI's mobile computing business. The agreement includes the purchase by Acer of TI's award-winning TravelMate and Extensa product lines, and the associated assets of the business. It is expected that a substantial number of TI's worldwide employees dedicated to its mobile computer business will transfer to Acer upon closing, which is expected on or before March 31, 1997. Financial terms were not disclosed.

APPLE BITES INTO CYBER-CAFES: Apple Computer Inc. plans to take a bite into the cyber-coffeehouse concept. The company hopes to open a series of Apple Cafes worldwide, with the first site set to open in Los Angeles later this year. Neither a specific date nor location has been announced, but Apple staff have been scouting for 15,000-square-foot locations in Westwood, West Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. The restaurant-cybershop will feature PCs with Internet access on each table, and allow patrons to videoconference with those eating nearby.

DIGITAL COLLECTION: The San Francisco Fine Arts Museum has taken the idea of an on-line art museum to a new level: Their digital collection offers the public access to more than 60,000 images. Though there's not a great deal of information about the works, the site (http://www.thinker.org) presents one of the Net's most impressive pictorial databases.

SO HOT IT'S COOL: Cool Central (http://www.coolcentral.com) helps Web surfers find the latest, greatest sites. With the help of a handy pop-up menu, users can locate a ``cool site'' of the moment, hour, day and week. A quick cruise of the selections dropped us into the U.S. Department of the Treasury's site - what's more cool than cash? - and another site called StoryWeb, the ``gateway to original literary entertainment on the Net.''

MOVIE MOODS: It's a perfect time of the year to escape to the movies. But the prices of movies and popcorn have skyrocketed, so it makes sense to make sure you're not spending your hard-earned money on a bomb. That's where the Internet's World Wide Web can help. Try Entertainment: Movie Reviews at http://www.injersey.com/Entertainment/Movies/Reviews/. You'll be able to click on the movie of your choice to read the review. Or for a nice surprise there's 17-year-old Roger Davidson, for instance. His page is called Teen Movie Critic. You'll find it at http://www.dreamagic.com/roger/teencritic.html. The page and the writing isn't what you'd expect from a teen-ager. This is good stuff and a review page you'll definitely want to bookmark. If you like the notion of an unusual point of view, you may also want to check out Joe Bob's Drive-in Movie Review at http://hotx.com/joebob06-02-96/moviereview.html.