REVIEW: CD-ROM - PHONEDISC POWERFINDER '95  by Digital Directory Assistance
also PHONEDISC RESIDENTIAL, PHONEDISC BUSINESS and PHONEDISC COMBO PACK

I was happy to have the opportunity to review Digital Directory Assistance's
telephone number/address database - it still fascinates the heck out of me
that there can be so much information on a single Compact Disc.  Well, would
you believe FIVE of them?

Yes, indeed, the PHONEDISC POWERFINDER '95 consists of FIVE CDs, divided by
geographic region and bills itself the "master investigative tool".  The
database contains 91 million residential and business listings and allows you
to find people and companies from just an address, phone number or type of
business.  You can narrow your search by city, state, ZIP code, SIC (Standard
Industrial Code) and/or area code.  This reverse searching feature truly 
makes the PHONEDISC POWERFINDER 95 a true power tool when it comes to looking 
for somebody.  For business types, there is no limit on exporting business
listings to mailing label or contact manager programs.  PHONEDISC POWERFINDER
'95 carries a suggested retail price of $249.00 which makes it a pretty 
good deal for investigators or sales people as a source of prospect leads.

As an example - you'll find over 106,000 businesses listed under the category 
of Accounting,Auditing and Bookkeeping Services, nearly 231,000 Legal Servces
and about 235,000 Physicians and Medical Services.  

For those who do not need the reverse searching of residential listings,
Digital Directory Assistance has two additional products: PHONEDISC 
RESIDENTIAL which contains over 81 million listings on two CDs and searches
by name and narrows the search by city, state, street, ZIP code and Area Code.
S.R.P. is $79.00 and if you look up just over 100 numbers for people out of
your area code @.75 a shot you've paid for the program and the rest are free.
PHONEDISC BUSINESS, also carrying a S.R.P. of $79.00 contains 9.3 million 
U.S.business listings and 2,000 differenc SIC classifications which can be
searched by word or alternate category to find the correct SIC on a single CD. 
You can perform reverse searches and there's no limit on exporting the 
listings.  The PHONEDISC COMBO PACK consists of both the residential and
business PHOBEDISCS bundled together and saves you about $30.00 if you were
to buy both separately.

This is all well and good, but what about accuracy?  Even telephone books
maintained by local TELCOS are somewhat out of date before the ink is even 
dry, but they are the most accurate and up-to-date listings available.  Every
three months DDA's data supplier scans the local directories from all over 
the country.  Using a mainframe, they add ZIP codes, run the data through
the National Postal Service Change of Address file and match it with other
publically available files to ensure that its as accurate as it can be.
Contrast this with the fact that one of the competing telephone lookup CDs 
actually shipped all 10,000 American phone books to Peking, (oops, Beijing!) 
to enter the data. I can just imagine how accurate a Chinese phone lookup CD 
would be if the data were entered in this country.
 
Anyways, I played with the database for about three hours, looking up friends,
family and businesses all over the country.  I even found my cousin Harvey (who
disappeared about ten years ago) listed in Alabama (?).  Its a very useful
tool and priced very reasonably for the work it contains and the information
it offers.   PHONEDISC is the first of this type I have examined and
if I should review some of the others out there they'd have to be pretty
damned good to meet the standard set by Digital Directory Assistance. 

%T      PhoneDisc Power Finder 95
%I      Digital Directory Assistance
%C      Bethesda  Maryland  1-800-284-8353
%D      1995
%O      CD-ROM
%K      telephone directory database


(C) 1995
Michael Crestohl
Nahant Massachusetts  USA
mc@shore.net

DISCLAIMER:  I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in the success or 
failure of the book or materials reviewed herewith, nor have I received any 
compensation (other than a review copy requested by me) from anyone who has.  
All opinions expressed are strictly my own.

Other Internet and Aviation book/software reviews by me can be obtained 
by anonymous FTP from:  x2ftp.oulu.fi in the /pub/books/crestohl directory.