By admiron

Titan Class World is Class Action P/L’s award winning travel clock and time zone management utility. To even refer to it with that combined title doesn’t do the broad featureset the proper justice.

Features include:

• Multiple stunning world-views that illustrate locations, times, and daylight
• Multiple-city time display for comparison, with color coding to aid in deciding whether a call is appropriate at that time in that time zone
• Address book integration for looking up the current time for your contacts
• Time-zone calculator for negotiating meeting times
• A handy travel alarm clock
• Plus many more features…

You might be saying, “But I have a World Clock application included on my Treo, why would I want to use World?” The answer, of course, is a matter of degrees (no pun intended). The featureset of World far surpasses that of the bundled application, but similarly, the user interface and experience are also somewhat more complicated. I liken it to comparing a rubber band to a handgun - both are capable of firing projectiles, but one requires more care and learning to truly use it effectively.

I decided to initially use the application without reading the help files to see how intuitive the interface is. Clicking in locations across the globe will highlight the nearest available city and display the current time.

The other clickable elements of the interface are:

• An arrow in the upper-left which activates the menu-dropdown
• A circle or rectangle in the upper-right which toggles between a 3-D Globe view and a flattened “Map” view
• A pair of clocks in the lower-left which activates the timezone calculator
• A phone icon in the lower-right which allows you to search your Contacts and then have their location, time, and daylight displayed on the map.

These icons could use a textual cue to help identify their exact purpose, but after a moment of clicking around it becomes apparent what each is meant to do. Of course, there’s no substitute for reading the manual and inline help, wherein I learned how to set a location for easy recall (such as my home), sync the clock with Geobytes for accurate and automatic time-keeping, running the demo, and using the alarm clock.

Demo is the “Oooh-Aaah” feature of the application for me. It animates the map or globe (the globe is a more visually-interesting view) and shows the passage of time and relative daylight hours for whichever location you have selected. This came in very handy for me at dinner last week as I was explaining to my mother that while I am in Iceland on vacation this week, I will not be enjoying much in the way of nighttime. The Demo view allowed me to precisely illustrate the lack of darkness that will accompany my trip.

I’m also a fan of the status indicators that appear when you use the contact lookup feature - they display a colored circle next to the contact name and phone number which alerts you to whether or not it may be an appropriate time to call. Red signifies a poor time, yellow signifies that it might be alright, and green signifies that it is mostly likely fine to call at that time. Doubtless, my family and friends will appreciate this feature when I am in a timezone that is 4 hours ahead of theirs this week.

When you change the default location in the application, it also updates the system clock as necessary. I used this functionality upon my arrival in Iceland, and the system clock was set accordingly, which was quite handy.

Lastly, one of the major strengths of the World application is the integration with a suite of travel tools that allow you to manage your itineraries, create time zone based events, convert various units, and sync all related information to a central website which allows easy entry and dissemination of travel details by multiple people. I’ll have to investigate some of the other elements of the suite, but that’s beyond the scope of this review.

Overall, I like this application a lot. It’s a great demonstration of the Treo’s abilities both in regards to graphics and PIM synchronization, and once you read the manuals, you really have a powerful travel companion in your hand. I think World represents a solid value once you understand the extent of its abilities, especially if you continually hop between time zones for business or pleasure.

Price: $24.95

Compatibility: OS 4 and up, Color devices supporting thousands of colors

Pros:

• Time zone management
• Contacts integration
• Time zone coordination for meeting negotiations
• Synchronization with external timekeeping service
• Integration with extensive travel suite

Cons:

• Featureset results in an interface that is not wholly intuitive
• I like the included alarm clock with snooze, but I’d love an extra clock/alarm setting
• Cost when World Clock is already included with the Treo for free

Overall Score: 4 out of 5

Related Links

Click here to download a free trial

Check out the rest of Class Action P/L’s award winning Titan Class Travel Suite

Filed under: Software reviews