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1994-08-05
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September 1994 PsL CD-ROM
Still Up to Our Hips...
As the old saying goes, when you are up to your hips in alligators,
it is sometimes difficult to remember that your objective is to
drain the swamp.
We are still struggling into the wee hours with trying to convert
our text-based reviews files over to our new database format,
as well as with enhancing the CD-ROM access software to make
it perform better and converting our review department software.
We were very late getting out both the August PsL News and
the August CD-ROM. The September issues are much closer to
being on time, but we are still having a lot of extra work to do
and after a year of putting out the Monthly CD, we have not yet
achieved a level of quality with which we could be satisfied.
(Although many people tell us this is already the highest quality
CD around.)
The CD interface still has a lot of room for improvement, and
those of you who have called and written with suggestions can be
assured that once we get past the alligator stage, we will imple-
ment as many of your suggestions as possible.
The PsL Shareware Database which is used to access the CD-ROMs
is going to be a very valuable asset to the whole shareware
community once it is completed.
We are very excited about the direction things are headed and
about the response we have received over the last year. While
some other major shareware vendors and CD-ROM publishers
have gone out of business, PsL's CD-ROM distribution continues
to grow each month, mainly from word-of-mouth since we have
not had time to put forth a real marketing effort.
Again, thanks for your support, for your many suggestions
and for your patience during this difficult time.
September CD-ROM Overflows
As you know, each month we put onto the PsL Monthly CD
all the programs received during the last 30 days (900 programs
this month) plus a section of our disk-based library.
The section for this month is Business. For lack of a more
appropriated category, we include in the Business section Com-
munications & Networking, Church/Religion, Engineering, and
Statistics & Math, as well as Accounting/Finance, Business
Applications, Database & Mailing List Managers, and Spread-
sheet programs.
This has turned out to be the largest of the Monthly CD sec-
tions and we had more than 600MB available to put on the Sep-
tember CD-ROM. To maximize the number of programs put on
the CD, we omitted for one month the text files with the past
issues of PsL News and the Reviews files (which are gradually
being replaced by the PsL Shareware Database files, anyway).
Since we will not have room to add the new programs six
months from now when Business hits the CD again, we will have
to find another CD onto which to put Communications, or we
will have to leave off the large number of BBS utilities and add-
on's which only appeal to a small percentage of users, most of
whom have the past CDs with those files on them anyway.
We hate to have to break the nice six-month cycle we have
now for putting out all six sections of the library twice a year, but
as the new programs continue to flow in, we may be forced to do
just that before too long anyway. The alternative is for us to
choose programs to be omitted from the CD, which is something
we had hoped to avoid doing.
Any ideas about how you would like to see the Monthly CD
develop are abundantly welcome here.
id Software in Business Week
Many people still wonder if the shareware concept works. At
PsL, we take credit card orders for the authors of over 1300
shareware programs, so we know it works. (We have to write
those authors checks at the end of each month which prove it!)
For some programmers, it works better than others. One
smashing success are the people at id Software, publishers of
Doom, the arcade game (available from PsL) which is sweeping
the computer world.
id Software founders Adrian Carmack, John Romero, and
John Carmack, were pictured (along with a screen shot from
Doom) in a full-page article about the company in the August 1
issue of Business Week.
id's revenues for 1994 are projected to be $6-$10 million,
according to the article.
The article goes on to say that "Id's proprietary graphics soft-
ware lets players move fluidly in a 3-D world. With stereo sound,
the illusion gest so convincing that players often try body English
to avoide their demon foes. An long Doom sessions can lead to
strong aftereffects: Players report seeing real walls move and
wondering what beast is lurking around the next street corner."
id Software's plans for the future (more great games!) show
one of the most important benefits of users paying the registra-
tion fees for the shareware they use -- more and better programs
in the future.
If you have not tried Doom, you don't know what you're
missing. Get it from the July CD-ROM, GAMES\DOS\ARCADE2
directory.