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View Full Version : Wanted: World Almanac


Jason Dunn
03-05-2003, 07:00 PM
Whenever I travel to another country, I'm always eager to learn more about it before visiting. The problem is that I have yet to find a good resource for doing so on my Pocket PC. What am I looking for? <a href="http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bb.html">Something like this</a>, although perhaps with more narrative <a href="http://www.peoplegoingglobal.com/Americas/Canada.htm">similar to this</a>. I <a href="http://www.mobimate.com/ppc/worldmate/index.shtml">use WorldMate quite a bit</a>, and it's a fantastic program, but there's no database with any cultural or factual information about the countries in their database. To me, this is a major oversight - if I'm travelling to these other places, I want to know more than just the time!<br /><br />Have you found a good solution to this issue? I know that I could manually go to these Web sites and create eBooks or save the HTML files, but I'm seeking a slick, polished program that I can have with me all the time. I love to learn - feed me!

kinged
03-05-2003, 07:17 PM
There are programs that give you information on other countries, but the details are not very good if you want specific information on a certain city. There are Atlas CE and pocketworld info.

But you can find information on website, you can just use repligo to extract content to your PDA.

Dave Beauvais
03-05-2003, 07:47 PM
The 2002 CIA World Factbook is available in PalmReader (http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/) and iSilo formats from MemoWare. I have the PalmReader version, and while not very user-friendly, does seem to contain everything that the original does.

Get it here (http://www.memoware.com/?screen=doc_detail&doc_id=11148&back=main). The PalmReader version is at the bottom of the page.

--Dave

kfluet
03-05-2003, 07:59 PM
AtlasCE is nice for an overview, but doesn't contain much meat.

If you are looking for on-the-ground tourist type info, I always recommend Lonely Planet's excellent web site (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/) for info. Saving web pages to your handheld isn't the most elegant solution, but it's the quality of info that really matters, right?

I know there is a huge amount of economic info by country in Business: The Ultimate Resource, which is available in Mobipocket format from Franklin (http://www.franklin.com/estore/details.asp?ID=BUS500752DLDP). While I highly recommend this book, the eBook price is an INSANE $99 USD. Since I paid $50 Canadian at Costco for this in hardcover, I can't bring myself to pay 3 times that for an eBook version. But it's there if you need biz info on your PDA.

Chriswalley
03-05-2003, 08:05 PM
Use Isilo and the 2002 CIA World Factbook

PPCRules
03-05-2003, 08:08 PM
I wasn't looking, but I came across this moments after reading your request. Didn't look into it much, but here it is: http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?platformId=2&productType=2&productId=21871

SofaTater
03-05-2003, 08:10 PM
I use the CIA World Factbook with TomeRaider.

I also have CityTime from Code City, which has some useful features for traveling...

mjhamson
03-05-2003, 08:48 PM
The website www.geohive.com has some very interesting information on just about every single country in the world. They are moving a lot of things over to XML, so consumption in the PPC format should be pretty easy.

kwerner
03-05-2003, 09:17 PM
On a related note, I think it would be nice to have some language basics that would be useful for travellers (numbers, airport info, food info, banks, restrooms, hello, thank you, etc). Do any of these programs have these essentials? Personal, handshake, type customs would be good too.

shawnc
03-05-2003, 09:37 PM
I wasn't looking, but I came across this moments after reading your request. Didn't look into it much, but here it is: http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?platformId=2&productType=2&productId=21871

PPCRules,

Thanx for the link. This is EXACTLY what I have been searching for.

rix
03-05-2003, 10:24 PM
re: Pocket World Info, let me know how you fair with it. I downloaded the demo & liked it, so purchased it, but eh program would not run consistently for me.

Gave the error:
Error Cannot load pwires.dll

Developer said it was a memory issue, I had 13 MB storage free & 22.49 MB Program free, so I'm not so sure about that.

The only way I could (sometimes get it to run, was to turn off everything (TSP's, startup progs etc.) & soft reset the PPC, even then it didn't always run.


If you are going to try it, make sure you use the $10 off discount code at handango

93BB37D1


It's on their specials page.


HTH,

Rich

dlangton
03-05-2003, 10:52 PM
I had exactly the same problem with Pocket World Info involving the pwires.dll file. In my case, turning off Calligrapher before running the program solved the problem. Once I launch Pocket World Info, I'm able to run Calligrapher as well.

shawnc
03-05-2003, 11:03 PM
rix,

As I was reading your post I thought........ah well, it's probably not worth the aggravation. But for $10 off, it's probably worth the risk. Thanx for the coupon code.

Jeff from MS
03-06-2003, 01:37 AM
Would also recommend you take a look at Pocket Earth (also from the same developer.) Great virtual globe, elicits oohs and ahhs when you show people.

Cheers!

Pony99CA
03-06-2003, 03:42 AM
Whenever I travel to another country, I'm always eager to learn more about it before visiting. The problem is that I have yet to find a good resource for doing so on my Pocket PC. What am I looking for? Something like this (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bb.html), although perhaps with more narrative similar to this (http://www.peoplegoingglobal.com/Americas/Canada.htm).
Do you know that you can just download zipped HTML files (http://www.cia.gov/cia/download.html) from the CIA World Fact Book? If you want the maps, you'll need a lot of storage, though.

Steve

nosmohtac
03-06-2003, 05:58 AM
Whenever I travel to another country, I'm always eager to learn more about it before visiting. The problem is that I have yet to find a good resource for doing so on my Pocket PC. What am I looking for? Something like this (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bb.html), although perhaps with more narrative similar to this (http://www.peoplegoingglobal.com/Americas/Canada.htm).
Do you know that you can just download zipped HTML files (http://www.cia.gov/cia/download.html) from the CIA World Fact Book? If you want the maps, you'll need a lot of storage, though.

Steve

But, if you download the whole CIA fact book in palm reader format you can zip it and move it on to your ppc and use uBook to read it while it is zipped (Maps and all).

Never mind. I tried this and it won't work 'cause it is in secure pdb format. :oops:

Fzara
03-06-2003, 07:02 AM
Why the heck is Iraq the screenshot on the Handago preview page?

Are they trying to advertise this program to the Bush Administration or something? :lol:

dlangton
03-06-2003, 07:11 AM
Why the heck is Iraq the screenshot on the Handago preview page?

Yeah, they shoulda put North Korea up there.

Pony99CA
03-06-2003, 10:26 AM
Do you know that you can just download zipped HTML files (http://www.cia.gov/cia/download.html) from the CIA World Fact Book? If you want the maps, you'll need a lot of storage, though.
Here is some storage size information on the unzipped CIA World Fact Book.

Size of all files -- 198 MB
Size of PDF reference maps -- 134 MB
Size of all files without PDF reference maps (JPEG maps are still available) -- 64 MB.

If you download this, I recommend not including the PDF reference maps. I tried opening the 40 MB physical world map on my laptop, and it was very slow. I can't imagine how slow it would be on a Pocket PC.

The bad news with the HTML files is that the pages are too wide for the Pocket PC screen in Pocket IE, even with Fit to Screen on.

Steve

dlangton
03-06-2003, 01:14 PM
There's a version of the CIA World Factbook which has been formatted for PocketPC. It's only about 15 MB, has GIF maps rather than PDF maps, and fits quite well on the PocketPC screen. The maps work better in landscape rather than portrait, however. The link was posted at *I think* Brighthand a while back. If I can find the link later today, I'll post it.

Pony99CA
03-06-2003, 02:20 PM
There's a version of the CIA World Factbook which has been formatted for PocketPC. It's only about 15 MB, has GIF maps rather than PDF maps, and fits quite well on the PocketPC screen. The maps work better in landscape rather than portrait, however. The link was posted at *I think* Brighthand a while back. If I can find the link later today, I'll post it.
Why bother with GIF maps? The downloadable one I got has both PDF maps and JPEG maps. GIFs tend to be bigger than JPEGs, although I realize that JPEG is intended more for photographs than graphics (like maps).

I'll be interested in seeing that link. I didn't find any 2002 versions formatted for 240x320 using Google, nor did I find any hits doing a search at Brighthand. :-(

Steve

dlangton
03-06-2003, 07:38 PM
Unfortunately, I cant seem to find the link anymore. It may have been a newsgroup for all I know. What I do remember is that the download available originally came from the CIA download site, but that it was no longer available. I'll upload it to a site for download a little later. Can't see anything illegal about this based on what information is at the CIA - it's public information. If I cease to exist, then you'll know what happened.

dlangton
03-06-2003, 08:43 PM
Here's a link. Only 5 MB.

http://www.wctc.net/~dlangton/Stuff/World%20FactBook.zip

shawnc
03-07-2003, 03:53 AM
I just purchased Pocket World from Handago and used the code rix provided. It's not a bad program. For $15 I would have been dissapointed. For $5, I can live with it.

I like how it displays relevant info about each country. It is very easy to measure the distance between two locations. My main gripe is that oftentimes I would like to see a regional view. For instance, I want to see the countries that border Iraq, in addition to Iraq. The capability to zoom in and out would really make this program a keeper for me.

Lex
02-06-2004, 10:26 PM
Dlangton, thank you for posting that link to http://www.wctc.net/~dlangton/Stuff...%20FactBook.zip !

Not a bad interface at all working through Pocket I.E. and with a big SD storage card, it works plenty fast on my iPAQ 3845.

Can you provide a link to the originator site for that download or is your link the only place the file can be found?

I found the CIA World Factbook site via Google but their smallest available download is many times bigger than yours.

Thank you again !