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Pocket PC: Software Reviews

Journal Bar for the Pocket PC

Most people who know me well know that I am fully addicted to technology (which is why I use a Pocket PC) and that in turn means I'm also addicted to gadgets and utilities which can be used on it.

One such area which cries out for the addition of such items is of course the Today screen as this can be used by each individual to customize it for their own specific needs.

So when a new Today program becomes available I usually take a look to see if it performs. Unfortunately many of the applications tend to be installed for a day or two and then get removed as they do not suit my needs or do not come up to scratch.

The latest Today program to be installed and investigated is Journal Bar from OmegaOne Software. The application has now been constantly installed on my iPAQ 3870 for some 3 weeks and the indications are it will be staying there for a long time to come.

Read on to see why!

Installation and Configuration

Installation is straight forward using the Active Sync system, no problems were encountered. The program will run as a free trial version - time enough to decide whether you like the program or not! When first installed you are taken to the configuration screen which allows you to configure the application.

The General tab allows you to specify whether the data will be updated when you dock and whether the display will auto-scroll through the displayed items. The Weather tab allows you to specify two locations (home and other) which can be used to locate weather from cities around the world. You may specify if both locations are displayed and the temperature unit to be used as well as the update interval.
The News tab allows you to access certain pre-defined news sources which are obtained via web-clipping from selected international news agencies. The Stock tab allows you to monitor your stocks and shares via the use of standard share tag codes (as use don Yahoo finance).
The Links tab allows you to pull various web pages of interest on to your machine for offline reading. The help screens within the Journal Bar are fully detailed and cover every aspect of the programs use.

Operation

After the initial configuration has been completed the Pocket PC should be placed in the cradle this will trigger Journal Bar (JB) to automatically retrieve data. Whilst data is being retrieved the 'mode' icon (the house in the Home Weather display for example) will flash, once the flashing has stopped JB will have updated itself with up to date data for all display modes in use.
Here you can see the weather for Manchester in the UK, unfortunately the weather data used as a source does not display more data than a basic weather condition......

..... unlike that used for USA weather where more data is available and displayed in the detail window.
UK News is taken from the BBC news pages and all data from the relevant news page is displayed via Pocket Internet Explorer.
MSN News is also available.

As is general world news again in this case from the BBC.

BBC business news is also covered.....

.... along with Sports news.

General technology news.
And Pocket PC news from Brighthands news pages.
Stock and share tracking comes in very useful. Changes in the data can be optionally coloured to assist you in seeing any changes. Tapping on each stock figure will display more detailed information again within P.I.E.
The Links display allows you to access miscellaneous data from the World Wide Web including film reviews as well as sports scores, TV listings and other data.

 

Pro's and Con's and Conclusions

Pro's:

  • Your commonly needed data such as weather forecasting is available constantly.
  • Auto-scroll makes it easier to monitor your data.
  • Graphically superb.
  • Integrated well with Pocket Internet Explorer.
  • Updated regularly.
  • No complex connection configuration needed.

Con's:

  • Occasionally the 'web scraping' process fails on some of the news pages. However this is caused by fluctuations in the design of the web page being scraped, and is not down to a failing within JB.

Suggestions:

  • Implement the support of RSS news feeds.
  • Allow the number of display lines to be increased.
  • Allow the scroll interval to be user defined.
  • Support PPC2002 style notifications for user selectable updates.

Conclusions:

Journal Bar is indeed one of those rare programs that manages to become one of the permanent members of my Today screen. It functions very well indeed and displays the right data when you need it. I'm now commonly used as a resource within the home and the office as an information source on the weather and stock changes.

I can not recommend Journal Bar highly enough, OmegaOne have scored a real hit with this application and I can confirm from personal experience they are more than willing to take new ideas on board and implement them.

Product Journal Bar v1.1
Manufacturer Omega One Software
Cost:

$9.99 introductory price
Web Site:

http://www.omegaone.com/PocketPC/JournalBar.html
Rating:


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