November 18, 1999

REVIEWS/SOFTWARE

Exploring Worlds on CD-ROM's

Interactive CD-ROM's have largely been ignored in the frenzy of the Internet land grab, left to collect dust on computer store shelves, but intriguing educational titles are still being released. The descriptions below are drawn from articles that appeared in Circuits this year.

BLUE'S BIRTHDAY ADVENTURE
(Humongous Entertainment; $29.99; Macintosh Power PC, System 7.1 or later, and Windows 95 and 98; for ages 3 to 6.)

All the genius of ""Blue's Clues,"" the much acclaimed preschool television program, has made its way into this clever think-along CD-ROM. Children help the dog named Blue and her owner, Steve -- our human guide through a cut-paper landscape -- prepare for Blue's birthday party. Children work through nine activities, each of which can be set to a different skill level.

This is a thoughtful piece of software. Decisions are reviewed, clues are repeated and praise borders on the lavish. And when all the clues are in, everyone repairs to the Thinking Chair to consider alternative solutions. Smart. (Feb. 11)

JAMES CAMERON'S TITANIC EXPLORER
(Fox Interactive; $29.98; Windows 95 and 98, Power Macintosh.)

This three-disc package is more than just a video of the popular movie. A timeline using archival photographs, documents and brief clips from the movie, with narration, provide a nice visual and oral summary of the ship's history.

The software is at its best when feeding the insatiable appetite for Titanic trivia. There is a modest but fascinating archive that includes a complete passenger and crew list, builders' plans for every deck and biographies of many passengers and crew members. (April 8)

POWERS OF TEN INTERACTIVE
(Pyramid Media; $79.95; Windows 95 and 98, and Macintosh 7.1 and later.)

Powers of Ten Interactive is dedicated to expanding the ideas of the husband-wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames. Charles Eames is best known for his furniture -- the plywood chairs and chaise longue he did for the Herman Miller company. But with Ray, he was also a multimedia innovator. Together, they created about 88 short films and pioneering multiscreen and multipanel exhibits.

There are many wonderful pieces here, like a short video that takes the viewer up a road, across a meadow and into the living room of the Eames house in Los Angeles, a landmark construction of off-the-shelf industrial parts.

Navigating the Powers of Ten disc, however, proved to be a challenge. The program slaps together portraits of thinkers on time and space, from Descartes to Einstein, with bits of science and a history of the Eameses' work thrown in: exactly the sort of needless complexity it was the genius of the Eameses to cut through. (May 13)

BODY VOYAGE
(Southpeak Interactive; $24.95; Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and NT, and Mac 7.0 or later.)

This eerie tour of the human body is about as close as you are likely to get to the atmosphere of a Renaissance dissection. A computer artist selectively reconstructed the digital images of a cadaver (a Texas murderer) into colored cross-sections and airy three-dimensional renderings. The viewer can twirl the entire skeleton on its axis, peel off layers of skin and muscle to reveal the organs underneath and pan along the various planes of the body as if peering from a tiny helicopter traveling over, under and through the body's terrain.

Body Voyage is not the place to learn rigorous anatomy. But there is plenty of ambience. (July 8)

DICK HYMAN'S CENTURY OF JAZZ PIANO
(JSS Music; $49.95, Home version; $99.95, Pro version; Windows 3.1 and later, and Macintosh 7.0 and later.)

Dick Hyman, the jazz pianist and historian, has spent his career educating audiences about the great figures of prewar jazz. As a result, the videos, études, biographical nuggets and diabolically difficult quiz on this two-disc set are weighted toward the early giants of jazz piano.

One large section is given over to Art Tatum, where Hyman details runs and intervals, analyzing Tatum's style; in ""Ragtime to Stride"" and other segments, he emphasizes how successive styles built on what came before, like how the role of the left hand gradually changed from ragtime into stride to the sophisticated post-stride of, say, Teddy Wilson and finally to the jabbing bebop minimalism of Bud Powell.

Hyman is not offering beginner piano lessons here. But for pianists or even vaguely interested casual musicians with a bit of jazz knowledge, Hyman gracefully connects the historical dots.

(Aug. 5)

COUNTRY.COM'S CENTURY OF COUNTRY
(Starworks; $29.98; Windows 3.1, 95 and 98.)

Billed as ""the world's first interactive country music encyclopedia,"" this disc is designed to appeal, so say its creators, to both casual and academic fans. They may be half-right.

If you want to hear Sleepy LaBeef discuss his debt to rock 'n' roll, this is the place. If you want a video clip of Hank Williams, you will be disappointed, as is the case for almost every other major star.

The primary focus of Century of Country is its encyclopedia. One outstanding feature is a searchable database of awards, record labels, management companies, birthdays, even fan clubs. But the CD-ROM has one overriding weakness: its silence, odd for a multimedia disc about one of America's great indigenous art forms. (Aug. 5)

THE COMPLETE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
(National Geographic/Mindscape; $149.95 for CD-ROM, $199.95 (DVD-ROM); Windows 3.1 and later, Macintosh 7.5 and later.)

The National Geographic Society boasts that the collection includes every cover (1,247), every page (190,000), every article (9,300), every photograph and illustration (180,000) and every advertisement to appear in its pages, all scanned directly from the original magazines.

And the pictures look great. The magazine's pages are displayed a spread at a time, and the scans were optimized to favor the photographs. The words, however, are often faint and barely legible, even on a 17-inch monitor.

Searching the 109-year archive yields split-second results. But browsing is the best way to follow National Geographic's evolution from a scholarly scientific journal with a conservative, dark-brown cover and no photographs into a legendary publication that today reaches 50 million adults and children each month. (May 13)

APPALACHIAN TRAIL
(Maptech Windows; $39 for each CD-ROM, $139 for set of four; Windows 95, NT and 98.)

The Appalachian Trail -- 2,160.3 miles, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Baxter Peak in Maine -- is no walk in the woods. Hikers who travel a section of the trail make up the bulk of the users, and they are the ones who would benefit most from this set of CD-ROM's.

The discs offer plenty of maps, photographs and descriptions. The guides include trail mileage, elevation ascents and descents, locations of shelters and sources of water. There is also a description of what a hiker will encounter. A 2.3-mile stretch of the trail in Virginia near Hawksbill Mountain in Shenandoah National Park, for example, includes the altitude at the summit (4,050 feet, the highest point in the park), the mountains visible from the trail and the places to find the three-toothed cinquefoil, which blooms in late spring. (Sept. 30)

THE SUPREME COURT'S GREATEST HITS
(Northwestern University Press; $29.95; Macintosh and Windows 95 and 98.)

The Supremes have a compilation disc, but don't expect to hear Diana Ross on this one. Instead, this CD-ROM platter, produced by Northwestern University Press, is crammed with more than 70 hours of often passionate legal debate that was recorded on tape in the nation's highest court.

Included on the compilation are memorable cases like Roe v. Wade, New York Times v. Sullivan and Miranda v. Arizona. The recordings, which date from 1955, can be heard in their entirety. The CD-ROM also includes pictures and biographies of all the justices who have served since 1957 and background information on a range of opinions that cover issues like race and freedom of the press. (Sept. 2)

FAMILY TREE MAKER DELUXE VERSION 7.0
(Broderbund; $89.99; Windows 95 and 98.)

If you are one of those people who has been meaning to compile your family history since ""Roots"" was broadcast in 1977, help is here. Broderbund's latest version of Family Tree Maker contains a whopping 20 CD-ROM's of genealogical information, and the program promises access to more than a billion names.

In addition to templates for your own family tree, the deluxe version offers the digitized Social Security Death Index and an International Marriage Records Index, plus discs containing American military records, land records and 900 years of birth records for the United States and Europe. Users also receive a free four-month subscription to GenealogyLibrary.com, a Web site with more than 2,000 rare books, census microfilm records and online databases to search.




Home | Site Index | Site Search | Forums | Archives | Marketplace

Quick News | Page One Plus | International | National/N.Y. | Business | Technology | Science | Sports | Weather | Editorial | Op-Ed | Arts | Automobiles | Books | Diversions | Job Market | Real Estate | Travel

Help/Feedback | Classifieds | Services | New York Today

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company