Trip Boss Birthday Celebration Contest Entries

WE HAVE A WINNER!!

Randy Jones has chosen a Dell Axim X51v as his prize. Read his first prize "How do you travel with Trip Boss?" entry here.

In addition, a close runner-up, May C., has been awarded 3 Creative Algorithms' software titles of her choice. Her entry "Traveling with your PDA, how do you use it to help you travel?" is here.

Thanks to everyone who entered! Be sure to read all the valuable articles on this page to get some great ideas while traveling with your PDA.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

Contest Entries
Check out these wonderful articles for ideas on how to travel with your PDA:

1a) Traveling with Trip Boss
1b) Traveling with your PDA
2) PDA247 logos
3) Traveling with the Web
4) Mobile Travel in the Future

Tie Breaker tips and tricks

Why is Trip Boss
for you?

We recommend the
following software
(more info on these fine products is available in our Store):

Beiks Talking Phrasebooks - EU edition by Beiks
$39.95

Collection of talking phrasebooks for English travelers (French, Spanish, German, Italian). Foreign language phrase books that talk! How cool is that? Highly recommended!

DayNotez Desktop by Natara Software
$24.95

A journal application with all the features you need to organize your record of events and thoughts on a daily basis. Memo was never this powerful.

Acid Image by Red Mercury
$29.95

Digital image viewing software. Great to keep track of your vacation pictures!

Foreign Language Dictionaries (Gold) by Paragon Software:
$32.45 each

Foreign Language dictionaries. A must-have for foreign travel.

English-Spanish & Spanish-English
English-French & French-English
English-German & German-English

mobileCLOCK by rMOBILE
(formerly "Bob's Alarm")
$9.50

Highly configurable alarm clock. Great for traveling or on the go. Plenty of free skins available to add.

4 cast by ShSh software
$9.95

Weather information while on the road. Updates wirelessly.

With Trip Boss you can:

Track Expenses
Log Mileage
Plan your Itinerary
Keep a Journal
Set a trip Budget
Rate Places
Convert Currencies
and much more.

Visit our product page

for more information.

Trip Boss™
Birthday
Contest Entries

Traveling with Trip Boss

How do you travel with Trip Boss?

by Randy Jones

I am a relatively new owner of a Treo 650 and am new to Trip Boss. I recently downloaded it to give it a test drive on a business trip to our Dallas office. What I’m going to list below will just give you an idea of what I go through on a business trip in order to keeping track of everything I need to in the name of my work!

I’ve used a myriad of programs to keep track of information during different portions of my trips in the past. Prior to leaving on my trip I would use DateBk5 to set an alarm for my flights and would include flight information, gates, seating arrangements, and time all in the entry in DateBk5. Most often I would use Bonsai to create a checklist of items that I needed to remember to do from the time I left my house until I arrived at my destination. Next I would use Documents to Go to store spreadsheets that kept up with my expenses such as meals, hotels, car rentals and fuel on the business trip so that I could easily complete my expense report of items purchased on the trip. Finally I would log my thoughts in DayNotz so that I could recount those items that hit my brain while traveling. Some of my best stuff comes while I’m traveling! As you can see I have a multitude of programs I use just to keep up with everything I need to do on a business trip. That’s where Trip Boss comes in. I decided to download this puppy and give it a run to see what was under the hood. I must say I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to do so much with the program, but while I was able keep track of everything I needed to in one concise package I felt that I hadn’t completely put Trip Boss through it paces. This brings me to the REAL challenge I had in store for it, our family vacation to Orlando-to Disney World!

We have been planning this vacation for over a year now. We decided it was as good as time as any to take our two children (ages 4 and 10) to Disney World. For the 10 year old, if we didn’t go soon he would reach that point where it wasn’t “cool” anymore. As for our 4 year old, we thought it would be the perfect age to see the magic in her eyes as she experienced Disney World for the first time. We had been saving for quite some time to insure that we had enough for everything that we wanted to do. We had arranged flights, hotels, rental cars, etc., you know the drill. With all of this going on I was beginning to feel out of control. It was at this moment I decided to really see what Trip Boss could do, at this point I was committed to see if I could manage our entire vacation (information, schedules, expense tracking, you name it!) from one program.

I began entering data for our trip into Trip Boss; I started with logging our destination-Orlando, Florida and listed every piece of information. Next I listed each leg of the trip in Trip Planning, I figured I could use this to make sure I was getting proper credit for the air miles I was logging (gotta make sure I get every mile I supposed to! J). I then proceeded to input our itinerary for the trip to make sure we were where we were supposed to be, when we were supposed to be there.

This was the first time our children had flown and I wanted to enjoy their excitement on this “maiden voyage”. I don’t know if many of you have traveled with children before but it can be a harrowing experience to say the least, especially if it’s the first time getting on a plane for the kids. By getting all of this information input into one place and only having to look in one place made traveling much easier and allowed me to enjoy their excitement instead of worrying about the next leg of the trip (i.e. where do we have to be, when?).

Once we arrived in Disney World the fun began (in more than one way)! Although we were there for fun I had to remember that we had a limited amount of funds that had to be managed so that we could do everything we had planned to do and maybe a little bit more (if at all possible J)! That’s where the Budget section of Trip Boss comes into play, while I had already entered a lot of data in regards to the trip I now needed to set up a budget so that I could track what we had budgeted and how we were performing against that budget. I was very happy to have something like this in Trip Boss that would allow me to track expenses and see how that compared against our budget. I know there are programs out there for your Palm that will allow you to budget and track, but again, where can you get this all in one package? This made it very simple to know exactly where we stood during the entire trip.

Finally some of the other features were also very useful. I managed to keep a daily journal, albeit short entries, so that I could tie certain events throughout the day back to photographs we were taking. It also served to recount the trip later on as we were reminiscing. I also used the rating portion of Trip Boss to maintain any comments I had that could later be recalled so that I could share them with whomever. Again, it was very helpful to have this consolidated in one place whenever it was needed.

I really feel like Trip Boss was a huge help to me on this trip. I helped me keep track of everything I needed in one place. It allowed me to enjoy my trip with the family and not worry about what was happening next since it was already there when and if I needed it. It allowed me to not have to worry (at least too much) about finances since I had already set up a budget and was able to track expenses against that budget. All in all this vacation was a huge success, we really enjoyed our time together, didn’t get overly stressed out about traveling, managed to maintain our budget and still had a little money left over at the end (and we did a lot of stuff!). It doesn’t get much better than that!

from sangahm:

I am a Road Warrior.

My arms were full with all of the luggage and I was searching my pockets and bags for my itinerary to give to the agent. My bags were stuffed with clothes and travel entertainment (books, videos, video player, MP3 player, etc), amounting to several extra pounds of weight. When I finally got onto the plane, I would stuff my carry-on below the seat in front of me. As soon as we took off and we were airborne, I would hunt through my bags for a video to watch or book to read, thinking how much extra stuff I bring since I didn't know what I'd like to read or watch, depending on my mood at the time. I would maybe buy a beer from the flight attendant, and rather than dig through my bags again, I would try to remember to write down the amount "at the next opportunity." And then, of course, when I was comfortably situated in my aisle seat watching my movie, the passenger next to me would have to get up to use the restroom, disrupting all of my perfect placement of equipment. No wonder I began hating traveling and was always worn out. Between the extra weight to carry, the worry of forgeting expenses, and the disruptions of making those journeys, I felt the joy of traveling that I used to feel earlier in my career a ghost of existence. Even before 9/11, flights began to feel boring, tiresome, and energy sapping.

I feel like a Road Weary Worrier.

That was me before I discovered the wonders of fully using my new travel companion, my T3. My T3 has become an indespensable travel companion for the decent amount of business traveling that I do. Traveling now still has its rigors, but I have managed to find enjoyment in areas that were previously exhausting.

My palm is valuable in three important areas: keeping my travel information (itinerary, meetings, schedules) immediately available, capturing expenses, and of course entertainment.

For my itinerary, I was extremely pleased to come across Trip Boss. My main concerns when flying is what is my flight number, when is the departure time, and what seat am I assigned to (window or aisle, front or back of the plane). Spending the few minutes while in my office to enter those pieces of information helps cut down the stress while flying. And when I get to my destination, what car and hotel do I have booked (and what is my confirmation number when the car or room is not booked, as it happens too often) Even though this is printed on a paper itinerary, searching for the paper (usually stuffed somewhere in my overstuffed carry-on) and looking up the information takes more time than I'd like. I'd love to have Trip Boss summarize the info on the table in the Itinerary tab without having to press the details button for the flight or event would be ideal. But that's not a huge problem. Having it all there in one program is very efficient for me.

In the past, capturing all of the small expenses used to be a major inconvenience. And I always had the feeling that I was missing something to turn in for reimbursement. I resorted to writing all of this down on my travel envelope (that I keep all my receipts in), but then I'm stuck with the same problem of finding that envelope and a pen, from my overstuffed carry-on. Now it gets entered as soon as I spend it. If I'm in a real rush (running to catch a plane), I'll jot it down in my Notes (which I use as my portable 3M notepad), and enter it into Trip Boss soon afterward. The joy of knowing I've captured all my expenses when filling out my expense report at the end of the trip is definitely worth it for me. And I know that one missing expense would have easily paid for the cost of TB.

As a sidenote, entering all of the itinerary information ahead of time was not convenient until I came across TapSmart Keylink. What a great timesaver! I never realized how much I picked up my palm to put things in, even while sitting at my desk. I would put stuff in Outlook, Bonsai, or Daynotz to sync over at the next synch. It was eye-opening to actually enter the info right into my Palm from my desktop. It really minimizes the need to have a desktop counterpart for my programs.

As for entertainment, this is my latest find. I like watching movies and TV. Something usually more intelligent than the mainstream. For the short segments that I fly, the flights are usually 1.5 to 2 hour segments. For longer flights I can catch a full movie, but for the normal segments, between the time that passengers are allowed to turn on their electronics to the time they must be turned off, it only leaves about 45 to 90 minutes of viewing time if I'm lucky. I used to carry a video player and DVDs. Not anymore. Between FairUse and TCPMP, I have a full video player in a small package. Before my trip, I copy a movie DVD or DVD TV series onto my laptop and transfer to my Palm. Right now I have the full series 1 and 2 of West Wing sitting on my laptop ready to transfer over to my palm. And I've copied the latest month's Spiritual Cinema movies and am ready to go. With my new Patriot 1G SD card, I can fit a full movie, five TV episodes, and over 100 songs, all in that tiny space. My other 512M card fits about 87 books along with my apps, a few photos, and the last few backups from BackupMan.

And of course, the T3 is not know for its long battery live. Just the opposite. So I use FullPower to eke out as much power off of the battery as possible. And I use a battery extender that I picked up from eBay for about $10, that uses 4 AA batteries. It can stay plugged in when the battery is low to keep my powered for several hours, enough for a long day of full use, until I can make it to a plug. I've considered rechargeable AA batteries but I haven't done that just yet.

Traveling for me would be excruciating if I had to return to the old way of doing things. I don't know that I could do it anymore. Taking control of some of my discomfort areas has allowed me to keep sane while traveling. It's nice to think that as the months and years go on, this stuff will get even smaller.

Links for reference:
TCPMP
FairUse
Trip Boss
Bonsai
Daynotez
BackupMan
FullPower
Spiritual Cinema
West Wing

from Terry:

I'm glad I had TripBoss for our last trip, in May 2005. We travelled through 6 timezones and dealt with 6 currencies. TripBoss enabled me to track all records without a hitch, and as we also used airplane, boat, train and bus, it was easy to use the software to plan where to go, when, and to record all expenses everywhere against a $ budget. It made life much easier than ever before.

The rest of my PalmOne Tungsten T5 software is also invaluable, and the PDA goes with me everywhere. I used Dictionary and six language modules to manage our way through German, Czech, Hungarian and Slovak speaking countries. The program enables you to add words as well so I could record menu items and other useful words we came across that weren't in the (freeware) dictionaries. The memo pad was full of notes I'd made before our trip - before I knew about TripBoss - which I'd made from reading guidebook entries on the main places we had decided to stay. I had a complete list of museums, art galleries and places of interest, and this saved us a lot of time. I use DateBk5 as the main calendar, and also as my alarm clock. Spare moments while waiting for the bus or whatever I could spend playing solitaire or taking more notes on what we saw, on the weather and the restaurants we liked.

The address book section is perfect for noting embassies, American Express locations, emergency numbers etc, and I had setup SplashShopper to make a list of possible gifts for friends.

The PDA has surpassed my former Filofax system and is so light and easy to carry that I don't know how I managed without it. TripBoss is however my favourite program, doing everything I need without fuss. I backup onto a card when away, and this is also a useful protection in case anything goes wrong with any software (a dictionary module caused a glitch, but I restored from the previous copy and evrything worked fine after that).

It's the third party software that makes my T5 special - I wouldn't be without it!

Traveling with your PDA

Travelling with a Palm (my Precious - Tungsten T3)
by Arny Moore (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

Just got back from a road trip of Europe. Went with my wife, father-in-law and brother-in-law. We were retracing my father-in-law's steps. He is German, was born in Breslau (Wroclaw), Poland and was 8 when the war ended and was relocated 4 times. He moved to Canada when he was 18.

We started our trip in Germany, landing in Frankfurt. Stayed a couple of days with my wife's aunt near Nurnburg. Headed out to Breslau - stopping off in Prague for a couple of days and then returning to Germany to visit quite a few cities. In total, we spent 21 days, travelling 4300 km by car, visiting 4 countries and 36 cities.

Two minor programs I used were DayNotez and the built in Photos (now Media) in the Palm OS. DayNotez helped me keep a journal of our trip. I used Photos to review my digital photos taken each day. My Pentax Optio camera LCD is far too small to be useful for this type of review. I deleted my lesser images to keep room on my SD card. I ended up with over 900 pictures.

Brought along the Palm WiFi card, but could never get connected although I could discover many HotSpots. It would have been handy. I could have updated my currency converter and weather forecasts in WorldMate, not to mention picking up my email, but it was not to be.

The main software that I used was my Tom Tom Navigator. I upgraded to version 5 and bought the European maps (being from Canada) before I left. My best investment for the trip. Even got the John Cleese voice prompts to make it more fun. By the end of the trip, my father-in-law was asking "What does John suggest we do?".

It was obviously very handy in getting driving directions. There were a few times when I would lose satellite contact. Found out that turning off the receiver for a couple of minutes refreshed that connection. Got frustrated with a few tunnels in the Alps (and under the main train station in Cologne), but all in all it was a good experience.

Missing a turn or trying to navigate in a maze of one-way streets in the inner cities is where John (Tom Tom) really shone. Trying to get from Neuschwanstein castle to Linderhof castle in Bavaria, nobody could give us understandable directions (as you have to travel through Austria to get there). John came through with flying colours - even listing both castles on the list of Tourist Attractions under Points of Interest.

As we got further and further into the trip, I started experimenting more and more. After you've gone 180 kph on the AutoBahn a couple of times, it gets to be old. Programmed the next routes to avoid highways and we got to travel through some beautiful little villages that we would have missed on the AutoBahn - although it did take more time to get from point A to point B.

Cologne was a real challenge. For whatever reason, there was not a hotel room to be had (we stopped at over 10 hotels). So we set up John to warn us of hotels coming up on the route we were travelling (chose an "ayooga" style car horn). A half an hour later and 15 km south of Cologne, we were snug in a little country inn that we would have never found on our own.

Same thing with restaurants. Anyone who things that they can get a good meal at the road side gas stations on the AutoBahn probably also thinks that McDonald's is fine dining. Again John came to our rescue. Set up Tom Tom to warn us of restaurants coming up on our route (this time a cow's "moo") and the first one we stopped at was a nice little German restaurant run by the family that established it years ago.

Got a little tired after 3 weeks of John's canned jokes ("After 800 meters, what we used to call a half a mile in my day, if it wasn't for that little b*stard Napoleon..."), but I don't think the trip would have been the same without Tom Tom. We came to rely heavily on his directions and corrections when we missed his directions. It made the trip all the more enjoyable.

An added bonus: since the Palm and the satellite receiver have to stay on all the time, I used the included car charger and harness. Always meant that Precious was fully charged.

Arny Moore (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

From Lee
"I currently have a Palm Tungsten T3 and, although it is Bluetooth ready, I don't have a Bluetooth phone, so much of my web access is done through iSilo transfer in advance.

There are quite a few ways I use my pda when I go traveling. Here are the typical examples.

When I get my flight itinerary through - it goes straight in the calendar with a reminder initially set for a day before, then for 2 hours before check-in. The calendar notes include a cut and paste of the flight number etc. If I am hiring a car, I get the order number and include that here too. All this with some ID generally means carrying less paperwork with electronic ticketing.

Asides from the obvious meetings in the schedule, I pop online before I leave to confirm general items like:

Is there a web-based street map for the town I am visiting? - if so, I parse that and drop it into iSilo - I have Dunedin and Christchurch street maps on my pda already.

What is the weather going to be like? - I like to drop a copy of the last 24 hours of satellite photography for the country, and also get a general prediction for the coming weather - here in New Zealand, this means visiting www.metvuw.com for the following 7 days forecast of precipitation.

What are the weeks movies locally? - this is good information when you are away from home staying in hotels and again, a quick parse of the web helps with this for the coming week.

The BBC news site does a low-graphics option http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/default.stm which usually keeps me busy reading for a while.

Obviously having a copy of my current emails in versa mail is very helpful, though without on-line access, this is limited in usefulness as I can't reply till I am back at a palm-synch PC, but I can at least draft emails out ready to go.

If I get receipts for expenses as I travel, I generally have to keep a paper copy for our billing clerks, but where I use my credit cards I like to keep a note of the items in a running memo - not very tidy, but helps keep it together if I loose a receipt.

I tend to throw a lot of voice memos onto the T3 when I am walking around - this is a quick way to take notes, and I transcribe them later when I have time and I am sitting still (graffiti on the move is tough).

Also like-it-or-not, my phone is never up-to-date with all the contacts I have - my pda is indispensable here.

I have used MetrO extensively when in Sydney - and it is a lifesaver for getting around.

Fun whilst traveling includes playing bike-or-die, bubbles B5, freeware mahjong, freeware sudoku and reading an ebook - last one was a grab of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy from online.

I have a copy of the original open source Palm WWCalc weight watchers guide, which continues to motivate me to at least think about what I am eating.

I like to go kayaking and there is nothing quite as cool as turning up in a spot well away from home and knowing what the tide is like using TideTool (Freeware).

I actually think that getting a Bluetooth enabled phone would be the best solution to improving my connectivity and readiness of information when I travel (if I could afford the data connection), but a true network-ready pda would certainly help!"

Submitted by Bryan Allen:

I can’t imagining going anywhere without my Palm! It has become an essential accessory on every single journey. Let me first say that the travelling I do is mostly by plane, bus and taxi. I think if I were driving then my usage of a PDA would be quite different. I would be very interested in GPS and mileage tracking for instance, but personally have no use for that in my present situation. In this article, I shall cover the software and hardware I use regularly, and will include a reference list at the end with URL for each item.

Before I even head out the door I use my Palm to make sure I have packed everything I need. For that I use HandyShopper. I’ve set up lists of things I need to take on my trip and then as I pack each item I check it off, so I can be sure I don’t miss anything important like my coffee maker mug! I have two separate lists: one for when I travel alone and one for when the whole family comes.

While I am sitting in an airport departure lounge, I like to pass the time by playing some of my favourite games. I have several different ones installed: WordWatch, Space Trader and Sudoku, for example, but since this is about travel I should especially mention Puissance1000. It is a card game based on a French game called Mille Bournes where you try and score miles while blocking your computer opponent by giving him flat tyres and crashes.

Having books to read is also essential for me. I mostly use Ereader but depending on the format I sometimes use Mobipocket or Plucker. I also like to read the Bible, and have several versions on my Palm, which beats carrying around a stack of heavy books. One benefit of reading on the Palm is that I can read at night no matter where I am. (And the light from the Palm also makes for a great torch!) Recently I have started to listen to books read to me, using Audible software. Right now you can get a free trial of three books if you want to test it out.
Sometimes it is hard to read in a taxi winding its way over twisty mountain roads at night, but I can slip on the headphones and just relax which helps take my mind off the precipices beside me. Similarly, it is great to be able to listen to MP3s on a long journey using Realplayer.

While in the area of multimedia, I have installed Mmplayer to watch videos too. To be honest, I can’t really imagine myself watching anything very long, but I have some Tom and Jerry cartoons converted for the children which helps distract them on a long journey. I also use the built-in Photos application to show pictures of my children and my wife to people I meet.

Other regular applications which I depend on are Contacts so I have all those phone numbers and addresses at my fingertips and Calendar to plan my appointments. I also use both Diddlebug and BugMe to serve as my alarm clock and reminders so I don’t miss anything. These are also extremely useful for jotting down notes and freehand drawings like sketch maps wherever I may be. Scribbling on napkins and other bits of paper is asking for trouble!

For storing information which I want to refer to on a regular basis I use MobileDB. There I keep lists of films I want to watch and books I want to read so that I can quickly refer to them when out shopping. This database program is useful for all kinds of things: a workout tracker, world information, recipes, stain removal tips… you name it, you can keep it here. I have also downloaded more specialised encyclopaedic information such as a FirstAid manual and the US Army Survival Manual. I’ve never had to use them but they may come in handy some day!

Some information I prefer to keep encrypted and so I have SplashID for things like credit card numbers, and SplashMoney for tracking expenses. When it comes to keeping tabs on exchange rates, I find there is nothing better than Currency which I update from the web each time I leave on a trip. (Without the ability to update itself regularly it would be useless). I use it all the time to check on how much things cost. Another useful conversion program of a different kind is Converter for seeing how many litres in a gallon, or converting stones to kilos, or doing any one of hundreds of conversion types. Another useful number tool is Snapcalc, which is a calculator which I have configured to pop up when I press the tasks button.

I travel a lot in China, and so I find I am constantly using my dictionary program. It is Plecodict and has an extensive English-Chinese and Chinese-English database. I especially like the ability to enter characters by writing them freehand on the screen as its character recognition engine is superb. It makes looking up those pesky characters a breeze! To carry this kind of tool with me in print format would be inconceivable. Of course, your particular need might be another language but I can guarantee there is a dictionary out there somewhere which can help you.

I could continue listing the programs I use whenever I travel, but no matter what you have on your PDA, if it crashes when you are on the road and you need to do a hard reset, you have lost everything as you probably cannot synchronise to your computer to restore it all. To prevent this tragedy I use CardBackup which I have set to backup automatically every night. It has already saved my bacon at least twice.

Those of you with a Tungsten T3 will know that perhaps the only negative about this device is its battery life: it could be better. Well, with a little application called Fullpower it is! It basically sets the low power warnings to a lower level which actually gains you a lot in battery length. Some who have tested it claim 8 hours’ life!

Moving on now to hardware issues, I have purchased an external battery pack for my Palm to be absolutely sure I do not run out of battery on long journeys. Sometimes I can be on a bus for about eight hours. It holds 4 AA batteries and can recharge my Palm wherever I am. I see it as insurance. The first time I travelled with my Palm I found lugging the cradle and power supply with me was a real pain, so I bought a travel charger. The cables retract into a central rotary holder and the whole thing is extremely light. You can also use it to sync to a USB port.

It goes without saying that I have an SD card (256MB), but I have my eyes on a 1G card mainly so that I can store more music. I do not have a dedicated MP3 player as I find the Palm works well; I just need more space. I do have a card reader which I take with me on business trips so that I can transfer files from my Palm to a computer and vice versa. With some Palms’ ability to be recognised directly by a computer this would not be necessary, but the card reader is light.

Finally, I have invested in the Palm Ultrathin keyboard. It always turns heads when I unfold it as it has such a cool design. With this keyboard I am able to travel without a laptop to meetings and take notes straight onto the Palm. I can also work at airports and in other confined spaces.

Of course, everyone has different needs and there are many and varied solutions to all these needs. I offer my experiences in case they may be of interest to someone out there.

Freeware:
HandyShopper
Currency
Converter
Metro
Diddlebug
SnapCalc
Bible programs
Puissance1000
FirstAid
Army Survival Manual

Non-freeware
Audible
WordWatch
Mmplayer
Dictionary
Fullpower
Cardbackup
SplashMoney and SplashID
MobileDB

From Chris- "Traveling with my PDA:

I have a Sony Clie NX70V, and I love my PDA (PalmOS). Using it while I travel on business, I use QuickOffice to work on Word Docs & Excel Spreadsheets I need. I also us it for keeping track of meetings (conference calls) when I'm away from the office. While traveling, I use the PDA as primary reference for my travel itinerary, as I typically travel using eBooking/eTicketing airlines.

If I am traveling leisurely, I have an assortment of entertainment on my PDA. I have converted some DVD movies (Matrix, & Animatrix) to view (saved to CF Memory card) . I also am quite fond of ebooks (I retreive books from the Gutenburg Project, as well as from www.fictionwise.com). I also use my PDA to log into my journal, daily activities of importance, and items I wish to remember for later, etc. Using Adobe for PalmOS, Lastly, I have a small selection of games (Sony Columns, Qubic 320, & Chess) for my PDA which help me to relax & unwind.

Travelling with the Web.
As my PDA has WiFi capability, I periodically use to check email, pay bills, and keep up to date with tasks from office.

Future PDA mobile uses:
Using my WiFi capability, would love an easy way to VPN into my offices network, to remotely work (Telnet or SSH) on my 65+ Solaris & HP Unix Servers at the office."

from Klaus:

just a few words on how I use my PDA while traveling:

- preparing travel itenaries (with regard to Trip Boss I use)

- collecting and storing all expenses while traveling

- making notes on talks

- gathering information on places I visited

- brainstorming on how to conduct upcoming talks

- keeping a datebook on my Palm

- making calculations (with regard to foreign currencies)

and syncing all data afterwards to my home PC

from Tim:

I have very nice PDA, a Palm Zire 72, and I use it a lot when I travel. I always jot down my flight numbers, ticket numbers, arrival times, departure times, & airport gates before hand so I have a record of them in case I lose my tickets. Also my hotel name and address and my hotel confirmation number as well as directions to and from the airport. Any activities or meeting times and places are kept in my calendar and I set alarms for important meetings. I always download any documents I might need for a business meeting too. To help me relax while I'm on the plane I keep my favorite songs downloaded for my listening pleasure. And just in case I've seen the in-flight movie already I keep a movie or two on my SD card so I can have some videotaped entertainment to pass the time with. I keep a few photos of my wife and kids and a few short videos of them on my PDA in case I get lonely and want to see my families loving faces while I'm away. I also keep track of all my personal and business expenses so I have a record of what I've spent. To top it all off my PDA helps me keep my baggage to a minimum. There's no need to carry my laptop around when I have everything right on my trusty PDA, so that's one less thing to worry about. My PDA helps make traveling much easier and a lot more entertaining. I can even take photos and videos while I travel.

from May C:

Traveling with your PDA, how do you use it to help you travel?
(in .pdf format)

Try here for HTML format.

Traveling With a PDA, by Nathan Wiering

These days traveling is made a lot easier, with the use of PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistant.)

First of all, there is business and scheduling.

PDA’s can be used to manage your schedule, budget flights and many other things. With the use of WiFi or Bluetooth, you can check and write email, browse the internet, download e-books, and songs, Instant message your friends, or family, and with some PDA’s even use V.O.I.P.(Voice over internet protocol.) or you can set up V.N.C(Virtual network computer), for controlling your computer at home. When I am traveling I use WiFi to check my mail it is very helpful, I have even used it to check the weather.

Bringing your work with you is easy; with third party applications you can create and edit Office Documents, and almost any other files you might use. I work on my book while traveling, and I don’t need to convert it when I get home.

Tip: You might want to save your files on the card instead of the device. If your battery goes dead and your files are on the device, you might loose your files (If you have an older PDA.) or you might not be able to get your files off until your battery is charged.

Second you can use your PDA for entertainment.

Do you like to read, but are low on s pace? Bring an e-book; you can get most books in the e-book format. Most PDA’s can also play mp3’s or other audio formats, letting you listen to your music while on the go. I listen to music while reading an e-book on long car drives. There are many different games that can be played, from card games, to fast passed 3D action games. You can even watch full length movies, or recorded TV shows.

Tip: if you plan to watch more then one movie, and want to do other things after watching a movie, you should turn the screen brightness down, and use head phones to get longer use before recharging.

No matter what you choose to do with your PDA, you will always find it handy when traveling.

PDA247 Logos

Logo entry from Lee

Logo entry rom Casey

Traveling with the Web

from Claire Nurcombe:

I travel. A lot. I’m on the road for business several times a month for trips that range from one day jaunts to another part of Europe to several week trips to America or Asia. And that’s all before we start talking about my 6 week holiday allowance, which I usually use to travel some more.

I have a few apps that I use to get focused data from the web both to make my travel preparations and support me during my travels. All are palm based, and most can be used or updated either via hotsync or my GPRS connection (only if necessary though, because that gets very rapidly expensive when outside my home country). Let’s start with the basics:

WebPro: OK, I’ll be honest and admit that there are probably better Palm-based browsers around but I just haven’t looked at them. WebPro was one of the bundled apps that came with my T3 and while there are some things (such as its bookmark handling) that irritate, ultimately it works in a hassle-free manner. No weird crashes, no difficult set up. I tend to use WebPro for last minute updates at the airport and for passing the time when waiting to board – BBC News, FCO travel advice, SeatGuru Mobile (to snag the best seat) as well as browsing my favourite website ;-) My bank has recently introduced mobile internet banking so I can also use WebPro to check if I can really afford that large sombrero/wooden elephant/embroidered silk dress that I’m bound to want to pick up once the travel fever kicks in J

CurrencyCalc (Benc) is a very nice calculator with integrated management of currency exchange data. A conduit (developed by Tiny Stocks) lets you update your currency exchange rates from xe.com via hotsync. Armed with up-to-date currency data you can head off to the souk in confidence, or at least find out if that taxi driver who took you to the hotel from the airport really did just horribly overcharge you.

Weather Manager (Tiny Stocks), a program from the programmers of the CurrencyCalc conduit, lets you check weather conditions for your destination (or lets you see if it wouldn’t be better to stay where you are for another few days until it stops raining at home). You install world city databases and then select your favourites for download. You can therefore limit the amount of downloading data but still enter your complete itinerary so you can keep tabs on whether you have to pick up a brolly or suncream before heading off to your next destination. You get a current status report plus a five-day weather forecast with a little pictogram to show the general synopsis, temperature (high and low), humidity level, wind direction and strength and daylight hours. Not all cities are covered in some geographic areas (although you can generally find a reasonable substitute), and the city search is irritatingly set out (A-Z, but within each country, which is also A-Z, and you can’t search L ), but once I’ve got it set up downloading data for my favourites is as easy as pie and useful even when I’m at home trying to decide what to wear that day.

HBlogger (NormSoft) is an app that lets you painlessly Blog on the go. It supports several different blog services, including Blogger and LiveJournal. You can set up several accounts and the text editing tool is basic but easy to use and quite sufficient to let you get your thoughts down when you find a couple of minutes to collect your thoughts in between all the jet-setting J It also supports html code so you can concentrate on learning the essentials of the local language rather than your preferred programming language.

Continento from the website of the same name acts as a complementary travel diary to my musings written with Blogger. This program lets you enter an itinerary and upload it (plus trip reports) to their main webpage, keeping the stuck-at-homes updated on your progress. The transfer process Palm to Web is not seamless and I find it better to set up my itinerary before leaving home – some functionality is limited in the Palm version so fine-tuning must be done on-line. However, this is a fun app and you end up with a nice travel diary to match up those photos to when you’re back home.

TrafficStat (NormSoft) is not exactly travel related, I will freely admit, but with all this web activity over my GPRS connection I have to keep a close eye on how much data I have downloaded so as not to incur additional charges from my mobile provider. TrafficStat is simple but effective, allowing you to check data totals and daily and weekly stats quickly. You can enter your billing period so you can be sure not to double your bill due to incautious web activity.

Mobile Travel in the Future

from Stephen:

We live in Asunción and every couple of years travel home to the UK.
This involves a 24 hour door to door journey. I keep my itinerary on my
Tungsten E but I only use it infrequently when travelling as a matter of
fact, why? because the batter life is so limited. If I was to play a
game, or read some downloaded web pages I would quickly kill the
battery. If you are carrying critical information on your Palm, you do
not want to lose access to it.

So, my wish list for a Palm would be 24 hour plus continuous use one a
single charge. If I knew for certain I could leave the Palm on all day
and it would still function. I could watch a movie, and my itinerary
would still be safe. I could read an ebook without worry.

If there is one innovation that will make PDAs truly useful it is long
battery life.

From Brian Sachs:

This would fall under the "Mobile Travel in the Future" heading, I suppose. Thanks for this contest opportunity and for reading my entry!

Having been a student for quite a while now (this being my first year in medical school) I usually have a different take on the potential roles handhelds can play in our lives. I began with the lovely Palm M505 (which I wish I hadn't sold!) and moved to a Tungsten T|T and currently own a Sony UX-50 (oh so very nice!). Throughout my high school and undergraduate days, now venturing into the world of medicine, I often think of the possibilities missed by Palm(r) et co.
It is not a new revelation that humans operate almost exclusively by sight. Neither, is it, any news that we are creatures of habit. But it does seem that the opportunity to learn via visual repetition on a device which affords us all of today's modern multimedia advances is still largely unfilled by the handheld community

The idea is simple. Palm software (or WM I suppose, though I personally am not from that camp) that organizes your educational schedule, learning objectives, and personal knowledge. Indeed, while flashcard programs already exist, what I envision is much more. As a medical student I have to travel between my apartment, campus, and clinic quite often. Since I happen to be in medical school in the Caribbean I also travel to the US as well. Waiting for the bus consumes much of my day as well as the time between classes and labs. When I eventually go on rounds in the hospital there will be down time between seeing patients and meeting with colleagues. These are the precise moments in which mobile education should take place.

The software I envision encompasses all aspects of mobile education.
I outline three major aspects to mobile education: lessons, training, and research. To be brief, lessons provide the student with an introduction to the material, training tests the student's specific knowledge by daily repetition, and research provides the means for advanced personal study. It is the research portion that I deem perhaps the most functional or usable part of this software as it is able to serve both the student and the professional . Several scenarios exist. The medical student is outside the patient's room and need to look up a certain blood value indicates. Michael is reading his 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' ebook and wants to understand the historicity of a certain allegory. Jenna is on her way to music lessons and needs to remember what a fifth interval sounds like.
Whatever area of study the student is currently in, a mini Wiki of sorts is provided on his or her handheld. And, of course, a thousand professional scenarios could be drawn upon as well.

All sorts of other options can be imagined and incorporated as well.
Randomly generated quizzes. Interactive video lectures. Flashcards based on text, pictures, or sounds. Extensive databases. The basic premise stays the same, however: easy access to mobile education. In recent news Palm has been steadily reaching out to the education community. If Palm does not begin to offer more than mere schedule organization, though, they will most likely not generate much more support than they currently have. For me, mobile education is essential for personal success in my studies. To see a concerted effort towards mobile education by the handheld community would bring about a world of difference in the education of today's younger generations.

Another entry from Lee- "MOBILE TRAVEL in your FUTURE"

What you wish you could do while travelling with your PDA and can't yet
(either because you don't have all the gadgets or they don't exist)?

Shamelessly, because I am desperate for a new gadget, and there is no way on earth that my wife will ever capitulate to find the same stuff important in life – here is my attempt at this topic.

I won’t be at home from December 15 to Feb 15, because I am taking a “sabbatical” just to spend some time with my wife, Helen, and try to “do something active every day” – so the 4WD is getting covered with gear, tent, 2 sea kayaks and 2 mountain bikes, the walking boots go in along with the waterproofs, and all the excuses are being left behind – no room for them in the luggage.

You might think that this is a good example to daydream about “Mobile travel in my future”, and you’d be right. What would I like from my pda on the move?

A truly integrated GPS would be grand – with all of the bells and whistles and “up to date” maps, either at GIS Data level, or better still 1:12,500 scale “walking" maps, where available. I do enough outdoor stuff that this would be grand – but I have yet to see a handheld GPS software set that has this level of map integration, and certainly not for little New Zealand.

The Garmin is pretty cool with the ability to find directions from one address book entry to another, but the possibilities of information-linked-to-location are where the potential excitement lies.

With integration to sources online, you could get the pda to call out when you were driving past an area of interest – say a particularly beautiful walk, or waterfall, or historical place, or coffee shop (if you told the pda you were a bit peckish). With a subscription to a travel publisher, you could get reviews for these places too. This optional "tour guide" would certainly be helpful in unfamiliar cities.

A fully integrated browser and email is obviously a must, but wouldn't it be great if you could get the days news read to you from your pda as you travel - in some way like a verbal RSS news feed, with headlines, that you can express an interest in vocally and then have read out to you.

As far as payment and ticketing goes - I'm sorry, but I will be most happy when everyone has a credit card with their current photo on it - electronic swift payments are best done from your banking site, I recon.

Maybe you can do this already, but how cool would it be to blog your travels straight from your digital camera pda/gps by GSM to the web? - did you never take a photo, and you aren't sure where you were when you took it?

Imagine that you set the GPS / pda to put a meta-tag on the picture file
- with the nearest street or place name, the date and time...
- heck, even the direction you were facing when you took it?
- and all of this gets flicked with the picture straight to a photo album on-line?
- if you are at a tourist spot, then you might get additional local information off a local WiFi point to save with this, like a bit of relevant blurb from the location.
- You could even record an audio note (some cameras do this already) and have that tagged to the picture.

Oh yeah - and rocket boots, we need more rocket boots too.
You can never get enough USB WiFi Bluetooth firewire rocket boots.
Really.

from Michelle:

MOBILE TRAVEL in your FUTURE

Since I don't own a PDA and really haven't looked into all its functions, I am dying to find out the many uses. If I had a PDA, I know that my holiday travels would be a lot easier. First, I could make plane reservations and control costs by using this nifty little gadget to arrange reservations without having to hang on hold while someone looks up itineraries and costs. I could have my address book handy all in one place to plan visits with old friends and family members.

One thing that I stress about when traveling is being out of touch with people and what is happening in the world. With a PDA, I could view news, messages from friends, contact my family if the plane is late, etc. What a relief that would be.

The more I think about it, the more I am considering actually purchasing one...IF I don't WIN!

Tie-breaker Tips and Tricks

from Claire Nurcombe:

I’ve been racking my brains to come up with some PDA travel related tips – they seem somewhat obvious, but will maybe help someone (and they’ve been found through real-life trial and error L

1. Have a back-up solution you can trust and test it before you leave your desktop computer behind. The time to find out that you can’t restore your DateBook is not when you’re sitting in a hotel in a different time zone wondering when and where you were supposed to meet your business colleague (and what his name is J)

2. Double check all your recharging cords, spare batteries, etc. for damage before leaving home. My theory has always been “if I forget something I can always buy it again there” but you may or may not be surprised to hear that you can’t easily buy a recharging cord for Palm PDAs in China. Or in Nashville. Or Mexico. For bonus marks, have your recharging cord short due to arcing across exposed cables and blow all your USB ports on your work laptop as well J Oh yes.

3. Keep an eye on your PDA charge and general condition, even if you are used to just chucking it in your bag and leaving. I have arrived on a couple of occasions after long flights to find batteries drained due to missed alarms and bad luck (crashes or buttons being stuck on or something in my bag pushing against the buttons). See also point number 1.

4. Try and store all your travel info somewhere obvious and all together (a note under the DateBook appointment for your flight, or a note against your hotel address) so you have everything quickly to hand in case of need.

5. Make sure you have all essential addresses and telephone numbers listed and easily findable (separate category for instance) for all your travel emergencies.

6. Download your currency conversions before you go so you can get a feel for the worth of money in your destination. If possible find out a ball park figure for the travel costs to the hotel, since this is the time when you’re most likely to get ripped off.

7. Make sure you have the correct adaptor plugs so assuming you did all the above you can actually recharge when you get there. Many countries only sell adaptors for their country standard converting to others outside of the airports (Nashville, I’m looking at you again – yeah, that was a baaaaad trip J).

8. Have a backup solution for when all goes completely pear shaped. Power-to-go, 9v battery recharging solution (at least Nashville can do something), solar panel recharger, wind-up recharger, etc. etc. It may not provide enough power to let you play your mp3s, DVDs or games, but it’ll give you enough power to let you access your critical dates, contacts and notes."

from Randy Jones:

Use Trip Boss to track your air miles:

Use Trip Planning or Itineraries to log the different legs of your trip. You can enter the distance in Trip Planning (distance field) or Trip Itinerary (note field) so that you can keep track of your air miles for each leg of the trip. After you have input and completed your trip you'll have all the totals from each leg of your trip and know how many air miles you should be credited for.