NEW PROGRAM CAN HELP YOU FIND YOUR WAY

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 24, 1993                   TAG: 9302230261
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
NEW PROGRAM CAN HELP YOU FIND YOUR WAY
Heard the one about the Traveling Salesman?
He got client addresses in Manhattan and then starved to death trying to figure out cross streets in New York City's typically user-hostile street numbering system.
Native New Yorkers have genes that allow them to understand a system of tortured math that seems to take into account the relative humidity and time of day to find a cross street from a numbered address. The rest of us might want to try a program called City Streets published by Road Scholar of Houston, Tex.
For IBM PCs and compatibles with fast (286 chip or better) processors and a hard disk, the program can ask you for an address and identify that spot on an on-screen map.
Or you can point to a spot and get an address. Or any number of spots and get the distance between them as well as the cumulative total.
The software allows you to zoom in and out on maps and city streets and pick your level of detail. You can also draw on the maps and store and print the results. City Streets will also allow you to store your work in the .PCX graphics format for export to word processor and other graphics programs.
The software is ideal for anyone organizing a convention with events at multiple sites, planning distribution routes or running any kind of pick-up or delivery service. It would also be a godsend for any organization that responds to emergencies with little information - rescue squads, police and fire, utilities, news.
The initial $99.95 purchase gets you a basic road map of the United States plus demo maps of downtown San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and midtown Manhattan. You also get a coupon that entitles you to disks with data on one free city of your choice from the more than 160 available. After the first one, there's an additional charge.
Besides the hard disk, the software wants to see 640 kilobytes of RAM and an EGA or VGA monitor. It's compatible with Windows 3.0 or 3.1 and runs under DOS as well.
The digital maps used by City Streets come from ETAK of Menlo Park, Calif.
Road Scholar, 2603 Augusta, Suite 1000, Houston, TX 77057. Orders: 1-800-426-ROAD. Questions: 713-266-ROAD. FAX: 713-266-4525.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB