Like Llew I have looked at natural history CD ROMS and been disappointed at
their quality.
I have looked at a Frog CD ROM (I don't know whether it was the same one)
and been struck at how foolish it was to include only a few calls?after all
the calls are usually all you ever have to go on, and sound is the one
advantage that the format has over the printed medium.
CD Simpson and Day (the latest version), for those who don't know, has all
the information in the printed book, plus a few little extra things (like a
Triva Quiz :-(). However its principal advantage is that it has extracts
from the BOC tapes for 570 spp (all the spp that the BOC tapes currently
cover, which means you get a little burst of sound for all the but the last
few species). These are not as full as on the tapes, however the CD ROM is
much less expensive than the full set of tapes. The CD ROM requires a
Pentium. though it just about runs (excruciatingly slowly) on my 486.
As to other CD ROMs, all the ones I've looked at seem to be written for
unintelligent 8 year olds, by people who don't know any 8 year olds. They
are, quite frankly, appalling; they generally start with 30 or more seconds
of irritating music, which you can't turn off or bypass, an irritating
commentary, and a design which channels you straightaway into tutorials,
guides, video shows &c &c. Even with Simpson and Day, you have to very quick
at clicking to get out of guided tour and on to the information.
I guess what I'm looking for in a CD ROM is that it should have all the
information of an authoratative natural hisotry book, plus sound, and be
quick to draw on screen (even on a 486) and not to have any gimmicks. I'm
not really taken with photos and videos because I believe that in a natural
hisotry book the best thing is to have lots of good drawings, pictures
(especially when there's only one) are usually pretty useless. And as for
videos, I can imagine how things move and what they look like pretty well
thank you, in much better detail than some smudgy little .avi file?and my
interest in the product is to obtain information that helps me when I go out
looking at the subjecst of the CD ROM, not to enjoy the CD ROM for itself.
So I'd be intersted to hear of GOOD natural hisotry CD ROMs, but I rather
suspect that there aren't any.
Good to have a rant about a hobby horse, isn't it?
#############################################
John Leonard (Dr),
PO Box 243,
Woden, ACT 2606
'I thought of New York as a Hemlock forest that had
been logged too heavily....'
Murray Gell-Mann
http://www.spirit.net.au/~jleonard
#############################################
|
