I'm no geologist but I know a, excuse the pun, "gem" of a program when I see one and for any rock, mineral or geologist, this surely is one.

This comprehensive encyclopedia and research base contains just about everything there is to know about rocks, minerals and gems in an easy to search format with in depth descriptions and attractive images. If you need it customised to suit the needs or focus of your organisation, it can also do that too to reduce it's huge range and depth to something more manageable.

To be precise, the developers claim it has information on 600 minerals, 300 gems, 200 rocks, around 900 glossary items and a staggering 2100 pictures. Of course, it also features the entire periodic table with detailed info on each element, isotopes, allotropes and compounds. It also saves you valuable lab time because it tells you how these react and interact with each other. To cap it all, you can also find out about the geniuses and researchers that have pioneered the geological field and those that discovered each element, rock and gem.

Perhaps it can't replace Google or a good geological encyclopedia but for a free program, this is an impressive resource.