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3D Topicscape Lite works something like an outline, but instead of a mind-numbing series of letters and Roman numerals, it uses cones. The parent topic dominates the landscape like a mountain, and its child topics are hills around it. Any topic can hold files, links, and archived Web pages (as MHT files). Putting them there is a simple drag-and-drop. To access these files, double-click the cone that interests you, and it shows you a list of what it calls "occurrences," which can be anything from Web links to .exes.

Making sense of messy associations is 3D Topicscape's forte. If a topic belongs in more than one place, you can associate it with other parent topics. Each child topic can spawn new topics as well. Forget what's associated with what? Find any instance of the topic that interests you and click it. A glowing white dot appears over its other associations. You can also use the road on the left to trace your recent flight path.

Although it takes a few minutes with the demos to understand how 3D Topicscape works, feeling comfortable with the program doesn't take long. Once you're using it, it's a powerful way to store and access all kinds of information.

Note: Due to its demanding graphics, 3D Topicscape Lite may not work on every PC running Windows 2000 or XP. The vendor recommends running glVersion to check for compatibility before installing 3D Topicscape Lite.

--Laura Blackwell