Category: Software

Like most Brits we’re more than a bit obsessed with all things weather-related, so as soon as we bought a Palm Treo we were busily installing a host of weather-related applications, including Treo Alarm.

We thought that combo had left us most with isobaric bases covered until we came across the uncrowned Big Daddy of weather apps, the superb Tréociel.

This puppy positively assails you with weather info, serving up max and min temperatures, precipitation probabilities, weather forecast icons and wind speed and direction.

Of course, all that data’s a fat load of good if you can’t make head or tail of it, but here’s where the Tréociel really excels, presenting weather forecasts in a series of clear, easy-to-read scrollable charts.

Setting it all up
Before you start, you need to input which cities you want to monitor, and this can be done by typing in the city name, weather station ID or search.

Once located, the program prompts you to decide whether you want to track hourly or daily weather data, with a click on the ‘update’ button downloading the latest information off the internet (unfortunately, there’s no auto-update facility yet).

Reading the charts
Downloaded ten-day weather information is shown on a horizontally scrolling graph which can be set up with customised views.

By default, Tréociel will show min/max temperature, weather icons, wind speed and precipitation information, with the option to define three custom views.

Wind speeds can be shown in km/h, mph, m/s, knots or in the trusty old Beaufort Scale, with the choice to select temperature readouts in Celsius or old school Fahrenheit.

Graphs can display hourly or daily forecasts, with the scrollable graph making it easy to track weather trends.

Conclusion
We loved Tréociel, with the program’s novel and easy to read interface tempting us into wasting endless time checking out the weather in different cities around the world, as well as looking up the local forecast.

The internet updates meant we knew when to pack an umbrella before leavng the office and if anyone made the mistake of striking up a conversation about the weather, we had Tréociel on hand to bore them utterly senseless.

At just €9.95 the program represents great value to our eyes and looks to be an essential purchase for travellers and meteorological mullers.

Currently optimised for the Palm Treo only, owners of non Palm smartphones should be able to join in the fun soon with the authors promising versions for “Windows Mobile and other platforms” in the future.

Features: 80%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 90%
Overall: 90%

TréoCiel

If you’re a modern, go-getting metrosexual-about-town like us Digi-Life hipsters, you’ll be the owner of a mile-long list of passwords, web logins, ATM PINs, program serials, bank account details, credit card numbers and passcodes for highly exclusive West End nightclubs.

Remembering all those numbers and passwords isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’re out and about, so it would be handy to be able to carry them all about on your smartphone, in a safe and secure way that will keep all your personal data safe if your phone gets purloined.

The best way to do this is to use a password-protected Password Manager that keeps all your personal info under lock and key, leaving you with just one password to remember.

Although there’s a ton of password managers available for smartphones/PDAs, we haven’t found any that do it as well as Splash ID – we’ve been using the program for several years and find it absolutely indispensable.

Using SplashID
Available for the Palm OS, Treo, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Symbian UIQ, Series 60 and BlackBerry, SplashID securely stores all of your sensitive personal information in a database protected by 256-bit Blowfish encryption.

Launching the program on your handheld brings up a password request, and once you’ve inputted the right digits, you can access all your data alphabetically, by category or by searching.

Using its clean and simple interface, user names, passwords, credit cards, PINs, and other such personal information can be inputted on your handheld, with the option to include categories, create custom fields and assign icons in a colour-coded customisable List View.

Naturally, with all your precious data a mere password away, it’s vital that you make your SplashID password a good ‘un – if that kind of thing defeats you, there’s a handy password generator onboard to help you create hard-to-crack passwords.

Desktop application
Best of all, Splash ID ships with a password protected desktop companion and conduit that lets you store, add and edit data information stored in the database.

It’s a neat, small application that replicates the functionality of the handheld application, accessible with the same password.

A nice touch is that you can click the clipboard icon next to listed passwords and have the code automatically placed in the clipboard ready for pasting into your browser or program password box.

Conclusion
Whenever we’ve upgraded our phone or PDA in the past, this is one of the very first programs we install – it’s that good.

Because of SplashID’s cross-platform abilities, we’ve been able to exchange data from Palm to Windows Mobile devices (and back again) without a problem so it’s pretty much future proofed, and the desktop integration is a great way of ensuring that the info is kept up to date.

The program is simple to use and offers a convenient, secure and versatile way of safely storing passwords on your mobile, and we reckon $30 (£16, €23) is a small price to pay for such peace of mind.

Features: 90%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 85%
Overall: 90%

SplashID