AT THE age of 87, Alastair Spencer-Nairn has had his first book published. Most people would consider that, in itself, to be a remarkable feat.But Alastair’s achievement becomes all the more remarkable when you discover that when he came to write his life story, he faced two major problems – he had recently lost his sight, and he was unable to type.
Alastair solved the problems with the help of a PC. In just two months, he had learned to touch-type. Now his book has been published in Britain and accepted by a major bookseller for special promotion in the USA.
Alastair is a retired linoleum manufacturer, living in Cupar, Fife. When his sight failed, he looked for something to pass the time, and asked members of the Fife Society for the Blind to teach him to touch-type on a PC keyboard.
“I could have learned Braille,” he says, “but I came to the conclusion it wasn’t going to be much use to me because none of my friends would be able to read it. But I had never used a computer before.”
After a couple of months using a software package which reads back his typed text letter by letter and sentence by sentence, he decided he was ready to start work on his book. “I was a slightly mature student when I started,” he jokes. The book – Silver Spoon – was an enormous challenge, but he enjoyed it immensely. “I had to memorise a tremendous lot of the procedures,” he says.
The idea for the book came from his great grandchildren, who asked him to write something about his early life that would be fun for them to read. He showed the first chapter to his family, and they encouraged him to continue the project.
He wrote all of the reminiscences from memory, being unable to refer to notes. Silver Spoon has been entered for the Scottish Author of the Year Competition. Meanwhile, Alastair has already written his next novel.
COMPUTER companies have been accused by the Plain English Campaign of using language that baffles millions of their customers.The Campaign’s director, Chrissie Maher, says: “Millions of pounds’ worth of equipment is not being used fully. Many people who have spent good money on expensive computers are intimidated by the technical language in manuals.“What’s the point in Britain having proportionately more PCs than any other country if so many of us don’t know how to get the best out of them?.”
Chrissie issues a challenge to the big companies: “Cut out the jargon in manuals and all communications. Use plain English and release thousands of computer users from the frustration of not understanding. Some companies have made the effort and use straightforward language. Let the rest follow suit.”
Chrissie, mother of four and grandmother of eight, says she knows from young people just how important computers are in life. She adds: “I’ve been fighting gobbledygook for 25 years. Just when we thought we might be beating it, along comes computer jargon to baffle a new generation.”
CONTACT: The Plain English Campaign, PO Box 3, New Mills, Stockport SK12 4QP, tel 01663 744409.
- Perhaps Chrissie and like-minded souls should invest in a subscription to Writers’ Update, where the policy is to explain all computer terms encountered, and present everything in plain English.
DIGIZINES – interactive magazines published on disk – appear to be winning acceptance by the news trade. How long will it be before there are interactive versions of popular printed titles, as well as the pioneering magazines that started life as digitised offerings?If the view of W. H. Smith’s retail division is anything to go by, the future for digizines is well starred.Commenting on the recent launch of Interactive Wave (I-Wave), a new CD-ROM title described as “four hours of full sensory overload”, Judith Swailes, of W. H. Smith’s Retail, said: “I do think that’s the way the market will go in the long term. It has a lot of potential and it’s good value with music, video and the whole interactive thing.”
Interactive Wave is the English version of a quarterly French digizine called La Vague Interactive (LVI). It is sold at £9.99 off the shelves in newsagents, deliberately published in a cover that resembles a paper magazine. Its “pages” of interactive video interviews, music, animation and free software are quite brilliant.
In France – where it is sold alongside other CD-ROMs because distribution practices prevent it being sold in newsagents – sales are around 7,000 per issue. Another leading digizine of the moment, Dennis International’s Blender claims 50,000 sales world-wide per issue.
CONTACT: I-Wave is available from main newsagents, or see details on the World Wide Web at http://www.lvi-press.com/i-wave.
EIGHT out of 14 of the 1996 BIMA (British Interactive Multimedia Association) award-winning products were developed using Macromedia software.Macromedia is one of the leading names in multimedia authoring and digital arts software. One of its main products is Director, a sophisticated multimedia authoring package for PC and Macintosh. In recent times, Macromedia has also produced software aimed at making World Wide Web publishing easy and more interactive for the end user.
The BIMA Awards, now in their 12th year, are open to anyone with a multimedia program or Web site. The 1996 Awards attracted 195 entries, of which 45 were nominated for one of 12 awards.
Special craft awards were also given for technical areas of Digital Video, Graphics and Animation, Sound and Music, User Interface and Packaging.
Newcomer to multimedia publishing, Notting Hill – headed by former Independent newspaper founder and editor Andreas Whittam Smith – won the Entertainment award for their Art of Singing CD-ROM.
Microprose won the Games section with Civilisation II, and Brøderbund Software Limited won the Children’s section with The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis.
In the Home Reference section, FlagTower took the honours with their World War II CD.
All of the above winners used Macromedia software.
BIMA was founded in 1985 and has established itself as the representative trade association for multimedia in the UK. BIMA’s awards are considered to be the most prestigious mark of achievement in multimedia in Europe.
Members include hardware and software manufacturers, suppliers and distributors, publishers and lawyers, freelances and consultants, affiliated associations, academic and other institutions, and end users.
CONTACT: For further information about Macromedia products, call 01344 458600.
FIVE MILLION people now work from home, according to a recent Government estimate. At around the same time, BT estimated that 2.25 million white collar workers, representing a third of all UK companies, are currently working from home as “teleworkers” for three days a week or more.Many writers, and others whose work includes writing-related tasks, are among the growing army of home workers.Home-working is now recognised as a forceful, ever-growing trend that mirrors the insecurity of our times. Companies are cutting overheads, streamlining their management structures and embracing technology – at the price of permanent, in-house jobs.While redundancy threatens the jobs-for-life culture, a new and independent movement is making home-based working its personal choice.
Many, if not most, home workers are finding that the change suits their lifestyles better, or, perhaps more accurately, that their lifestyles change for the better once the initial shock of having no colleagues to chat with in the normal way has been overcome.
But at least one dangerous myth is apparently being perpetuated thanks the to the rise in home working: the Great Insurance Myth. It goes something like this:
“I’m working from home now, and I have the basic communications requirements – computer, fax and mobile phone. If I’m burgled, or there’s a fire, I can automatically claim on my household contents policy.”
This myth, like all myths, is absolutely untrue. Not only that, it is POSITIVELY DANGEROUS. If you’re running a business from home, as many writers do, you need a separate and distinct policy to cover the items associated with the business.It’s not difficult to get a proper policy covering your work-related equipment. Some policies extend to loss of income due to damage to or theft of the tools of your trade.
One specialist in this area of insurance is Tolson Messenger, who in 1993 pioneered the original, dedicated home-working insurance policy, branded the Home Office policy.
For the second year running, Tolson Messenger have won the Broker of the Year Award in the category “The Most Effective Use of Media”, acknowledging the their detailed research on the possible pitfalls of home working and how they focused public awareness via press and media attention.
Tolson Messenger’s Home Office policy has now been updated and relaunched under the title Home-Business to convey the policy’s breadth of cover.
For £120, cover under this policy includes “all risks” of physical loss or damage on £7,500 of all business equipment, from the Pentium PC to the potter’s wheel, plus £1,500 of portable items (laptops, mobile phones etc) anywhere in the world. “All risks” includes accidental damage and new-for-old replacement. Other benefits include business money cover, a 24-hour legal and emergency helpline, public and employer’s liability, business interruption of £10,000 and cover for £1,000 worth of stock. Tolson Messenger says the policy is ideal for writers – they have a number of journalists on their books.
Central to the relaunch of the package is the Home Business Club. Clients automatically become members of the club, benefits of which include a seven-strong on-call team of consultants for specialist advice, discounted household and car insurance, a gift of £15 if you introduce a new club member, a series of fact sheets and a quarterly newsletter, The Messenger.
CONTACT: Tolson Messenger, 148 King Street, London W6 0QU, telephone 0181-741 8361, fax 0181-741 9395.
THE LATEST CD-ROM release from IMSI (UK) Ltd forces us to ask: Is there anything you can’t publish on CD-ROM?I Can Do Magic is an interactive, 3-D magic trick tutorial for children aged from seven upwards.It contains classic tricks including a conjuring collection, sleight of hand tricks, dinner table dazzlers and card illusions.The course follows a practise and perform methodology.
Each trick is shown using fully-rendered 3-D animated characters as opposed to ordinary video clips, providing a seamless, behind-the scenes look at how the tricks are done.I Can Do Magic! is designed for both PC and Macintosh systems. It is Windows 3.1 and 95 compatible. Street price is £19.95 (recommended price £25.95 plus VAT).
With another recent release, IMSI is rocking the clip art market with the largest-ever high-quality image collection.The Masterclips 35,000 Premium Image Collection includes vector-based colour clip art, TrueType fonts, colour photos, sound clips, animation and video clips, together with a graphics browser. Recommended retail price is £49.95.Demand for clip art has rocketed as writers, businesses and home computer users seek to enhance their documents, presentations and publications to make them stand out from the crowd.
All of the clip art is vector based and can be edited and saved by the user in a variety of formats.One wonders what Corel – previously the leading supplier of volume clip art, with 25,000 images included, for instance, with its Graphics Pack suite – will do now. A 40,000 clip art pack, perhaps? Or will they go straight for their competitors’ jugulars with a whacking great 100,000-item offering?
It’s a good thing for them that new CD-ROMs with even greater storage capacity than the current 650Mb are on their way . . .
CONTACT: IMSI (UK) Limited, 0181-581 2000; Internet – http://www.imsisoft.com.
| Contents | Latest News | New Markets Update | Newsbytes | Competition |
| Features | Comment | Writers’ Views | Subscriptions | Advertisements |
