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> Review :: Journal Bar, Rating 4 out of 5
Slacker
post Mar 30 2006, 01:39 AM
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Journal Bar
By SBSH Mobile Software
MGN Rating -

Rating Legend

1 star: Find something else; save your money
2 star: Below average; not recommended
3 star: Average; performs as advertised but not inspiring
4 star: Good; worth the money
5 star: Great; best of its kind on the market

Review by Slacker
Review Date / March 29th, 2006

Note: Screen captures are created with Pocket Controller-Professional by Soti, Inc.

This review is a bit of a head-to-head review with SBSH Mobile Software's PocketWeather. The products share a weather component but they are very different. The comparison isn't to show how much more Journal Bar can do over PocketWeather, but to give you an alternative should you need a more or less informational application, and to compare their weather information. You may see a lot of similarities as we compare and contrast their capabilities.

I ride motorcycles. Often called a couch rocket, my HD Electra Glide Ultra Classic is an RV on two wheels. It is the essence of two wheeled comfort. But because it is a motorcycle the time I spend on it I am completely exposed to the elements. I really enjoy spending time on the bike, so I pay very particular attention to the weather on a daily basis. Sure, I can ride in the rain, but I don't really like to. The bike gets dirty, I get wet, and I just don't enjoy the ride nearly as much. So I can really use a tool that tells me what to expect from day to day. Journal bar is one example of an application that does exactly that, but it also offers a great deal more information including news, stocks, movie information and more.

Here is what Omega One has to say about Journal Bar:

QUOTE
From Omega One - the makers of Battery Pack Pro - Journal Bar gets Weather, News, Stocks and more and puts it right on your Pocket PC today screen! Simply install, enter your location, then let Journal Bar put all the best web pages & information automatically:

Weather - 14 forecasts with up to 5 days forecast & current conditions for cities. Radar & satellite images for US cities. Over 230 countries & thousands of cities - most complete coverage of any Pocket PC program.
News - headlines & in-depth articles for 29 countries in 18 languages - over 100 news sources.
Stocks - up to 200 of your favorite stocks / mutual funds / currencies updated every 10 minutes.
Movie times for your local movie theaters.
Movie reviews of the latest releases.
TV listings for the main channels this evening.
Sports scores for the major leagues.
Horoscopes - your daily personal reading.
Custom links - take your favorite web pages with you wherever you go.
Localization - Deutsch, Français Espanol, Italiano, Portuguese, Catalan, Danish, Norwegian & Traditional Chinese.

How does it work?
Journal Bar downloads data from the Internet when your Pocket PC is connected to your PC, and your PC is connected to the Internet. Don't worry about changing options to make this work, Journal Bar works right out of the box - all you do is install and go! Enter your ZIP code for local weather, local news, and local movie listing information.

Customize Journal Bar to remove the information you don't want to see.
Auto scroll through the information so you can quickly see it from the docking cradle.
Change how often the information is automatically updated.
Works perfectly with Phone Edition, Bluetooth & 802.11 devices for updating on the go.


Journal Bar is more than a weather application. It is like CNN, The Weather Channel, Moviefone, The Wall Street Journal and The Onion all rolled into one. After you install Journal Bar you are asked for your location by country, then by Zip code for those in the US. After answering the questions you will have a new homescreen plugin that looks like this:

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See the small up and down arrows on the left? Clicking those changes from section to section. Sections available to you are weather, news, stocks and websites which includes TV listings, movie listings, horoscopes and more.

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Clicking any of the news, stocks or website links will open Pocket IE and take you to that site. But clicking on the weather icons will take you to the forecast information and more. You get a tab at the top for each of the next five days plus infrared and radar images for your local area.

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Ok, thats what it shows. Lets take a look at how you can change what it shows. There are 5 tabs in the setup section. The general tab has information concerning action to take on docking, checking for updates, auto-scrolling, etc.

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The weather tab allows you to add up to 14 different locations to track the local weather. You can also specify to show the local time, indicate temperatures in farenheit or celcius and control how often the weather is updated.

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These two screens show how to add new localities to the weather. First you select a country. Then in the case of the US you are asked for the ZIP code.

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The news section has 100 news feeds to choose from simply by picking the one you want from the provided list. You can show up to 14 news feeds at one time.

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Need to know how your Starbucks stock is doing? No problem. Simply put in the symbol and you are all set. Show information on up to 200 stocks!

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Finally the last section provides website information. You can pick from the provided websites and take them with you or customize it with your own favorites!

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Finally, those of you who have seen my reviews before on software know how I feel about taking the help with me. Omega One is a company that understands I am usually not near a computer when I need to know how to use a specific feature. They provide the help for Journal Bar right on the device.

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But what if that isn't enough for you? What if you need more news feeds? Omega One offers an expansion pack to extend the news feed choices by more than 75 additional options.

JournalBar will connect at your specified intervals and download the information you ask for, whether news, weather, stocks, or actually cache copies of web pages. So you an leave for work in the morning with a whole newscast in your pocket ready for the bus, train, plane or taxi ride. If you don't have a wireless data connection you can use the passthru feature of ActiveSync to get the updated information before you leave. If you are able to take advantage of a data connection you can keep the information updated throughout the day, making sure you always know what is happening in the world.

So that's Journal Bar. But is the application worth $29.99? That is really a call you have to make. There are other applications out there that deliver weather, like SBSH Mobile Software's PocketWeather which sells for $9.95. But PocketWeather doesn't have news, stocks, cached websites or any of the other additional Journal Bar features. Journal Bar is like the swiss army knife, offering a lot of tools that are probably not the best at what they do individually but together they make a really complete current events toolkit to keep you informed and prepared.



You can download a trial for Journal Bar from here and purchase the full version here.


--------------------
Jim Cleek (Slacker)
Editor / Administrator
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