Wanted: World Almanac

[Jason Dunn]

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, although perhaps with more narrative similar to this. I use WorldMate quite a bit, 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!

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!

[Jason Dunn]

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, although perhaps with more narrative similar to this. I use WorldMate quite a bit, 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!

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]

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]

The 2002 CIA World Factbook is available in PalmReader 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. The PalmReader version is at the bottom of the page.

--Dave

[kfluet]

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 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. 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]

Use Isilo and the 2002 CIA World Factbook

[PPCRules]

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/PlatformProd...roductId=21871

[SofaTater]

I use the CIA World Factbook with TomeRaider.

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

[mjhamson]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by PPCRules

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/PlatformProd...roductId=21871

PPCRules,

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