Spb Traveler by Spb Software House

August 6, 2007

As one who travels on a regular basis, information related to weather, flights and currency conversions are a critical bits of information for me.  While most of this information can be obtained online, having it quickly and readily available to me on my Windows Mobile device - something that is always with me - makes traveling in this day-and-age a bit easier.  With few exceptions - most notably WorldMate Professional -  there has not been many single comprehensive program that could provide most of the information that a traveler needs both before and during a trip.

Spb Software House has been producing applications for the Windows Mobile platform for several years now and their latest application, Spb Traveler, is designed to be that "one stop shop" for travelers.  Spb Traveler offers users the ability to plan a flight, a meeting as well as get currency, unit and size conversions while in virtually any country in the world.  Taking things a step further, Traveler also provides you links to local information on the cities you are traveling too as well as local customs, weather and even dialing codes to make phone calls.  The beauty of Traveler is that you can get all of this information essentially from one screen and only a tap or two away, making it quick to use and with a low learning curve.  Combine this with its Over The Air updating abilities for currency conversions, weather and links and you end up with an application that travelers should strongly consider for their next trip.  Even if you do not frequently travel, this application could prove to be handy just for the conversion tools alone!

Spb Traveler installs on your Windows Mobile device via ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center and requires approximately 4.1MB of storage space on your device.  The application can be installed either in main memory or on a storage card and requires your device to be running PocketPC 2003, 2003SE, Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6 and both QVGA and VGA devices are supported.

Once the installation is complete Traveler prompts you to select a city.  Usually this is your "home" city and this can be a city near you or, in most cases, your actual city.  Traveler has information on literally tens of thousands of locations, making it easy to pinpoint even small locales.  No longer are you having to simply "get in the area".  This level of information is available globally throughout the application, making it easy to find locations on every continent.  Finding locations can be done by spelling of the town or city, by airport code or by country.  Once a location is selected, that location is listed on the main display of Traveler.  Additional locations can be added at any time by tapping the Menu>Add City menu.  There is no limit to the number of locations that you can have listed in Traveler although practicality does diminish as you add more than a handful.

Figure 1:  Spb Traveler Add City Interface	Figure 2:  Spb Traveler Interface with Multiple Cities

You will note that if you add a major location that an iconic landmark for that city is shown.  For example, if you add London, England then Parliament with Big Ben is displayed.  If you choose a city without such an icon available, the flag of the country where the city is located is displayed. 

Figure 3:  Well Known Cities Have Iconic Landmarks for Icons

As you can see in Figure 3, the power of Traveler is already evident.  On the display for each city you have the most current currency conversion rate, the current and forecasted weather as well as the local time.  This is all provided to you at a glance without a single screen tap!  The amount of information will change as you change your view of the interface as well.  In all there are four different viewing modes which should make the application easy to use for everyone depending on the information you need to display.  The simple rule is the smaller the view the less information you will see immediately but the more cities you can see immediately.  Finally, you can also view your cities with a map as well.  This will show you the physical location of the cities on your list with a red flag highlighting on the map the city currently selected.

Figure 4:  Spb Traveler Narrow View	Figure 5:  Spb Traveler One Line View
Figure 6:  Spb Traveler Map View

Once you have a city or two selected in Spb Traveler, you can get more detailed information on that city by tapping it or by using your device's Action button to select it.  From here you can see information such as the weather forecast and local date and time as well as local dialing codes, links to Internet sites with local and tourist information as well as a currency converter, a unit converter, clothing size convert, sunrise and sunset information and longitude and latitude of the city.  Scrolling through this information or selecting one of the items can be done either with your stylus or with your D-Pad and Action button, making Traveler one-handed friendly.

Figure 7:  City Detailed Information

One of the not-so-obvious features of Spb Traveler is that while viewing the city information, virtually every item listed can, when selected, provide you further information about the city.  For example, if you highlight and select the Date and Time listing, you are shown more detailed information such as other cities which share that time zone, if and when Daylight Savings Time is observed and the city's relationship to GMT.  Likewise if you select the Weather listing, detailed weather reports for the current day and up to five days in advance are provided, breaking the reports down into various parts of each day.

Figure 8:  Date and Time Detailed View	Figure 9:  Weather Detailed View

When traveling throughout the world or even here in the United States, keeping track of local dialing or area codes can be a challenge in itself.  Fortunately Traveler makes this a bit easier by displaying how to place a call to the city you have listed.  It will display exactly how the number is to be dialed, eliminating the guess work for you.  Additionally, if the city you are visiting has multiple area codes - such as Dallas, Texas - all of those area codes are listed for you.  Traveler also eliminates guess work when it comes to tipping in a city by providing you a brief, one-line summary of what tip percentage is generally expected for services.  If you tap this section of the page, the Tip Calculator is opened to allow for computations. 

Figure 10:  Tip Area Highlighted	Figure 11:  Tip Calculator is a Tap Away

The Links section of the city view in Traveler is an area of the application that is both brilliant but a slight disappointment as well.  The idea is great:  Tap the Links section and links related to that location are brought up for you.  You can then click on those links and get information about that city.  It is a great way to get quick bits of information on your location.  Unfortunately it does not have much depth.  Most of the links provided are for Wikipedia and, in some cases, the city's website if it has one.  This area though could easily grow into something far richer within Traveler by providing information such as local restaurants or events.  It is one of the few areas of Traveler that I found that needs improvement.  Given however this is a 1.0 release of the product it is understandable.

Figure 12:  Links View of a City

One aspect of Traveler that shines are the variety and the performance of the various converters within the application.  Some of these converters, such as the currency converter, will primarily be used when traveling to a foreign location.  However other converters such as the units and clothing size converters can be used almost every day by most users.  The currency converter, as the name implies, allows you to to convert a currency into three others.  The current currency rates are updated automatically (if configured) or manually and the last time they were updated is provided at the bottom of the screen as well as a button to force an update and the full listing of currency rates.

Figure 13:  Currency Converter

The Unit Converter allows you to convert temperature, area, speed, weight, volume and pressure into various forms of measurement.  This converter is exceptionally handy in everyday life as well as travel.  To use it, select what you are wanting to convert then choose the units you want it measured into.  At that point, enter your value and it is automatically converted into three other units of measurement.  Quick, simple and accurate!

Figure 14:  Unit Converter

Operating on the same principle, the Clothing Size convert allows you to select a type of clothing, gender and convert that information into different sizes throughout the world.  In all there are 14 items that you can size ranging from children's clothing to women's shoes.  Select the item you want to size and choose three different locations you want the sizes to be converted into such as the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom and you are presented a conversion chart of the sizes.  While this converter is helpful for travelers wanting to buy clothing for children and loved ones, it is equally as helpful in every day life:  Online Shopping.  Today, in our global economy, buying items from other countries is not difficult from online retailers.  Having this sizing converter available takes the guess work out for you before you buy an item and assures you that what you buy will fit you.

Figure 15:  Size Converter

To be sure, Spb Traveler is not only for the leisure traveler.  Indeed it has the business traveler in mind by including the ability to create an appointment from within the application and putting it into your Outlook calendar.  While you can do this from outside of Traveler easily enough, the application makes it easy by not only creating the appointment but by taking the different time zones into consideration when it does so.  Like the converters, this eliminates guess work for you!

You can create an appointment by tapping-and-holding the city where you want to create the appointment on your city list and selecting "Create Appointment in your city" .  This will open a dialog screen which is very similar to the appointment creator in Calendar on your device albeit with a few less options (which can be added later within Calendar itself).  Create the appointment as you would, adjusting for the start and end time of the appointment and giving it a proper subject.  You will see in the Notes section that the local time in the city you have selected is displayed for reference.  Once you are done tap create and the appointment will be populated to your Calendar on your device and if you synchronize, to your PC or Exchange server.  Because the application is mindful of the different time zones involved, your calendar will be populated at the correct time locally.  For example, if you create an appointment in London at 9:00AM, it will appear on your calendar at 3:00AM in the Central time zone of the United States. 

Figure 16:  Selection of Appointment Creator	Figure 17:  Appointment Creator in Spb Traveler Automatically Adjusts for Time Zones

The final key feature of Spb Traveler is its Flight Assistant tool which allows you to easily keep track of fights that you have planned and automatically inserts them into your Calendar.  This feature is particularly handy for those who have multiple flights on a trip or several flights planned in a short period of time.  Flight Assistant is off of the Tools menu within Traveler and when opened provides an interface similar to that of Spb Traveler itself.  To add a flight tap the Menu>Add New Flight menu and enter the flight information.  Unfortunately this aspect of Traveler is not online enabled so you must enter in your flight information manually.  Given the number of flight information resources on the Internet, hopefully online integration will come in a future release.  Once you enter in your flight information it populates the flight listing.  Like the cities listing, multiple flights can be viewed at a single time and the time to your next flight is displayed as well.  Once you have your flight information entered, saving the trip file assures that the information is available every time you open Flight Assistant in Spb Traveler.

Figure 18:  Flight Assistant Flight Entry	Figure 19:  Flight Assistant Flight Listing

Topping of Spb Traveler is a great and well developed Today plug in.  From it you can rotate between the cities you have listed in the application by tapping their name, open up a mini conversion calculator and see the weather forecast for that city.  Understand that this plug in replaces those of Spb Time and Spb Weather if you have those applications installed and essentially integrates them together.

Figure 20:  Spb Traveler Today Plug in

While there are some rough edges in Spb Traveler it is clear that Spb Software House has done their research and released a comprehensive and well developed application.  If the links section of the cities were further developed and Flight Assistant was online enabled, Traveler would be the head-of-the-class in this type of software genre.  Despite these shortcomings - minor ones at worst - Traveler should be an application both leisure and business travelers should consider.  It provides detailed information in great quantities and is easy to use both with a stylus and one handed.

Like other Spb Software House applications, Traveler is supported through online forums and email support.  Email responses to questions were generally answered in less than a day.

Spb Traveler is available for $29.95 (US) directly from Spb Software House and other online retailers.  Now through August 27, 2007 you can save 15% off of Spb Traveler at the Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! Software store when you use the coupon code CFTRAVEL when you check out. 

Clinton Fitch, MVP-Mobile Devices
Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!