WorldMate
Unlike Find It, WorldMate does not rely on locationing technology. It's a far less dynamic service, with much of the data static or only nominally location based. Not that it isn't useful, but with an up-front cost of $74.95, which includes a one-year subscription, you may want to think carefully about whether it will deliver value. Targeted at travelers, WorldMate provides information about time, weather, currency exchange, flight status and schedules, useful local telephone numbers and a world map.

At set-up, you choose your home city from a list of a couple of hundred. Outside the U.S., you'll find few if any small or mid-size cities. Some versions of WorldMate
`51;for Windows Mobile devices working over a Wi-Fi connection, for example
`51;let you key in other cities besides the ones on the list. This BlackBerry edition doesn't. The home city is really only relevant for the updateable weather and clocks modules, though.

If you select Clocks from the home menu, WorldMate shows you the current time and temperature in your home city, plus the time in four others. Pressing the BlackBerry menu key launches a pop-up menu that gives you options to swap any of the cities shown for others in the master list.

The Weather module presents a graphical five-day forecast for your current home city. It doesn't automatically update, though. You have to tell it to do that. The BlackBerry context menu includes options to update the forecast, and change the city. To update, WorldMate goes out to the Internet, but does this at speeds that, in my testing, were impressive.

The Flight Status module lets you track several flights and save past queries. The context menu gives you the option to update the status of the currently requested flight, or retrieve a past query. So you could have your Friday New York-to-Boston and Saturday Boston-to-Martha's Vineyard flights saved in WorldMate and get an update on their status, including posted delays, with a few button clicks.

The Flight Schedules module works much the same way. You create queries
`51;select a start point and destination and ask for a schedule for a specific date or the whole week. Some of the query terms can be populated into the form from drop-down lists - country and city, for example. As with Flight Status, you can save queries and update them online later.

It's hard to see the point of the World Map module. It shows a tiny map of the world, with no cities or national boundaries marked, plus the time and weather in your home city. Period. The map graphic does let you see at a glance where on the planet it's night and where it's day.

The Currency Converter displays the current value of one currency against two others. You can change any of the displayed currencies for others in a master list. To calculate the equivalent for a specific amount, key it in to the appropriate field, press the BlackBerry menu key and click Select. WorldMate shows you the equivalent amount in the other two currencies. The context menu also gives you the option to update rates over the Internet.

The final module in the WorldMate suite is a grab-bag of useful phone numbers
`51;airports, airlines, hotel chains, car rentals
`51;plus international country codes and North American area codes by place or number. The BlackBerry context menu gives you options to sort by various means - by airport code or name, for example - and to call the selected number on your BlackBerry.

The WorldMate interface seemed a little clunky in places to me. Clicking an onscreen link often popped up the BlackBerry context menu with exactly the same link highlighted, which you then had to click again. What's that about?

Bottom line: Is WorldMate worth the freight? If you're a frantic traveler, always on the go, constantly on and off planes, maybe it is. Otherwise, not.