                    The 11 Million Businesses Phone Book
                        Reviewed by Eliot M. Gelwan

        A program like this represents the flip side of the current love
affair with multimedia that has made a CD-ROM drive standard issue on most
new PCs. Dull but immensely practical, it utilizes enormous storage capacity
not for flashy sound or images but merely copious textual data. This is not
entertainment by any stretch of the imagination - merely what is probably
the most comprehensive listing of US and Canadian business listings
available on CD-ROM , compiled from over 5,000 Yellow Pages directories and
other sources. The price is right enough - $49 - that I believe I can
forgive it its few weaknesses.
        The disk comes with both DOS and Windows versions. Unless you read
the manual, it'd probably take some figuring out that you install the DOS
version by running "install.exe" and the Windows version via "setup.exe."
The user interface in both is simple and nothing to write home about but it
gets the job done. One searches by filling in the blanks in the search
fields. You can search by business name (or even just a portion of it)
across all of North America or narrow the search by state, city, zip code or
area code. You can also do a so-called "reverse search" to find the name of
the business when you enter a phone number. (Handy, for example,  for those
of you who want to find out which of those phone messages comes from a
creditor you've been trying to duck before you return the call!)
        The search engine is not very rapid. On my fast 486 computer and
slow CD-ROM drive, at least, the limiting factor seems to be CD-ROM access
time. This is unfortunate, because in a quirky fashion you can only enter
search criteria one step at a time. For example, let's say I'm trying to
find the phone number of "Andy's Diner" in my home town, using "Andy" as my
search term. I have to wait for the program to pull up all the businesses in
the US and Canada with the name "Andy" in them before I can tell it to
narrow the selections to those in Cambridge, MA with a second round of
searching through the previously retrieved set. By the way, it didn't find
the Andy's I was seeking, one of the best breakfast joints in Cambridge.
(Thankfully, you don't have to call to make a reservation for breakfast
there yet.) It did, however, find many of the other quirky local businesses
I set as a task for it.
        After playing with the program, it's clear to me that you can't
exactly use it in lieu of the Yellow Pages, for the simple reason that you
can't look businesses up by category. If I tried to find a nearby
electrician, for example, I'd be restricted to businesses that had the
search word - i.e., "electric" - in their name as listed. You also wouldn't
be able to use it if you were, for example, a marketer trying to build
mailing lists of likely prospects. For one thing, while the program tells
you what street a business is on when you look it up, it doesn't show its
address on the street. And while you can print a single listing out or have
the program's auto-dialer call the number for you, you can't save a listing
or listings to disk (although users of the Windows version, of course, can
get around this by "printing" to disk) or copy it to the Windows clipboard
to paste into another application.
        Furthermore, the program is metered by a proprietary system which
makes the disc unusable after 5,000 "look-ups" or a year, whichever comes
first.. By the way, I happened to notice that that's 5000 in each version.
The DOS and the Windows programs are metered separately. Users might install
only one version and not figure this out It seems to me, on the other hand,
that 5,000 is probably plenty for most casual users. (Unless you have an
awful lot of creditors to duck - just kidding!)  The company justifies their
metering system by arguing that, despite the massive volume of their
database, they can charge the consumer a low price based on the premise that
they will probably actually never need more than a small amount of that
data.
        I think American Business Information, the publisher of this CD-ROM,
intends this program to be a kind of "loss leader" to gain business for
their consulting and direct marketing enterprises. The company's annual
report is included in the program's packaging, which is geared much more
toward profiling ABIs' other services including a full on-line database of
the same 11 million businesses including much more information on each, such
as credit rating, sales volume, and names of owners and managers, "making
business to business marketing possible."  Arguing that there is "no
substitute for telephone verification.", they say they update this database
by a laborious annual process of over 14 million phone calls. They also use,
they recount, corporate annual reports, government data, business magazines
and newsletters, and the Post Office's National Change of Address program to
ensure the  accuracy of their data. Even if it is only an afterthought in
ABIs' scheme of things, however, the 11 Million Businesses Phone Book are
beneficiaries of this effort.

System Requirements: Minimum RAM: 640K (Windows version), 420K (DOS) ,
Minimum 2 MB available disk space  (3 MB with sound), MS-DOS 3.3 or higher
(for DOS version), or Windows 3.1 (for Windows version), CD-ROM drive with
Microsoft CD-ROM extensions ver. 2.1 or higher, Optional: Soundblaster card
(for spoken phone number capability), Hayes compatible modem (for
auto-dialling capability)


                       American Business Information
                   5711 South 86th Circle, P.O. Box 27347
                         Omaha Nebraska 68127-7347
                           phone: (402) 593-4595
                            fax: (402) 331-6681

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