Palm Pre Apps » location

findMYcar

palmpreapps — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:50:49 +0000

This aptly-named app for the Palm Pre helps you find your car by allowing you to “pin” your car’s GPS position. You can than ask it to map out the route to your car from your current location. It doesn’t have a section for noting the parking level though, and obviously that can’t be discovered by GPS. The paid version comes with an alarm for the parking meter and a BAC calculator. You can also dial AAA services with a single tap, which is a very nice touch but doesn’t really fit in with the app’s goal of helping you find your car (unless AAA has gotten around to locating cars).

The interface is quite nice but shows needless information such as latitude and longitude from the GPS reading (though that information may come in useful when one needs to check if the GPS radio is working alright – hopefully never). The interface also lets you email or text your car’s location and your current location, another feature that doesn’t quite fit with the app’s overall goal. An extra feature or two never harmed anyone however, and the app is quite useful and well-designed overall – a useful addition to your portfolio.

Intersection

palmpreapps — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:33:56 +0000

Apps that do one thing and do it in a polished and useful manner will always remain popular in the smartphone world. Intersection is a GPS-enabled Palm Pre app that automatically discovers your current intersection with a single tap and lets you text it to the right people with another. It’s simple yet surprisingly useful in a variety of scenarios. If you lead an active social life, or are perennially late to events and have to field-off calls demanding “Where are you?” in an annoyed tone, this will be an invaluable app. Making ad-hoc plans becomes significantly easier with this app.

Intersection lets you configure a list of favorites to whom you can broadcast the message with your intersection. The other option is to send it to all your contacts (yikes!). There’s currently no way to group favorites (“Work”, “Social”, etc.), and that may cramp your use of the app a little bit. The accuracy of the intersection discovery seems to be spot-on. You can also use it to send address reminders or notes to yourself. This Palm Pre app is simple, but covers such a frequently encountered scenario that it’s well worth having on your Pre.

Mobile by Citysearch

palmpreapps — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:10:07 +0000

Mobile by Citysearch is a location-aware business and restaurant review guide on the Palm Pre. Like the “Where” application reviewed previously, you can find restaurants, banks, theaters, cafes, and other establishments close to your current location. It draws from the extensive Citysearch database and you can expect to find most establishments on this app. You can view both owner descriptions and user reviews for specific businesses. You can also find the address, telephone number, user rating (along with the number of ratings), and most useful of all: hours of operation.

There is a search function available from all screens. I find the icons and interface to be slightly more polished than the “Where” application, but the latter definitely has more categories (Gas prices, traffic, etc.). And again, for restaurants and cafes I would recommend the Goodfood application, which is really well done and polished. I have no doubt we’ll continue to see some more location-aware directory application sprout up in the Palm Pre apps catalog. This particular app is straightforward, easy-to-use, and polished. But lacks in breadth of categories.

Where

palmpreapps — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:50:32 +0000

The “Where” Palm Pre app is a GPS enabled location-aware application that helps you find businesses close by. It’s a wildly popular app available on most major smartphones and it’s the first application on the Palm Pre that really brings a good places directory with it along with integration with Yelp (excellent for viewing user reviews of establishments). The home screen of the app presents you with a set of categories including Movies, Starbucks, Traffic, News, etc. Digging deeper takes you into more detailed information about each category that is relevant to your current location.

The information is often very detailed. The movies section, for example, will automatically pull up theater locations close to you, showtimes, movie reviews, and trailers right within the app. This is one of the best and most widely used location-aware places directory in the mobile market today, and it’s great to see it on the Palm Pre. I have no doubt you’ll be able to pick from a plethora of such apps soon, but this is a great start.

Google Maps

palmpreapps — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:39:39 +0000

Google Maps on the Palm Pre works as expected, no surprises. The Pre automatically shows your location on the map through the built-in GPS and the application is fast and responsive. Both regular map view and satellite are available, with traffic data added by going through the menu button on the bottom right.

The full Google Maps functionality is included, including to-from directions. Like other applications on the Palm Pre, you can slide out of this application through the card view and leave it running in the background – especially useful when you want to field a call while driving to a location with this application on.