Yeah, you’d think a week would be good enough to catch up on WES stuff, but that’s clearly not the case. WorldMate Live announced a new “Connections” feature to their great BlackBerry travel app, allowing you to easily hook up with people that have overlapping travel plans. After requesting a connection with someone else, WorldMate Live will keep an eye on both of your accounts, and whenever it looks like you’ll both be heading to the same destination, you’ll get a notification. This is a really cool and easy way to keep in touch with business contacts who are on the move just as much as you are. On top of that, the WML handheld client also added calendar integration, so all of your itinerary information get shunted to your BlackBerry’s default calendar app. Oh, they also announced integration with Telmap’s mapping systems, so you can get GPS directions to all the destinations listed in your itinerary. If you’re interested in giving it a shot, there’s a free version available, but to get the good stuff, you’ll have to sign up for Gold service.
Tag: travelPage 2 of 4
WorldMate Live adds social networking
Nomadz is a new personal safety tool for businesses and travelers. If you’re going to a foreign country, you can simply fill out your itinerary and you will be alerted to any potentially dangerous situations you might be involved in, from terrorist threats to thunderstorms. You can contact the Nomadz team if anything untoward happens, such as a car accident or injury, and they will alert the authorities, as well as get maps and directions to business meetings or wherever you need to go. They mention that they are working on a new health service, which will give you information on drug interactions and remind you of dosage schedules, and even give a second opinion based on information your provide. Definitely something to look out for at WES.
We talked last month about some of the more idyllic travel destinations, and how BlackBerry helped you out in those exotic locales, but, as we’ve seen, sometimes things don’t go quite as planned. Everyone’s missed a flight, or at least came close to it, or botched hotel reservations, or got completely lost in a foreign city. Well, let’s hear your worst travel story, and how your BlackBerry helped (or ruined) everything. I always think of Max the Road Warrior when it comes to missing flights, and accordingly, we’re going to give away 6 months of WorldMate Live Gold for the best travel horror story, especially if it involves a plane full of zombies.
Last week’s winner behind the jump!
If WorldMate Live is a little too time-consuming for arranging your travel plans, TripIt offers something a little quicker. All you have to do is forward your booking e-mails to plans@tripit.com, and their robots will go off and scour the web for weather, maps, directions and all sorts of info to make your travelling all the more painless. With their recently-announced mobile site, you can access all that amassed information from your BlackBerry at m.tripit.com. You can also shoot off a command to that e-mail address to get a reply with all of your info, if you’d prefer to have it in e-mail format. I’d sooner stick to WorldMate Live if I’ve got the time to plan, but TripIt sounds like a great service for last minute trips.
Oanda, a company specializing in foreign exchange services, and SweetCaesar, who develop custom BlackBerry apps, have teamed up to release a mobile version of Oanda’s FXConverter. The software is used around the world to convert over 160 different currencies, from the Afghanistan Afghani to the Zambian Kwacha, usually with rates less than a minute old. FXConverter Mobile puts all the information at your thumbtips, with an easy interface that sorts currencies into alphabetical categories and remembers your recent conversions, and even tells you exactly how many seconds since the rates were updated. Easily used and usable by everyone from casual travelers to millionaire bigwigs.
If you’ve somehow missed WorldMate Live, we’ve got you covered with a review, a spotlight, and a podcast. The software is a must-have for any globetrotter, allowing you to create itineraries and check world clocks, flight status, weather and more. Their latest update adds support for reading travel confirmation emails from a number of web-based email services including Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Mail. Users can forward confirmations to WorldMate’s confirmation address to have them automatically added to their itinerary and pushed to their BlackBerry, or have their travel agents skip the middleman and send them directly to WorldMate. They’ve also added Safari support, so Mac users can jump in on the action as well. If you’d like to get 6 months of WML’s premium service, you should check out our Weekly Contest…
Networks In Motion offers a number of location-based-services for both personal and business use. AtlasBook provides you with maps and directions, as well as a local directory of points of interest, while its family-oriented counterpart FamilyFinder lets parents track the whereabouts of younger family members without requiring them to call and check in. Their PhotoFinder software allows photographers to tag their photo with location information and even get exact directions to where their photos were taken. Finally, for business customers, AtlasLink is tool for managers to track and communicate with a team in the field. Developers attending WES will likely be keen to check out their booth for their NAVBuilder solution, a platform for LBS/GPS development.
Last week we talked a bit about going where no BlackBerrys had gone before, mostly to hilariously dangerous consequences. Of course, not all the places you’ve taken your BlackBerry are threats to its structural integrity – maybe you’ve shot out a few e-mails from the Sahara, or taken a call from Mount Everest (I hear the reception’s pretty good), or grabbed a few snaps in the Arctic with your Curve. Wherever you’ve been, let’s hear the most exotic place you’ve used your BlackBerry. The winner will get 6 months of Gold service from WorldMate Live to set them up on their next trip.
Last week’s winner behind the jump…
Everyone from the self employed, to small businesses, to large enterprises incurs expenses, and Exgis is there to track them. Using their web-based software, which is available anywhere with an internet connection, you can input and track expenses, and even automatically convert prices into your home currency if you’re out of the country. Their mobile version, available exclusively on BlackBerry, has all the features of the web-based software but allows you to input expenses as they happen rather than days later. Their booth at WES should be well worth visiting, and hopefully we’ll get to see even more features.
The BlackBerry travel companion of choice just shot off their first newsletter, announcing a few changes to WorldMate Live. For one, the Outlook plugin has been smoothed over with improved compatibility with older versions of Outlook. The biggest change is being able to add and edit itinerary items right from your BlackBerry. This was my primary gripe with WorldMate Live, and it’s great to see the improvement made. It wasn’t even much of a problem, but really just a gap in function. Another cool feature is the ability to CC WorldMate Live for travel confirmations so that bookings are immediately reflected in your itinerary without needing to put it all in through Outlook. This is a great app that helps you keep all of your travel plans together in one spot, so go ahead and sign up for free, and if you’re already hooked up, you can grab the Gold subscription here, which includes flight alerts, status and schedules, along with a handy travel directory and 24/7 customer support.
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