Visual IT's Rough Guide

Visual IT’s Rough Guides – New York City

The challenge of knowing what to do in a particular city that one is visiting can, at times, be a daunting task. Hotel staff is usually helpful as are the local cab drivers. However, knowing what the “must see” places are in a location is a little more of a challenge. Visual IT has helped resolve this dilemma with their production of the well known Rough Guides for Windows Mobile based devices. The interactive guides, based on the information from Rough Guides (http://www.roughguides.com), gives users helpful information about the location including maps, top attractions, subway maps (if applicable), and hotels. Further, these guides are not just for the user on holiday as they also provide business related information such as the location Post Office, banking and currency exchanges. Regardless of the purpose for the travel, Visual IT’s Rough Guides is an excellent application and will quickly prove to be a must-have for Windows Mobile device owners.

For this review, the Rough Guide of New York City, New York was chosen. The installation of the application is done via ActiveSync and it can be stored either in Main Memory or on a Storage Card. The amount of space required will vary depending on the city but a good average would be between 4~6MB. For example, the New York City guide is approximately 4.6MB in size.

Once the application is started, users are presented a vibrant and easy-to-understand interface (Figure 1). By using the D-Pad, users can move side-to-side to select the particular bits of information they need to access. For the New York City Map, the menu options are Map Index, Around New York, Sights and Subway Maps. All of these will change based on the city that is purchased from Virtual IT. To access a menu option, tap it and follow the on-screen instructions on loading that part of the application (Figure 2). As a general rule, the application works much like a web browser in that the Forward, Backward and Home buttons on the bottom task bar are the easiest way to move around.


Figure 1: Rough Guide Interface	Figure 2: On-screen instructions are provided

The Around New York section provides detailed maps of the Manhattan and surround areas. These maps can be zoomed in and out and provide a good level of detail on the location of attractions and sites as well as practical information such as the locations of Post Offices (Figure 3). The maps can be tapped as well, with an information dialog box being displayed for the tapped location (Figure 4). Moving around the maps can be done with the D-Pad and was found to be quite responsive.


Figure 3: Around New York Map	Figure 4: Tapping a site will provide name information

In any major city, especially a city as large as New York, there are countless sites to go and visit. While some of these will quickly come to mind – The Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Time Square – others may not and finding these can be a challenge if one is not familiar with the city. Rough Guides includes a list of twenty Sites that should be on everyone’s “must see” list while visiting. Keeping with the browser-like navigation, on the main display, tap the Sites option then tap the blue forward button to open the Sites area (Figure 5). Once it is open, users can use the D-Pad to move up and down the list of sites. To select a site, tap it and a small information dialog will be displayed giving you details about the site (Figure 6). Next, tap the blue forward button and a map of where the site is located within the city is displayed (Figure 7). This is an excellent way of determining which sites are closest to your current location.


Figure 5: 20 Things Not To Miss	Figure 6: Quick information is displayed by tapping the site

Figure 7: Find out how close you are to a site with the map locator

One of the many things New York City is known for – good or bad – is its subway system. The maze-like underground is challenging even for New Yorkers at times. Rough Guide provides a detailed map of the New York City subway system including where stations are located. Different lines are represented by different colors with station and transfer points indicated as well (Figure 8). By using the D-Pad, users can move around the map to find the nearest subway station and transfer points.

Figure 8: The Subway map of New York City

The final major feature of Visual IT’s Rough Guide is the Map Index. This feature gives you an overview of all of the maps in the application of New York, including the sub-area maps such as Lower Manhattan, Midtown Manhattan and Lincoln Center (Figure 9). By tapping a map then tapping the blue forward button, users can instantly go to the area that they are in or will be visiting, making it much faster to find locations and information.

Figure 9: The Map Index of Rough Guides

Beyond a simple map application, Rough Guide also offers users the ability to locate information about sites and destinations in New York. From the applications home page, users can tap the blue information icon on the task bar to access information in a variety of categories including opening times of practical as well as sites and attractions, transportation and a guide for understanding the street and building numbering system of New York (Figure 10). Lastly, detailed information about sites can be found with the location browser. This allows users to browse categories of sites within the city then get detailed information such as location, pricing and phone numbers (Figure 11). Lastly, any site or street can be searched for with the text search feature of the application. Accessing the search function is done by tapping the magnifying glass icon on the task bar.


Figure 10: The Information Browser	Figure 11: The Location Browser

Given the amount of information in Visual IT’s Rough Guide, the application is very well behaved and responsive. Maps are accurate and detailed something that is difficult to find on the Windows Mobile platform outside of GPS applications. Additionally, technical questions were answered by the Visual IT staff in a quick and accurate manner and all were highly courteous.

For the vacationer or the business traveler, Rough Guides is a great addition to ones Pocket PC. The depth of information is impressive and will quickly become a must-have application for those in need of information quickly while visiting this impressive and sometimes confusing city.

Visual IT Sells the Rough Guide – New York application for $20 (US) with a current promotion of buying two cities and getting a 3^rd free. Current cities that are available include New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Rome and San Francisco. For more information, visit the Visual IT website at http://www.visualit.co.uk

Clinton Fitch
Senior Editor
Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! (http://www.clintonfitch.com)
HPC:Factor (http://www.hpcfactor.com)