WorldMate CEO blog – Nadav Gur

Monday, October 6, 2008

The cool new WorldMate Live !


We were walking around for the last few months with a strange feeling. On the one hand, we had what we believed is a kick-ass service for travelers, one of the richest, most advanced mobile services. On the other hand, it didn't feel right. Something was missing.

It was at a meeting with one heck of a smart guy, David Steinberg of CAIVIS that it dawned on us. David asked how we reached our users, and when we told him most of them encounter our service directly on their smartphones - he said "Guys, you need to wow them. You gotta make it the coolest thing they've seen on those phones!". That took me back a few years...

So - with the help of our great programmers and designers - we are now proud to present the all-new WorldMate Live. We improved the usability and UI of everything - website, web app, BlackBerry app, Windows Mobile app - everything. And we launched our new branding. So kudos to the WorldMate team, and mates - you just have to check this out at www.wmlive.com !


8 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

First let me begin by congratulating you on a great blackberry application . The new Worldmate live is a excellent program. Great Job!

However, I do have a small problem with a particular design choice that in my opinion significantly cheapens this product....
The two bottom buttons on the home screen! Why are they there? Not only is this a big waste of valuable screen space but one button does nothing! It simply (and rather crudely) says GOLD, the other is an "invite button" that emails your friends information about downloading WorldMate. A function that will only ever be used a few times if at all and seems to only be there to help advertise the product (Note that you can also get to 'Invite' very easily in the options screen.)

All of the above is totally acceptable for the free version of WorldMate but when you upgrade and pay $100 a year for a program one of the things you should unlock is elegance and extra functionality. It would be FAR more useful if you could customize these redundant buttons with your own shortcuts or even better have the option to remove them altogether and allow for a bigger and less cluttered home screen. Not to belabor the point but 'rewarding' people who pay $100 with the permanent word "GOLD" in big bold shiny capitals is almost a crime considering how beautiful the rest of the program is.

WorldMate Live is a great program that I would recommend to all frequent travelers. But the annoying thing is that it could be a truly FANTASTIC program with just a little more attention to detail.

Anonymous said...

very great blog!

Anonymous said...

I really like this app, but it interacts very badly with the power management and keyboard lock functionality on my Window Mobile/Samsung SCH-i760. Even when I don't have any itineraries, it insists on opening a data connection periodically to synch up, and if the phone has been asleep or the keyboard locked, it frequently locks up the phone and I have to reset. So, I have to either deinstall unless I'm traveling, or go back to WorldMate Pro, which doesn't have any of these problems. I hope these things get worked out before WMP goes off support!

Nadav Gur said...

Hi Wm.

Make sure you're using the latest version. We've just upgraded it 2 weeks ago and believe we've solved many issues with performance on Windows Mobile.

And regarding automatic communications - the idea is to synchronize your itineraries for you. You can turn it off in Options -> Settings.

Nadav

Anonymous said...

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