REVIEW: Spb Traveler 2.0

REVIEW: Spb Traveler 2.0


Spb Traveler is a Swiss Army knife application for all your travel needs, providing the tools you need to plan, travel and then manage your trips, holidays or meetings. These tools can be divided into four main areas: a Today plugin providing a daily weather summary, the Cities screen, a Trip Assistant and a general toolbox with a number of useful utilities. This second version of Traveler from Spb Software has been given a complete overhaul from its predecessor and is far more graphical and finger friendly in its operation.

It may interest you to read this editorial in conjunction with this review as it will shed some light on personal views I have used during this review.

Supplier: Spb Software Product: Spb Traveler 2.0 Cost: $29.95 Version tested: v2.0 Build 2043 OS Support: WM5/6/6.1 Classic/Professional Screen Support: All standard QVGA/VGA & WVGA modes Language Support: Eng, Ger, Fre, Spa, Por, Rus, Trad Chi, Simp Chi, Jap, Pol, Cze Install Size: qVGA 9Mb, VGA 11Mb Install Location: Device or Storage card supported Review: The review was carried out on a T-Mobile TyTn II WM6 with a unlimited data connection. 4WinMobile would like to thank Denis Khitrov of Spb Software for providing a copy of Spb Traveler 2.0 for review purposes.

Installation
Installation was flawless and can be performed using a either a PC based ActiveSync setup or, via a CAB file directly on the device itself. Once installation is completed a today plugin is activated showing a selection of international cities by default.


Today Plugin

The today plug-in is a fairly standard format displaying the current weather forecast for your selected cities. There are quite a few views available, according to your preference displaying either a digital or analog time, allowing the positioning of the time and headers and the format of the weather forecasts themselves. The screenshots show its integration with Spb Pocket Plus 4 though as a standard plug-in this should also be able to integrate with other Today Screen organisers. The Today Plugin is the default method of access, via a long click (press and hold), to the rest of the application's features via a comprehensive menu. However, as this menu is a standard WM stylus friendly menu, my preference is to add a shortcut to Spb Traveler directly onto the today screen itself. This makes access easier using a finger rather than a stylus driven menu. One point I did not realise until I had almost completed the review is that there are two separate areas for viewing city related information (Cities and Time) which are independent of each other. Simply put - you have to add the cities you want for each area separately.The Today plugin and Cities module use the same information and the Time utility is a list of upto 5 possibly different cities. They do appear to have some overlap when initialising the system but after that modifications do not flow between each module. The reasoning behind this is that you may not want the same information showing in each part. I did not have the benefit of a manual for the review and did feel this was somewhat confusing. However, adding a city was straight forward and comes with a fairly comprehensive list, though your choice is strictly limited to those provided and there is no lookup option to add additional cities. One unusual option was allowing the city to be selected by Name, Country or Airport. To be honest I could not get the Airport option to work but the manual with the live version may assist here. Weather updates were quite rapid over both ActiveSync and 3G and appeared to be as reasonably accurate as a weather forcasts tend to be. In keeping with it's travel assistant funtion, when you click on one of the cities details, it changes the menu displayed to allow you to create an appointment in that city rather than having to start the full Spb Traveler application first. Spb seem to have missed a trick here though, since if you select to run Spb Traveler it shows the last City page viewed rather than the one for the Today plugin you clicked on. Running Spb Traveler appears to take up about 0.32Mb of program memory and did not cause any apparent issues with the day to day running of my device.

Traveler Screen










Launching run Spb Traveler from the today plugin is where the main part of Spb Traveler's functionality comes into play. It is highly graphically orientated, smooth running and touch friendly. A lot of the functionality can also be accessed using swipe actions. I had intended to take some videos of this functionality to demonstrate this but unfortunately the graphic movements were just to fast for them to be captured!{br}Access to each of the 4 functional areas is provided by a common touch bar along the bottom of the Traveler screen. These are, from left to right:

• Cities
• Trip Assistant
• Tools
• Globe

All the functions are initially graphical in nature, though some do provide additional features in the standard WM format (e.g. calendar input etc), and remain within the today screen footprint enabling access to the WM Start toolbar throughout.


Cities

This can be accessed via the Today plugin or by running Spb Traveler directly as it is the initial screen displayed. The default screen appears to be a fairly basic, but nicely graphical, version of the today plugin. But, and this is a big but, it is quite deceptive and it hides quite a lot of functionalty and information. The initial screen shows the city's national flag, time and today's weather and then a list of the other cities with the same information in a linear format. The secret to this module's functionality is uncovered by clicking on the different areas of the screen each of which links to additional features. 1. Cities Menu Clicking anywhere on the City Header pops up an overlaid menu with the usual Add/Remove functionality along with with the ability to create a meeting in that city (tied to calendar). Additional options include an external link to Google Maps, the ability to launch the internal Tipping utility which from this screen incudes tipping information for that location which is a useful touch. 2. Pictures Downloads a selection of pictures which are displayed full screen and also enables the mini pictures to rotate in the Cities screen instead of the national flag. Not the standard fare of typical tourist subjects so quite a change. 3. Date/Time A comprehensive date and time screen with a current daylight/nighttime map along with DST start/end dates. 4 Weather A full page weather screen from which a further even more detailed screen can be accessed by tapping on any of the displayed dates. 5. City Info Tapping on this area brings up a selection of related web links with a minimum of a Wikipedia and Wikitravel entry and a metro map if appropriate. 6. Other Cities Tapping on one of the other cities in the list at the bottom causes the City page for that city to be displayed using a cube style vertical transition. 7. Other Modules Throughout Spb Traveler a left to right (or right to left) swipe motion across the screen invokes a cube style transition to the next or previous module. In this case left to Trip Assistant and right to the Globe module. Additionally, where the screen cannot accomodate all the relevant information, scrolling is performed using vertical strokes and scroll bars are actually totally absent enabling full use of the available area. Throughout Spb Traveler additional navigation options are presented as finger friendly large icons at the bottom of the screen.

Trip Assistant

Obviously as a "travel assistant" this is one of the important modules within Spb Traveler. Navigation within this module follows the same look and feel as the Cities module and clicking on the Trip Header pops up another overlay menu: Add Item New Trip Load Trip Load Trip from Web Rename Trip Delete Trip Once again Spb have managed to introduce a new and interesting feature - Load Trip From Web. Unfortunately I cannot tell you what it does as is not operational and leads to a web page that shows a "coming soon...". Perhaps it is some kind of trip sharing feature allowing others to participate in the trip as well (that is my speculation but would be a useful option). The Add Item function pops up an overlay menu (similar to the file menu) using touch friendly icons for just about every kind of activity you could wish for: Flight Hotel Train Car Rent Cruise Bus Meeting Activity Note It is at this point that Spb Traveler dops back to stylus use and displays WM default calendar style entry forms. However, each of these forms is specifically formatted for the activity selected and integrate with the built in calendar (or in my case PocketInformant). This is extremely handy as it prevents duplicate date entry (and associated errors) and allows your default calendar to supply any reminders etc. However, the Meeting option does not integrate with your contacts which seems a strange omission. The lower portion of the screen displays a list of the current items associated with the trip. Clicking on an item then shows a full screen display of the item in Spb Traveler's default graphical format. From this screen you can then either modify or delete the entry. I would have liked to have been able to spend more time on this feature unfortunately the fact that it does integrate so well with your calendar was causing me issues in a test environment as I use my calendar rather a lot.

Globe

This is rather more of a toy than a module. However, it is an exceptionally nice one, displaying a swipe moveable globe of the earth with the option of 1 level of zoom and weather overlay. It shows your selected cities and can be used to perform a virtual trip. If left showing the globe will rotate through all your cities showing the actual location, time and weather. The globe rotation is very smooth and clear and tactile throughout. Remarkably Spb have managed to get it to use a left/right/left finger swipe to rotate the globe as well as to invoke the next/previous (Cities/Toolbox) depending on the intensity of the swipe. I am looking forward to the next atlantic storm to see how well the weather updates can track it - though I obviously hope it will die out long before making any landfall.

Tools

The Tools Module is a collection of 8 modules plus the Options function. 1. Tipping This is a standard tipping facility that takes a bill, adds a percentage tip, and then allows the final bill to be split fairly between everyone. A very nice and handy solution However, from the Cities screen this is more useful as it then gives you an indication of the level of tipping, to be expected for different services, in that country. 2. Units A handy conversion utility for the various weights and measures etc. 3. Flights This is the first of Spb Traveler's tools that provides something new. A free (did you catch that - FREE) airline search that allows you to search for flights between different airports. The search facility is quite good and although the initial search entry form is back to a stylus and keyboard the "I'm searching" graphic is very nice image of an airplane circling the globe. The results are reasonably fast and a selection of results are supplied. My only comment here is that it does not allow a search by Flight name, if you have already booked a flight, in order to provide delay and cancellation information as provided by one of its equivalent competitors (Fizz Traveler - though this is a pay for option after the first 10 uses). The results are quite extensive and selecting a result displays a further page providing extensive details including departure, arrival, flight time and the aircraft you will use. Additionally, once a flight is selected, there is also the option to add it to a trip and as a result into your calendar. 4. Clothing This is another of Spb Travelers features for which they have added an extra touch. In principle it is another conversion utility but specifically for clothes sizes. Where Spb have gone that extra mile is that you can add individual peoples profiles by male, female or child. If you then select to see the conversions "By Person" it only shows the relevant conversions and clothes. You can also personalise that profile by entering their actual sizes. 5. Currencies A fairly standard currency conversion utility that appears to give reasonable "tourist rates". 6. Geo game This is Spb Traveler's fun inclusion and is a "Where is and whose flag is this?" quiz. Normally a pretty standard fare but Spb have tied this into the Globe module and when you eventually get the correct answer it is displayed using the Globe moving from the result of the last answer. 7. Phrase Book A reasonably complete phrase book application supplied by Lingvosoft supplying 18 languages and 14 categories of phrases. Additionally a link to Lingvosoft is provided to buy additional Lingvosoft products with a $10 discount. There was however a problem with my install displaying the phrases of some of the more graphic languages (Chinese, Thai etc) although Greek was ok. 8. Time This option provides a quick check of the current time in up to 5 different cities and also allows you to create a quick appointment in one of them as well. However, the cities displayed are not tied to those shown in the Cities Module and I did spend some time trying to work out what was wrong here as a result. I imagine with the use of a manual this will be made more apparent but intuitively it did cause me to waste a lot of time. 9. Options The Options Module allows you to select your preferred units for currency and download and synchronisation as well as showing your current cache settings (which can be cleared from here). It also allows you to see the actual currency rates used in the Currency Module which are not shown on that screen.

Summary


Pros
A smooth graphical and finger friendly program
Superb graphics
Excellent finger friendly usage
Great cube style swipe navigation
Integration with existing and built in calendar/task management applications
Good selection of utilities
Can be installed to storage card
Consistent and inuitive screens

Cons
Time does not use Cities (my personal point of view as I expected them to).
Flight search does not allow search by specific flight identifier
Some languages are not displayed properly in the Phrase book
Meetings does not use your contacts.


Conclusion

Spb have once again moved the target for other developers to reach for in this update and produced an application that provides useful and appropriate information in an excellent and graphical format. I would strongly urge eveyone who is reading this review to read the comments made by the various developers in the editorial to gain an understanding of the issues they face when attempting to provide applications to this level of a graphical nature. In light of their comments I would like to applaud Spb on maintaining access to the WM Start button throughout Spb Traveler enabling easy access to other programs at the same time as using Spb Traveler.

Spb Traveler is a well thought out group of utilities and modules that integrate well. This integration is enhanced through the use of the device's Calendar/Task Management program to store Trip Assistant activities preventing the duplication of data and allowing the existing application to provide reminder functionality.

So in conclusion would I buy it? Personally no. I can hear the cries of "What?" from here already so I had better explain. In the field of Travel Assistants there are three main applications. WorldMate which is the world class bells and whistles option but costs $99.95 a year subscription is really only for someone who is a major league traveler. The other solution, that is in the same arena as Spb Traveler, is FizzTraveler. This provides almost the same functionality with exception of the Phrase Book module BUT it also includes a fairly extensive alarm feature which is the reason I originally bought FizzTraveler rather than Spb Traveler.

The real question is would I recommend it to someone else? Absolutely. The look, feel and navigation are superb and with its integration with the device calendar it is a complete winner. If you already have an alarm utility (or just use the built in feature) then this has to be the correct choice. My question is do I get a standalone alarm utility and swap allegiance to Spb Traveler - and that is a tough one

The one feature that may actually change my personal choice is the "Load From Web" feature and I will definately be waiting to see what that provides.