Travel Assistant 1.1

Planning your trip is a straightforward process with the itinerary application, albeit somewhat confusing as to the language used for information (for example, a vendor is never defined, and we're still not sure what it really means). But the itinerary function does allow for a logical display of your information, sorting by airline reservations, rental car information, and lodging plans on separate pages. Additionally, the itinerary offers the ability to plan several trips at once and categorizes each accordingly, which is good for differentiating between the family's summer vacation and your company's annual retreat.

Once your bags are packed and you're on the road, you can check in with the Travel Mate, a skinny, all-purpose reference tool. It offers clothing sizes (ranging from suits to women's dresses, including UK, U.S., and European sizes), currency conversions (which you can update manually at will), and standard conversions (temperature, distance, volume, and weight).

Rather than rely on hotel personnel to help you meet your tour group on time with a wake-up call, use the SuperClock, a large display time (approximately one inch high and very bold) that makes an ideal bedside clock. Alarm settings allow for a basic alarm sound, varying days (such as weekdays only), and a customizable snooze function.

Still, the most compelling reason to purchase this application is the translator function, which will undoubtedly serve as your traveling language coach and constant companion. With 39 languages available, users can select up to nine at a time, so hopping from country to country is no sweat. We found a pleasant surprise after installing Spanish and Yiddish: words are sorted by types that include directions, shopping, places, and much more. Even though the translator offers no pronunciation help, we found that the selection of words and the accompanying look-up function would prepare travelers for intercultural communication.

By combining travel dictionaries, scratch-paper notes on confirmation numbers, and day-to-day plans, Travel Assistant proves to be useful for both the business commuter and the leisure traveler.--Emilie Dirks

Amazon.com Product Description
This program offers comprehensive handheld help for both domestic and global travelers. It allows you to keep all your details about travel plans together in one convenient place and easily share them with another traveler's Palm OS Device. The information you will have at your fingertips includes airport information, car rental companies, confirmation numbers, frequent flyer ID numbers, and room rates and confirmations. You will be able to easily find any travel resource in specialized database listings.

You can create detailed records of all your travel-related information with simple layouts, auto-completing fields, and pop-up menus. An itinerary may contain unlimited travel segments and unlimited free-form notes. Built-in databases and auto-complete text simplify data entry: You can choose from hundreds of automatic entries to speed completion of itinerary details. Critical date and time entries can be posted to the Palm OS built-in date book. The built-in travel clock offers multiple alarm sound options, a weekday-only alarm option, and easy pop-up interface controls. The size calculator translates international clothing and shoe sizes into U.S. sizes, as well as liters to gallons, kilometers to miles, kilograms to pounds, and Fahrenheit to Celsius. Use the exchange rate tool to view local values in multiple currencies.

The translator feature allows you to custom install up to nine languages from a list of 39, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Welsh, Czech, Dansk, Dutch, Esperanto, Korean, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish Gaelic, Mandarin, Nihongo, Norsk, Pa-sa-Thai, Persian, Polski, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Svenska, Taioan, Holooe, Turckce, and Yiddish.