Software for the Road

IFodor's and OAG WorldMate bring helpful travel info to your handheld.

Yardena Arar, PC World

Got a question about handheld computing? Write to The PDA Pundit.

When packing your bags for a summer vacation--or a business trip, for that matter--don't forget to pack your PDA. In addition to keeping the usual address book info at your fingertips (postcards, anyone?), it can help you get around.

I checked out two fairly new apps for travelers, IFodor's and OAG WorldMate. These are not little shareware programs, which tend to be utilitarian but short on visual appeal. Both are sophisticated and handsomely designed, delivering valuable information. But you'll pay accordingly.

IFodor's: San Francisco Test Drive

IFodor's, available online at Fodors.com, is basically a Fodor's guide that's been formatted for a handheld and augmented with a cool and amazingly detailed map. There are currently ten IFodor's guides, each covering a major city: Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Each $20 guide is available in Palm OS, Pocket PC 2002 and 2003, and Windows CE versions.

When you launch the application, the first thing you do is establish your home base (your hotel, perhaps?) as a starting point for searches for and directions to other locations, such as restaurants, concert halls, or other points of interest. For example, you can search for an art gallery or a Chinese restaurant within one mile of your starting point.

The San Francisco guide I tried out had entries for an impressive assortment of categories, grouped generally under the headings of Sights, Cuisines, Facilities, Nightlife, and Shopping. ("Facilities" is a pretty broad category that includes bars, spas, and kennels, plus hotels and restaurants grouped by price range.) If you want to drill down to the crème de la crème, simply check off Fodor's Choices in categories where they are available--Cuisines and Sights, for example.

Each entry your search retrieves has a brief capsule review and buttons to locate the venue on a map, return you to the guide, or generate directions to the venue from any address; the preset starting point just saves a bit of data entry. You can zoom in and out on the map; you move to adjacent areas by clicking on the map and dragging in any direction. It's a bit like having MapQuest on your handheld.

The San Francisco IFodor's guide is not encyclopedic in its listings, which isn't surprising given that in a mere 2.62MB it covers such a bustling urban center, including maps. But it certainly hits the high points that a tourist or visitor would want to investigate, and you can map any street address in the city, even those that don't rate an IFodor's review--such as my own home, for example. That feature alone might be worth the $20, especially if you're the type of person who easily gets lost.

OAG's WorldMate: Flights on the Run

OAG WorldMate 2004 Professional Edition ($70; available in Palm OS and Pocket PC versions) has a lot of little modules with information that travelers can use. But by far the most valuable of the lot is its flight database.

Supplied by OAG, which describes itself as "the leading source of flight schedule information," the flight database module lets you use your handheld to search all airlines for flights between two destinations. You can save up to five such queries, so you can perform the same searches at another time simply by tapping an "Update" button.

Updates can be performed via HotSync, or wirelessly over the Internet if you have a connected PDA. Either way, you'll need a subscription to WorldMate's premium online service. WorldMate's price includes a one-year subscription; but the service's annual renewal fee costs as much as the program itself, which seems rather steep to me. The subscription is also required for updating weather reports and forecasts, but the product's other features keep working regardless of whether you renew.

Compared to the elaborate flight database module, WorldMate's other features sound rather tame: clocks for user-defined world cities, including an alarm; a day/night map of the globe; converters for clothing sizes, measurements, and currencies (you can update rates yourself if you don't subscribe to the online service); international dialing prefixes; an itinerary manager; a tip or sales tax calculator; and a user-customizable packing check list. These features can come in handy, tame or not.

I found WorldMate easy to use, but I wish the flight database would supply fares as well as departure and arrival times. Better yet would be the ability to buy a plane ticket using a connected handheld. WorldMate does provide a complete list of airlines and flights to call to check up on fares, but given the lack of fare information and the relatively expensive subscription fee, it will probably appeal only to frequent flyers who need scheduling information at their fingertips and don't particularly care what they have to spend to get on a specific flight.

But why not decide for yourself? You can download a free trial version from OAG's Web site. Meanwhile, travel light and have a nice summer.