Getting travel data off the Internet just got easier. Until now, putting together a list of attractions to visit has entailed extensive copying and pasting.
Now PlanetWare (www.PlanetWare.com) has introduced a small software utility that automates the process of grabbing data and printing it in an integrated travel agenda. In doing so, PlanetWare is pushing the technology of the Internet into new directions.
The software called PlanetWare Travel Agenda Builder lets a user incorporate any of the over 50,000 world places to visit from the PlanetWare Travel Encyclopedia. The software adds each attraction to a personal travel calendar. It then gives the user the option of dragging and dropping attractions onto specific days into any desired order. The software also allows the addition of personal appointments, meetings, flights, hotels or family visits, complete with personal notes.
If one tries to drop an attraction onto a day when it is closed, Agenda gives a warning. In figuring closings, Agenda takes national holidays and differing seasons into account, not just day of the week closings. With so many factors to consider in planning, Agenda minimizes the risk of overlooking whether a site is open or not, saving travelers time and money.
When the user hits the print button, PlanetWare delivers a Personal Destination Guide as a single continuous day-by-day document. To do so, Agenda assembles instructions that are transmitted to the PlanetWare web site which generates the printout using the very latest data. Downloaded documents use Rich Text Format (RTF) which possess all standard formatting features, can be opened by any word processor, are compact and are not capable of transmitting viruses. Thus they are convenient and safe to email to travel agent clients or friends.
Agenda print setup lets users include or exclude visit details like public transit, street addresses, opening hours, admission costs, admission passes and visit tips. Travel agents will like the ability to include their own and their client`s names in headers on every page.
Agenda offers the ability to exchange trip sequences with other users or to replicate and modify existing trips for clients or friends.
The software is free and requires Windows, Internet Explorer 3 or later configured to accept cookies, and 14 MB of free disk space. Agenda grabs and prints either the free sample data on the PlanetWare site or the mass of data accesible by subscribers. PlanetWare`s innovation is in using cookies to send data from the PlanetWare web site to the Agenda module. Adapting cookies, which are normally used to track user preferences, to this new purpose allows communication between the Web and software beyond just Internet Explorer.
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