Astraware Pocket Express
Posted by: Peter Murphy on May 23 2008Most of us are aware of Astraware as one of the major Pocket PC game developers, and a division of Handmark. I myself am not an avid game player, I just don’t have the time. So I almost overlooked a post on the Astraware blog today about Pocket Express, new application they have just released.
Pocket Express is an all in one package for a variety of hand held devices that delivers
FREE news, sports, weather, travel and more for your PDA or Smartphone!
- NEWS: Get worldwide breaking news and photos
- SPORTS: Follow your team with real-time scores and in-game stats
- WEATHER: Get the latest weather with detailed forecasts around the world
- TRAVEL: Check details for 75,000 daily flights and other essential travel features
- & MORE!: stocks*, entertainment, 411 directory search*, maps*, 24/7 personal assistant* and Extras Store with easy to purchase ringtones, games and more!
This looks pretty good, and I haven’t had a great look at the trial and customisation options yet, but off the cuff, the default setup is pretty good.
A focused information source for the discerning news reader and more.
Have a look at Pocket Express Here
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A version of this app came preinstalled as one of Sprint’s add-ons on my Centro. It’s limited but I like it. Customization seems to be mainly limited to choosing your location and your favorite types of news, etc., and if there’s a way to move or change the main icons I haven’t found it.
I really like the movie times app. News is okay, but it’s more weighted towards the latest, not the most important, stories. Sports seems good, a ton of customization here so you can get scores and even full schedules plus news. Haven’t tried weather or maps because I have another weather app I like and Google Maps rocks. My version has TV Guide listings, very well done, instead of Travel — I wish I could have both!
I thought this looked pretty interesting and decided to give it a try. First, it ticked me off a little bit. The first time I ran the program I was met with a message that I needed to install the .NET software from MS. This was not mentioned as a requirement. I know that it is in some ROMs, but I think plenty do not have this. At least the program offered to install (download) .NET for me.
To conserve space I put as much of .NET, as well as Pocket Express on my SD card. Still cost me a little over a meg of program memory. Once you are in a channel the program is pretty zippy, but moving between channels (pageone) is slow. That is probably in part because I installed to the card.
While there are a lot of free channels I sure felt like I was seeing the “starting your free trial” screen a lot. My only other gripe is the changing soft keys. On most screens when you “drill down” into a channel the left soft key is a “back” key which is very handy. When you get to the main screen of a channel it becomes an update key. Lots of times I am going back, back, back, darn, that was update.
Beyond that, this is kind of a cool little program. Our local paper dropped Dear Abby so I was reading her for the first time in a long time. I have a tendency to try an program for 30 minutes and then uninstall, but I am going to keep this for a while and see how it goes. All in all it is abut the same speed as doing things with Opera Mobile, except that it does cache and you can view things offline.
Hi Peter
Thanks for posting the news about Pocket Express. This great app is actually Handmark’s own, but we’ve recently added it to the Astraware site too.
If you’re using the app, and are based in the U.S. then why not share it with friends and family as Handmark are currently running their ‘Share Sweepstakes’. Full details including how to enter and the prizes on offer can be viewed here: http://express.handmark.com/index.php
Kind regards
Alison
http://www.astraware.com