Making Moves, Doing Deals, Screening the News

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The situation I used as an example was a lease that needed to be renegotiated. I described myself to Negotiator Pro and was pleased to discover that I am not deplorably weak but rather an "Analytic, Effective Cooperative Negotiator" who shows some "tendency to be an Ineffective Cooperative" -- capable of backsliding but apparently not hopeless. The software then described other negotiating personalities and showed how I could respond effectively to them.

Negotiator Pro draws from such negotiating bibles as Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton (Houghton Mifflin, 1992), and Getting Together: Building a Relationship That Gets to Yes, by Roger Fisher (Houghton Mifflin, 1988). The software's glossary explains some 500 terms specific to the field of negotiation, making it easy (and entertaining) to find out more about topics like Difficult People and Herding Cats.

The structure Negotiator Pro imposed on my usual seat-of-the pants approach was its most helpful feature. Using the software to help create a plan meant that I had a plan, for starters. And for people negotiating as a team, Negotiator Pro helps keep everyone on the same page throughout the process.

I'll be renegotiating my lease with an Analytic, Effective Competitive Negotiator, and that has Negotiator Pro a bit worried. My software mentor is urging me to "be sure that you have the internal fortitude to put up with the stonewalling." But this time I won't waver. This time I have Negotiator Pro on my team.

Software
PointCast Network from PointCast Inc., Cupertino, CA (408-253-0894, http:// www.pointcast.com, free with registration), a customized news and information service that also takes the place of a screen saver

Reviewer
Sam White (samw@worldcongress.com), vice-president of the Treasury Resource Center of World Congress, in Burlington, MA, a research organization for corporate treasury managers

Requirements
486/33 MHz or higher IBM-compatible; Windows 3.1 or Windows 95; 8 MB RAM; 10 MB hard-disk space; 256 or higher color screen

No more flying windows. No more toasters. No more scenic views, scanned-in pictures, or cartoon characters. Thanks to PointCast Network, a news and information service on the Internet, something useful is going to appear on your screen when you're not busy writing your next great business plan. There's only one problem: this superjazzy piece of free software may wind up costing you in on-line charges and slowdowns.

Setting up PointCast is a breeze. You download the program from, and register for the service on, the Web (http://www.pointcast.com) and then install it as you would any other piece of software. PointCast automatically finds your Internet connection, whether you dial in or have a dedicated line from your company's local area network, and also configures as your screen saver. After the software is installed, you can personalize news feeds in six categories: News, Companies, Weather, Sports, Industries, and Lifestyle.

The service is like an IV drip for news junkies. It offers four update options: automatic updates, manual updates (you have to hit a button), customized scheduled updates (you set the schedule), and limited scheduled updates during off-hours (good for large networks). With each update the program sweeps out the old news and then downloads information in the categories you've selected and flashes the headlines on your screen. During the course of a day you might look up and see that IBM has taken over a small software company or that President Clinton has signed a bill that directly affects your industry. To read the entire story, you click on the headline. If you want, sports scores and stock-market quotes can scroll across the bottom of your screen (you can choose just the sports and stocks you're interested in). You can even get your horoscope.

In the newest version of the software, you can choose the source of your news. Among those sources are the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Knight-Ridder News Service, CNN, and the Weather Channel.

Although it will certainly wow just about everyone in the office, PointCast has some problems. For starters, the program takes up a significant amount of memory (nearly 2 MB in the first version). It can take a long time to download updates in all the categories you select, leading to high on-line charges (still, a savings over the monthly cost -- in the thousands of dollars -- of most news-filtering services). Of course the time it takes to download an update is also a function of your hardware. According to PointCast, an update via a T1 line takes just seconds; but if you have a 28.8-Kb modem and connection and update only once a day, it might take as long as five minutes. And if you share an Internet connection with more than a few people, you may have to take the blame for slowing everyone else down.

Still, for businesspeople who want to stay in touch with the outside world even while they're sitting at their desks, PointCast is certainly worth a test-drive.

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