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BY: Hailey Lynne McKeefry
Before you rent another movie from the local video store, make sure your flick pick lives up to your lofty expectations. The Blockbuster Video Guide to Movies and Videos provides reviews of more than 21,000 film and audio titles. You can search by category, rating (up to five stars), keyword, Academy Awards won or other criteria, then print a list of your choices. A trivia game tests your entertainment savvy, while more than 40 video clips, 5,000 photographs and 4,000 biographies add to your knowledge of the movie industry. You can purchase the guide at all Blockbuster Video stores.
$19.99; monthly updates, $3. Creative Multimedia, 800-262-7668, 503-241-4351.
BY: Eileen McCooey
Dabbling in the market? Things'll look a lot clearer once you scope it out with Monocle. This analysis program, supplemented by downloads via modem, gives you the lowdown on 1,000 popular mutual funds, then slices and dices the data six ways to Sunday. Pinpoint winners, losers and trends, and revel in the charts and statistics you can compile.
$149; updates $25 a month or $240 a year; trial package, $10.95. Manhattan Analytics, 800-251-FUND, 310-374-2142.
BY: Hailey Lynne McKeefry
Uncle Harry's 75th birthday slipped your mind, the mall is closed, and it's too late to get a card. Or is it? Hallmark Connections Card Studio lets you create professional-looking cards, signs and banners. The CD-ROM comes with more than 200 pieces of Hallmark artwork, 900 Micrografx clip-art symbols and 1,000 messages. $49.99. Micrografx, 800-676-3110, 214-234-1769.
BY: Ian Etra
Microsoft enters the action-game arena with Fury3, a first-person shoot-'em-up for Windows 3.x and Windows 95. The plot revolves around a race of robots trying to take over the world. Your goal is to blow up specific military targets while collecting weapons and power-ups. The story line won't inspire any prize-winning novels, but the action is fast and the graphics are phenomenal. With full 360-degree movement, you fly at high speeds over a rolling 3-D landscape, as mountains unfold before you. Plunge into the atmosphere or subterranean tunnels lined with moving hazards, all the while pursued by ships that scream around you at frightening speeds.$44.95. Microsoft Corp., 800-426-9400, 206-882-8080.
BY: Jonathan Matzkin
The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Deluxe Electronic Edition on CD-ROM could push your trusty, unabridged hardcover into well-deserved retirement. It offers more than 160,000 dictionary entries, 130,000 synonyms and antonyms, a wealth of etymological info and a multiplicity of search possibilities, along with 1,000 illustrations and tables. The Deluxe Electronic Edition is also a rhyming dictionary, a Scrabble dictionary and a crossword dictionary, and that just scratches the surface.
$49.95. Merriam-Webster, 800-201-5029, 413-734-3134.
BY: Hailey Lynne McKeefry
If science is your bag, Science Sleuths will be a challenge. The CD-ROM lets you try to solve science mysteries in your own virtual lab. Volume 1 lets you investigate the Mystery of the Exploding Lawnmowers and the Mystery of the Blob. Volume 2 introduces the Mysteries of the Biogene Picnic and the Traffic Accident. Dig through video interviews, maps, graphs and photos, or conduct science experiments using a Bunsen burner, Geiger counter and more. Each of the two mysteries on each CD has six difficulty levels and six solutions.
$39.95 each (street). Videodiscovery, 800-548-3472, 206-285-5400.
BY: Lori L. Bloomer
Most would agree that technology is, for the most part, a good thing. Given some time to think it over, however, it's easy to see that the technological revolution has its darker side. The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst poses this lofty and intriguing question: "Can human ideals survive the Internet?" Author Stephen L. Talbott discusses the way human beings relate to the intelligent machines that have become so much a part of everyday life and posits that the increasing reliance on the computer will weaken the imaginations of those who use it. The philosophical viewpoints described here might be hard for technophiles to swallow. For that reason alone, this book is a compelling read.
$22.95. O'Reilly and Associates, 800-998-9938, 707-829-0515.
BY: Lori L. Bloomer
If you're trying to switch to Windows 95, but are befuddled at the brand-new interface, here's a very simple solution. EasyTutor Learn Windows 95 is a multimedia CD-ROM that provides an entertaining look at Windows 95's nuances, from the completely refurbished interface itself to its improved hardware handling. It also introduces you to the many new applets in Win95's bag of tricks. Even the graphics on this tutorial are stimulating and varied.
$39.95. CRT Multimedia, 011-44-181-743-9900, fax 011-44-181-740-0020.
BY: Tom LaSusa
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