Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide for Palm

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide for Palm

by Adam Cochran
January 2005

Each day I used my Treo to help me find my way around town using Mapopolis, I make appointments, phone calls and jot down reminders. There are many reasons to love and use a PDA, but one that sits at the top of the list for me is its ability to resolve arguments.

Have you ever been in an argument about whether Lawrence Fishburne or Samuel L. Jackson was in the Matrix? Have you ever watched a movie with your spouse, but they rent it again a few weeks later claiming to have never seen it? Have you ever wanted to rent a movie, but your kids insist that you already own it? If so, this is the perfect tool for you. In fact, if you don't already have a Palm device, this program may persuade a few of you to head out and buy one right this instant.

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide is a portable, searchable database of 20,000 films.

Each film listing displays a summary of the movie with commentary, whether it is available on DVD or VHS, Leonard Maltin's star rating, the actual film rating, year it was released, actors, director and production company, and more.

The Movie Guide goes beyond a simple listing of movies. You can also search for movies by actor, genre, director, title, awards and attributes (such as rating, DVD availability, nationality, or color). If you want to find out if there was ever a movie directed by David Byrne starring John Goodman you can look it up and discover True Stories.

Great features don't stop there, you can also create your own lists from the database, such as movies you want to rent, already own, or plan to buy.

What about movies that are just coming out now? This program allows for that. The program also installs a conduit that connects to the Internet and downloads events such as film premiers, DVD releases and film festivals. This keeps the program up to date. If you have a wireless device, such as a Treo or PocketPC phone, the Movie Guide will access the Internet directly and update the device right at the video store.

There are only two drawbacks to this program and both of them are nitpicky. The program takes up 4MB of space, so you either need a lot of free internal memory or an expansion card. The program asks when you install it whether you want it to go on the device or expansion memory.

The other problem is that updates to events don't include any information other than the title of the movie. If I want to rent a new release, I can't look up how Leonard Maltin felt about it.

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide is priced at $19.99 for online download and it can also be found on it's own expansion card for Palm Devices in many electronics and office supply stores for a little more.

Castellini on Computers Rating (1-5 mics)
Recommended Market:	Movie lovers and trivia buffs
Approximate cost:	$20
Company and Web Site:	LandWare