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January 2001, Week 2 -- Two for the Road

   A couple of golden oldies have been updated, and are just as much fun as they always were.

   The first one is "ClickBook 2000." ClickBook has been around at least as long as Windows and what it does is print booklets. It's handy for instruction manuals, address books, appointment schedules, etc. Let's say you have a large file of names and addresses -- friends, customers, whatever. Instead of printing them out on a single sheet of standard letter paper, you can have them printed in a form that can be folded and cut into a small booklet that can be carried in a purse or pocket.

   You can create folding maps, photo albums, catalogs, brochures, business cards, collections of web pages, etc. Appointments can be printed in one of the standard formats used by popular day planner books. There are several dozen templates. Booklet pages can be numbered and a table of contents printed at the front.

   The new ClickBook 2000 lets you combine text and photos in portrait and landscape printing mode in the same booklet. This lets you have pages that can viewed vertically or turned to view them horizontally. A drag and drop feature lets you drag any file onto the ClickBook icon and that starts the process that converts the contents to booklet form. A new layout feature lets you add borders to pages, for a nice professional look.

   ClickBook 2000 is from Blue Squirrel, Inc., $50 for Win 95/98; $25 for an upgrade from a previous version. Phone info: 801-523-1063; web: www.bluesquirrel.com. "ClickBook Jr., CD-case creator," is free from the web site and makes the little booklets that fit inside CD jewel cases. Businesses can use it to make covers for promotional CDs. (NOTE: ClickBook 2.2, which came out a couple years ago, is available free as a download from www.wugnet.com.)

An endless scratch pad

   We turn now to MicroLogic's new version of Info Select, the database for the terminally disorganized.

   It seems like this program has been around forever, and that's because there has always been a market for a notepad with unlimited pages. Info Select is what's called a "free-form" database. You enter any information, any way you want. The program can find it again in a couple of seconds or less.

   The key to Info Select's operation is a lightning fast search module. Though you enter thousands of pages of information Info Select will bring up the right document or phrase if you can remember a single word of it.

   That's the good part. The problem I always had with Info Select was the interface; I couldn't figure out how it worked even after spending hours with it. That's been simplified now: you can switch between a "novice" interface and a more complex one for experienced users.

   Version six adds a lot of goodies. Among the best: You can organize all your e-mail and have it sorted by subject, date or sender, have form replies, auto-forwarding and auto-response, proof-of-delivery, and encryption. There is a web page cache, which keeps track of all the web pages you visited recently and can take you straight back to any one of them if you can remember a word or phrase.

   One of the most useful features is the ability to create "topics" for related items. I know this smacks of actually organizing things, and hence is antithetical to the spirit and idea of Info Select, but it sure saves time. A "new projects" or "fun things" topic can contain all the things you jotted down for that topic. Makes them easy to review.

   Info Select is $150 for Win 95/98; $100 for upgrades. Full and free trial versions are available at www.miclog.com. Phone info: 201-342-6518. The program has received numerous awards over many years.

Internuts

 
Gorilla Cam

-- www.oanda.com  Currency converter. Converts any currency into any other currency and also lets you print quick reference sheets for common comparison amounts. Also does conversions for past dates, as far back as 1990. A traveler returning home can look up what they paid in their own currency on other dates. Good for expense accounts.

-- www.positivepress.com Tired of all that unhappy news about violence, scandal, bribery and corruption? This site carries only positive news and inspiring quotations. Some of the stories are actually interesting.

Crime Cam

-- www.camcentral.com All the web cams you ever wanted to see: Airports. Outer space. Sweden! Site contains a huge directory of web cam locations by subject.

-- www.leonardsworlds.com  Leonard likes listing live web cams, 10,000 of them.

-- www.camvista.com Covers British Isles and has links to other places. See Scottish castles in the morning mist, watch men getting haircuts in Cambridge.

-- www.crime.com  "Jailcam" lets you watch prisoners in the Maricopa County, Arizona, jail. That's the county for Phoenix, Arizona.

 Downloads: Bridge over troubled waters

   For the beginning or experienced bridge player, here are a couple of instructional downloads from www.zdnet.com. "Easy Bridge, v4.01," is for beginners and free, "Bridge Baron, v11.0" is for veterans and has a free trial. They have a ton of others.

   NOTE: Readers can search more than four years of columns at the "On Computers" web site: www.oncomp.com. You can e-mail Bob Schwabach at bobschwab@oncomp.com   or bobschwab@aol.com.