CAPTURE THAT THOUGHT!

Reprinted with Permission

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Whether it's jotting down that important fact or editing the final draft, writers find many electronic tools designed to help them work.   Pens, pencils and even typewriters are things of the past. Today, the tools of the trade include word processors, spelling and grammar checkers, thesaurus and even scanners, graphics packages and text databases.

A primary challenge for writers, as for many people, is quickly recalling ideas, facts or just remembering who said what!  These bits of information can provide the proper content and perhaps even the basis for organizing an article, report or a book.

A perfect example is the story of Robert Lissauer who had always been around the world of music, show business, and the arts. Lissauer spent six years compiling what he knew best, music trivia.  His obsession to create a book containing his knowledge  resulted in the six pound  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR MUSIC IN AMERICA.  It contains the titles, authors and chronology of nearly 20,000 popular songs all compiled in the text database, askSam.

Not knowing anything about computers in 1986, Lissauer states, "I foresaw that if I were to use index cards on which to register the information garnered through my research, it might take 25 years to complete the task." Sidney Zion of The New York Observer credits Lissauer's achievement, "If ever a buff made good, it's Robert Lissauer, who finally got tired of umpiring bar bets at the Player's Club and decided oh-hell-I-might-as-well-write-it-myself.... this is the Tiffany window of song." And rumor has Lissauer writing yet another music project with of course, askSam.  

Writers sometimes travel to collect their information. Such is the case of Fred B. Eiseman Jr. who lives six months each year in Bali, Indonesia.  Currently, six of his books are in print about this unusual region.  His essays about the culture fill two volumes of the book,  BALI: SEKALA AND NISKALA, and his guide book enjoys international distribution.

"All of my field notes for all of these books are stored in askSam files." says Eiseman.  He normally takes a laptop into the field and enters data directly in askSam files, or transcribes hand-written notes into askSam when he returns.  Eiseman further explains, "Whenever I go into the field I make sketches of significant items that I am studying.  When I get back to my base, I scan the sketches with my Logitech ScanMan hand scanner, convert them to GIF files with HiJaak and store them with the askSam file on the same subject so that the sketches become part of the field notes on the subject being studied."  Eiseman also uses askSam for his Balinese-English dictionary,  for cataloguing slides, indexing maps, categorizing his finances,calculating conversion rates between Indonesian Rupiah and US Dollars and tracking "things to do." Eiseman indicated that his Bali askSam files contain sixteen million bytes of information.

Using askSam, writers often take large amounts of disparate information and easily search and edit it. Writers can  import ASCII information downloaded from on-line systems such as CompuServe, NEXIS/LEXIS or Westlaw;  from word processors; or scanned in via OCR. askSam combines database,  text retrieval and word processing functions.

Several Pulitzer Prize winning  journalists use askSam.  Andrew Schneider, while at the Pittsburg Press, used askSam to search large amounts of FAA reports about helicopter crashes.  Schneider discovered the reason for  the crashes by finding a pattern in the recorded information.  His find has probably saved numerous lives.  Following Schneider,  Joe Hallinan and Susan Headden, won the Pulitzer Prize for a medical malpractice series at the Indianapolis Star.  Hallinan credited askSam with helping him organize the mountains of information he gathered during his project.  

Keith Mohler, a technical writer for 16 years and an enthusiastic askSam user since 1988,  summarizes the importance of askSam as a tool for writers.  Mohler states, "When it comes to managing text, askSam works as a Writer thinks.  Research and background material is not found in fields;  it's arranged in Words, Lines and Paragraphs and that's exactly the criterion askSam can use to access my data!"

As stated by Authur C. Clarke:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Mohler concludes "When it comes to pulling data out of my computer with blinding speed, askSam certainly has more than a few tricks up it's sleeve."

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               NOTES:  

               Lissauer's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR MUSIC IN AMERICA (First edition, 1991) was published

               by Paragon House, 90 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011.  

               Books about the culture, flowers, fruits and woodcarvings of Bali by Fred and Margaret Eiseman are

               distributed by Weatherhill Distribution Inc, 420 Madison Ave, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10017-1107.

               ScanMan is a registered trademark of Logitech Inc.

               HiJaak is a registered trademark of Inset Systems.

               CompuServe is a registerd trademark for CompuServe Incoporated.

               LEXIS/ NEXIS  are registered trademarks for information products and services of Mead Data Central, Inc.

               Westlaw is a registered trademark of West Publishing Company.

Reprint rights for  CAPTURE THAT THOUGHT! granted by askSam Systems, Copyright, 1996.

Questions reguarding this article may be directed to Bea McKinney, c/o askSam Systems, PO Box 1428, Perry, FL  32348. Phone: 1-800-800-1997 or 1-850-584-6590    -   Fax: 1-850-584-7481