TCS - What Were They Thinking...
What Were They Thinking...
Product that never saw the light of day
by Steve Bass
Pasadena IBM Users Group
From the January 2001 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter
Ever wonder about the stuff we never write about? I write for PC World and I'm on the inside. I
get to see all junky software, bizarre gadgets, and wacky hardware. Here are a few that ended up
in the trash can.
Tell Me About It
Do you need to get some work done? Tired of hassling with Windows and exhausted from installing
all those upgrades? Try The Couch, a hot new product from the cool streets of Beverly Hills.
Within six hours of using The Couch, you'll be ready to give up your computer and get a life.
Features include WAVs with appropriate and supportive responses, dynamic help screens so you can
determine your weekly progress, and a handy dialer for those late night crises. Helpful Wizards
are also available to guide you--step by step--through those times when you're nagged with
insecurities and doubts. And if that's not enough, you get valuable look-up tables with the most
common psychiatric disorders, such as Schizophreniform, Paranoid Schizophrenia, Psychogenic
Fugue, and the Writers Disorder, also known as Attention Deficit Disorder, to name just a few.
The list price for The Couch is $150 an hour but I've seen interns and psych assistants working
for as little as $50. The Couch, Psyche International, (800) LAY-DOWN, www.psyintl.com
Just Expense It!
Face it: no one likes the hassle of filling in expense accounts. But there's no getting around
it, especially if you want to get reimbursed. Fortunately, there's FillUp 2.0, a handy macro for
getting your spreadsheet up to speed, quickly and easily. All you need to do is give FillUp a
starting range, say, $150. Within seconds, FillUp works backwards, breaking the amount into your
spreadsheet categories, including travel and entertainment, transportation, and lodging, to name
just a few. The program's smart, using odd numbers, such as $5.21, $16.63, and $35.17, and the
total is never an even number. Don't have a spreadsheet with categories? No problem because
FillUp will do it for you, in over seven professional categories including sales rep, attorney,
and journalist. What's more, FillUp even prints receipts, from taxi and airline tickets to
restaurant stubs and itemized hotel portfolios. Macros available for Excel, Quattro Pro, and
Paradox. List Price: $75. FillerUp Corp, (212) 555-fill, www.fillerup.com
Lickity Split Replies
It's a fact of life: In today's economy, many people are out of work. At the same time, busy
executives barely have time to read, never mind answer, their electronic mail. But with
QuickReply, there's a quick solution for everyone. QuickReply is a remote communication package
that actually pays you to log onto an executive's e-mail service, read the messages and respond
with bright, business-like repartee. There's more free time for the executive and you get a
couple of bucks in your pocket. The program comes complete with a built-in spell checker,
thesaurus, and grammar checker, and includes plenty of sample responses. Don't know an executive?
It's easy. Just choose from a list of high quality execs supplied by QuickReply. Price includes
payment of $1 per message processed. List price: $149. Total Solutions, (415) 555-quik.
http://www.quickreply.com
Give me an A+
Want to help your child get into college? Forget about Encarta. Ignore Comptons. What you need is
Make the Grade, an extraordinary CD-ROM based program that actually writes your child's reports
and term papers. Here's how it works: From an easy to use menu, you--or your child--answer some
simple questions. Start with "What grade do you want?" Then, "What's the subject or topic of the
report?" One more. "What grade of school are you in?" Choose from writing styles including
casual, terse, convoluted, and scientific, to name just a few. Finally, decide how many pages
you'll need. Make the Grade searches through the CD-ROM's 200 gigabytes of highly indexed,
compressed data. The program quickly finds the facts and details about the chosen subject,
keeping your child's profile in mind. In no time flat, your child has a polished report ready to
go. What's more, Make the Grade discovers items even the professor probably doesn't know. The
professional version creates theses, dissertations, and newspaper and magazine articles. List
price: $79; Professional $249. MG Systems, (213) 555-grad. www.makethegrade.com
Play it Safe
You've seen them on everything from old-fashioned floppy disks and Zip drives to hard drives.
AVOID EXPOSURE TO ALL MAGNETIC FIELDS. DO NOT BEND OR FOLD. Unfortunately, most people don't pay
close attention to the warning, resulting in damage to untold thousands of disks and drives.
Millions of dollars and more than thirty thousand jobs are lost each year because of this
carelessness. Luckily, GayGezunt's got a hot answer: bright fluorescent BeSafe Tags that will be
noticed and remembered! Self-adhesive and tough to remove, BeSafe Tags carry the important
warning all end-users should heed. Available in over thirty colors, such as Hot Pfunk, Sizzling
Scatado, and Cool Culumber, the tags use standard fonts as well as Algarian, Zonk and Bondini.
Try BeSafe Tags on other items, such as your morning newspaper, your car, your spouse, and your
children. List price: $3/roll. GayGezunt Int'l. (714) 555-safe. www.gaygezunt.com
Do It Yourself Receipts
Do you cut those rebate coupons out of the newspaper? You know the kind: Send in the product's
UPC code, fill out the form, and include the store's original receipt. Do you always fall for it?
Don't feel bad, it happens to all of us, In fact, it's a well-thought out marketing scam, because
you never, ever save the store receipt, and never send anything, saving the company plenty of
bucks. Fortunately, there's BoguStub, a hot solution developed by a cool programmer with too much
time on his hands. From an easy to use Windows interface, type in the name of the store, the date
purchased, and the price and name of the purchased items. And Voila!, out pops an authentic
receipt from your laser printer, complete with accurate sales tax added to the total. BoguStub's
features include a handy pull-down menu of local stores, the ability to change tax tables, and
even a friendly "Thanks for shopping with us!" tag at the bottom of the receipt. BoguStub is also
useful when you've lost a receipt and need to return an item. Future releases will let you print
a color watermark on the receipt, add store names to a look-up table, and print realistic
perforations. List price: Free. LastMinuteProductions, http://www.bogusystem.com/
Yes, before you send me e-mail, all of these products are entirely fictional. Except, strangely
enough, BoguStub, which is a legitimate product, available on the author's web site.
Steve Bass is a Contributing Editor with PC World and runs the Pasadena IBM Users Group. He's
also a founding member of APCUG. Write to him at steve_bass@pcworld.com. Check PCW's current
edition at www.pcworld.com/resource/toc/index.asp and sign up for the Steve Bass online
newsletter at www.pcworld.com/bass_letter.
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Tulsa Computer Society 01/02/2002
Don Singleton, President