Sunday, October 13, 2002
YuBee location based services for your Pocket PC
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "SITES & RESOURCES" @ 11:00 AM
http://www.yubee.com
YuBee is another site that allows you to put in your zip code and it will tell you where restaurants are, what movies are playing, local news and where wireless hotspots are. I used it a few times today and it works pretty well, though it does have some holes in it. Read more if you are interested in some screenshots and some of the pluses and minuses I found.Note that there is a drawing on their home page to win a Pocket PC Phone from T-Mobile and when I signed up, I got a $100 coupon towards the purchase of the Pocket PC Phone Edition, though I don't know how long either of those offers/contests last.
Figure 1
This is the YuBee main menu. You must give it your email address for it to remember your settings between sessions, but that's it.
Figure 2
Selecting Restaurants from Figure 1 will bring you to this menu. Here is one of the downsides of YuBee. Instead of using the zip code you gave it to bring up the popular eateries around you, it seems to pick the same 4 items every time - Starbucks, Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's and Wholesale Foods. Doing this in Butte Montana, for example, will get you nothing. :( YuBee doesn't leave you hanging though. More on that in a minute. Regardless of what city I went to, it didn't do much in the way of wireless hotspots for me. YuBee did contact me though and they are working on this feature. To be honest, I've yet to see a site that does effectively tell you where hotspots are.
Figure 3
Looking up Wholesale Foods in Beverly Hills will give you a ton of links. Looking up Starbucks in Seattle will probably crash your browser. :wink: It gives mileage estimates, but from where I have no idea. Perhaps the geographic center of the zip code you entered.
Figure 4
Ok, if the default choices YuBee doesn't offer enough or anything at all, it has a selection of links at the bottom of the page that will help you out, and the ones I tested were all optimized for Pocket Internet Explorer. I even added a few of these links to my Favorites, like www.globaldining.com.
Figure 5
If you register with YuBee by simply using your email, it will keep track of what you have asked and give on a convenient dropdown of recent zip codes you've queried. It worked well on the Pocket IE screen and it was gentle with my GPRS data account. I used under 150K in moving around all of these screens. I do have my T-Mobile proxy set to give me medium quality images through GPRS, so I am sure that helped keep the data transfers down. It is definitely worth checking out and I've added it to my Favorites and plan to use it when traveling.
YuBee is another site that allows you to put in your zip code and it will tell you where restaurants are, what movies are playing, local news and where wireless hotspots are. I used it a few times today and it works pretty well, though it does have some holes in it. Read more if you are interested in some screenshots and some of the pluses and minuses I found.Note that there is a drawing on their home page to win a Pocket PC Phone from T-Mobile and when I signed up, I got a $100 coupon towards the purchase of the Pocket PC Phone Edition, though I don't know how long either of those offers/contests last.
Figure 1
This is the YuBee main menu. You must give it your email address for it to remember your settings between sessions, but that's it.
Figure 2
Selecting Restaurants from Figure 1 will bring you to this menu. Here is one of the downsides of YuBee. Instead of using the zip code you gave it to bring up the popular eateries around you, it seems to pick the same 4 items every time - Starbucks, Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's and Wholesale Foods. Doing this in Butte Montana, for example, will get you nothing. :( YuBee doesn't leave you hanging though. More on that in a minute. Regardless of what city I went to, it didn't do much in the way of wireless hotspots for me. YuBee did contact me though and they are working on this feature. To be honest, I've yet to see a site that does effectively tell you where hotspots are.
Figure 3
Looking up Wholesale Foods in Beverly Hills will give you a ton of links. Looking up Starbucks in Seattle will probably crash your browser. :wink: It gives mileage estimates, but from where I have no idea. Perhaps the geographic center of the zip code you entered.
Figure 4
Ok, if the default choices YuBee doesn't offer enough or anything at all, it has a selection of links at the bottom of the page that will help you out, and the ones I tested were all optimized for Pocket Internet Explorer. I even added a few of these links to my Favorites, like www.globaldining.com.
Figure 5
If you register with YuBee by simply using your email, it will keep track of what you have asked and give on a convenient dropdown of recent zip codes you've queried. It worked well on the Pocket IE screen and it was gentle with my GPRS data account. I used under 150K in moving around all of these screens. I do have my T-Mobile proxy set to give me medium quality images through GPRS, so I am sure that helped keep the data transfers down. It is definitely worth checking out and I've added it to my Favorites and plan to use it when traveling.
