PRINT BEATS CD-ROM FOR WEB DIRECTORY : WEBPOINTERS.

Byline: Robin Lind

Young, ambitious and computer-struck technophiles expect everything constantly to improve for the better. Occasionally old ways are best.

A case in point is the 1997 edition of the World Wide Web Yellow Pages, published by New Riders, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster. It's big. It's impressive. It includes a CD-ROM that works on Windows, Mac and Unix.

Weighing in at just over two pounds, this mammoth compilation of more than 1,000 pages has an 86-page table of contents, a 56-page introduction, more than 700 pages of individual listings, a 35-page appendix of college Web sites and a 120-page index.

Approximately 10,000 Web sites are categorized by topic in the familiar Yellow Pages model. Each site includes 40 to 50 words summarizing the site's content.

At $34.99 it's hard to believe this is going to be a runaway seller, but it does offer value for people and businesses just beginning to dabble on the Internet.

The introduction is worth reading if you want to get a basic grounding in the way the Web works. If you're just introducing the Internet to your business, you'd do well to have everyone study it.

Unfortunately, the alphabetizing is a little eccentric. It is confusing, for instance, to see Web sites within the Books & Authors category go from Cyber-Seuss to Roald Dahl to Le Marquis de Sade, then Fyodor Dostoevsky to Dr. Seuss. I understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, but it tells me only that this was compiled by propeller heads with scant experience in library science.

As for the CD-ROM: Forget it. True, this one includes all the information that's in the book, with active hyperlinks to all those sites. You must access it from your Internet browser, however, and the accessing is painfully slow.

A WWW directory is not a static medium: It ought to be growing and changing all the time and ought to be archived on the Web where it can be updated every minute.

And, what do you know, the Yellow Pages directory is available on the Web!

Not only is it available on the Web but you can enter your own company's listing at no charge. This will help increase the value of this directory immensely. By next year the directory may be too big to print but the on-line version should be really useful.

If you want an enhanced listing you can pay extra to have logos, pictures or additional text. If you buy the enhanced listing, your company is guaranteed to come up ahead of someone else's if a search is made in your category.

This can be a two-edged sword. A search on the word ``bicycling'' brought up a host of sites, the first of which was for Spokes Bike Shop, an enhanced listing with art. But the second listing was for ``Buttman Videos,'' which turned out to be a purveyor of adult videos.

Say what? Either this is a sorry example of poor judgment or some hacker has already started mucking with the sorting codes.

Finally, I must say that having the printed version in your hands is a major advance over having the CD-ROM.

Why?

Well, for the simple reason that we have all been trained to read. A book lies flat on your desk and you can scan two pages at a time. You can not only find information quickly but you can also benefit from the serendipity of seeing allied and related information you did not realize existed.

You can turn the pages at your own speed, accelerating or slowing as you please, without worrying that the screen will seize up, the connection fail or the computer crash.

The Yellow Pages Directory also passes WebPointers' popular ``Four-Bs Test'' - the standard by which we compare all alleged advances in technology: Yes, you can carry it from bedroom to bathroom to bus to beach.

ADDRESS BOOK

WWW Yellow Pages

http://www.mcp.com/newriders

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