My editor keeps me on a short leash when it comes to the types of databases to be reviewed, but once a year I may opt for ones that are beyond the scientific, technical, business, medical, or academic circles. This is reasonable because EContent readers also have a life, and most of them certainly dine out and buy books, CDs, or video flicks. I have no doubt that they also want to know their choices so that they can spend their money wisely. So this time my picks include the new Web version of the Zagat Survey of restaurants and a superbly enhanced and intelligent shopping agent, ACSES, for books, video, and music. The pan is the Web site of Blockbuster Music that may shed some light on why well-established brick and mortar stores are left in the dust by many competing Web stores. THE ZAGAT SURVEY The maroon-colored Zagat Survey guides to restaurants, first published in the early 1980s, became an overnight success. No wonder that the print content has been licensed to several CD-ROM travel guides and that Microsoft chose it as its culinary guide for the Sidewalk project. Those implementations were OK, but they don't come close to what the original chefs cooked up and started to serve this past June. The publisher's own Web site (http://www.zagat.com) currently covers about 17,000 eating places (there are a few duplicate entries) in 20+ locales (cities, regions, states) with more to come. The focus is North American, although both London and Paris are included. Of course, it does not cover every decent place (it missed two of my localfavorites in the test), but offers enough choice for every palate. The design and typography of the printed Zagat guides unmistakably come through in the intuitive interface that offers a simple search mode (if you remember at least part of the name or, in some cases, how it sounds), and an advanced search mode for the discriminating gourmand.
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