17/8/94
IT IS not long before a fledgling entrepreneur thinks about getting a good business card. You can use a program, from Windows Paint through to MicroGrafx Designer, to create the design.
Or you can scan images into your computer and use a word processor-desktop publishing program to cobble together various components.
If, however, you find your imagination cramped by your budget, one solution might be to download the 15,324 byte file AFCRD.ZIP from the CompuServe winshare forum's library 10.
This file contains what its creator claims to be a passport to eye-popping business cards, namely a Word 6.0 for Windows template.
Once in business, you will need to design a good shopfront. If you happen to have a computer hooked up to a large monitor, you might want to download a program called ArtShow 2.2 in library 10's 92,885 byte file, AS22P.ZIP, which displays your favorite .BMP files.
Features include scripts, a built-in script editor, mouse control, floating icon bar, full screen operation and textured backgrounds with color control.
And once the earnings start to pour in, you may need to update your home.
Design-A-Room, version 2.3, is in the winshare forum's library 10 in a 184,539 byte file, DES23.ZIP. This Windows "virtual reality" program allows you to draw a room, add furniture and fixtures to exact dimensions - then move the pieces around to your heart's content without leaving your chair.
You can move and resize the furniture, make any shape and size room, then print it out.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
10/8/94
POLITICIANS, particularly American ones, are among the world's keenest golfers. Sure, our own Bob Hawke made a gallant attempt to be recognised as a golfer on the global stage.
But it was undoubtedly pollies of the calibre of former US Vice-President Dan Quayle, who converted golf-driven diplomacy into an art form.
With such high political and business stakes riding on golf games, it is not surprising that the Americans should turn to computer enhancement of the game.
Thus, in CompuServe's winshare forum's library 10, you can find the 485,700 byte file, GHC31N.EXE, which contains Chris Bodine's Golf Handicapper. This program is a complete golf analysis tool that runs under Windows 3.1 and offers thousands of statistics such as NCGA handicaps, nine hole handicaps, putting analysis, driving analysis, greens hit in regulation and trend analysis for scoring.
It can track an unlimited number of golfers, courses and scores, offering bar graphs for course analysis in an intuitive user interface.
Download it now and you can be fully armed for the big summer golf season.
Meanwhile, you will probably want to keep an eye on those troubling calories that undermine even the most accomplished golfer's waistline.
The winshare forum's library 10 file, the 172,144 byte FCC11.ZIP, contains the trusty old weight watcher's aid, Fat and Cholesterol Counter for Windows.
This allows you to calculate and monitor the amount of fat, cholesterol, salt and calories in your diet.
You can estimate your risk of heart disease, identify foods with high fibre, or calculate your ideal weight, caloric need and caloric expenditure.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
3/8/94
WE ALL have lives that just keep getting busier. As you sweep through your frantic day, you likely get bombarded with information such as telephone numbers and dates.
You know the kind of conversation.
That crucial business contact finally sees the light: "Can you do lunch on August 2?"
Or that romantic possibility you've been angling for finally succumbs to your efforts: "OK, I'll give you my number. Do you have a pen?"
The traditional way of recording all this data is with a paper and pen. If you are lucky, and a bit of an obsessive, you keep a pen and notebook with you all the time. This technique has advantages and disadvantages.
For one thing it is easy to make a quick jot on your pad. But then you can lose the note, or forget to record it permanently. There is also the issue - once you get a big wad of papers stuffed in your pocket - of how to retrieve the information you want, quickly.
An increasing number of people are turning to electronic devices to keep track of information, particularly diary dates and phone numbers.
If you are tempted to entrust your information to a machine, you have two choices.
The first is to use a notebook computer. The advantage is that you can readily enter data on a full-size keyboard, see your data easily on a large, easy to read display (in color if you pay more), and enjoy the speed of what can now be a very powerful silicon chip.
The disadvantages are that you have a large, heavy object to cart around - one that will not fit in your pocket, even if it is one of the smaller notebook computers known as sub-notebooks. Further, even the most battery-efficient notebook computers will not provide a whole day's use.
Many people are turning to the pocket-sized Sharp Organizers, a range of tiny computers that offer powerful ways to keep track of your information in a container about the size of two slim cigarette packets.
The most powerful Sharp Organizers offer two ways to enter data. One is the keyboard, the other is the screen itself. With the keyboard, the process is the well understood traditional technique. You can punch the alphabetic and numeric keys to enter information just like on a typewriter or computer.
The screen is another technique for data entry. The screen is sensitive to touch so that you can enter information or change to views of different kinds of information by touching it or writing on it.
To change from one area of information to another (for example, from your schedule to your telephone numbers), touch the appropriate icon (in this example, a picture of a telephone) on the screen.
This can be done with either your fingernail or a small plastic pen provided with the Organizer.
Unlike the Apple Newton, which allows you to write information on its screen and converts your handwriting into typed text, the Organizer series only allows you to navigate around your information, or draw pictures, using the screen.
To enter a diary date, you would select the appropriate day using the pen on the screen, then hit the "new entry" key on the keyboard and key in your date. Likewise with a new contact's phone number.
The two kinds of data entry - screen and keyboard - are each suited to different needs. For example, when you enter a diary date, you can touch a time line on the screen to enter the start and end times of that diary entry. The information such as who you are meeting and where is best entered from the keyboard.
If you needed to draw a map, use the pen on the screen to select a data entry mode called "scrap book".
On a page of the scrap book, you can draw a picture such as a map in what is called "electronic ink". This picture can be attached to a diary date, kept in an appropriately named "folder" (containing information on a particular theme) or simply left in your scrap book for later retrieval.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Capture those images in a single grab
3/8/94
EVERY now and then you create something on your computer screen that is truly miraculous.
But if you can't record it, no one will believe it, right? It's like the computing equivalent of the fish that got away.
"Capture" programs let you "grab" an image that you see on your screen to show someone later.
One of many examples of such programs on CompuServe is GrabIt Pro, a 118,166 byte file called gpro41.zip in the winshare forum's library 10.
This program allows you to capture a screen's appearance directly to your printer.
Basically it achieves what the old DOS print screen used to do, but for Windows.
It offers image sizing and scaling and allows you to capture windows, menus, the desktop and selected areas of a window. It also has an "inverse option" for DOS screen captures.
Capturing a screen is all very well, but as you install your new commercially obtained and shareware programs into Windows, you may be more concerned to keep track of the (sometimes) sinister system changes that get made without consultation.
In library 10's 238,556 byte file, A430PC.ZIP, you will find the Software Manager, a program that provides three wizards to help you manage your computer system and application software.
It monitors processes such as installing or removing software, maintaining Windows initialisation (.INI) files and DOS configuration files (the autoexec.bat and config.sys).
It also creates comprehensive reports of changes made to your system during the processes.
But of course, software changes may not be the only source of concern. Perhaps roving fingers in your office are making the odd illicit foray into your system?
Library 10's 75,247 byte file, AMON10.ZIP, contains the Activity Monitor, a small utility which keeps an unobtrusive eye on your system, noting invisibly what happens to your programs while you're away from your computer.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Keeping bills down at the bar...
27/4/94
WE OFTEN assess programs and computer products that you can work with for years to come, improving your productivity and success in study, business and personal organisation.
But there are some programs which, rather than offer this broad assistance over a long period, are honed to do a specific task particularly possible.
The program's basic operation involves you compiling your financial records and recipts - just as you would for your accountant. You can also import data you may have entered into QuickTAX for last year's tax return.
THE program interviews you- that is, it takes you through an interview questioning process where you are asked about issues relevant to your income tax prepartion.
One reason many people still go to an accountant is beacuse they are afraid they may miss out on a deduction.
But this is unlikey with QuickTAX.
Advice in the online help is extremely clear.
Tax rates, rebates and other information can be obtained merely by clicking on a pull-down menu bar.
The program's help facilities can be interrogated directly for excellent coverage of recent tax changes in areas such as the abolition of the dependent spouse rebate, the new Medicare thresholds and car-parking coast as a deduction for those who are self-employed.
There is also assistance regarding when a deduction for clothing expenses will be allowed, the status of concessional tax treatment for unused long service leave, or how to calculate the amount of claim for your motor vehicle expenses.
Other areas include:
WHAT to do if you recieved a Government benefit.
HOW to tell if an activity will be considered a hobby or a business.
WHETHER you can claim child-minding expenses.
You are provided with a depreciation schedule for depreciation rates.
You are told, for instance how to classify directors' fees, circumstances in which entertainment expenses are allowable deductions, or, importantly for some Victorians, when gambling and betting wins will be taxable.
Students, for example, can find out how to handle their Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) payments.
On completing the interactive interview with reference to all this-in-built help, the program's auditor checks your tax return for contentious issues and points out responses that may trigger a desk-top audit.
The program allows you to attach notes to your tax return, explore "what if" scenarios to determine what will provide the optimum tax result, and give an estimate of the amount of refund due.
You can either print out your return, sign it and send if off in the normal mail, or lodge a return electronically at the National Lodgement Centre or any Post Office or participating Registered Tax Agent.
A PART from free-phone support, there is a 60-day money-back guarantee. QuickTAX for Windows, published and distributed by Reckon Software, is $59.95.
For more information, phone Intuit on 1800-974-888.
Some professionals (especially accountants) may feel threatened by programs such as QuickTAX.
However, other professionals are improving their client service by embracing computer technology.
Two products, Solicitor's Companion and Counsellor's Companion, for Macs and Microsoft Windows, help solicitors and barristers keep track of their legal work.
For more details, phone David Lewis on (02) 262-2255 or (02) 357-4777.
Barristers are helped to prepare briefs, keep track of expenses, render accounts for fees and improve debt collection. They can quickly and easily get vital information such as the complete financial position relating to any brief, and a profit and loss account for a complete financial year.
This kind of electronic assistance will increasingly become a key part of the modern professional's life.
Not only does Solicitor's Companion allow you to pursue flexible client marketing options, but programs also interface with fax modems.
You can then send accounts or marketing letters instantaneously.
All businesses can cite bad or lazy debtors.
These programs, for example, perpare reminders to aged debtors either automatically or, if desired, tailormade for added finesse.
Such programs are being hooked up to voice recognition software to create integrated voice, accounting and matter management.
But taken as a whole, this kind of software represents a broad model of computer efficiency and productivity that soon will leap to your profession or trade as well.
It is well worth exploring.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
27/7/94
IF you're a child who is curious about computer programming (or a parent who wants their child to know), a good start can be to download from CompuServe's winshare forum's library 10, the 74,583-byte file Kslog1.zip, which has KiwiSoft Logo v1.2a.
Logo is an easy introduction to basic programming. Kiwisoft Logo includes a tutorial to help get you started and full on-line instructions.
It allows drawings to be created (and printed) using simple logo commands. It also allows continuation of command execution even when commands are used improperly.
Feel that you've been there, done that? Why not explore modern marketing techniques. Winshare forum's library 10 file, the 180,057-byte Admake.zip, contains OsoSoft's AdMaker 3.5 - a program for creating professional advertisement lay-outs.
AdMaker 3.5 can create camera-ready ad lay-outs using True Type and ATM fonts, .bmp and .pcx clip art, and line drawing tools.
It can handle lay-outs up to 19 x 24cm, rotate text, position text with point-and-click, put graphics in the background and insert special characters.
Want to make a shopfront stand out? Consider library 10's 60,875-byte file, Atentn.exe, which has Attention for Windows v4.0. This is a neat presentation program designed to display moving text messages.
It automatically resizes type to fit within borders, uses bitmap files as backgrounds, and creates beautiful gradient fills.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on CompuServe at 100033,3457.
20/7/94
AN INCREASING number of programs, especially from Microsoft, pop up an initial bit of information when you fire them up.
Usually, this is advice designed to help you use software more efficiently.
With the newly-released Microsoft Bookshelf 1994, however, this information is simply a quote that will come on your screen, for example, whenever you fire up Word for Windows.
Computer users are divided on the desirability of this trend.
Of course, you can switch it off. But maybe you'll miss a key tip.
If you have become a random-tip junkie, you can try out WynSage v2.0.
This program, contained in the 37,087 byte file, wynsag.zip, in CompuServe's winshare forum's library 10, offers a variety of quick quotes and wise sayings to start your day.
You can use it at boot up or whenever you need fast "Sage Advice".
You can configure the screen position, colors, 3D-Text or copy your quote to the Windows clipboard.
If that's not enough, try breaking down quotes into individual words.
The 507,197 byte library 10 file, wtwin.zip, contains Word Treasure for Windows, offers 500 college level words, each one with its pronunciation.
The aim, of course, is to increase your vocabulary.
Why this should be more efficient than simply opening a dictionary is unclear. Perhaps the pop-up timer is supposed to make a difference.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
A pair of inspired thinkers...
20/7/94
A pair of inspired thinkers...
WAITING for a knockout idea? Some people say you should just "hit the sack". The best ideas, they argue, pop from the subconscious in the dead of the night.
Others prefer brainstorming with a group revving on coffee. Bouncing ideas off others can evoke your own most productive moments.
Some people argue the human mind works much faster, and in more mysterious ways, than any computer.
These folks reject the computer as an intelligent assistant - too slow, too clumsy and too limiting, they say.
Those who have some computing experience know how to keep these claims in perspective.
They know the computer is just another tool in the quest towards better ideas. And they know that the worth of a computer in any job, especially the challenge of helping you get ideas, depends on how good your software is.
Today we look at two outstanding software products designed to help generate ideas.
The first is available to any CompuServe member merely for the cost of a download and represents excellent value.
The 150,467 byte file, VISUAL.ZIP, in the Winshare forum's library 12, contains the program, VisualOutliner.
This is a Windows program that helps you create what it calls "mindmaps" - visual representations of ideas where the ideas are small boxes of text linked by lines to form idea trees.
VisualOutliner allows you to directly manipulate mindmaps with the mouse on screen, drawing new lines to connect ideas or inserting and moving groups of connected ideas using the mouse to click and drag.
Each line emanating from a central point has text running along it. These are your basic ideas. Longer notes can be added.
The on-screen pointer looks like a fountain pen. One click and a new branch of your idea tree appears, linked to the branch closest to the pen.
Move the pen close to a branch and it changes shape to a pointing hand which allows you to move a branch in any direction, shorten or lengthen it.
If you use the hand to shorten the branch, the hand turns into the shape of an eraser to "rub out" lines.
If you find intriguing either VisualOutliner or merely the idea it represents, you will want to try the Rolls-Royce of idea mapping programs, Inspiration 4.0.
The real challenge of an idea-generation program is quickly and easily to help you get your ideas into a form that can be communicated to other people.
Inspiration is the market-leader in this quest.
It is an elegant means by which you can enter information and make updates, either to text or to the way in which that text is organised in diagrams such as flow charts.
Inspiration was previously only available to those with a Macintosh computer.
Now an almost-identical version released for PCs using Microsoft Windows costs $199 until December, or $399 after that.
Inspiration will convert outlines into good-looking flow diagrams automatically. Alternatively, it will convert a quickly-drawn flow diagram into a neat outline.
Inspiration is specially designed for what its writers call "thinking in real-time right on the computer". The sort of feature they have in mind is Rapid Fire.
With a pencil and paper you might jot down ideas, each in its own circle and connect circles with lines.
With Rapid Fire, you type ideas on your computer screen as quickly as they occur, and Inspiration automatically puts each idea in its own circle (or other visual symbol of your choice) and links those symbols into a visual format.
This allows users to quickly type related ideas into a diagram which can be updated and re-arranged by dragging shapes around the screen with a mouse.
You don't even need to worry about shapes.
It is possible to simply click anywhere on you computer screen and start typing.
Inspiration will pop a symbol around your just-entered idea to hold it until you are ready to connect it up with the rest of your ideas.
For inquiries, contact Mark Daley at Conexus on (02) 975-2799.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Tips to complete the picture...
13/7/94
THE computer can help present ideas with style and impact. Last week we looked at general techniques to turn a vague idea into an unforgettable presentation.
Now we will look in detail at programs which can help you.
Microsoft's PowerPoint is a presentation graphics program which is designed to put your ideas in overhead presentations, 35mm slides or on-screen presentations.
Putting your ideas into these forms will help your audience understand the thrust of your message as you talk. But PowerPoint goes further and allows you to swiftly and easily produce paper-based aids such as speaker's notes, outline pages and other kinds of audience handouts.
POWERPOINT offers many features but here are some which you may like particularly:
IF you understand other Microsoft programs such as Word for Windows 6.0, you will be well on the way to understanding PowerPoint.
This is particularly so in areas such as the Outliner where initially you jot down ideas. It extends through most of the menus, commands and dialogue boxes.
THE excellent "help" facility includes an informative Quick Preview to demonstrate program features when you first start it.
IN a hurry to create a presentation? The PowerPoint Wizard (a kind of automated personal tutor) will whisk you through the process.
Wizards are designed for common jobs like selling a product, recommending a strategy or communicating bad news.
Wizards also help create a "look" or "style" for the presentation so that you don't need to spend too much time selecting aesthetic characteristics.
YOU can see slides in well thought out ways, such as "slide sorter view", which shows a miniature of each slide, allowing you to check your presentation flow; and "notes pages view", which lets you make your own notes to go with each slide your audience will see.
AN on-screen presentation with PowerPoint looks great. Colors are consistent and your choices for "transitions" between slides are both numerous and impressive.
What does "transition" mean? Just as scenes in a movie can be linked by shots such as a "dissolve" or "fade to black", so can slides.
While you don't want your audience's attention to be overly focused on the fascinating way one slide becomes the next, stylish transitions are an important part of making your presentation look as professional looking as possible.
Of course you need a computer monitor to give an on-screen presentation. This can be inconvenient.
But if you are lucky enough to have one on hand - and it has a large enough screen - it has several advantages over an overhead display.
Your room doesn't need to be as dark. You can annotate the slides as you present them, using your mouse.
Movies and sounds can be played during the slide show. Information such as a spreadsheet can be embedded in the slide and opened during the slide show.
POWERPOINT comes with a useful collection of clip art drawings and pictures which can be easily pasted into your presentation for humorous and other effects.
INFORMATION such as outlines can be easily shared between PowerPoint and Microsoft Word 6.0.
So far we have looked at some of the ways in which computers can add punch to your rhetorical and visual techniques.
THERE will never be a substitute for knowing your material and presenting it with theatrical fluorish.
But the business world in particular now expects speakers to use these new-fangled lecture aids. If you must adapt to these heightened expectations, PowerPoint is an excellent choice.
But software writers have been busy at the other end of the creative spectrum as well.
While PowerPoint focuses on packaging your ideas in the most digestible form for an audience, other programs specialise in getting ideas in the first place.
Those suspicious of technology may well laugh at this point. Perhaps, if you are one such person, occasionally you have looked at computers over the years and found them too slow and complex.
If a machine needs weeks to master and makes you feel alienated and confused, how can it increase your productivity, let alone suggest a valuable idea?
Well, computer power and software writing maturity have both reached the point where you should reconsider that (arguably out-of-date) viewpoint.
A new generation of programs called brainstormers aim to catalogue more and better ideas as you go to work on a project.
In coming weeks we will examine a commercially available brainstorming program called Inspiration.
Inspiration has been a treasure only available for Macintosh users but now a new release for Microsoft Windows will allow many more to take advantage of its remarkable powers.
We will also look at a thesaurus for ideas called Idea- Fisher for Windows.
If you don't believe the computer is much more than a glorified typewriter, such programs may convince you that human creativity is being transformed at the most basic levels.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
13/7/94
THE graphic user interface isn't just good for presentations. It also makes project management much easier.
In CompuServe's Winshare forum's library 10, the 184,832-byte file AMAIN.ZIP contains the MainLine Project Management Software Rev 2.2.
MainLine Project Management helps you develop project Gantt or PERT charts with easy data entry. It can handle up to 150 tasks or milestones of up to five years duration.
It simplifies large projects and offers a compact text output suitable for presentations as well as a degree of compatibility with electronic mail and word processors.
A class of students is a defined project which must be managed by teachers.
Winshare forum's library 10 also contains the 414,517 byte file, GB303.EXE. It contains GradeBook for Windows 3.03.
This offers multiple subject report cards, a test generator, multi-subject and multi-period reports, report cards, mailing labels, reusable lesson plans and more seating charts, form letters, a student database (Access) and class calendar schedule.
It can also directly export to Word, Excel, Lotus and Word Perfect.
Want a generic chartmaker? Consider library 10's 83,051 byte file, POPCHT.ZIP. It has Pop Charts! Public Editor v1.0.
This is a quick and easy charting and presentation graphics tool which can display line graphs, point graphs and bar graphs.
Novelty styles include stacked coins, ladders and pyramids.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
6/7/94
HAVING a good idea is only half the battle. The next challenge is to communicate the idea so that your audience does not merely stay awake but also leaves the meeting, seminar or conference exhilarated by your efforts.
The computer is not just a typewriter.
Sure, it can help you write documents free of spelling mistakes and poor grammar.
It allows easy updating of documents. And it helps you include pictures and other kinds of information with your text.
But the computer can go still further and help you punch home your work with the greatest possible impact.
One example is Microsoft's program, PowerPoint.
PowerPoint is called a "presentation graphics software package".
Your attempt to communicate effectively during a presentation - be it to class mates or potential business clients - can be improved by using all kinds of presentation aids. POWERPOINT helps produce these, quickly and easily. Examples? You can create a handout on paper which summarises what you are saying.
Your listeners can take this away with them and refer to it as a permanent record of what you have told them.
Of course, you are the most important thing about your presentation.
If you are not a good orator, with clear articulation and expressive hand movements, you will never keep an audience in your palm no matter what artificial techniques you use.
But that said, assuming your own performance is polished, you can keep people's attention better by referring to overhead slides or presentations on your computer screen.
An overhead slide is put by an overhead projector's beam of light onto a white screen above and in front of your audience.
Your computer screen may not be as easily visible as the elevated screen, but has the advantage of offering various special effects.
Whichever method you use, your presentation on the computer screen or overhead screen can be keyed into your paper-based handout so that an audience member who does not like looking at a computer monitor or faraway overhead screen, can follow your presentation on paper instead.
Next week, we'll look more closely at how Microsoft PowerPoint helps you do these things.
For now, we concentrate on the threshold issue of whether organising your information in this way really does improve your ability to communicate. It has to be acknowledged that people's attention span has decreased.
One important plus for using these kinds of learning aids is that they help you keep people focused on your message.
Even if your audience didn't understand what you were saying at the time, they will walk out of the room with textual information that will help them follow up the points later.
Condensing core points into written form that can be seen by your audience as well as you, also helps you stay on the subject rather than amble into interesting side-issues.
If you are a nervous public speaker, you may have difficulty getting across good jokes.
One advantage of having electronic support is that you can select, for example, pictures, which make a humorous point for you.
Honing information into compact points also helps you structure the information into bite-size chunks, and, as you give your presentation, assess how quickly you are running out of time.
Finally, a visual representation of your speech helps people see the "big picture" - that is, how all the details you have presented fit together. IN complex presentations, you usually start at a general level and "zoom in" to the details.
But no less important is to finish your presentation by zooming out again, to once more return to the broad propositions which were your initial departure point.
This can give your audience a perspective on the information based on their now more informed understanding of the area - which hopefully reflects your own, or at least the position you are urging them to take.
If making a presentation using a computer screen on which you have created a summary of each part of your speech, draw attention to key points by pointing with the mouse.
With PowerPoint, you use one mouse button to move backward and forwards through your screenfulls of information.
The other mouse button you can use to draw on the screen - words and other data - can be emphasised by underlining, circling, or whatever.
Assuming you decide to make a presentation to your office and you want to use the on-screen power of your presentation program, how will your audience see it if you do not have a very big computer screen?
One solution is to fetch a whole lot of normal sized computer monitors from around your office or school, then plug them all into your computer. This is done with a small box known as a video splitter (which can be obtained from Micronica on 699 8844 for about $370).
Each monitor plugs into the video splitter, which is then plugged into your computer VGA plug.
Up to four monitors can then show the same information simultaneously.
If you arrange these monitors around the room, your audience can cluster around them in small groups - the method is ideal for about 20 people.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
6/7/94
A new world of learning...
IF YOU spent your childhood watching the American TV series Lost In Space, you may remember the episode where Will Robinson has special futuristic lessons on a computer.
The problem is the lesson goes so fast even Robot would be left behind.
Will can't understand - he feels like the "booby" Dr Smith always brands his babysitter.
In Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World, citizens learn by repeating key details countless times between certain ages.
Computerised learning by repetition has now been picked up in the United States by those who write shareware programs for CompuServe libraries.
One example: Winshare forum's library 10's 839,664 byte file, DC21.ZIP. This compressed file (use your PKunzip utility) contains DigiCard for Windows 2.1, a learning tool with flash cards to aid memorisation.
The claim is that you can master professional and academic materials fast. There is a tutorial, extensive context-sensitive help, and integrated editor and viewer.
But you need Library 10's DC21U.ZIP as well, which upgrades the original program, offering automatic presentation, undo typing, font support and network access.
Similar offerings include the 161,149 byte Winshare library 10 file, FLASH.ZIP, with Windows Flashcard Program. It has TrueType fonts, colors, .BMP graphics, WAV sounds and a "Priority Questions From History" mode.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Paying lip service to a machine...
29/6/94
Paying lip service to a machine...
ONE of the most exciting and amazing things about computers is the way they allow you to use sound and video in your communication with people around the world.
Using a shareware program such as Internet VoiceChat, you can literally talk to anyone else running that program, anywhere in the world, for the cost of a local telephone call.
You will need a reasonably powerful Windows PC, a SLIP connection to the Internet, and to have downloaded a file called IVC10.ZIP from any one of various sites around the planet.
But, after that, talk on . . .
If, however, you are more interested in writing documents on your computer than using it to talk to people, you should definitely consider a remarkable new product called DragonDictate.
This is an MS-DOS program (the Windows version is expected later this year) and sound card which can cost as low as $1587 but which enable you to talk to your computer and see your words materialise as text on the computer screen.
After installing the software on your hard disk and a sound card into a slot inside your PC, you plug a microphone headset into the sound card.
DragonDictate can be turned on and off via the keyboard or your voice.
Once activated, the words you utter - up to 65 words a minute - are converted into screen text if they are recognised from the program's dictionary.
The $1587 vocabulary (5000 words in RAM and 110,000 more on disk) is just the start. You can add your own words, or buy much larger vocabulary banks. DragonDictate can't handle free flowing or so-called "continuous" speech, so you can't speak at machine gun-rate.
But if you pause for about one-tenth of a second between words it is quite happy.
You can, however, train it to recognise phrases you use often.
It could be somebody's name or something such as "theHeraldandWeeklyTimes".
Everytime you utter a word, the program inserts into your word processor the word it thinks you said.
This is usually the correct word.
However, just in case it has misrecognised the word, it also shows a list of similar sounding words.
You can select from this list, either by voice or keyboard, the correct word.
You can enter punctuation as well, just by speaking it.
You can also give your computer commands by voice.
Such a command might be to save or print a file, or fire up a macro (a pre-configured series of commands).
But you will need to use a word processor (such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect) which is supported by DragonDictate.
DragonDictate requires a fairly muscular computer.
It prefers a 486 33Mhz or better PC (although it will work on a 386), and needs a minimum of 8MB of RAM and 19MB of hard disk space.
If your notebook has a standard size expansion slot, it will work on that too.
DragonDictate can constantly learn any new words you say, and in the first hours (or even days and weeks) of use, you create personal voice files that improve its recognition capabilities.
Gradually, and especially if you do a lot of work with a standard vocabulary, you can obtain a satisfying level of recognition.
With similar sounding words, DragonDictate makes decisions based on probability and context.
For example, when you say "period" it will usually offer a full stop.
But if you wanted the word instead of the punctuation, you could simply select it from the pop-up list.
DragonDictate also allows you to program in changes to its "first choice" selection habits so that it would select the word "period" first up, rather than the punctuation.
DragonDictate would be especially useful for people with poor keyboard skills or those who have difficulty with spelling.
Even if you are a touch typist, you will find it a useful and fascinating new phase of your life with the computer. FOR more details, contact Richard Foley, John Burgess or Catelyn Hearne of Austcript. Tel: 672-5621 or 672-5619.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au
29/6/94
DESIGN STYLISH CURSORS
A REAL little shareware beauty is CompuServe's Winshare library 10's 76,507 byte file, MW21.ZIP, which contains Mouse Warp 2.1, a custom cursor-design program.
Mouse Warp will change your cursor to be more visible, or let you choose a novelty cursor such as a hand (or even design your own cursors).
A particularly nice object is a stylish replacement for the Windows hourglass that shows up when Windows is busy with an operation.
Mouse Wrap makes the cursor pop up on the other side of the screen if you move it out of view.
You can also assign useful functions to mouse buttons, use Windows from the keyboard alone, easily navigate dialogue boxes with a QuickPoint feature and keep track of the date, time and resources with a handy desktop display.
But if you're tired of jiggling your system, go into global publishing.
One resourceful writer has put the first half of a sci-fi novel into library 10 in the 215,469 byte file TRATOR.ZIP.
The novel is titled The Penetrators, and is a sequel to Jurassic Park. If you like Part 1, Part 2 can be purchased by credit card or cheque for $US10.
Winshare library 10's 490,508 byte file, DTSW.ZIP, has dtSearch 3.0 for Windows, which is a fast, powerful, easy to use text retrieval program for all major word processors.
It offers fuzzy and phonic searching, a scrolling word list, a search history, fast indexing and searching and can handle documents of unlimited size.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au
22/6/94
REALITY ALMOST OUT OF THE BOX
VIRTUAL Reality gets a lot of media coverage nowadays. It's the idea of a "reality" created by computer that simulates a convincing, three-dimensional experience.
The idea shot to cult status in the '80s after science-fiction writer William Gibson's novel, Neuromancer, coined the word "cyberspace" and became the bible of "cyberpunks" worldwide.
A good TV example of what virtual reality may be like in future is the Holodeck on Star Trek - The Next Generation - a computer-generated recreational area on the Starship Enterprise which can conjure any imaginable fantasy landscape or people.
You can rent Wild Palms from most video shops, an Oliver Stone produced US TV mini-series (not yet shown on TV here) which paints a chilling portrait of how virtual reality may become an instrument for political power broking in the near future.
And, of course, there is Sylvester Stallone's memorable virtual sex scene in the film Demolition Man or the nightmarish episodes in the movie Lawnmower Man.
Unfortunately, if you're accustomed to the science fiction version, virtual reality as you can conjure it via your home computer will be a sharp disappointment.
However, the commercially available versions are fascinating and offer a tantalising glimpse of VR's future potential.
A good example is Virtus VR, which promises virtual reality for both the Windows PC and Macintosh desktops.
This program fires up with three main window areas. The most important and interesting allows you to walk through a virtual world, either one supplied with the program or created from scratch by you.
A virtual world means, for example, you might see a truck moving along a strip of road on a paddock floating in cyberspace. Imagine your point of view is like a camera suspended in midair.
Your mouse buttons (all three if you have that many) can move the camera.
One button moves it towards or away from objects and from side to side. Another mouse button tilts the camera to the side or up and down.
The third mouse button moves the camera up or down, and left or right.
By holding down the appropriate mouse buttons you can navigate your point of view camera around the virtual world.
Once you get the hang of it, that might mean you can actually move UNDER the truck and look at it from beneath.
But what really blows your mind is when you discover you can even move through the truck (or any other object in your cyberlandscape) and look INSIDE it.
The program comes with numerous shapes, people, pieces of furniture and so on which can be selected and inspected from any angle in a second window.
A third window allows you to import these objects with a simple drag and drop procedure, into your virtual world - then reshape or otherwise reorient them.
Although these objects are fairly crudely drawn (the quality is far from realistic), Virtus VR will ensnare you in hours of experimentation - even if computer games usually don't interest you.
You can also buy add-on modules for themes such as science fiction, home design, archaeology, office space and modern architecture.
But be warned. Unless you want the navigation around your virtual world to proceed at a snail's pace, you need a very powerful computer.
The manufacturer's recommended configuration in the PC world, for example, is an 80486-based PC and 8MB plus of RAM.
The review machine was a 486 DX2 66Mh with 16MB of RAM - and even the performance obtained with that level of hardware was rudimentary. VIRTUAL VR is available through Amitron. For more details, phone 764-8944.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
22/6/94
KEEP GOOD KENNEL RECORDS
IF YOU are hunkering down to some winter hobbies, remember that CompuServe's libraries hold a wealth of programs that might be of use.
If you're a fan of humanity's best friend, the Winshare library 10's 1,480,888 byte file, PEDIGR.ZIP, has a full version of Pedigree for Windows.
You can keep thorough data records for dog pedigrees, vet records, dog shows results, vaccination schedules, awards and so on.
Pedigree for Windows, a $20 shareware program, prints spectacular forms and is a fine, inexpensive way for professional and hobby breeders to completely maintain their kennel records in one integrated package. It's certainly cheaper than a ski holiday, anyway.
In the same library 10, you can also hobby along with Track It Coins for Windows v1.01 which lets you enter the Face Value, Market Value, Year Minted, Mint, Mark, Quantity, Comments and so on, relating to your coin collection.
Another file, TKB101.ZIP, lets you track, organise and catalog your book collection in the same way.
As you stretch out by the fire, create your own categories and personal rating lists. The program also includes an advanced search facility for tracking down exactly what you want from your collection. You can also create various reports, sorted by title, category, rating or year that the book was published.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
15/6/94
TOTALLY INTELLIGENT RETRIEVAL
FINDING vital information in a mountain of data is increasingly important with the arrival of electronic mail and large databases.
Even finding a key passage in a letter, memo or essay can be difficult if you have accumulated text over many years.
Last Wednesday's report about Melbourne barrister Mr Chris Priestley's new information management program, Total Research, showed how information can be presented in the most useful manner and fed into a database for intelligent retrieval purposes.
Connecting key parts of a large amount of text to a database is the electronic equivalent of putting a yellow paper PostIt note in a transcript.
Total Research is not the best program available for searching your hard disk to find a lost file.
However, for searching, say, 10MB of data and making sense of it, the program is ideal.
One difference between Total Research and an excellent text retrieval such as Isys for Windows is that Isys creates a large, separate index of the text files you want to search.
This process can be time-consuming and the index files may be very large.
Unlike Total Research, Isys creates an index, Isys searches are faster.
The latest version of Isys, 3.1b, will also read WordPerfect 6.0, Word for Windows 6.0 and dBase IV files, work smoothly with files compressed using PK Zip 2.0 and consume less memory.
It comes, too, with a macro for calling up Isys from within WordPerfect for Windows 5.1, 5.2 and 6.0 and Word for Windows 6.0.
Isys is now faster to open and to browse documents residing in DOS directories that contain thousands of files.
Double-clicking on what looks like a file name within a browsed document will now activate it through its file manager association.
Importantly, notebook computer users who are on a local area network can have a local Isys database which travels with the notebook and then hook up to the office networked Isys database without either technical or licensing problems.
Isys costs $525 for a stand-alone version. For more details, phone (02) 439 5800.
The Windows version of Total Research (due out in August) will work in conjunction with Isys.
A user can choose the interface best suited to a given job.
If finding context around a search word and then managing the information is most important, you would use Total Research.
If keying in a complex search formulation and speed of retrieval is most important, you would use Isys.
It will soon be possible to obtain electronic transcript of proceedings in court on a computer back in your office, virtually at the same time the words are uttered in court.
Mr Priestley's new program, LexTerm, captures the transcript as it pours into your computer via a telephone connection.
It allows you to search and index the text with a program such as Total Research.
From August, Mr Priestley will also sell a hypertext linking program called HyperTED (the hypertext editor).
It will enable you to call up a file (perhaps using Total Research), click on a word or phrase, and link it to another word or phrase, sound or picture.
Jumping from one linked object to another is instant and very easy.
Even if you later rename a target link and further, perhaps, move it to another location on your computer's hard disk, HyperTED will still find it.
Mr Priestley also offers a Macintosh program called Unique, which creates an index for a hard-copy transcript.
The program will go to work on an electronic transcript.
It will provide an index that can be stuck into the front of the hard copy index.
You start with a "noise" list of words that are not interesting to you. Then you drop the transcript on to the Unique program icon and Unique processes the transcript automatically.
The program is specially designed so that people who don't like computers can look up a word in terms of the page and line it exists on in the paper transcript.
In contrast, another Priestley program called Keyword can be configured for a list of words you are interested in. FOR more information on Total Research ($600) and other Priestley products, phone 642-4022.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
15/6/94
TALKING OUR LINGO
WE HAVE reviewed various commercially-available programs for translating foreign languages into English (and vice versa) during the past year.
There are also shareware programs you can try.
In Compuserve's Winshare forum's library 10, the 324,936 byte file, DICT.ZIP, contains the Popup Dictionary for Windows, version 1.03.
This lets you type in a word or import a word via the Windows clipboard for translation into German.
The program shows the two words - in English and German.
Sides can be changed to show the German word first, then the English translation. Found words can be copied into the Windows Clipboard.
Also in Winshare's library 10 is the 570,745 byte file, KH2A.ZIP, which has a Cambodian (Khmer) Lesson (1 of 4).
This program provides computer-assisted multimedia learning as a Windows 3.1 application.
A Windows 3.1 application, it requires a minimum four megabytes of RAM, 10 megabytes of hard disk and a sound card compatble with MPC.
Vacation Dreamer is a multimedia travel guide and vacation planning software product which includes overviews, detailed information and hundreds of full-color super VGA pictures on vacation hotspots in the US, Hawaii, the Caribbean and Mexico.
Top attractions, hotels, and cruises are included.
VACATN.ZIP is a functional demo of Vacation Dreamer which includes an overview of locations available.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
8/6/94
SIMPLY SEARCHING FOR WORDS
WORD processing is one of the most common computer uses. Soon you find all those essays, letters and memos - not to mention a torrent of incoming electronic mail - become unmanageable.
The solution?
Melbourne lawyer and computer programmer Chris Priestley has developed an exciting new program, Total Research, which should be of enormous help to people who need to find textual needles in data haystacks. There are one or two basic concepts that should be understood about text retrieval.
There are two basic search methods used by text retrieval programs: indexed searches and free form searches. Programs that use an indexed search create an index on disk to assist subsequent searches. Programs using the free form method simply move through files real time when conducting a search.
We will soon review a new version of Isys for Windows, a text retrieval program which analyses all the text you wish to navigate and creates indexes of the words in those files.
This method means that searches are fast. However, creating the indexes can take a long time for large amounts of text.
Other programs, such as Gopher and Retrieve It, use a free form text retrieval engine - that is, they do not makes an index.
There is a fully indexed text retrieval engine on the Mac. It is called Sonar Pro. It is also available for Windows. It is not particularly fast for an indexed search engine, but it does have a fairly simple interface.
Also there is On Location - but this only gives a pointer to a file, not the location of text in a file.
With Mr Priestley's Total Research, no indexes are created. Searches take slightly longer, however, there are numerous other advantages.
These relate to the program's interface with the user. Importantly, Total Research does a search and presents you with matches it finds, in context.
A word by itself is useless. Nor do you really want to know how many matches there are. Context, for most ordinary text retrieval needs, is all-important.
In Total Research, the key search word you are seeking appears vertically aligned in the centre of the screen - or on a marker which can be moved horizontally across the screen to show more contextual informati both before and after the search target.
Isys does much the same thing but Total Research relies on a user typing in less complicated search strings and when a context list appears, the maximum information is presented in the most useable manner.
Mr Priestley said: "I think the most powerful text retrieval combination is not the computer alone but in combination with the pattern-matching or relevance-matching of your brain.
"When Total Research presents you with a list of matches in context, you can scan the lines and see which ones are relevant to you."
With Total Research, you read context lines, then after selecting one that seems relevant, double-click on it.
That calls up the full text version in a separate window, centred on that particular match.
That is, you can jump into the list at any point rather than stepping through the matches in a linear fashion. The next key step is what to do with the text once you have it. Total Research is not just text retrieval but a complete information management system.
You select a portion of the found text by running the mouse over it, then click on an option, "append", at the bottom of the text screen.
Your chosen text can be sent either to a text file or automatically catalogued in a database record.
In the file option, the text is included in the file, then the full path to the file that the text came from.
Particularly useful for lawyers is the fact that the page number of any transcript can also be stored.
In the database option, Filemaker Pro on the Macintosh (which allows up to 64 pages of text in one data field) can record the full path back to the file, the transcript page number, the text you selected, an extra field for comments and a topic field which is a pop up list that the user can define.
A list for lawyers might include exhibits, rulings, discussions, witness names and issues in the case.
Using the power of the database, you can collect together notes relating to the same topic.
For example, lawyers could order the computer to give them every note ever made on case exhibits, sort them by date and put them together in a report.
Making a record in a database is similar to making a bookmark back into original source material. Database records can be traced to the original source location file via hypertext links.
The database structure so created, adds value to your work by making links between database records and the original source material automatically - without further typing.
You focus on research. The program does the work. Sounds good eh? FOR details about Total Research ($600), call LAW2000 on 642-4022. Chris Priestley via e-mail is: chriswoody.apana.org.au.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
8/6/94
DESIGN A NEW LOUNGE
IF YOU are thinking about improving your home, there are many programs available on Compuserve which may help.
In the Winshare forum's library 10 you'll find the 143,363 byte, $US25 shareware file, BOXPLT.ZIP.
This contains a Windows program, Boxplot 2.0, for designing speakers in your stereo system.
It helps you design speaker enclosures for sealed or vented boxes by showing the frequency response and power handling. Its writer says his program is good for home or car stereo buffs looking for good bass response.
In the same library, the 184,539 byte file, DES23.ZIP, contains Design-A-Room (version 2.3), which helps you draw a room on your computer, add furniture and fixtures and arrange the pieces - without leaving your chair.
It comes loaded with 17 different fixtures and 31 furniture pieces.
The Windows 3.1 version can deal with larger rooms and has cut-and-paste functions for any item.
Finally, you might like to try the same library's 235,520 byte, $US15-25 shareware file, GCAD.ZIP, which contains a program called GammaCAD 1.10.
This claims to be a full-featured CAD program for Windows 3.1 which provides a wide range of functions in an easy-to-use package.
Drawing elements include lines, arcs, circles, points and text. Edit options include cut, copy, paste, rotate, scale and undo.
Line properties such as dash, dot, width and color can be set. There is also full text font control, on-line help, zoom and pan.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
1/6/94
PEER TO PEER PRESSURE POINTS
THE kind of computer network in which each connected computer has equal access to resources is called "peer to peer".
The advantages of this kind of network have been described here recently, but it is certainly not the only type of network available.
Although a peer to peer Ethernet network is possibly the best kind of network for homes and small businesses, it is unquestionably cheaper to hook together two computers through a program such as Brooklyn Bridge, the shareware program $25 Network, or Microsoft's DOS 6 file transfer utility.
This kind of connection is made via the serial (or parallel) ports at the rear of the computers to be linked and transfer rate is about the speed of a floppy disk.
Such a network solution offers slow but reliable data transfers and sharing and it is a good taste of networking.
Another alternative to a peer to peer network is the most common kind: a file server network.
The main reason for a computer network in business is usually to share data.
For example, you may need to look at the quotation from someone within your organisation or, if you have two people writing invoices, invoice numbers must run consecutively.
One solution is to simply throw a floppy disk across the room or yell out what invoice number was used.
Another choice is a central processing computer.
Geographically separate people will each work at computer terminals linked to the central computer via cables.
These terminals may just be dumb with no hard disk or Central Processing Unit (chip), and rely on the central computer for almost everything.
As more people launch processor-intensive tasks, the processing slows down.
A similar, but now more common solution, is where information will be stored in the hard disk of a central computer - the file server.
All the workstations linked to that server will be able to access a single copy of a centrally stored and shared version of the information.
Unlike in the mainframe model, with a file server arrangement processing power is spread among your users instead of centralised. Thus, the network doesn't slow down as much just because someone is doing a particularly processor intensive job.
The primary function of a file server is to send files to users.
It doesn't do any real processing.
Usually the work stations are PCs, connected via coaxial cable (similar to that which runs from antennae to your TV) or twisted pair telephone-type cable which provide the 10MB a second Ethernet data transmission standard.
In addition, there are ways of connecting to all networks via a modem from a remote location such as your home.
It is worth noting that with a file server network, if a workstation does a big database search, all the data is transmitted across the network and other people who want to get a file from the centralised file server get slowed down.
The client/server configuration is a variation on the file server theme in which a computer physically close to the server performs the searching of the information and transfers only wanted information across the network.
Thus network traffic is reduced and overall network performance is undegraded.
Not many software applications can provide this, but examples are Oracle, Ingres (a database system) and Microsoft Access (acting as a front end to the Microsoft SQL server, another client/server based database application).
The disadvantage, if any, of a peer to peer network is that it may slow down when each work station, apart from doing its own work, has to serve files to others on the network and give access to a local printer if a person elsewhere wants to use it.
For business, a file-server model aims to ensure data consistency so that every part of the business knows about things done by the other parts.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
25/5/94
JOIN THE RUSH TO NETWORK
A COMPUTER network is an expensive way to let everyone's computer easily use scarce or costly resources.
With a network, a printer or CD-ROM that may be physically proximate to just one computer on the network, is available to all.
A network also makes the most of hard disk space by allowing computers to share programs that need only be installed on one computer in the network.
Novell's Personal Net-Ware ($135 a computer) is a good example of the peer to peer network described last week, in which each computer con have equal access on the network to every other computer's hard disk and attaached devices.
If existing hardware is not too complex, Personal Net- Ware is easy to install.
But if you run SCSI chains off any of the computers you propose to network, you wiil need to ensure that your devise drivers (in the config.sys) are loaded in the correct order. Also, if you load many TSR programs, you must ensure that you load as many into high memory as possible.
Striking a perfect combination of drivers in your config.sys can often be obtained only by trial and error or by long experience.
If your system is complex, you may need to invest long effort - or you cann consult an expert like Edward Jozis (tel. 699-8844).
The orders in which drivers are loaded is important because unless you arrange them properly, either the network or your SCSI devices or both, may not operate.
Alternatively, even if they do work, there may be insufficient conventional memory remaining to run certain DOS programs (especially games). Even windows may baulk and tell you there is not enough memory to run the programs.
Remember that this type of problem is a DOS issue, and ironically, partly independent of the overall amount of RAM installed in your computer.
Even computers with eight, 16 or more megabytes of RAM can return this insufficient memory message because the key issue is how much conventional memory is available in the crucial 640K memory zone that DOS runs programs in.
Once a network is installed and running, Personal NetWare requires that you give each computer on the network a name. You may also set a password. Then you allocate a name to every resource on each computer.
If, say, there's a computer on my network called Jason1, with a hard disk "Jason1drvC". A CD-ROM drive attached to the Jason1CDROM".
After each network resource (be it a hard disk or whatever) has been allocated a name, you can assign network resources to a drive letter on each network computer.
Printers, too, can be given names. This process is known as mapping.
Through the Personal NetWare software (using the cables likning each computer can "see" whatever else is available on the network.
It can seeamlessly incorporate those resources as if they were its own, right there in your room with you.
New ways to harness the wonderful convenience of a network will occur to you all the time.
A good example is taht you can link, say, your notebook computer, with a simple $400 pocket Ethernet adaptor connected to the notebook's printer port. This allows you to get a large files on the network easily and quickly.
Novell's Personal NetWare includes both DOS and Windows software for organising your network resources.
The Windows version allows you quickly and easily connect or disconnect to the network. When connected, you can simply drag named network resources with your mouse to the local drive letter of your choice.
Remapping of different network resources to different drive letters is easy. Likewise sending electronic mail to other network users. And diagnostic network information can be seen in convenient graphic format.
Windows for WorkGroups 3.11 can do much the same thing as Novell's Personal NetWare.
But one advantage of the Novell solution is that it is possible to make key network settings from Personal NetWare's DOS utilities, more flexibly.
You might note also that a patch must be obtained for the recently released and excellent PC Tools for Windows 2.0 (of which more later) for it to work with Windows for Workgroups.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
18/5/94
TUNED TO THE RIGHT NETWORK
THE world may well have managed just fine without computers, but now that they're here, families sharing just one computer can get frustrated quickly.
The little kids want to play games, the big kids want to do homework.
Mum and dad want to do spreadsheets and wordprocessing from work. And the grandfolks may well have their own plans.
Such high demand for computer resources means that an increasing number of households and small businesses have numerous computers chugging away in different rooms.
Now, if each one of those separate computers has its own printer or other sought after devices such as a CD-ROM drive, the most you will need to share is, say, a few files.
These can be quickly and easily transported between computers via floppy disk.
But what if your family has just one swanky laser printer or nifty CD-ROM drive? More to the point, what if it went to someone's computer in a room other than yours?
Every time you want to use it, you need to shuffle up, hat in hand, and request: "If it isn't too much trouble, I don't have much to do . . . "
Sound familiar?
This annoying situation ironically reflects a cliche of the industrial revolution.
Greedy, hoarding capitalists far too wealthy with computer resources, control the miserable lives of the less fortunate by meting out permission to use the CD-ROM or do a high-quality print-out, when and if they feel like it - not when it is convenient for you.
Well, the computer equivalent of a socialist utopia in which all members of the community have access to all the community's resources is called a "network". With a network, there need be no hoarding of resources.
Individual computers are joined together via cables and a whole range of devices such as printers, hard disks, tape back-up units, removable cartridge drives, CD-ROMs and so on can be shared by everyone, no matter to which individual computer they are connected.
Vive la revolution!
Another advantage is that software can be run and files can be accessed (or backed up) from any location convenient to you.
That can be particularly important in businesses where, further, there is one shared, central copy of data files.
People at the front desk, for example, who need to know which items are in stock or which invoice numbers have been used at each counter, can check the shared copy. Each gets the same information.
In general, all you need to establish a network of PCs is a special card inserted into one of your computer's slots, cabling to connect your PCs ($1-$2 a metre) and network software installed onto each of your PC's hard or floppy disks.
(For example, the so-called WD/SMC ethernet card - it stands for Western Digital/Standard Micro System - costs less than $300).
The best kind of network for the family home is called "peer-to-peer".
With this method, all computers on the network can access all hard disks and printers on any other network-linked computer.
This means that when you look at the Windows file manager, you will be able to see a drive icon representing every storage device on the network.
You can copy, move and delete files or activate programs on any network drive as quickly and easily as you would on your local drives.
A clear advantage of this is that many programs need only be installed on one computer in the network.
Others can access that program across the network (licenses permitting), freeing substantial hard disk space across the network as a whole. Networks rationalise your household's computer resources.
They allow each member of your local network to share resources - and even send electronic mail. NEXT WEEK: how a program such as Novell Personal NetWare can inexpensively and easily create a network.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
18/5/94
SCREEN PLAY AT ITS BEST
MANY computer buffs start a romance with their machine through various writing jobs.
And for some, it's not long before the essays and memos that fill the day graduate into a night-time quest for an Academy award-winning film script or best-selling novel.
If you want to keep the script-reader's attention after that first page, why not use the standard screen-writing format?
Macintosh users can automate the production of an industry-standard film script with a 1,582 byte file, the Mac Word Screenwriting Template, in the Winnew forum's library 5, called script.sit.
While you're at the script, why not write the musical score as well.
In the Winshare forum's library 7 you'll find a 10,133 byte file called musicf.zip. This is a compressed file which contains a special Windows Truetype font with various music symbols.
It will let you print notes, rests, staves and clefs.
You can even print instruments such as sax, piano, guitar, trombone and drum.
But if inspiration dries up, you might like to check out an update on Microsoft's new operating system, Chicago.
In the Winnew forum's library 1, the 47,104 byte file, chicqa.doc, answers common questions about the development of the next major release of Windows for the mainstream desktop and portable PC platform.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
11/5/94
CHECK PRICE BEFORE YOU BUY
A MONITOR can be an expensive investment. In this final instalment of our four-part series on computer monitors, we provide a checklist for buyers.
You will be stuck looking at whatever you finally buy for many years - and up close, too.
So do a little homework now, before you buy, and save a lot of aggravation.
The most important rule is: NEVER buy a monitor without looking carefully at the actual monitor you will take home.
When you make that essential examination, one important check point is picture purity. For example, if you have the whole screen colored blue, is the color (and color intensity) even across the screen?
If your picture purity is out you will notice (in the case of a blue screen), purple or even red and green blotches in the corners and on the sides. There may also be slightly dark patches on parts of the picture.
Even worse, you may notice some power supply noise or interference causing wavering or horizontal light and dark bands in the picture.
Also check for picture jitter in the vertical or horizontal direction.
Ideally, you should not buy a monitor which isn't capable of rock solid picture stability.
Another important check point is whether the monitor has a non-glare picture tube.
This is a slight frosting type of effect on the screen which reduces strong reflections of light from above and behind the viewer so it tends to defuse spots caused by, for example, light globes and fluorescent tubes.
With modern monitors, a silica coating with anti-electrostatic qualities is used so as not to attract dust as well.
Another checkpoint is dot pitch.
Simply looking at the picture quality of the monitor is often the best guide, but if you tend to pore over brochures when you get home, check that the claimed dot pitch of your proposed purchase is 0.31mm or less.
Good-quality monitors normally have a dot pitch of 0.28mm. By comparison, 0.39mm is close to consumer TV quality.
With this dot pitch, the effect is that the picture will have a very fine chicken wire-type appearance on the screen. Of course, it isn't all in the figures.
You can find a 0.28mm dot pitch monitor with poor focus will look worse than a 0.31mm dot-pitch monitor with sharp focus and good electronics - but dot pitch is generally a good pointer to know about.
Another checkpoint is so-called screen "geometry" - in other words, is your picture nice and square?
Check that the top edge of the actual picture area, in an application such as Microsoft Windows, is actually nice and horizontal (that is, not tilted).
And more particularly, check that the height of the picture on the left side is equal to the height on the right side.
So-called "misconvergence" can be another problem. Convergence is the effect where white text seems to have a haze of color around it, usually blue or red.
When present in computer monitors, it is usually more pronounced at the extreme edges of the screen than the centre.
These are the key points.
Of course, the components' quality (such as soldering and tying down of loose cables) can be an issue for long-term reliability.
Most prospective buyers will just have to assume an expensive monitor has no flaws in this department.
Lastly, something you may well forget in all the excitement: A smooth swivel action at the base (especially for heavy monitors) is not something you can take for granted.
It should be checked.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Tapping into a model constitution
11/5/94
TAPPING INTO A MODEL CONSTITUTION
WITH the great ideologues of our nation stoushing over whether we should dump the royals, you might like to check out the comparative wisdom of an alternative constitution.
If you want to do this online unfortunately your choice is limited to, well, America, America, and then there's also America.
We get on to US cultural imperialism in sociology 1A next week.
In the meantime log into Compuserve's winshare forum's library 10 and check out The Constitution - Windows Help File, a 41,389 byte file called CONSTI.ZIP (not to be confused with digestive issues).
This program offers the US Constitution compiled as a Windows Help file including a quick reference guide, hypertext jumps, browse sequences and more than 200 search terms and phrases.
It features strikeout text for sections that are superseded or amended with hypertext jumps to the appropriate amendments up to No. 27.
Alternatively, you might want to test The Federalist Papers (a 530,326 byte file called FED2-1.ZIP in the same location).
This is a collection of articles which were published by a number of newspapers in New York from late 1787 through to early 1788.
These were originally published under the pseudonym PUBLIUS, but the 85 essays were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison to explain the benefits of the proposed Constitution to the people - and defend it against its many critics.
Sounds like the thing an innovative Australian software company would be well rewarded to bring out - even commercially.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Plenty of storage options in battle of the bulge
4/5/94
PLENTY OF STORAGE OPTIONS IN BATTLE OF THE BULGE
IF your home collections of movies and music are becoming unmanageably large (we should all be so lucky), Compuserve's software libraries (in particularly winshare's library 10) offer the following solutions:
VidBase 2.4 Home Video Database, a 132,711 byte file called VIDBAS.ZIP, allows information to be entered in up to seven fields including movie title, category, video format, running time, rating, index, and letterbox format.
The listing is automatically sorted by title but the user has the option of sorting by various fields.
The words "A", "An" or "The" at the beginning of a title are removed and appended to the title's end, automatically.
There is also laser printer support.
Video3D V2.1, a 400,248 byte file called VIDEO3.ZIP, is said to be the most complete Windows 3D Video Tape Database, featuring a slick, 3D interface, exploding screens and VCR-like controls. It allows queries or sorts by any field and for viewing and printing of user defined ranges.
VideoDex/3D V1.0, a 552,427 byte file called VIDEOD.ZIP, keeps track of your video tape library collection with a fully editable 3D browse table. It has 15 fields (including memo field and Personal Rating Option buttons) and prints to index cards and labels.
The Video Tape Cataloguing System for Win3, a 257,044 byte file called VIDEOW.ZIP, keeps track of Title, Type, director, stars, tape number, running time, index and description, with 11 ways to search for titles.
The CD-Dex/3D, a 549,906 byte file called CDDEX.ZIP, keeps track of your CDs, cassettes or record collection.
CDProW version 1.2.0, a 141,531 byte file called CDPROW.ZIP, is a CD record keeping system for Windows.
This system has extensive fields, search capabilities and support via Compuserve.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
4/5/94
AVOID MONSTER OF A MISMATCH
IF THE word "multi-media" leaves you blank, just think of your computer as the celebrant of a marriage between pictures, sound and video.
Actually, it's been a bit of a shotgun wedding.
When buying one of the attractive-looking computer package deals available, you have to be careful that your powerful new computer isn't a Frankenstein's monster - full of ill-fitting components and jagged around the edges.
A computer's screen is a very important part of its ability to present multi-media products. But no less important is the video card you slot into your computer and into which your monitor plugs.
Make sure your video card has a so-called "feature connector" on its top edge - cheap video cards often do not have one. This mysterious little connector is not visible from the rear of the computer, only when you open the computer up.
Why do you need one? A video converter card (which you may buy in addition to your VGA card and plug into a nearby slot) enables you to feed images into and out of your PC from other video sources eg a camera or video recorder.
Many of the popular video converter cards need to plug into the "feature connector" on your VGA card via a cable.
Thus, if you don't have a "feature connector" you are immediately kicked out of the multi-media marriage's reception party.
That's one major trap, but there are plenty more.
For example, you should know about "degaussing", a facility built into monitors which demagnetises the picture tube.
Degaussing is important because, if your monitor comes close to a magnetic field (for example, a loudspeaker), it can become "magnetised", which causes color distortion.
Particularly with large monitors, even the earth's magnetic field can distort color and impair picture geometry.
You only have to turn your monitor sideways or upside-down while it is running to see how the colors change.
Some monitors may need to be switched off and cooled down for 30 minutes before being switched on again after being moved into their new position.
This is because most monitors demagnetise the picture tube automatically upon startup.
Some monitors also have a degaussing button which will take care of the problem whenever necessary, without the need to switch the monitor off.
Another important thing to look for in a monitor is digital storage settings. When you change scan rates and resolution modes, an average Taiwanese monitor's picture size and position may well change also. For example, the picture may be smaller and shifted to the left or right - even off the screen.
Digital storage settings allow a good monitor such as a Matsushita to have its screen characteristics changed from the front console and stored.
It is very useful to be able to store the adjusted picture size and position for each of a monitor's scan rates at the press of a button.
The Matsushita monitors, for example, can store up to 26-picture settings. This ensures your monitor's picture is optimised no matter what resolution or scan rate you choose.
Micronica is the authorised Australian distributor for Matsushita.
For dealer and retail details, phone Edward Jozis on tel. 699-8844.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
27/4/94
BIGGER MAY NOT BE BETTER
WHEN buying a new monitor for your computer, never be seduced by size alone.
We explained last week how a monitor capable of displaying high resolutions can make more icons and text visible, effectively making a bigger desktop.
But this is actually done by making the icons and characters smaller.
That is why, on 14-inch monitors (even quality ones), the bearable upper resolution limit is usually 800x600 resolution.
With 1024x768 resolution, even if your 14-inch monitor can do it, the icons get too small and mouse movements become a challenge of careful aiming and eyestrain.
Thus with 1024x768 resolution you really need a 15-inch or larger monitor.
Some VGA cards and monitors extend to 1280x1024 resolution - but again, you really need no less than a 17-inch screen for such modes.
If you are not sure about this, get your computer shop to show you the difference.
But it's important to realise that some software will only run properly in 640x480 mode because that is the traditional IBM VGA standard.
Some higher resolutions, such as 800x600 mode, are not IBM standard.
This is particularly so for multi-media games and so forth, which may toss up a message raising incompatibility and other problems if you have a non-standard, that is, non-VGA screen resolution.
Another important consideration is something called interlacing.
Your salesperson will always boast about a monitor being "non-interlaced" (if it is).
Be careful if this is NOT mentioned.
A monitor with interlaced scanning will display noticeable flicker, especially on horizontal lines.
Monitors are usually non-interlaced for 640x480 and 800x600 modes.
But for 1024x768 or greater, non-interlacing adds to the cost and may not be available.
Always ask about this because non-interlacing at higher resolution, which avoids screen jitter, is well worth the extra money.
Even if you suspect your VGA card does not support non-interlaced operation, check the mysterious little switches at the end of the card and read the fine print in the manual - rejigging such switches may make it non-interlaced.
Another important monitor issue is "scan rate" which refers to how quickly the dot scans from the top corner to the bottom corner of the picture tube - 60Hz means 60 times a second, 50Hz means 50 times a second, and so on.
A high-scan rate reduces flicker.
Now, that's fine, but be wary: not all monitors lock into their highest scan rate automatically and, even if non-interlaced, you can sometimes still notice flicker on very large screens if the highest scan rate is not engaged.
This is usually controlled by hardware settings (on your VGA card) and really requires investigation of your unique system setup.
On the common Paradise card, for example, there are dip switches that allow the card to be set from 56Hz to 72Hz.
(This is called "monitor vertical retrace timing" in the manual).
If you experiment with scan rates, be careful. Not all monitors accommodate the full range of scan rates.
If you choose a scan rate your monitor can't support, your expensive investment may well be damaged.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Cash for kids as easy as falling off a log-on
27/4/94
CASH FOR KIDS AS EASY AS FALLING OFF A LOG-ON
IF you didn't grow up with computers, your best shot at becoming a financial wizard could be to enrol in former junkbond king Michael Milken's economics and business class in California.
Otherwise, parents can get their children off to an early start in the theatre of commerce by downloading Cash for Kids, an 84,927 byte file called CASHKI.ZIP in the Compuserve winshare forum's library 10.
This program is an easy way for a child (ideally aged 5 to 13) to save money and spend it wisely.
The program looks like a simple cheque-book register.
It allows transactions to be easily recorded and allowances deposited automatically.
A child sets future spending goals and graphs show whether they are saving enough to reach them.
Impulsive spending is curbed as children develop the ability to plan.
Optional password security keeps each child's records private.
When all of this early discipline translates into adult riches such as a compact disc collection so vast that you can hardly remember what you own, or a video cassette library bigger than than your local video store, then tune in next week.
Compucorner will show how to sift the multitude of programs that keep tabs on your libraries and easily retrieve a video/record/CD/DCC/Minidisk etc that is right for the moment.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Monitors give a clearer picture
20/4/94
MONITORS GIVE A CLEARER PICTURE
A COMPUTER screen's clarity and size is the most conspicuous aspect of a system.
A jealous home-computer user may quickly notice that friends seem to have a much better-looking screen display than the standard package deal job: a 14-inch monitor with VGA resolution.
Why is this so? The first thing you notice about monitors is size.
If you measure the picture tube of your new monitor, you may be in for a surprise.
With the average Taiwanese monitor, even though the monitor's picture tube is 14 inches (and this means the diagonal measure from left bottom corner to top right corner, not simply from top to bottom), the actual picture size will be considerably less. A half inch border around the picture area (with no way of adjusting it) is common.
More expensive flat screen monitor provides 19 per cent more active display area.
There is also less distortion at the edges - especially important in Windows environments.
Most vendors claim to be selling a 15-inch monitor, but your measurement will show only 13.5 inches.
Promoting that 13.5 inch monitor as a 15-inch is justified, they claim, because a flat-screen monitor (with a picture reaching right out to the screen edge) yields the same effective viewing area of a normal 15-inch monitor.
This sounds dodgy, but is relatively standard practice.
With a $450 Taiwanese monitor, a large border around the effective viewing area is reasonable.
But when paying $800 or more for a good quality 15-inch or larger flat screen monitor, you should really expect something better such a scontrols to stretch the picture right out to the screen edges.
Another important issue is screen resolution.
This is controlled by the hardware design of your VGA card in conjuntion with appropriate software drivers.
But your monitor must have the hardware ability to display the driver software-determined resolution of your choice.
Most monitors can display standard VGA with 640 x 480 pixel resolutions.
But better resolutions such as 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 pixels make an enormous difference to the appearance of your work. (Apple's new monitors - 17-inch ans 21-inch models - are capable of video resolutions up to 1152 x 870 at 75Hz.)
If you choose to install the mysterious disks thzat come with your VGA plug-in card, you can often make Micro- soft Windows run in one of these higher resolutions.
In actuality, this merely makes your icons and menus smaller.
The idea of the higher resolution is not to give you more dots on the same size characters to make them smoother but rather to make the characters smaller, each still having the same number of dots.
The picture is then expanded by virtue of the physical size of your monitor screen.
The aim is to have more icons and text visible, effectively making a bigger desk-top.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457
20/4/94
BIBLICAL BYTE
BOTH evangelists and those who like to taunt them will benefit from computerising their spiritual reference points.
Of course, the really confident Jesus freak will have the New Testament memorised (a la Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 ) which puts those who don't have the same command of the text at a distinct disadvantage.
Never mind. Salvation is at hand.
New Testament for Windows v1.5, in a 660,137 byte file called NT4W.ZIP in Compuserve's winshare forum's library 10, features the King James text of the New Testament in an intuitive, easy-to-use, 3-D Windows interface.
Yo, disk disciples. Just plop it on your notebook's hard disk and - aided by its powerful text search, color maps, timeline and provision for personal notes linked to the corresponding scripture - you can emulate the revered spiritual leader of your choice.
You'll do it better than Jimmy Bakker (well, no, he's not quite the role model).
That should read Jimmy Swaggart (gack), I mean Robert Tilton (eck), er, would you believe the Rev Sun Myung Moon (hmmm)? Look, let's just settle on Billy Graham.
It even includes tutorials, context-sensitive help, and study-aids with topical hypertext links to events, parables and miracles in the life of Christ.
But if you really want to be the cleverest Christian on the block, you'll also need Bible-Q for Windows, version 2.0, a 128,148 byte file in winshare's library 10 in the file BQWIN.ZIP.
It has 1200 questions drawn from the Scriptures to challenge your biblical knowledge.
You select the category and difficulty, or let the program do this automatically. It keeps score for one to 10 players. (Great Saturday night rage.)
BQ for Windows also has a calendar, an opening display of random Bible verses and a "bible mood screen" to display Bible verses to fit your mood. What more can I say, cyberscribes.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Pro Audio PCMCIA and Compaq's new family
20/4/94
PRO AUDIO PCMCIA. COMPAQ'S NEW FAMILY.
Add in, listen up IF you are looking for an add-in sound card for your notebook computer, Media Vision now sells a PCMCIA card, the Pro Audio PCMCIA with compact-disk quality recording and playback and complete backward compatibility with Sound Blaster and AdLib cards.
The Pro Audio PCMCIA has an on-board FM-synthesiser, a software controllable mixer and game port.
An external music keyboard can also be controlled.
It comes with ExecuVoice voice recognition software from Dragon Systems, a text-to-speech synthesiser called Monologue for Windows and programs to assist in recording and editing digital audio and playing audio CDs.
For more details, phone Tom Kennedy on tel. (02) 979-5791. Worth a plug HIGH-quality monitors such as the Matsushita or more expensive NEC range usually come with a cable for a PC.
But they can operate with a Macintosh.
An inexpensive adapter plug can be bought which converts a PC cable, designed for a VGA card, for Macintosh use.
For more details, phone 699-8844. Note the weight COMPAQ have a new family of four computers, the LTE Elite, with prices starting at RRP $6409.
They have a built-in AC adapter, four display adapters and what Compaq claims to be the lightest total carrying weight (including AC adapter, power cord and trackball) of any power notebook, 3.1 kilograms.
Compaq LTE Elite use new Intel microprocessors ranging from the DX2/40 to the DX4/75. User upgradable features include the removable hard drive, memory, microprocessor and displays.
There are also three new desktop expansion bases: the Compaq SmartStation (with plug and play functionality and VCR-style docking) as well as two ministations
For more details, call 1-800-060-800. Apply to you? VICOM has announced that its range of communications products - which include terminal emulation and front-ending packages for people using Macintosh computers to access data on mainframes - are now available as native PowerPC applications.
For more details, contact Nick Hodge on (08) 232-1489. - JASON ROMNEY
Cable Compu-Vision one out of the box
13/4/94
CABLE COMPU-VISION ONE OUT OF THE BOX
A COMPUTER is made up of many components, the quality of which will directly determine how well it gets your job done.
There must be enough RAM for your programs to run in (8MB or more is preferable).
The hard disk must be large enough to store your programs and data (250MB or more, is preferable).
Floppy drives must accept disks of the type you use (two drives, one 3.5 inch and one 5.25 inch, are preferable).
All these components are important, but no less important is the device you choose as a video display monitor. It is, after all, something you will be watching whenever the computer is in use.
Technologic will soon discuss what to look for in a good monitor and describe some options available to monitor hunters.
Before then, we describe a more unusual alternative that may appeal to some computer users.
It is possible to connect your computer to your normal TV set instead of a special video display monitor by using a device called a Pavi-Live "encoder box" (RRP $389).
Such a box is about the size of small novel and connects to two cables: one plugs into your computer's VGA output port while the other plugs into either the S-Video or RCA video ports of your TV set.
A small memory-resident program on your computer lets you choose between video modes and text sizes for DOS sessions, and better align the computer image of both DOS and Windows sessions, on your TV screen.
It's very simple.
What are some uses for such a device?
Firstly, you could give presentations to a large group using your big-screen TV instead of your much smaller computer monitor (or your friends can watch you play games or participate themselves on a much bigger display).
Secondly, you can take advantage of other components in your audio-visual equipment to do some really snazzy things.
For example, say your VCR or TV have the increasingly common picture-in-picture function which allows you to see more than one "window" at once on your TV screen.
You might want to plug a video camera into your VCR and direct the camera at a sleeping baby in another room while you watch TV.
The baby's safety can be monitored in the picture-in-picture window.
But if, instead of a video camera, you plug in your computer, then you can watch TV while you are replying to your electronic mail, seeing both the TV broadcast and your computer's output with the electronic mail on it on the same TV screen.
While it is not possible to run Windows in high-resolution screen modes on a TV (as you can do on a quality, computer-specific video monitor), standard VGA mode looks reasonably acceptable. It also includes an option for running Windows in 800X600 resolution.
You would not want to spend a very long time doing finicky work with a TV as your monitor but, an encoder box is an inexpensive, easy-to-use device as an alternative for a very large screen monitor.
It offers some novel display possibilities that extend, because it is an external device than can be moved from computer to computer, to use with notebook computers as well as desk-based models.
It is certainly worth investigating if you are interested in computers for teaching, business presentations or meetings - and even just using your computer and TV without getting out of bed. THE Pavi-Live encoder box is available from Micronica Computers, tel. 699-8844.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
13/4/94
FLAGS AT FULL MAST
A FRIEND interested in national flags has talked me out of beginning this column with a meditation on why someone would spend hours writing a program that presents and organises national flags.
So, flag buffs, listen up. World Flags 3.0 is going to make you very happy.
This 566,950 byte program, in the file WFLAGS.EXE in Compuserve's winshare forum's library 10, is a Windows 3.1 program which displays the flags of more than 150 countries.
It also has a quiz (see the flag, identify the country), a special display of flags of defunct countries (undoubtedly a big growth area in the program's hot features based on 1993's turbulent European restructuring), and even a slide show of flags (well, you can always use it as a screen saver).
But if you need a database of more important information, BiblioTech - The Bibliographic Reference Manager for Windows could be sensationally useful.
This 108,056 byte file called BIB32.ZIP in Compuserve's winshare forum's library 10 allows you to keep a database of standard scientific and biomedical citations (with abstracts) which can be entered manually or, more significantly, imported from MEDLINE, Paperchase, BRS and other databases.
What you take on-line through your modem will be automatically and neatly processed - ready for formatting in any style, including those of major biomedical and social science journals and a full Boolean search facility.
Now that's useful.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
13/4/94
FAX MODEM FACTS
THE Newton Fax Modem (pictured right) costs about $250.
It's an external modem connection via the Newton serial port, offering 2400 bps for data and 9600 bps for faxes.
The Newton Fax Modem is Hayes compatible, uses the Group 3 fax standard and offers MNP 2 and 4 error correction, V.42bis and MNP 5 data compression.
Lotus link-ups AT&T and Lotus Development Corp have announced a new service, AT&T Network Notes, which will provide businesses with an ability to communicate, work together and obtain information by extending their electronic relationships beyond traditional company boundaries.
For information, phone (02) 350-7700. New $4495 Apple APPLE has a new monitor: the Multiple Scan 20 Display (right).
The 20-inch color monitor for both Macintosh and DOS-Windows platforms works with Quandra, Centris and Macintosh II computers, PowerBooks, DuoDocks and PowerPCs. Its recommended retail price is $4495.
Resolution modes include 640X480, 832X624, 1024X768 and 1152X870 pixels, all at 75Hz refresh rate and the ability to switch resolution modes without restarting the computer. Seeing double MEDIA Vision has two new products, the Reno multi-purpose portable CD-ROM drive and the Pro Sonic 16 add-in sound board.
The Reno has external controls for music playback but also meets MPC level 2 specifications for multi-media computer applications with an access speed of less than 180ms.
The Pro Sonic 16 will run applications for numerous platforms. It has 16-bit recording and playback, 20-voice FM music synthesiser, software controllable mixer and IBM joystick port.
Details: phone Tom Kennedy on (02) 979-5791. - JASON ROMNEY
Windows with an even better view
6/4/94
WINDOWS WITH AN EVEN BETTER VIEW
WHEN typing a lecturer's words into my notebook computer at university last year, I sometimes fielded questions from other notebook computer owners as to why I was using a DOS word processor.
They thought it was strange that I did not use a Windows word processor like almost everyone else.
The answer was simple.
Until the arrival of Microsoft's Word 6.0 for Windows, the only word processor on the market with built in "Auto-Expansion" power was a DOS program called Xywrite.
"Auto-expansion" is a Xywrite feature in which you create a list of abbreviations which, when typed and followed by a space or punctuation, automatically "explode" into the full word they represent. For example, "cd" might become "could", "ag" might become "Attorney-General" or "dpm" might become "Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet".
Over time, your list of abbreviations grows until you ultimately have a fully-personalised "shorthand" vocabulary that increases your typing speed dramatically.
This feature now has been built into Word 6.0 for Windows (although it is called "Auto Correct" rather than "Auto-Expansion"), and it is invaluable.
Not only can you obtain the much longer version of the abbreviation simply and easily, but changing your list of abbreviations is a breeze. Further, the text brought into the document by typing an abbreviation of your choice can be in any font or size.
But changing abbreviations into the longer word or phrase they represent is not its only power.
Auto Correct will capitalise the first letter of a sentence automatically, or if you have accidentally typed the first two letters of a new sentence as capitals, it will make the second letter lower case. It will also automatically capitalise the names of days of the week.
Another handy feature of Auto Correct relates to the ASCII text issue, covered some weeks ago.
If you use speech marks in your text, the nicely rounded versions are different to the less-professional ones offered by ASCII text.
The Auto Correct feature will either convert the ASCII version into the better looking typeset characters or leave them alone - as you might wish to be the case if you propose to send your document as electronic mail.
Of course, glossaries are still available (although now this traditional feature is called "Auto Text").
Why would you want to use Auto Text when you have Auto Correct?
Sometimes you will want to attach text or graphics to a key sequence so that typing the key sequence alone (as in Auto Correct) does not automatically insert the associated material.
For example, I might want "hs" to become "Herald Sun" through Auto Correct, but I might want to use the same sequence of characters, namely, "hs" followed by the F3 key (the conventional key used to initiate the glossary or "Auto Text" feature) to insert the Herald Sun letterhead.
These features distinguish Word 6.0 for Windows from all other Windows word processors now on the market.
Although the competition will probably be quick to emulate Word for Windows 6.0, for the time being at least, such features make it probably the best choice for anyone interested in fast text entry.
And isn't that everyone?
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
6/4/94
WHEN TIME IS MONEY
IF you work in an office or factory where billing for hours is important, you might want to check out some of the special utilities on Compuserve that help determine where your time went.
You might like to be in a position to keep records that are independent of your existing office system, or customise these programs to work in with the system you already have.
TIMEIT (version 1.1B) is a 25,213-byte file called TIMEIT.ZIP in Compuserve's winshare forum's library 10, which allows you to time tasks while working under Windows.
Alternatively, Time Log 1.5 For Windows is a 91,146-byte program in the file TIMLOG.EXE, also in the winshare library 10, which allows you to log, total and print dates and the amount of time spent on any number of projects or dates.
To go with these types of programs, you might like a standard Windows clock. One not already mentioned in this column is All the Time v3.01.
Available in the winshare forum's library 10 in a 276,726 byte file called ATTALL.ZIP, it is versatile once downloaded. You can show time/date in virtually any format imaginable or in combination with stats on memory, Windows resources, disk space etc, or graphics showing seasons, moon phases, night/day.
And if you think time is running away from you, maybe it is. Or at least, anything can be arranged.
The CatchMe Time Utility for Windows (a 165,109 byte file called CATCHM.ZIP in winshare library 10) is a clock/alarm program that displays a neat little time/date window - that scampers to the other side of the screen if the mouse pointer touches it.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
Simplicity is the word for success
30/3/94
SIMPLICITY IS THE WORD FOR SUCCESS
A REALLY outstanding word processing program is a joy to use for its simplicity and power - Microsoft Word for Windows 6.0 is one of the finest examples of these features.
A word-processing program as it comes out of the box will never be optimised for your needs.
One criterion which sets aside the truly excellent package is whether you can customise its features to your needs.
This is the first area in which Word for Windows 6.0 excels.
Any frequently-used series of commands you issue can be automated through a "macro" - a macro is simply a recording which remembers each command and will play them back whenever you want to initiate the sequence.
In that sense, a macro is similar to a video recording - each command is a scene in your video and when you play back the macro, the commands are implemented just as the scenes in a video would smoothly and automatically flow past on your TV screen.
This similarity is reflected in the controls used for making a macro.
There is a panel just like the control on a VCR with a "record" button, "play" button, "pause" button and so forth.
Stopping and starting the macro recording process is as simple as clicking the mouse on the appropriate button.
Two macros I made which I find most useful - and which are typical of things you might like to automate - are one to transpose the position of two characters (for example, "marco" can be easily changed into "macro", swapping over the "rc" characters), and a macro to directly flip the case of a given character, either from lower case to upper case or vice-versa.
You might also use a macro to move to different text windows or activate a pre-chosen font (for example, running writing rather than printed characters) and size for your text.
But Word For Windows' simplicity and power in this area do not stop with the macro recording process.
Once the macro is completed, you can "attach" it to an icon and initiate the macro simply by clicking on that icon.
Alternatively, or in addition, you can attach it to a keyboard sequence (whatever is most convenient for you), or make it an option that will appear in the pull down menus at the top of the screen.
If you make many macros it is possible to forget about them as time goes by - but if you use these three macro "homes" wisely, you'll never "lose track" of the macros you create.
The icon-based macro is particularly well implemented in Word 6.0.
Because you can see the icon on your screen, you are constantly reminded that it is waiting there to be used.
But one of the major advances in this version of Word is that the "toolbars" that contain icons can be so easily altered, both in terms of the icons they contain and in terms of the toolbar's position on your computer screen.
If you prefer the toolbar to appear vertically, or simply to float in a particular screen position, it is as simple as dragging it with your mouse.
Of course, as with the preceding version of Word for Windows (2.0c), all screen contents other than your text can be cleared away for "full-screen" editing.
This is particularly valuable for when you want to concentrate exclusively on your words - and want as many of them to fit on the screen as possible.
It's important to remember that keyboard sequences can still initiate commands - including the "pulling down" of Word's drop down menus - even when you are working in "full-screen" mode. NEXT WEEK: Part Two of our Word for Windows 6.0 series.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
30/3/94
WALK ON THE DARK SIDE
THERE was a time when all you needed to set up shop as a self-appointed mystical guru and fortune-teller was a neat little round table, a good glass sphere and maybe some incense.
But nowadays you may find the cyberseer muscling in on your amateur act, offering silicon seances and terminal tarot.
While the equipment might be expensive, at least the seer's software can be inexpensively downloaded from Compuserve's libraries.
You could start with The Pagan Daybook for Windows 1.0a (a 187,392 byte file called PAGANW.ZIP in the winshare forum's library 10), a small Windows application that displays the date and time of any pagan festival and celebrations that occur on a given day.
It also features a search mode to query its extensive internal database of observances. "Never miss another solstice or Saturnalia" says its creator, Alchemy Mindworks Inc. A must for WYSIWYG wizards.
And while we're taking a walk on the dark side, all you urban werewolves out there will no doubt rejoice in a nifty program, The Clysmic Lunar Almanac.
This 94,473 byte Windows program in the file LUNA.ZIP in the winshare forum's library 10, displays moon phases, rises and so on. It has 256-color graphical displays and scanned bitmaps.
But corporate wolves with more extensive requirements, will probably be more impressed with a program called Eye On Sunrise (a 305,813 byte file called EOSUN.ZIP in the winshare forum's library 10).
Eye On Sunrise v1.03 gives sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, and full moon details for any location, based on a starter database of more than 250 cities.
It handles daylight savings time, 30 minute offset timezones, and includes a world clock/map with 24 timezone displays - even a weather forecaster with heat index, dew points, a wind-chill calculator and on-line help.
Jason Romney can be contacted on the Internet at jromney@werple.mira.net.au or on Compuserve at 100033,3457.
ClarisWorks 2.1 and Footy tipping
23/3/94
Clarisworks 2.1
NEW RELEASE CLARISWORKS 2.1 for Macintosh is now available from $275 rrp. For more information, tel. (02) 452-8585.
ClarisWorks offers business, education and home users new ways to easily share information and increase productivity.
The new version supports hyphenation, and adds new file filters for Microsoft Excel 4.0 and ClarisWorkds 1.0. STAYING IN TOUCH SPEECH-LINK is an Australian-developed program for people with severe communication problems which provides the user with auditory and visual scanning of words and phrases.
This allows the person to communicate their needs, the only physical demands placed on the user being the ability to select the desired communication through the use of a touch switch, as well as the ability to see or hear.
For more information, tel. (09) 388-2241.
FOOTY TIPPING '94
CADETS, clerks, juniors and the keen footy buffs in offices throughout Victoria are undoubtedly turning their minds to organising the office footy-tipping competition.
Of course, you could be boring and use the time-tested pencil and paper.
But the computerised method can make the collection of tippers' preferences and the printout of weekly reports a cinch.
An inexpensive DOS program (which will quite happily work as a DOS program within Windows) is Ben Quin's 1994 AFL Football Organiser Version 4.
It can cope with up to 500 tippers, print data entry sheets for each tipper, calculate round or season results and print a ladder detailing team stats.
Each copy costs only $30. Send your order to Ben Quin, c/o Quin & Bourke, 401 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne, 3004. For further details, phone Mr Quin on 867-6044.
New computers flex their muscle
23/3/94
NEW COMPUTERS FLEX THEIR MUSCLE
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