[mattmarenic]

There is new version (1.1.26 of great BB app WorldMate Live...

New in this version:

-- Edit Your Itinerary on the Road...
-- Get Travel Confirmations Directly to Your BlackBerry� Smartphone
-- Improved Outlook Add-in

WorldMate Live home page

[JimR]

WorldMate Live Standard is a free subscription. You will need unlimited data access to avoid getting charged (probably) by your carrier for the transfer times.

The free stuff consists of the following:

Itinerary scheduilng, which you can do either on your BB or on their web site. I find using the BB a bit easier, in fact, but once changes are made they are quickly synchronized. Also, you get "world clocks," where you can have five clocks (four in addition to your home clock) to follow time zones in five different places in your home country or abroad (I have two zones in the US and three abroad); these can be changed at any time. You can also get weather updates; this is nice (and free), but the number of available weather reports is limited to the (very large) number of named cities in their database; you can't ask for it by zip code or the equivalent, in case you live 40 miles from the named city. The currency converter is excellent and can be updated in real time among three different currencies simultaneously. There's also a "world map" which is mainly decorative.

When you create an Itinerary, if you plug in a flight number on the approoriate day, the program looks up the flight and adds the schedule in automatically. It will also try to verify addresses for hotels (at least the larger ones and the chains). You can also add additional infromation like price, seat number, confirmation number, and so on. Quite nice.

The other features (Flight Schedules, Flight Status, and Travel Directory) are premium services atatched to paying the $99 per year subscription for WorldMate Live Gold. You get lots and lots of reminders that you can "subscribe now" to Gold; while this is annoying, the free portions of the program are indeed nice.

One issue I have not been able to resolve is the calendar: as far as I can tell, the program's itineraries and their web versions of the same itineraries synchronize nicely, and you can export schedules from things like email confirmations or items already on your Outlook calendar to both places. What it appears that you can't do is extract your itineraries from WorldMate into your Outlook calendar directly. A pity, because that would make this a can't miss program. If I had one more suggestion to make, it would be a one-time rate for the subscription. $100 per year is not hay.

A final gripe is that the CrackBerry site links you only to WorldMate Gold and it is not transparent from there how to get to the Standard version. For that I had to go to Handango, where they are listed seprately. It is possible that they are the same program and that the subscription just unlocks the premium features, but that is not stated anywhere, either.

[giorgosh]

Is there a Blackberry version? I cannot load the page from my Bold...

[gameboy213]

WorldMate Live � Turn your Smartphone into a personal and business travel companion (for Free) on the Bold whould work.

I am a gold member on my Curve and LOVE IT.