• Category Archives Micha’s Daily Rant

  • Offline Travel Apps?!?

    Posted on by micha Comment

    Ok, time for another rant.

    On the plane over I wanted to set up our itinerary on my phone.

    On my PalmPilot I used an application called WorldMate. Awesome little thing. Had a small database of the most common airports and whatnot included as well as a few useful utilities and pieces of info such as clothes-size conversions etc.  Absolutely brilliant.

    So before I left I installed that on my Android phone, as well as TripCase which seemed to be similar.

    Well guess what. Both of these apps require internet access for just about everything. Most importantly, to create and edit a trip.  What bollocks – just when you are least likely to have internet access (ie, while travelling abroad), apps which manage your trip require it.

    While it is very nice to have these apps pre-populate input fields using online data, this  should always be optional and the user should always be able to edit things offline.

    So a huge thumbs-down from me for both WorldMate and TripCase on Android.


    Android Micha's Daily Rant Travel 📎and tagged

  • Tube troubles

    Posted on by micha Comment

    So there’s a signal failure at Mile End today.  More quick-setting concrete (1)?  One hopes not.
    However what I can’t understand is why they can’t just run up to Mile End (2) or a station or two before and turn the trains around there,  instead of causing grief on the entire line.

     

    (1) In case the link breaks, on the 23rd January contractors accidentally poured quick-setting concrete into a signalling room, suspending the Victoria Line for a day.

    (2) For non-Londoners, this is  a station on the eastern end of the Central Line.  There are 20 stations from Ealing Broadway in the west to Mile End.


    Micha's Daily Rant 📎and tagged