Classic Computer Magazine Archive ANTIC VOL. 6, NO. 7 / NOVEMBER 1987

Editorial

Practical Applications Winners

Nat Friedland

Editor, Antic

This issue features the for winners of Antic's firs 8-bit Practical Applications Contest. We received close to 200 entries during the six months that the contest was open. And at least half of the entries arrived during the final two weeks of the competition

It was extremely heartening to see such an outpouring of programming talent for the 8-bit Atari. We accepted over 30 of the program entries for publication, most of them from that final deadline batch.

Because we now have such a good backlog of 8-bit applications, Antic will begin a new section next month-the Featured Practical Program. Starting in December, each issue will contain at least one type-in practical application for the 8-bit-if not more.

About the Winners

The Grand Prize Winner was Critical Path Project Manager by David Schwener, which uses industry's CPM and Gantt Chart techniques of organizing workloads. Aside from being very useful for a wide range of personal and small-business activities, this software is written in an impressively clean and well-organized programming style.

Schwener, a product engineer from Fayetteville, North Carolina, is making his first appearance in Antic. His grand prize is an Atari 1040ST computer (courtesy of MichTron Software) and $500 of Batteries Included ST software from Electronic Arts.

The runner-up winners have all had other programs previously published here. Their prizes are one-year disk subscriptions to Antic. Each of the outstanding runner-up programs does only one job. But that job is handled very effectively and is useful to a large number of people. The runner-ups are:

  • WYSIWYG Cassette Jackets by Chet Walters. Millions of music lovers make personal copies-or compilations-of their favorite commercial albums and tapes. Now you can bring pleasing order to the chaos of your cassette collection and instantly know exactly what mucic you have placed on each cassette.
  • Bibliography Writer by Alfred Filskov. All students in high school and collage are going to have to turn out significant amounts of written term papers during their educational careers. Term papers usually require bibliographies of source material. But now your Atari can automate the maddeningly precise specialized punctuation your teachers want for bibliographies.
  • Your Best Route by Jeffrey Summers, M.D. Whether you are traveling for business or pleasure, this software effortlessly figures out your least expensive route between multiple destinations.

Sorry For The Mix-up

A number of contestants wrote us that they were disappointed about getting the standard Antic rejection letter for their entries, without any specific written mention of the Practical Applications Contest. But we actually did more for entrants this time around. In previous contests, it was specified that all entries became the property of Antic and would not be returned or acknowledged.

However, we certainly apologize for upsetting anybody. It seems that the contest rules didn't make it clear enough that because all entries were being considered for publication in Antic-and all winners would get paid our regular publication rates along with their prizes-we were processing the contest entries exactly like regular magazine program submissions.