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                       PCM Online December 1994

REVIEWS Contents:

   []  Reviews: 13 reviews of business programs, utilities and other
          really neat stuff

Entire contents copyright 1994 by Falsoft, Inc.

PCM -- The Premier Personal Computer Magazine is intended for the 
private use and pleasure of its subscribers, and reproduction by any 
means is prohibited.

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Reviews
~~~~~~~

   <>  11 Million Businesses Phone Book
   <>  All Music Guide
   <>  ClickBOOK
   <>  The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations
   <>  The Cruncher
   <>  d-Time10
   <>  Financing Sources Databank
   <>  Good to Firm
   <>  Kittens to Cats, Puppies to Dogs
   <>  MoodMaker 2.0
   <>  SmartPad 3
   <>  Uninstaller 2.0
   <>  A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes

                                 -=*=-

              <>   11 Million Businesses Phone Book   <>
                      Let Your PC Do the Walking

   What if I said you could fit 5000 "yellow pages" phone directories on 
a slab of plastic about a millimeter think and 41/2 inches across? Would 
you believe me? Of course you would, because you're a computer-literate 
person living in the age of CD-ROM. The program in question is called 11 
Million Businesses Phone Book, and the name pretty much says it all.
   This disc is a database of virtually every business in the United 
States and Canada, compiled from more than 5000 telephone directories. 
To use it, type in a business name, then tell the program to search. 
After a few seconds of churning, up pops a list of all the businesses 
containing the words you typed -- with city, state and ZIP code. If you 
select one of the businesses and ask for more detail, you'll get the 
street name (just the name of the street, not the number) and, of 
course, the telephone number. (Be careful about the businesses you ask 
for "detail" on, however, because they go on the counter: you are 
allotted 5000 and no more "details.")
   The program is a piece of cake to use. For example, if you type 
"Ray's Bar," you'll get 37 matches; this includes establishments like 
Ray's Cocktail Bar (White Haven, Pennsylvania) and Billy Ray's Bar-B-Q 
Express (Tulsa, Oklahoma). There are six exact matches for "Ray's Bar" . 
. . well, only three if you're particular about the apostrophe. (Why 
"Ray's Bar"? My dad always thought it was funny to answer the phone with 
a chirpy, "Ray's Bar & Grill." Was just curious if there were any. And 
there are -- exactly two.)
   You can also search by a phone number. Enter a phone number, and up 
pops the company's name (assuming that the number is used by a listed 
business). And you can restrict your search to a state (or Canadian 
province), a city or even a ZIP code. Other options include voice mode 
(English, French or Spanish), in which a pleasant female voice says, 
"The number is . . . " before reading out the number. (Psst. You can let 
the program autodial for you. Sound and autodialing are supported only 
using the Windows installation. You can also install the program to run 
in DOS.)
   Now, 11 Million Businesses Phone Book may not seem like the most 
practical business application out there, but it can save you money if 
you make lots of long-distance phone calls to directory assistance. So 
if you do a lot of canvassing or marketing to other businesses, it's 
handy. It's also a useful tool if you're planning to start a business 
and want to make sure its name will be unique -- in less than a minute, 
you could see if anyone else in the United States or Canada has already 
latched onto that name.
   I've come up with my own list of reasons why I like this program -- 
trivial pursuits. It answers questions like, "How many McDonalds are 
there in the United States and Canada?" (9683) For your viewing 
pleasure, a bit of franchise trivia:

            Business                   Total in U.S.
                                       & Canada

            Burger King                5555
            Chevron                    4953
            Circuit City                236
            Frederick's of Hollywood    196
            Holiday Inn                1612
            K-Mart                     2652
            KFC                        5278
            Kroger                     1213
            Lazarus                     271
            Piggly-Wiggly               723
            Pizza Hut                  7324
            Radio Shack                6102
            Subway                     7342
            Taco Bell                  3665
            Wal-Mart                   2044
            Walgreens                  1828
            White Castle                194
            Winn-Dixie                  930

   More trivia. In the United States and Canada, there are: 51,053 
businesses with the word "pizza" in their names; 23,349 with "computer" 
in their names; 67 with "Internet" in their names; and two 
establishments calling themselves "Bates Motel."
   American Business Information, the publishers of 11 Million 
Businesses Phone Book, also publishes a "white pages" directory of the 
United states, called 70 Million Households Phone Book ($69), which 
should be perfect for finding lost relatives and rounding up old 
classmates for that 20-year reunion.

{11 Million Businesses Phone Book, American Business Information, 5711 
S. 86th Circle, P.O. Box 27347, Omaha, NE 68127, (402) 593-4595; $49. 
REQUIRES: 512K RAM, DOS 3.3+ hard drive and a CD-ROM drive for DOS 
installation. Windows 3.1 installation is an option.}

                                 -=*=-

                       <>   All Music Guide   <>
                      A Day in the "Record Store"

   Are you the type of person who can spend a blissful day browsing the 
aisles of a "record store" (read, "CD/cassette store")? Are you a music 
lover, a CD collector, a trivia buff, or just someone trying to pick out 
a good gift? Then All Music Guide should strike the right note for you. 
This Windows program is a music lover's guide to the best CDs, tapes and 
LPs of all time. Its database covers more than 35,000 recordings by 6000 
artists -- in every major category!

   That's everything from Muddy Waters to Clint Black to Beethoven to 
the Shirelles to Aerosmith to Nine Inch Nails. If you're looking for any 
recording by any artist, your grail ends here. Browse the alphabetical 
lists of artists to get short biographies of each artist and see a list 
of all their albums. (You can also browse albums to find the artists.) 
You can click on any album to get a mini-review of it by veteran 
critics. They'll show you which albums are considered the best in the 
genre, and which of an artist's works you should consider buying first.

   If you don't know what you're looking for, that's OK too, because the 
program lets you do searches, and wildcard support means you don't have 
to be a perfect speller. One of the best features is All Music Guide is 
the inclusion of each album's publisher and stock number -- making it 
easy to order if your local record store doesn't carry it. Annual 
updates are planned.

{All Music Guide, Great Bear Software, 1100 Moraga Way, Moraga, CA 
94556, (510) 631-1600; $49.95. REQUIRES: a Windows 3.1 VGA system with 
2MB of RAM and 11MB of hard-drive space.}

                                 -=*=-

                         <>   ClickBOOK   <>
             Bookmaking: Legal, Fun -- and No DTP Required!

   A few years ago I had the bright idea of putting together a company 
cookbook. I formatted it in PageMaker for 8-1/2-by-11-inch paper 
(landscape), folded in half to make a handy-sized booklet. Just fold and 
staple -- and there would be printing on both sides, page numbers and 
everything just like that, right? Wrong! The pages didn't come out 
sequentially, they didn't get numbered automatically, and the index was 
messed up because the page numbers were wrong. (Here's what's going on, 
should you try this: PageMaker sees only one page where you see two, so 
you'll have to do everything manually, even page imposition. It involves 
lots of cutting, pasting and rearranging. Plan to waste a lot of paper.)
   Now that I'm older and wiser, and in the habit of checking to see 
what goodies UPS delivers, I use ClickBOOK for churning out booklets and 
the like -- with minimal hair-pulling on my part.
   When you want to use ClickBOOK, just select the ClickBOOK printer 
driver from within any Windows program, and "print." Up pops ClickBOOK 
with a variety of print styles up its digital sleeve -- side-by-side 
folded (this is the classic landscape, doubled-sided, folded booklet), 
four-up flip-book, wallet book, tri-fold brochure, standard address book 
and many more. Choose the style you want to print, and click on Print 
for real.
   Out come pages printed on only one side. So how do you get printing 
on the other side of the paper? By reading the instructions page. For 
every print job, ClickBOOK generates a page telling you how to put the 
paper back in the printer so that the back sides get printed correctly -
- it tells you whether the pages should go back in the tray facing up or 
down, and which end goes in first (a large arrow points the way). You 
can't miss! When the pages come out of the printer, just fold and staple 
-- they'll be in the right order.
   I get the feeling I've made it sound more difficult than it is, but, 
really, the printouts themselves tell you how to proceed. And for the 
tiny "books," like four-folds, where cutting is required along with 
folding, you get instructions for that too.
   If your goal is to quickly print booklets, directories, phone lists, 
catalogs, etc., I recommend you back away from PageMaker and run with 
arms outstretched to ClickBOOK. It's not perfect; often the type sizes 
you've selected will be "shrunken" in order to fit on the page with the 
formatting you've applied. Sometimes the characters look squeezed. The 
printouts are never ugly, though (except for one test of a PageMaker 
document I did in two columns -- I discovered it was best to work from 
Microsoft Word). But if your project is for publication and everything 
must look perfect with graphics, typesizes and breaks in just the right 
spots, you'll have to sweat it out with PageMaker.
   ClickBOOK shines at quick printing and automatic formatting -- which 
means minimal stress on your part.

{ClickBOOK 1.1, BookMaker Corp., 2470 El Camino Real, Suite 108, Palo 
Alto, CA 94306-1701, (800) 766-8531 or (415) 354-8166, $69.95; REQUIRES: 
a 2MB Windows 3.1 system, with printer.}

                                 -=*=-

     <>   The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations   <>
                  18,123 Quotes to Inform and Amuse

   "One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well."
                                       A. Bronson Alcott 
                                       1799-1888
                                       U.S. educator, social reformer

   "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
                                       Ralph Waldo Emerson 
                                       1803-1882
                                       U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher

   Collecting interesting quotations is a hobby of mine, and my 
favorites are those dealing with ironic quirkiness in human nature. I 
find good quotes in the oddest places. I've found them in everything 
from anthropology textbooks to gothic mystery novels. Lately my favorite 
place to shop for quotes is a Windows program called The Columbia 
Electronic Dictionary of Quotations. With 18,123 quotes, it's the 
motherlode.
   And the quotes are not the usual, run-of-the-mill, rehashed-until-
wooden quotations. You get the expected Shakespeare and Twain (who will 
never become wooden) as well as the unusual, the current, the offbeat. 
Try British punk rocker Sid Vicious on love: "I've only been in love 
with a beer bottle and a mirror." Or Marlon Brando's take on the 
venerable profession of acting: "Acting is the expression of a neurotic 
impulse. It's a bum's life . . . . The principal benefit acting has 
afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis." Or Berke 
Breathed, the Bloom County and Outland cartoonist, on comic strips: "I 
could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write 
it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10 percent of my papers over the next 20 
years. Such is the nature of comic strips. Once established, their half-
life is usually more than nuclear waste." (That may be true, Berke, but 
I quit reading your strip three years ago. Take that.)
   Where do all these quotes come from? Columbia University Press. 
Journalist Robert Andrews compiled them, and Aapex software converted 
the text into one of the most intuitive electronic references around. 
You can search for quotes using an amazing number of criteria -- 
subject, author, source, biographies, citations, time periods and text 
contained within quotes -- all by pointing and clicking with your mouse. 
The program supports Boolean searches (AND, OR), wildcards and 
exclusions. You can copy quotations one at a time to the clipboard for 
use in other Windows programs, or you can "mark" many quotations at once 
for copying.
   The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations is the largest and 
most complete collection of quotations I've seen, and it's been hard to 
tear myself away from it long enough to write this review. There's no 
doubt this program could make itself useful for writers and those who 
have to give speeches. (If you're one of those unfortunates who has to 
talk in front of others, you may be interested to learn that a free 
sample of the Speaker's Idea File newsletter is included in the box.)
   I'll leave you now with a pertinent quote from Benjamin Franklin: "If 
you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in 
order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in 
giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon spent, the regret 
only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, 
he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their 
sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors."

{The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations, Aapex Software Corp., 
925 Greg St., Suite 101, Sparks, NV 89431, (800) 728-7650 or (702) 324-
4580; $89.95. REQUIRES: a 2MB Windows 3.1 system.}

                                 -=*=-

                       <>   The Cruncher   <>
                   Crunch and Munch on Math Problems

   A lot of adults secretly play their kids' arcade games more than the 
kids do. No big secret. But their educational programs? Davidson & 
Associates may have started a new trend with its release of The 
Cruncher, a spreadsheet for ages 10 and up. This kid's program is just 
the thing to cure crunchophobia, an irrational fear of spreadsheets 
exhibited by a certain subspecies of computer-using adults, who repeat 
the mantra, "I'm NOT a math person! I'm NOT a math person!" (A direct 
effect of this phobia is the underuse of software suites: the word 
processor gets all the work, and the spreadsheet never leaves the bench 
-- or even the shrink wrap!)
   It's true: you don't have to wear a pointy hat or a propeller beanie 
to use spreadsheets. So if copies of Lotus or Excel are gathering dust 
on your shelves because you can't tell a range from a refrigerator (pun 
intended), try The Cruncher. Not only is it a functional Windows 
spreadsheet program with graphing ability, it's also a tutorial. And 
because it's a kid's program, you're treated to colorful graphics, cute 
animation, voices and sound effects. You must admit, when cells, ranges, 
formulas and functions are demonstrated by purple bongo beaters, they 
lose some of their power to intimidate.
   While the tutorials are rather youthful -- helping users to manage 
school candy sales and convince the folks that a new puppy wouldn't be 
that much of an expense, etc. -- they are brilliantly designed, layering 
new skills seamlessly right on top of the old. The tutorials run the 
gamut from simply adding a few digits to running a range of numbers 
through a function. They do a terrific job of building the user's skill 
and confidence in using spreadsheets.
   One of the tutorials, the recipe adjuster, is downright handy. Using 
it you can figure out how to proportion ingredients for two servings or 
two hundred. And adult sports buffs may have fun noodling with the 
baseball and basketball statistics projects.
   Of course your kids will like The Cruncher too! They'll enjoy the 
"stickers" (little pictures that can be attached to worksheets) and the 
text-to-speech feature, which reads numbers in the worksheet -- and even 
reads any notes typed in the notebook (an attached mini-word processor 
that makes easy to write down in English exactly what the worksheet 
does, in case you forget).
   We highly recommend The Cruncher to kids and adults alike! But to 
Lotus and Excel users, we must add that The Cruncher cannot save its 
worksheets in your flavors -- only as text files.

{The Cruncher, Davidson & Associates, Inc., 19840 Pioneer Ave., 
Torrance, CA 90503, (800) 545-7677 or (310) 793-0600, $59.95; REQUIRES: 
a 386+ Windows 3.1 VGA system with 4MB of RAM and 9MB of hard-drive 
space.}

                                 -=*=-

                          <>   d-Time10   <>
             Boost Your CD-ROM Drive to Hard-Drive Speeds?

   That's what d-Time10 (imagine the "10" is superscripted) from Ballard 
Synergy proposes to do. d-Time10 is a CD-ROM cache accelerator that 
claims to boost your CD-ROM's performance and thereby "decrease your 
wait time by a factor of 10." In other words, make discs running under 
DOS or Windows as fast as a disk drive.
   The program's trick is to combine system RAM with disk space to 
create a "virtual" CD-ROM designed to offer performance equivalent to 
the disk drive. (Even CD-ROM programs hold to the general rule that 20 
percent of the material will be accessed 80 percent of the time.) In 
theory, the result is high-speed data transfer much faster than even 
that of double-speed CD-ROM drives' 300K/second. d-Time10 has another 
feature not found in other accelerators: it saves CD-ROM frame ID and 
data in system RAM and subsequently writes it as a disk file, called a 
Timelog. Think of a Timelog as a Windows Swap file, only you can have 
one for each CD-ROM program you like, up to 255.
   So, does d-Time10 work? Yes, it definitely speeds up disc access. 
You'll notice the most difference with disc-based encyclopedias and 
reference works. When we ran 11 Million Businesses Phone Book (a CD-ROM 
equivalent to the complete Yellow Pages of the United States and Canada) 
without d-Time10 installed, it took three seconds to search the CD for 
all instances of "Taco Bell" and about 16 seconds to post the first 
screenful of them for display. With d-Time10 installed, the search still 
took three seconds, but getting that display up there took only five 
seconds.
   Reading the promotional materials, I envisioned turbocharging my 
33MHz 386 computer at work, with its older single-speed CD-ROM drive, up 
to the level of my double-speed 486 system at home. Well, that didn't 
happen. The test disc in question here was QuickTime: The CD, which is a 
two-disc set of the 1994 QuickTime Film Festival winners (published by 
Sumeria, 415-904-0800). The title played beautifully, both with and 
without d-Time10, on the double-speed CD-ROM 486 system. On the 386 
single-speed system, without d-Time10, we were lucky to get a static 
frame now and then, and snatches of sound once in a while. With d-
Time10, running a video the first time through got no better results. 
However, when we tried the same video again, the cache effect kicked in, 
resulting in a few seconds of fluid animation, and some sound. Though 
the results were by no means optimal, it was an improvement.
   Ballard Synergy claims its program is a great way to let older 
hardware play the latest-technology games, and that applications which 
almost work, but don't quite sync the sound to the video, will be 
transformed. We tried d-Time10 with Access Software's Under a Killing 
Moon on that rather slow 386/single-speed CD-ROM system and still got 
skips. (The video looked good, but the sound didn't match.) In all 
fairness, though, Access Software recommends that Under a Killing Moon 
be played on a 486 system with a double-speed drive and 16MB of RAM.
   We can recommend d-Time10 for enhancing reference-type discs. But, 
for speeding up CD-ROM games, we'll hedge by suggesting you try d-Time10 
with them on a case-by-case basis.

{d-Time10, Ballard Synergy, 10715 Silverdale Way, Suite 208, Silverdale, 
WA 98383, (206) 692-4565; $64.95. REQUIRES: a 386+ CPU, DOS 4.01+, disk 
drive with uncompressed space (20MB or more is recommended), a CD-ROM 
drive and MSCDEX 2.1+.}

                                 -=*=-

                 <>   Financing Sources Databank   <>
              Entrepreneurs: Find the Financing You Need

   According to research quoted by DataMerge, 80 percent of U.S. 
businesses are currently looking for financing, and 80 percent of those 
cannot secure traditional bank loans. The entrepreneurial market is 
bound to get only tighter in the months ahead as displaced and "down-
sized" ex-corporate workers try to go into business for themselves. If 
the banks won't finance them, along with a majority of other budding 
entrepreneurs, who will? DataMerge's program Financing Sources Databank 
was written to answer that question -- it's a database of alternative 
lenders around the country, lenders who finance on less stringent 
qualifications.
   Financing Sources Databank contains detailed information about 
lenders: its profiles contain contact names, lending criteria, 
investment preferences and submittal procedures. If your business needs 
start-up or expansion capital, search for compatible lenders. Have you 
stumbled across a fantastic real-estate opportunity but lack the capital 
to get going? Maybe Financing Sources Databank can connect you with 
somebody willing to make money by helping you make money.
   Financing Sources Databank actually comes in two versions: 
Entrepreneur 3.2.4 ($139) and Professional 4.5 ($499). The Entrepreneur 
version focuses on 2500 sources for small-business and venture-capital 
financing, and most of its sources will finance $100,000 or less. The 
Professional version features 5000 alternative lenders, which range 
across all major categories of debt -- equity financing, leasing 
companies, venture capitalists, commercial finance firms, IPO 
underwriters and more. Another difference with the Professional version 
is that it lets users print mailing labels and export data in ASCII for 
mail merging with a word processor. The Entrepreneur version is "read-
only." Updates are released every four months.
   The menu-driven program is easy to use. The user sets five criteria -
- type of lender, type of financing, amount of financing, industry and 
geographical location -- and Financing Sources Databank searches its 
database for a matching list of lenders. Profiles include such 
information as whether to approach the lender by phone or mail, which 
materials to send, estimated turnaround time, and more.
   Financing Sources Databank had its roots in a Denver law firm that 
needed a quick way to help clients find financing. DataMerge doesn't 
cull its lists from printed directories that may be out of date. Rather 
it uses an in-house research team to call each lender for screening. For 
the protection of its clientele, DataMerge claims to have weeded out 
brokers who pretend to be lenders, firms that charge large up-front 
fees, firms that are no longer lending, and a variety of companies 
posing as lenders.
   I confess I didn't really use this program for its intended purpose -
- I never called or wrote to try to get a business loan, although I 
spent a lot of time performing searches and daydreaming entrepreneurial 
what-ifs. I'd like to be my own boss someday, but for me that day is 
pretty distant. However, the time may be ripe for you to test the 
entrepreneurial waters. If so, I advise you to jump with both feet into 
Financing Sources Databank.

{Financing Sources Databank, DataMerge, Inc., 4521 E. Virginia Ave., 
Suite 201, Denver, CO 80222, (800) 580-1188; $139 for Entrepreneur 
version, $499 for Professional version. REQUIRES: 640K, DOS 3.3+ and a 
hard drive.}

                                 -=*=-

                        <>   Good to Firm  <>
             Join the Gentry: Raise and Race Thoroughbreds

   PCM is produced in Prospect, Kentucky, which adjoins Louisville, home 
of the Kentucky Derby. We're also about 70 miles northwest of Lexington, 
the heart of horse country. Movie stars, the old rich, and even royalty 
turn their thoroughbreds loose in our fabled fields of "bluegrass." In 
fact, Queen Elizabeth pops in regularly to check on her four-hoofed 
investments. So it's only fair that, should we receive a horsey program 
from Britain, we give it our full attention.
   We are. It's called Good to Firm, and it's a simulation no 
thoroughbred fan can afford to miss. The goal is to make it big on the 
British flat racing season. You'll start out with 1,000,000 pounds and 
an empty stable. First things being first, you attend auctions and fill 
your stable with the most promising colts -- after examining records of 
sire and dam, of course! You also set training schedules (the length and 
duration of workouts) and select jockeys. Finally, you race, and you 
keep racing through all the big races, including the English Classics, 
all the while betting and buying better horses.
   Good to Firm is strictly a simulation -- your decisions are based on 
the spreadsheet-like reports -- although it does offer a touch of 
animated whimsy: you get to watch the races TV-camera-style!

{Good to Firm, Wizard Games of Scotland, Ltd., P.O. Box 498, Wilmington, 
MA 01887, (800) 487-4625 or (508) 658-2209; $37.50 by direct mail only. 
REQUIRES: 580K and VGA.}

                                 -=*=-

             <>   Kittens to Cats, Puppies to Dogs   <>
            How Much Trouble Is That Doggy in the Window?

   Arf-arf! Probably not as much as you'd expect, at least if you follow 
the expert advice found in Villa Crespo's Puppies to Dogs: "a CD-ROM 
Guide to Raising the Perfect Dog." Puppies to Dogs, which is "hosted" by 
animal behaviorist Ann Childers, helps you decide on the kind of puppy 
to select, and it tells you what kinds of general behaviors you can 
expect from your pet as it progresses from an irresistible bundle of fur 
to a loyal, loving companion.
   Puppies to Dogs gives you dos and don'ts, training tips, 
diet/nutrition information, grooming advice, and suggestions on ways to 
break puppy's bad habits -- like chewing on your favorite shoes. The 
program, a multimedia spectacle, can be viewed as a one-hour QuickTime 
"video," complete with voices and sounds, or you can go to the glossary 
to jump immediately to the advice you need. The program also offers a 
breed directory, with detailed descriptions and full-color pictures, and 
a "pet notes" area you can use to keep track of vet visits and other 
milestones.
   Yes, there is equal time for cat fanciers. Villa Crespo also 
publishes Kittens to Cats, which does for felines what Puppies to Dogs 
does for canines. As an added bonus, both programs come with a VHS 
videotape that is the equivalent of its program's QuickTime movie. The 
videotape is a kind gesture, because QuickTime movies are not known for 
brilliant resolution or smooth motion. If you had planned to watch the 
"video" straight through, you'll definitely want to go with the 
videotape.

{Kittens to Cats, Puppies to Dogs , Villa Crespo Software, 1725 McGovern 
St., Highland Park, IL 60035, (708) 433-0500; $49.95 each. REQUIRES: an 
MPC system (386+ CPU, Windows 3.1, SVGA, sound card and CD-ROM drive).}

                                 -=*=-

                       <>   MoodMaker 2.0   <>
                     Setting a Mood With Your CDs

   Time flies -- you never imagined your 30-year class reunion would 
catch up to you this fast. And the gang's flying in from all over to 
meet at your place the night before the big event. Party time! You and 
Marge have the decorations all figured out (if you could just find the 
lava lamp), but what about the music? You could dig out the LPs for old 
times' sake, but fortunately you've re-created your collection on CDs 
and you own a carousel CD player, so you can program hours of music at a 
time. But which albums? Which songs? The music should be bouncy early 
(Jerry Lee and Elvis, because Marge likes them) and more introspective 
as the evening wears down (Beach Boys, late Beatles). But it will take 
hours to play DJ in advance and plan all that stuff. "No, it won't, 
Phil," says Marge, wiggling her eyebrows behind your John Lennon specs, 
"because I've been playing with MoodMaker."
   And what is MoodMaker, you want to know? The answer is that it's 
another one of those programs that catalog your CD collection, letting 
you store and retrieve information about songs (with such fields as 
artist, composer and type of music), print detailed reports, and more. 
The kicker is the more. MoodMaker lets you organize your music by mood 
as well as by all the other info. This means that the program can kick 
out lists of music you consider romantic, especially danceable, 
nostalgic, etc. Had a bad day at work? Try some relaxing music. Granted, 
you'll spend time at the beginning entering all that data, but later 
it'll be a breeze to churn out playlists.
   There's something else special about this program. It's from Kenwood, 
same company that makes audio equipment. MoodMaker comes into true 
fruition if you own Kenwood's multidisc CD player model DP-M7750, 
because you can interface the player to your PC and let MoodMaker 
automate the CD playback. (I don't own a Kenwood CD player myself, but I 
can certainly see the advantages of combining one with MoodMaker.)
   Whether you let MoodMaker "program" your multidisc CD player or you 
do it manually from a playlist, MoodMaker will save you time -- less 
time spent hunting for a particular song in a mountain of discs means 
more time you can spend enjoying music. And if you're hosting a party, 
MoodMaker can help keep the good music pumping with minimal effort. 
Wouldn't you like to have more fun at your own parties?

{MoodMaker 2.0, Kenwood U.S.A. Corp., 2201 E. Dominguez St., Long Beach, 
CA 90810, (310) 639-9000; $49.95. REQUIRES: a 20MHz or better 386 SX 
system with 4MB RAM and Windows 3.1.}

                                 -=*=-

                         <>   SmartPad 3   <>
                Toolbar Integration for Any Windows Program

   Word for Windows will spoil you for toolbars. It gives you toolbars 
of icons to click to do everything from opening new documents, to 
saving, cutting, pasting and printing envelopes. Makes you not want to 
wade through menus anymore. Wouldn't it be neat to be able to add 
similar toolbars to programs that lack them? Like File Manager and 
Windows Write -- or even a DOS session in Windows? You can with SmartPad 
3, which lets you link custom toolbars and floating "pads" so tightly 
with the target application, it looks like the original programmers put 
them there.
   SmartPad comes with "prebuilt" icons you can add to toolbars, to do 
common things like opening and saving files. But you can choose from 
many colorful and cleverly designed "empty buttons" to assign custom 
menu actions. And you can delve further into toolbar automation by 
assigning macros to buttons. If your application has its own macro 
recorder and player, that's great. If not, use SmartPad's macro recorder 
to record keystrokes and mouse actions.
   You can also include program-launch buttons on your toolbars, which 
means any Windows program can act as the Program Manager to launch 
applications. Do you work out of a contact manager or PIM like Lotus 
Organizer? Why not make that your central Windows desktop? Just make a 
toolbar for it that can launch other applications.
   The version of SmartPad we received was the PageMaker edition, and if 
any Windows program ever cried out for toolbar automation, it's 
PageMaker. The premier PC desktop-publishing program sure is powerful, 
but it lacks the cosmetic toolbar touches that have become so popular. 
With this version of SmartPad, all the work of designing toolbars is 
done. Almost every feature you need to dig for in PageMaker -- from Page 
Setup to Text Wrap to Line Styles -- is made available to you from 
toolbar buttons. The toolbars wrap around the screen, almost boxing it 
in. From that description you might think they consume too much screen 
space, but they don't. Died-in-the-wool PageMaker users might resists at 
first, but the aesthetics and ease of use will win out. If they keep 
resisting, the special characters palette will convert them -- imagine 
being able to insert a trademark symbol with a simple keypress!
   The PageMaker edition of SmartPad, while it's obviously PageMaker-
centric, lets you set up toolbars for other programs, just as the 
"Standard" edition of SmartPad does. Another version of SmartPad is 
available for programmer-types who want to delve into scripting, linking 
different applications together using a Visual BASIC-style language: the 
"Developer" edition.

{SmartPad 3, Softblox, Inc., 1201 W. Peachtree N.E., Atlanta, GA 30309, 
(404) 892-0202; $79 for PageMaker Edition, $99 for Standard Edition, 
$179 for Developer Edition. REQUIRES: Windows 3.1+.}

                                 -=*=-

                       <>   Uninstaller 2.0   <>
              Uninstaller Recovers Disk Space From Unused Files

   Ah, the tangled web we weave when installing Windows apps is what we 
achieve. An icon here, a directory there, a subdirectory under the 
Windows directory, a new .INI file, a new section in the WIN.INI file, a 
few .DLL files -- installation programs find devious ways to install 
program tidbits in many places on your hard drive. This isn't a problem 
if you keep using a program. But it sure is a problem when you try to 
get rid of it and reclaim disk space. Where are all the pieces?
   Enter Uninstaller 2.0, a program that helps you uninstall Windows 
programs. Just call up Uninstaller and click on the image of the 
offending program's icon, and it uses its "SmartLink" feature to track 
down all parts of that program: .INI entries, directories, related 
icons, .DLLs and more. It can also help clean out the garbage left by 
programs you deleted manually. If you're unsure about deleting 
something, Uninstaller can archive the "deletions" and let you test the 
system for a few days. Uninstaller is a must-have utility for the 
Windows tool box, and it works with replacement shells like Norton 
Desktop too.

{Uninstaller 2.0, MicroHelp, Inc., 4359 Shallowford Industrial Parkway, 
Marietta, GA 30066, (800) 213-8923 or (404) 516-0899; $69.95. REQUIRES: 
a Windows 3.1 system with 2MB of RAM.}

                                 -=*=-

                  <>   A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes    <>
                       Rhyme Time Becomes Sublime

   You've got to love a program whose manual begins like this: "Don't 
read this guide! Really good software shouldn't need documentation. So 
put down this User Guide, install the application onto your hard disk 
and start having fun . . . . You're still here. Perhaps this isn't 
really good software -- or maybe you just can't follow directions."
   I was so intrigued I kept reading anyway and was tickled to learn 
that Neil Radisch and David Goldstein, the songwriting/programming team 
behind A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes, also wrote a musical -- The Don Juan 
and the Non-Don Juan, which opened off-Broadway "to mixed reviews, 
though the New York Daily News did praise the elegant sophistication of 
the lyrics,' and of course David's and Neil's mothers both loved it."
   You've got to love the program too. A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes is a 
limerick waiting to happen. If you haven't guessed from the title, A 
Zillion Kajillion Rhymes is a rhyming dictionary on disk, but it offers 
more than you'd expect. In it you'll find slang terms, cartoon 
characters, even Rodney Dangerfield -- everything to construct rhyming 
social commentary. If it can't find a rhyme on the word you've entered, 
the program will strip off prefixes and suffixes and find words to match 
the root. The authors point out that not every word can be rhymed. 
Orange is perhaps the most famous example of one of those rhymeless 
words -- so is silver.
   The program is so easy to use, you really and truly do not need to 
refer to the manual in order to explore. All you have to do is type a 
word in the box where the blinking cursor beckons and press ENTER (or 
click on the FIND button), and A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes quickly pulls 
up lists of rhyming words. It offers further bonuses in its Hints and 
Syllables features. Hints, for example, remind you to also try -icks 
words when searching on -ix words. And the Syllables button lets you 
constrain your search to words of a certain number of syllables -- 
perfect when you need a three-syllable word ending in -ite. The program 
also keeps track of the last 16 words you searched, so you won't have to 
repeat a search when it's time to write the ending of your limerick.
   Remember the authors' stern warning, "Dictionaries don't rhyme, 
people do." Ignore the initial advice to not read the manual: it's full 
of tips on rhyming and near-rhyming, things you'll need to know about in 
order not to embarrass yourself.
   A rhyming dictionary probably seems a very impractical piece of 
software to install on the computer -- after all, how many people do you 
know who write limericks, jingles, poems and songs? Probably not as many 
as those who would secretly like to! Give A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes a 
chance. It's an indispensable niche tool for poets, ad writers, speech 
writers and writers of all kinds. It could be a godsend to the teacher 
who's charged with scripting the first-grade pageant. And, well, 
wouldn't you like to give your significant other an unforgettable 
anniversary poem? Of course it can help you write your own limericks!
   Which brings me to my project. I'm planning to skewer Alexander Pope, 
author of Rape of the Lock. The smug misogyny in that poem has rattled 
feminine sensibilities for centuries, though until lately we've been too 
polite to say so. Perhaps now the time is right. A Zillion Kajillion 
Rhymes has inspired me to pick up the sword and give that diminutive and 
dead chauvinist a well-deserved swat with my epic-to-be, Rape of the 
Jock. (Rest easy, no Lorena Bobbitt-style antics here -- just innuendo 
and good, clean puns). A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes has me off to a pretty 
good start with the epic question, an invocation to the muses, etc., 
etc. What do you think?

            What anger resides in residue lust?
            Calliope help me to write this or bust!
            Or should I appeal to Eroto in this --
            complications arisen from one misplaced kiss?

Right. I'll keep my day job.

{A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes, Eccentric Software, P.O. Box 2777, Seattle, 
WA 98111-2777, (800) 436-6758 or (206) 628-2687; $39.95. REQUIRES: a 
Windows 3.1 or higher system.}

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