** Suggestive Remarks / 452 words **

Mike Kerslake with some suggestions for better Atari computing and some ideas for programmers...

First off it was nice to hear a programmer is looking at the stock control and invoicing program idea mentioned last issue. I, and no doubt, others, look forward to developments on this front.

A few ideas now, and we start with a suggestion from Ian Pitfield in Sheffield who wondered if there's a programmer interested in comms who could come up with a pager-type program. There are a number of such programs available on other platforms, and it appears something similar could be done for our platform.

The basic idea would be to use STiK or STiNG to dial and connect to a paging service, then run the proposed paging program into which you enter the name and pager number details along with the required message, and send it to the relaying service. If anyone is up to the challenge I have a number of existing PC programs which do a similar job and I can make them available.

Moving onto my record collection now!  As an ex-DJ I have amassed rather too many tapes, CDs and vinyl records over the years to bear thinking about, and although I have numbered each album and single, there's no way whatsoever of telling what song is on what album other than looking through them all manually!

Finding a particular song or recording is reliant upon my increasingly fragile memory so it's about time I got a database together to help me and anyone else with large collections. I know I could use a general database, but all that messing about setting up fields isn't really for me. Kari Heimonen's Music Box was a reasonable attempt at a dedicated database but it's a few years old and looks and behaves accordingly! More ideas and help available from me personally if required.

A suggestion for a CPX now. Remember Mark Baines's excellent STAMPS.CPX which calculates which stamps are required to make up postal amounts? Well how about a CPX into which you enter the weight of a parcel and it comes back with the amount payable? Obviously this would have to take account of country and postal zones and it would need an editable database to so it can be updated easily when the rates change. Anyone up for this?

Finally, this column is open for everyone to contribute ideas and it would be nice to have a few more ideas from readers for programmers to get their teeth into. Many previous suggestions have resulted into excellent real programs which is proof, if any was needed, that programmers are taking notice of the ideas floated here!

Mike Kerslake