Ragtime life on a CD
Article Abstract:
Robert Winter's Crazy for Ragtime music education software from Calliope Media offers an overwhelming amount of material, but it suffers from a poorly designed interface. In addition, presenter Robert Winter's efforts to place ragtime in a broad historical context are often unconvincing. 'The Ragtime Craze' section makes a convenient starting place, since it is essentially a lecture on the history of the music. The lecture goes faster if users read it instead of listening to the over-enthusiastic Winter. The section on listening to the music has some good insights, but although it explains technical terms for the less experienced, it does not offer musical examples, and more experienced users will be disappointed by the lack of musical notation. The collection also includes covers from the original sheet music, musicians' biographies, photographs and a bibliography. It costs about $40 and is available for Windows and Macintosh platforms.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1996
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A CD-ROM guide for bird watchers
Article Abstract:
Houghton Mifflin Interactive's Peterson Multimedia Guides: North American Birds and Knopf New Media's National Audubon Society Interactive CD-ROM Guide to North American Birds have little to recommend them over the paper versions, although they do offer real bird sounds. The CD-ROMs are modeled after field guides, with Peterson's bird paintings and his identification scheme forming the core of the Peterson disk. The Audubon disk employs photographs to represent the birds, but the identification information appears in the text. Both disks suffer because they use only 256 colors, although the Peterson images use more of the color palette. The interfaces are poorly designed, and the Peterson search engine is especially weak. The fonts in both disks are annoying to read, and often the text cannot be printed. Both CDs cost about $50, and the Audubon disk is available for Windows or Macintosh, while the Peterson CD is for Windows only.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1996
User Contributions:
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