Travel Tracker is an iPhone application from SilverWare Software which allows users to track travel arrangements and expenses during trips. The user must manually enter expenses and trip information. The program provides contact information to major hotels and car rentals. It also allows for weather information to be displayed. The program includes a flag game for amusement. Screen shots and the review may be viewed below. Most reviewers have complained the program is much too expensive for the functionality it provides. The program is currently at version 1.3 and costs $29.99. The program has potential but tries to encompass too much with too many screens and it is too burdensome to manually enter in all the data. It provides online weather and flight status via FlightStats but we encountered fatal errors when trying to view the FlightStats pages. With all the screens, one can easily become lost in the interface. Our general opinion is that the program needs more enhancements and it needs much additional testing. As far as the cost, it is much more expensive than most iPhone applications but the value of a program has to be made by the user.

   

TravelTracker v. 1.3 (Reviewed)

TravelTracker from SilverwareSoftware is deigned to allow users to track and monitor their activities and expenses associated with travel. The application allows users to schedule trips, monitor expenses, track the status of various reservations. It allows for monitoring flight information via FlightStats. And it provides for for obtaining online weather.

On startup, the program prompts the user to optionally import information about travel related companies. We chose not to import these, mainly because not everyone wants an arbitrary additional 120 contacts added to their contact list. If they had allowed the user to select which ones to import it would have been much more friendly to the user.

 

Launching TravelTracker (TravTracker)

 

On launching the application for the first time, the user is prompted to optionally download 120 additional contacts to their contact list. Once they are in there, remember, it will be up to you to delete the ones you don't want.

 

A user may define preferences with the "Prefs" buttons, track travel awards with the "Awards" button, play a name the flag game with the "Flag Game" or check weather with the "Weather" button. They may define a new trip with the "+" button at the top right of the screen. These can be view on the screen below.

 

The "Prefs" page allows a user to define default airline, class of travel, rental car information, miles vs kilometers, Fahrenheit vs Celsius, default financial settings such as US Dollar (or British Pound or Canadian Dollar or Euro) , defaults for flight, train, lodging, car rental, transportation, dining, cruise, or meeting. Defaults means the user may manually select none, unconfirmed, confirmed, cancelled or planned in most cases. for example a user may manually select lodging is "confirmed."

 

 

The "Prefs" page scrolls and can easily be navigated by flicking the screen.

 

An additional "Prefs" page:

 

As is shown above, the "Show Help Prompts" controls whether you are shown pop up help messages. You will even be prompted to optionally turn this off as is shown in the screen below.

 

The "Prefs" page also lets the user to select the currency, download exchange rates and to define default payment (e.g. cash, AX, VISA, etc.)

 

Payment Types:

 

The following screen allows users to select the default currency.

 

The latest currency values may be downloaded periodically.

 

Exchange Rate Example:

 

Returning to our first page, the second button is "Awards"

If the users selects "Awards" then a screen similar to the following will appear. Users may add additional entries. Remember that all of the information must be manually entered by the user.

 

There is nothing wrong with a game to amuse yourself while in an airport. But with so many screens and so many options, it seems like the game should have simply been a separate free app or at least hidden in some misc options page. As we see on our trip page. Depressing this option prompts the user to name the country a flag is from.

 

By selecting "Play"

 

By touching the flag the answer is revealed as shown below.

 

Finally on the main travel page we have a weather button to the far bottom right. The weather page shows current and forecast weather for the city the user has selected.

 

At the top of our first screen of "Business Trips" we had an icon showing groups. Trips may be categorized as Business or Personal Trips.

 

And the user has the option of showing All trips, Business Trips or Personal Trips. When you start out there will be no trips listed such as:

 

Let look at scheduling a couple of trips. Remember, this app is simply entering the data you enter. It is not making reservations for you. Lets take a trip to the Apple store to buy another iPhone. In our trip lists, we ouch the "+" button at the upper right hand corner. This may be viewed in the above screen capture. A screen similar to the following appears.

 

Touching the various fields, the user may enter their data:

 

In our example, we entered "Trip To Apple Store" as the trip name.

 

After the user entered trip information. If they return to the "All Trips" page they would see an entry similar to this:

 

By touching a given trip name, a page opens with details about that trip.

 

Note that that above screen shows options of "Details", "Lists", "Expenses" and "Email".

By touching "Details" a page similar to the following will appear:

 

By selecting the "Lists" page, the user may display lists associated with a trip. This is like trip specific To Do lists.

 

The "Final Checklist" looks like this:

 

The user may also add "New Lists"

 

The user is also given options to view or modify expense details by touching "Expenses"

 

The details of editing the expense data will look like this:

 

Expense date may also be edited.

 

The last menu at the bottom of our page allows the user to email the Itinerary of any trip:

 

Lets add a trip which has a flight involved This will allow us to view some of the other options. In this example we are creating a trip from Phoenix to Chicago.

 

Flight Information in entered by the user and the result in a view similar to this.

 

As we indicated, the information gets into the program by manually entering it.

 

New Airlines may be entered. The user is forced to enter a 2-letter mnemonic for the entry before continuing.

 

To get flight information, the user must enter a valid airline and flight number. If not, an error message similar to this will appear:

 

If the user has entered a valid flight then Flight Stat information should appear similar to:

 

 

However, when we tried to expand the page to read it we received a variety of errors.

 

We also received this interesting message when attempting to obtain flight status information as well.

 

But more often than not we had the program simply terminate and return to the main iPhone screen. We also had this occur when attempting to view Google Maps or Airport Maps from within the application.

Airport maps are also simply web pages being displayed in a small browser window.

 

Phoenix Airport map simply does a web search. This page resulted. This isn't very friendly if you are in the airport trying to navigate. In many cases, the program terminated and again returned to the main iPhone screen. There appears to be some sort of bug in the web browsing windows within the application. This sort of behavior occurred on FlightStats, on Google Maps, and on the Airport Maps within TravelTracker.

 

If you click on the above link, another page will load if the application does not exit or error.

 

One final page we will touch on is the ability of the user to add a variety of activities to their trip. The user is presented with a screen similar to:

 

Per our summary, the application actually has a lot of capabilities built into it. The biggest disadvantage is the user is forced to enter all of the information in manually. It takes a while and a little playing to get use to the application. Because of all of the options and screens, the program can be confusing until one is familiar with where all the data is stored. The application definitely needs additional programming and somehow navigation should be simplified. The errors encountered when attempting to access FlightStats data and the browser windows giving errors and the application closing by itself is pretty intolerable.

 

 

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