Program Requirements:
Device:
Palm OS PDA
23 K free RAM
Desktop:
Windows 95/98 or NT

I'm a couch potato and have never denied it. Ever since Couch Fire for the Newton came out, I  wanted a version of it for my Palm OS PDA. Now there's What's On by Zookware. This is a nifty little electronic TV Guide application for your Palm OS PDA.  The program consists of two parts.  One part runs on your Palm OS PDA and the other runs on your Windows Desktop PC.

The small application that runs on your PC actually goes out to the TV GUIDE website and  'scrapes' the TV listing data off the web and then converts it to a text file that is then transferred to  your PDA via a conduit. The web scraper is a simple program that allows you to specify how many days and what block of time that you want to scrape for weekdays and weekends. For example, you can tell the program to get listings for the next 5 days for the hours between 7pm - 10pm on the weekdays and 8pm - 12am on the weekends. You also tell the scraper which  channels you want to get data for. Setting this program up is pretty easy. The only bad thing about the program is that you have to manually run it every time you want to collect new listing data. And, depending on how many channels, days and hours that you specify, downloading this data can take quite awhile. As an example, I usually collect 7 days (8pm - 12am) worth of listings at a time and the file size for this amount of data is around 100k.

Once you have scraped the data, you just sync. The conduit looks in the appropriate directory and will sync the listing data whenever it is newer than the data on your PDA. Next, you run the What's On application on your PDA. The program shows you a grid view of the shows for a specific day. Each line of data is for a different channel. At the top of the screen is a typical day selector gadget that you can use to tap on the day that you want to view. Navigator arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen let you scroll thru the grid. Your hardware up/down buttons also let you scroll up and down thru the grid. I wish there was a option to use the Address and To-Do buttons to scroll left and right thru the grid.

The grid displays the partial title (whatever can fit in the box) of the show. To find out the show details, you can hold the stylus on the show's grid box. This will pop up a small box at the top of the screen that will display the entire show title, date, time and duration of the show. If you want even more detail, you can tap on the little 'i' in upper right corner of show's grid box. When you do this, the small detail box pops up as before, but then under it is another larger box that has the show's description. I always use this feature and think it should be the default. I find it a little hard to get my stylus on the little 'i' to popup the details screen. One thing that the full detail screen needs is a scroll bar. Either that, or make the hardware scroll buttons work on this screen. If the full details are more than one page in length, you have to use your stylus to select the text and then pull down to scroll to the bottom. I find this a clunky way of doing things as it actually highlights the text and really looks ugly.

I only found one real bug in the current version of What's On. If you collect data between a certain time block for example 7pm - 9pm, and a 1hr show started at 6:30pm, the title of that show in the grid view is shown as garbage.

Basically, that's all the features of What's On. I like the program and use it everyday, but I wish it had some extra features that could / would make it even better. It would be great if it had an option to display the listings in a list view either by channel or time. It would also be nice if there was an option to let you set an alarm to remind you of your favorite show while inside that show's detail popup. I'd also like it if there was a preference to tell the program to start displaying the shows at a desired time. I collect data from 8pm - 12am and every time I start What's On, it always starts the grid view at 9pm. This gets annoying. And last but not least, the program needs some searching features. You can use the built in FIND app by pressing the silkscreen button, but this searches all apps, not just the listings in What's On.

How does What's On compare to using Avantgo to download GIST TV listings?  I really like the grid format of What's On better than just the text listing of GIST TV. I also think that the show descriptions have more detail using What's On. I used to use Avantgo and GIST TV but since What's On came out, I deleted that channel on my Avantgo setup.

If you are a TV nut, you really should check out What's On. It's a neat little program that has lots of potential. At $20, it does seem just a bit high considering the current feature set... Hopefully Zookware will read this review and consider my suggestions. You can download a demo from their website.

Price: $20

Pros:
Easy way to keep track of your favorite TV shows.
Easy to use.

Cons:
Needs more features.
Doesn't interface with Datebook.