No sooner than Woods Of The World Pro landed on this reviewer's desk did an opportunity for practical application arise. I was looking into the materials used for a limited run of SmartWood Montana acoustic guitars used for the Rainforest Alliance Concert last month. The specs of the guitars stated that woods such as grenadillo, chechen and katalox were used to replace the Indian rosewood normally found in high-end acoustic instruments. By simply typing in the names of the three woods into this CD ROM program, I found that, for instance, grenadillo is a black wood that grows plentifully in Sudan, Zimbabwe and other African nations. Chechen is a softer Central American wood with a dark brown color while katalox is a dense, reddish wood grown in Central and South America. This, along with a lot of the more detailed information WOW provided, would normally result in a drive to the library. Here, it was available in minutes. Woods Of The World Pro is a software package that provides a dizzying amount of information about the lumber industry. Granted, this software is actually geared towards someone IN the industry such as people who make end tables and baseball bats. But that would also include people who make musical instruments. But as demonstrated earlier, it can be of use to a connoisseur of guitars as well. One would shudder to think at the painstaking effort that went into creating this software. You can look up any type of wood by the scientific name, the common name, the name of the tree, etc. Once you've found your wood, you are shown a close-up picture of the grain and given access to a plethora of information ranging from the regions the wood derives from, the practical uses to its abundance as a resource. Technical facts such as how it will react to certain sawing techniques or its compression strength are also included. The information is presented in numerical terms and in relation to a given set of common woods (like oak) for the purpose of comparison. Information is also presented in the form of mini movies that demonstrate topics like the harvesting process and teach you basic wood terminology. So how can this information come in handy for guitar aficionados? By researching materials commonly used in guitars such as birch, mahogany or maple, you can deduce the reasons why they are excellent materials for guitar building. By comparing their characteristics to more exotic woods, you can find alternative materials that sound good while easing the burden on the world's endangered forests. It was this same line of thinking that produced Gibson's new SmartWood Les Paul guitars. This program isn't a "must have" for everyone. But it can certainly enhance the knowledge of anyone interested in fretted instruments. Please visit http://www.woodweb.com to learn more about Woods of the World Pro.