Mark Green CD-ROM

Mark Green is a candidate for the Mayor of New York City

August 30, 2001. In a new use of technology, a political candidate sent out CD-ROMs with his "message" to potential voters. The name of the CD-ROM is Mark Green's 100 ideas for a New York Century. Ignoring the politics, the CD lends itself to some computer gripes.

My confusion started immediately, on the opening screen (a cutout from the opening screen is shown at the right). How many computer users know, off the top of their head, if they have QuickTime version 5.0 installed? I don't. I don't think many people do. The CD-ROM offers no help or advice to users about how to determine whether their computer has QuickTime 5.0 already installed. You just have to know, not the most user-friendly design.

It turns out that the CD-ROM does not require QuickTime. Most of it works just fine without QuickTime. The only problem is playing the few videos. On a Windows 2000 machine without QuickTime (I verified this using control panel => Add/Remove programs) an attempt to play a video resulted in:

No explanation is offered, just a red X. The error handling needs improvement.

Browsing the CD-ROM with Windows Explorer turned up a bunch of .MPG files. Double clicking on them opened Real Player 8 and they played just fine. It seems the requirement for QuickTime 5.0 was not such a requirement after all.

FYI: Mark Green lost the election. As of January 1, 2002 Michael Bloomberg is the Mayor of New York City.

Page last updated: January 23, 2002