Vito ActiveTrace

Vito ActiveTrace Review

The latest offering from Vito Technology "is a sports oriented software specially designed to help you watch your sports progress. It's great for your outdoor experience!" and "turns your PDA into the universe counter gadget that can not only save the detailed statistics for every trip but also record your tracks, set pushpins, and exchange coordinates with friends." Can the people who brought us the award winning Vito Navigator II deliver all they claim?

Read on to find out!

For your delectation all photographs are thumbnails which may be clicked on to load an image.

Special thanks go out to Konstantin Kalinin from Vito Technology for supplying us with a review sample.
Supplier: Vito Technology
Product: Vito ActiveTrace
Cost: $29.95 (£17 approx)
Supplier Web Site: http://www.vitotechnology.com
Supplier Product Web Site: http://www.vitotechnology.com/en/products/activetrace.html







Introduction

Vito Technology are a well respected Russian developer of software for mobile devices and a Microsoft Empower Program Partner. Their extensive list of Pocket PC and Smartphone software to date has an equally prestigious list of awards under its belt. Vito's latest offering attempts to combine GPS functions, your Phone Edition device and software specially designed to monitor your sports progress. Being an avid cyclist for both commuting and in my leisure, I was intrigued. Vito's ActiveTrace could be the most exciting thing to happen to cycling since spokey dokeys. Can it live up to its potential? Read on to find out.....

I tested ActiveTrace briefly on my O2 Mini S, but more thoroughly on my Imate SP5m, with a TomTom 5 Bluetooth GPS Unit. I can confirm it works well on both form factors under WM5 in QVGA.

NOTE: While you could use Active Trace on a regular Windows Mobile PDA you would obviously lose the functionality to monitor the real time progress of your friends as you need the SMS facility of the Phone Edition device to use this feature.









Installation

Installation is typically straight forward, and is accomplished by running the executable on the PC. ActiveTrace is then installed if your PPC is connected, or at the next activesync if not. You can install to either Main Memory or SD card, and the program seems equally at home in both areas. Personally I'm running ActiveTrace from my SD card and it works well. You'll also need a GPS unit, preferably Bluetooth I would think as I doubt you'll have a cigarette lighter socket on your bike or board! With my TomTom bluetooth unit I found it best to turn on the bluetooth on the device first, then connect the Tomtom (GPS unit) and wait for a lock, and then startup ActiveTrace. A couple of times I had an issue (but not always) if I lost my lock while ActiveTrace was running. A facility to control the bluetooth (on/off) from within ActiveTrace would be handy here I think.

One excellent point to note here is that ActiveTrace comes supplied for both Smartphone and Pocket Pc in the same package. For people like me who have both and use them depending on their situation, this is great news.









Aesthetics

Graphically ActiveTrace is gorgeous in analogue mode. Seeing the dials took me back to my youth and almost had me pegging a playing card to my back wheel for that cinematic experience. I've always loved the techy appeal of phone edition devices, but they've never really been cool. ActiveTrace opens up a whole new world of possiblities, and in my opinion whole new markets. I doubt you'd ever find Dave Mirra bashing out a pocket Powerpoint presentation on the values of stabilisers, but you could definitley see him and Tony Hawk trading big air scores using the altitude meter. The analogue dials are especially sweet looking when attached to handlebars via my Krusell cycle mount, as you can see on the associated image. The images shown are actually part of a three image set. The first of the dials, and the second of the "wobble". The third was merely a picture of the sky. Thank heavens for soft verges I say. The moral of this story is riding no handed through the woods while photographing your handlebars is neither big nor clever.

I'm not sure about the digital colour scheme, but whether you like the slightly garish colours or not, the screens are very informative and well laid out. GPS configuration is handled by a screen showing a nice "sonar" type display for locating the satellites along with a com port and baud rate selector. There's what looks like a direct data stream display of the conversation being held with the GPS unit too. The graphs for altitude and speed screens are nicely laid out, are easily readable and again cool in real time. Scaling the data is a piece of cake too.

After you've completed a track you'll get to see the Statistics screen which holds a wealth of information about speeds, gradients, distances etc. As per the norm this is also very straight forward.

As a small note it might have been nice to be able to skin the dials, but the lack of this option doesn't detract any from the use of the software.























Functionality

The usage of Active trace is pretty straight forward. You create a track, then ride, board, run or walk to your destination. When you arrive you tell ActiveTrace you've stopped, and all the analysis is produced. You can have as many or few tracks as you wish, and the data for these can be saved to either the phone memory or the SD card. For cycling the real time information is definitly cool, for snowboarding you may want to keep your device safe while in motion. Either way, the stats at the end are great fun, time and again. For those training for a serious athletic goal, the real time information will be excellent for managing a training schedule as well as keeping tabs on your progress. One thing that may have been good would be able to have a "ghost" graph for realtime use whereby on the same track you could almost race against yourself by overlaying a new track onto an old one. While I'm on the subject of nice to haves, to be able to use a real OS or street map as a backdrop to the track would have been cool as well.

A feature which I've been unable to test (due to lack of friends ;o) ) is that at certain points ActiveTrace will automatically SMS a certain contacts from your device to a mate. These will then be translated to push pins on your track view. This would be awesome for keeping track of a group of friends while say Snowboarding or cycling. A great idea indeed.

A small issue I've noticed is that once you've used ActiveTrace and disconnected the Bluetooth it won't always startup again without a soft reboot. I didn't notice this on the Pocket PC, but it happened roughly half the time on the Smartphone.









Pro's

Highly informative.
Great fun.
Lovely graphics.
Nicely configurable.
Easy installation.
Single copy for both Pocket PC and Smartphone.





Con's

Sometimes requires a soft reboot to run a second time.
No Bluetooth Control from with ActiveTrace (on/off).

Suggestions

"Ghost" competitor would have been a nice option.
Real map overlay on tracks would have been good.
Would liked to have seen user skinnable meters.








4WM Rating

90%





Conclusion

Whether you're a hardcore extreme sports athlete training for the iron man or you simply like a leisurely afternoon cycle on a sunday, ActiveTrace will provide an extra dimension to your outdoor pursuits. If your exercise is a sociable affair, the automatic buddy locator will keep you up to date with your mates progress too, a feature I can't wait to try on the piste next winter. It's Windows Mobile meets Extreme sports, and you need it.