Amiga MA Magazine 1998 #6/amigamamagazinepolishissue1998.iso/www/cucug/amiga/amiinfo/reviews/whowhatwhenwhe.txt

Internet Message Format | 1997-11-07 | 12KB

Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: [e-mail] (Eric Dietiker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Who! What! When! Where!
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Date: 14 May 1993 01:47:10 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 277
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1sutmu$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Eric Dietiker)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: address book, appointment book, calendar, commercial


PRODUCT NAME

    Who! What! When! Where! version 1.3i


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    Who! What! When! Where! (WWWW) is a personal organizer program
containing a Directory (or phone/address book), Appointment Calendar, and
"To Do" list.  The program supports multiple users, each with his/her own
private Directories and Appointment lists.

    There are a host of other related features such as an alarm clock,
address label printing, and an auto dialer.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        The Blue Ribbon Soundworks Ltd.
    Address:    North Highland Station
            PO Box 8689
            Atlanta, Georgia 30306
            USA

    Telephone:    [phone]


LIST PRICE

    $99.95 (US).  I paid nothing, but I had to buy $100 of BRS products
to get this deal from Creative Computing.  They are now advertising WWWW for
around $10.



COPY PROTECTION

    None.  The program installs easily on a hard disk.


INSTALLATION

    WWWW comes with an install program which runs the first time you
start WWWW, configures some data file locations, and installs the "wwwwtimer"
program if you want it.  The install program edits your s:user-startup file
to start the background timer program.  Every so often, WWWW seems to get
confused and re-run the install procedure on startup.


WINDOWING INTERFACE

    The program runs in a number of windows on the Workbench.  There are
separate windows for the Directory, Calendar, Appointment List, Alarm Clock,
To Do List, and Clock.

    When WWWW starts up, you are presented with the Directory window.
It contains a scrolling list of the people in your directory, and a panel
with the currently selected entry on the list.  When this window is closed,
a WWWW icon is placed on the WorkBench.  Double-clicking on the icon
re-opens the Directory window.

    Other parts of the program are available through the Directory
window's menu.  Selecting items which activate other functional parts of the
program, such as the To Do List or the Appointment List, will cause the
Directory window to disappear and the new window to pop up.  One notable
exception is the Calendar window, which co-exists with any of the other
windows.  In some cases, such as the To Do List, there are no menu items
allowing movement to other windows, though you can always bring up the
Calendar window.

    In general, I like the multiple window approach to the problem of a
single program which is really an application bundle.  In some cases, the
implementation of WWWW is a little intrusive.  One thing that bothers me is
the fact that WWWW hides windows without really being told to.  When I move
from the Directory to the Appointment list, I must wait while WWWW hides the
Directory window, then pops up the Appointment window.  It is a little
unsettling to see windows appearing and disappearing all over the screen.
Another minor annoyance is the fact that when I select an appointment from
the Calendar window, the Appointment window pops to the top of the window
stack whether I want it to or not.  Usually I prefer my windows to stay
where I leave them.


DIRECTORY

    As I mentioned above, the Directory window contains a scrolling list
of a user's addresses and a panel displaying the currently selected entry.
The list is sorted alphabetically by name.  If you want your list sorted by
last name, you must enter last name first in the Name field for the entry.

    The selected entry panel contains fields for name, address, home and
work phone numbers, birthday, groups and notes.  Most of these are obvious.

    You can use the Groups string to categorize your address list.  Then
you can have WWWW display only the entries in a certain group by performing
a search on the list with only the group specified.

    If you enter the birthday of a person on your list, you can have
WWWW notify you when that birthday occurs.

    Once you select the person you wish to contact, you can have WWWW
dial the phone for you by selecting either Home or Work from one of the
menus. You can also print an address label for that person.


APPOINTMENTS

    This functionality is the real reason I bought this program.  I can
never keep track of when my wife is working, or when we are expected at
Relative X's for dinner.  We use Synchronize at work on our UNIX
workstations to keep track of everyone's meetings; I need a program at home
for much the same reasons.  One thing I usually don't need is granularity of
less than a day.  All I want to know is what day to drive to Relative X's.

    Several parts of the program interact to provide the Appointment
setting and notification functionality.  They are the Appointment window,
the Calendar window, and the background program "wwwwtimer."

    Appointments are entered via the Appointment window which is
arranged much like the Directory window.  To enter a new appointment, click
on New in the window and fill in the Who, What, When, Where, Phone and Notes
fields.  The When field always defaults to the current date and time, which
means it is always wrong.

    Using the menu, you can bring up the Appointment Parameters window
and set default parameters, or parameters for a particular appointment.  You
can set the time in advance of an appointment that the program reminds you
by selecting any of weeks, days, hours and minutes, and entering a value in
the associated text gadgets.  [Oh my God - WWWW's alarm clock just went off
and told me to go to bed.  I nearly fell out of my chair!]  If you have WWWW
remind you in advance of an appointment, it will remind you once in advance
and once when the appointment starts.  The Parameters window is also where
you set an appointment to repeat.  You are limited to once, daily, weekly,
biweekly, monthly, and yearly.

    Once the appointment is entered, it shows up in the Calendar
window.  The Calendar window can display either Appointments or To Do
items.  The month and year are displayed in the upper left corner.  Clicking
on the month brings up a pop-up menu from which you can select another
month.  Clicking on the year activates a text gadget; you can edit this to
change the year.

    Clicking on the Calendar display on a day which has an appointment
brings up a list of the appointments for that day.  The list contains
the Who field and the time of the appointment.  You can configure the
calendar so that selecting an item from this list either selects, moves, or
copies an appointment.  You can also have it create an appointment when you
click on a day.  When you select or create an appointment the Appointment
window is brought to the front of the screen with the selected appointment
or a newly created appointment.  When you move or copy an appointment, a box
appears around the entry, and you can then drag it to the correct day and
drop it.  I don't know how you could move it from one month (today) to the
next (tomorrow).

    Once you've created an appointment, the background timer program
starts monitoring it.  When the appointment comes up a window comes up to
the front reminding you of the appointment.  This window will override your
(well, my) screen blanker until you acknowledge it.  The program will also
speak to you, play a sound effect (some are provided), ring a bell, flash
the screen, and run and ARexx script when your appointment comes up.


THINGS TO DO

    The Things To Do window consists of a list of "To Dos" and a small
panel with the currently selected item.  An item has a What and a When
field.  There are buttons to create a new entry, delete the selected entry,
and put a check-mark by the selected entry.

    A Thing To Do will be carried forward until you check-mark it and
use the Update menu item to clear out the old To Dos.


ALARM CLOCK

    In the Alarm Clock window you can set a simple alarm to go off at
some future time.  There is a What field you can use to remind yourself of
why you set the alarm.


CLOCK DISPLAY

    You can have WWWW display a clock with the current date and time if
you wish.  The clock displays on the title bar of an iconified window, much
like the standard WorkBench 2.1 clock in digital mode.


PRINTING

    You can print phone numbers, your entire directory, appointments,
things to do, address labels, and a monthly calendar.  The output is either
Draft or Letter quality, depending on how you've set your Printer
Preferences.


LIKES AND DISLIKES

    I like the easy access to entries in the directory and the ability to
group entries (and thus limit the size of the scrolling list).  I like the
small touches that show a lot of thought went into the program; for example,
the act that you can select a person in your Directory, then bring up the
Appointment window containing only your appointments with that person.

    I dislike the somewhat quirky window scheme, and the flat,
"Workbench 1.3-like" interface.


COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    I've recently downloaded a copy of the OnTheBall ("OTB") demo.  This
program looks great and has a few features missing from WWWW.  It displays a
small calendar on the WorkBench, through which you access your appointments
for a specific day.  The program uses only one other window for all its
functionality.  There is a row of buttons at the bottom of the window you
use to select between Appointments, Addressbook, To-Do List, and NotePad
(not in WWWW). You can also display a calendar for the currently selected
week, month or year, and print any of these.  There are more options for
repeating appointments, such as repeating on selected days of the week.  The
calendars print in graphics mode using CG fonts, so they look beautiful.  I
wish my word processor could do as well!

    Some things in WWWW missing in OTB are the ability to have multiple
users, the great variety of notification methods, and the ability to use the
mouse to copy and move appointments.  This last is important to me when I
enter a month's worth of my wife's work days.  To be fair, I haven't done a
full evaluation of OTB, or even seen the manual.  There are probably a lot of
other features I am unaware of.


BUGS

    The displayed clock is often wrong for periods of time.  I haven't
checked to see whether this affects the timeliness of the notification.

    When I click on an appointment in the Calendar window, the
appointment pops up.  After it disappears, my screen is corrupted along the
borders of where the window was.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    When I last spoke to Blue Ribbon, before I bought WWWW, the person I
spoke to said they had sold out of all their stock, and weren't sure whether
they were going to continue manufacturing or enhancing the program.
However, she assured me they would continue *supporting* the program.  I
haven't called with the clock problem mentioned above to see just what
support they'll provide.


CONCLUSIONS

       Though it shows its age in the flat and quirky user interface, Who!
What! When! Where! is a good personal organizer program.  It has features,
such as multi-user support and drag-and-drop appointment moving, that are
probably not available elsewhere in the Amiga market.  If you can live with
the idiosyncrasies I described above, and don't care that the program may
never be upgraded, I think you'll find it worth owning.

    On the other hand, make sure you check out OnTheBall, which looks
quite cool.


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    This review is Copyright 1993 by Eric Dietiker.  All rights reserved.
    It may be freely distributed as long as it is distributed unmodified.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Dietiker    ...!ames!fxgrp!eric        [e-mail]
FXD/Telerate, Palo Alto, CA     [phone] x209
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