Rough Guide Maps

The challenge of knowing what to do in a strange city can, at times, be a daunting task. Hotel staff and cab drivers can be helpful, but finding what the must-see places is always a challenge.

Visual IT (http://www.visualit.co.uk) has helped resolve this dilemma with the introduction of their Rough Guide Maps for the Pocket PC. These interactive travel guides are based on information from the well-known Rough Guides (http://www.roughguides.com). These references give users street maps, subway maps (if applicable), and other helpful information about top attractions, hotels, and other points of interest in the city of your choice. These guides are not just for those on holiday-they also provide business-related information such as the location of post offices, banks, and currency exchanges. Regardless of your reasons for traveling, Visual IT's Rough Guide Maps are excellent resources that will quickly become indispensable for Pocket PC owners who travel.

Rough Guide Map to New York City

The Pocket PC version of the Rough Guides is available for major cities in the US and Europe. For this review I chose the guide for New York City. The installation of the application is done via ActiveSync, and the software can be installed either in main memory or on a storage card. The space required varies depending on the city you select, ranging from 4-6 MB. For example, the New York City guide is 4.6 MB.

Once the application is started, users are presented with a vibrant and easy-to-understand home screen (Fig. 1). By using the Pocket PC's directional pad, users can move around the different selection areas on the screen. The ptions on the home screen are Map Index, Around New York, Sights, and Subway. To access a menu option tap on it and follow the instructions displayed on the bottom of the screen (Fig. 1). 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.

Fig. 1: Tap on one of the four options on the home screen and on-screen instructions tell you what to do next.

The Around New York option lets you access detailed maps of Manhattan and the surrounding areas. These maps can be zoomed in and out, and provide a good level of detail on the location of attractions and sites. Tap on a location, and information about it is displayed in a dialog box at the top of the screen (Fig. 2). You can move around on the maps using the directional pad: I found this method quite responsive.

Fig. 2: The Around New York option lets you access detailed maps. Tap on a location, and information about it is displayed on the top of the screen.

Finding the must-see sites

In any major city, especially New York, there are countless sites to visit. While some come quickly to mind-The Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Time Square-others do not. The Rough Guide includes a list of "20 things not to miss in New York." Tap the Sites option on the home screen and then tap the blue forward button to open the Sites area. Once it is open, you can use the directional pad to move up and down the list of sites. To select a site, tap on its image, and a small information dialog will be displayed at the top of the screen giving you details about the site (Fig. 3). Next, tap the blue forward button and a map of where the site is located within the city is displayed (Fig. 4). This is an excellent way of determining which sites are closest to your current location.

Fig. 3. The Sites option displays a list of 20 things not to miss in New York along with a brief description of each site.