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PDA Hell
Kirby's Korner · August 25, 2000

The name of this Web site, of course, is the Ticked-off Traveler, or Ticked.com, implying that your columnists look for things to irritate them and then write about those travel-related items.

Okay, sometimes we do. And I'm such an online-travel-industry booster in my role as editor of Interactive Travel Report that I like to challenge the conventional wisdom here on Ticked.com, even if that conventional wisdom makes me a virtual community of one.

This column was going to be different. I was going to talk about some of the non-Internet-connected handheld-device applications related to travel that are available -- particularly Lonely Planet's CitySync set of city guides. And it was going to be a positive review. Unfortunately, I can't give the program the maximum number of stars, something I was fully expecting to do when I started this review.

Make no mistake -- the Web is no longer the cutting edge of digital communications. Every day press releases cross my desk touting some new wireless travel service, accessible through cell phones or modem-connected PDAs, or some downloadable but PDA-useful travel product. Just this week, I spoke with an official at OAG who told me his company's premiere product -- a complete schedule of all flights by all airlines worldwide -- will soon be available for PDAs for a $59 annual subscription, including access to daily updates. This is a real boon to frequent business travelers.

(Just to clarify any confusion, "PDA" is shorthand for "personal digital assistant," meaning essentially Palms and Palm-like handheld devices, along with the WindowsCE devices that have adopted Microsoft's operating system.)

Lonely Planet is one of my favorite destination guidebook publishers. I'm not big on the whole genre -- because I think even the best destination guides send you to what's popular with tourists, not what's popular with natives -- but Lonely Planet does it as well for travelers as anyone.

So I was excited to get a full copy of Lonely Planet's CitySync, a CD-ROM that contains PDA-compatible guides to 12 cities. Your purchase entitles you to "unlock" four of the 12 cities; if you register your product online, you get access to a fifth city.

Once they're unlocked, the city information is invaluable. You can find maps of key city areas, nightlife, cultural, restaurant, and shopping information, and just about anything you'd find in a typical printed city guide. You might expect Lonely Planet to provide the quirky guidance it does in its printed publications online, but that's a minor quibble. This is information you can carry with you in your shirt pocket, forgetting the heavy printed publications.

My problem with CitySync is with getting the program to work in the first place. I committed a sin among reviewers that brings me into the user category: loading the program the same night I planned to write about it. My adventures, then, may very well track your own.

The five cities I chose from the CD-ROM loaded into my Handheld Visor PDA adequetly, but the process was so slow that I aborted it at one point, thinking nothing was happening.

Once everything was loaded, I managed to unlock the first city on my list without problem. I can now find my way around Chicago easily. But I can't figure out how to unlock the other cities I'm entitled to. I got the CD-ROM as a freebie from Lonely Planet because of this review, but if I had bought the thing I'd be royally pissed off!

My suggestion: realize you'll be moving to a PDA (or a Web-activated cell phone) soon, and be aware of what's available for you. But don't make the move until you have to, or until the bugs have been worked out.

David Kirby is the editor of Interactive Travel Report. His column appears on Friday. You can reach him at david@ticked.com.