RIK: Gentle Reader, prepare for either mild embarrassment or a sweet burst of pride.
JIM: It's pop-quiz time.
RIK: We're not aiming for humiliation -- we just want to prove the crying need for this month's batch of geography-education titles.
JIM: So, without consulting any references, we want you to draw a quick map. Of Bosnia.
RIK: That's Bosnia-Herzegovina, for you geonerds. And while you're at it, add Croatia and Serbia.
JIM: You've seen this map a hundred times in your newspaper, so it should be easy, right?
RIK: Wrong. We Americans are a cartographically challenged bunch -- for example, less than 20 percent of the highly educated and singularly gifted MacUser editorial staff could even approximate a map of the Balkans.
JIM: To be fair, that's a heck of a lot better than the public at large. One study showed that only 20 percent of Americans could even find the U.S. of A. on a globe.
RIK: Depressing.
JIM: But curable. If you've got a Mac and a CD-ROM drive, we can steer you toward some of the best geography-training tools since Mercator flattened his first globe.
RIK: But first, turn the page and flip The Game Room upside-down to see the Balkans' prewar borders, courtesy of a map from World Discovery Deluxe, a rich collection of map-based games from Great Wave Software.
JIM: Games might be a bit overstated. Tests is closer to the truth.
RIK: If game equals test plus fun, I'd definitely call the activities in World Discovery Deluxe games. Plus it has great viewing options, including shaded-relief and day-and-night satellite views.
JIM: But some tests -- uh, games -- are hard. Can you identify the national anthem of Albania?
RIK: Well, not the first time. But at least World Discovery Deluxe's national anthems are full-scale CD-quality orchestrations, not just cheesy synthesized versions like those in Broderbund's PC Globe Maps'n'Facts.
JIM: PC Globe Maps'n'Facts is cheesy through and through -- from the simplistic commentary to the clumsy navigation tools.
RIK: Nice maps, though.
JIM: Hey, you're a hard-core cartophile. For us average citizens who simply use maps as tools, I recommend 3D Atlas, from Creative Wonders. It has solid educational content, a great global interface, and way-cool 3-D movies of flybys through various terrains.
RIK: I will agree that 3D Atlas is the slickest of the lot. The portentous music on the sound track is a bit distracting, though, and the flybys are more entertaining than enlightening.
JIM: But you have to admit that 3D Atlas has an incredible wealth of information.
RIK: Well, OK -- it's undoubtedly the only application on the planet that can graph a country-by-country scatterplot of central-government expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product versus the percentage of married couples using condoms.
JIM: So it's a bit free-form. If you're looking for a more structured approach to geography education, try Interactive Geography and Continent Explorer II. They're from Pierian Spring Software, the folks who publish the Digital Chisel multimedia-creation software. Both titles are thorough, well thought out, and academically sound -- if a bit stuffy.
RIK: Since the folks at Pierian Spring used Digital Chisel to create their titles, it's easy to create new lessons and add them to the curriculum. World Discovery Deluxe lets you create your own games as well, but both Pierian Spring titles have much more thorough game-creation . . .
JIM: . . . or test-creation . . .
RIK: . . . tools.
JIM: My quarrel with Interactive Geography and Continent Explorer II is not with their content -- it's impeccable -- but with their amateurish look-and-feel.
RIK: Well, if it's beauty you seek, I recommend the Small Blue Planet CD-ROM series -- The Cities Below and The Real Picture World Atlas -- from Now What Software. These guys do a marvelous job of combining maps and satellite images with an intuitive navigation interface and well-written information.
JIM: Their stuff is fun too. In the History and Language section of The Real Picture World Atlas, for example, you can click on different countries to hear various phrases spoken in each country's major languages. Very useful the next time your kid is in Malawi and wants to say "I love you" in Chewa.
