The City Clickers

When I go out for a drink with my friends, I always try to make them go to Scratcher. I like Scratcher. The place has weird British beers on tap. It has Christmas lights in the windows, even when it's not Christmas. I like Scratcher so much, in fact, that my friends refuse to go there with me anymore. The way I see it, I need either another group of friends or some other places to drink. That's where the new--and increasingly popular--handheld city guides come in.

A city guide is a program that runs on a handheld PDA, such as a Palm or a Pocket PC, and works like an electronic travel guide. You download it from the Web, install it on your PDA, and the next time you need to find the nearest Thai food or Irish pub or French boutique, you whip it out and look up the location. Suddenly, you're the guy who knows what's going on. You're an instant hipster. (Not that PDA and hipster are phrases that necessarily belong in the same paragraph.)

I loaded up my trusty Palm with two different city guides: Vindigo (available free at www.vindigo.com ) and CitySync, ($19.99 at www.citysync.com ). Vindigo covers most major U.S. cities; CitySync, which is produced by the people who write the Lonely Planet travel guides, doesn't include as many U.S. locations, but it does throw in cities such as London and Paris. I also brought along a weird little gizmo called Modo ($99 at www.modo.net ). Modo is a city guide that runs on its own funky-looking hardware (it resembles an evil ladybug from outer space). It covers only New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the beauty part of Modo is that it receives its listings wirelessly, so you don't have to synch it.

To test my new digital pals, I took them downtown for an urban quadrathlon: shop, eat, drink, movie. First up, an early autumn chill is hard upon us, and for reasons that should be obvious from my photo, I need a hat. I whipped out my Palm and tapped my way through CitySync's directories--Shopping, SoHo, Clothing & Accessories--and came up with a list of eight stores. Half an hour later, my head was winterized. What do you know? It worked!

CitySync wasn't as helpful at lunchtime--it gave me way too many restaurant listings, a number of which were halfway across town. If you're not into marathon walking, Vindigo's a better bet; it can sort its listings by distance from your present location. Over lunch I decided to catch a movie. Modo was the most helpful here. Not only did it give me accurate movie times, it also had the lowdown on which theaters had nice seats and big screens.

So which city guide is the best? They each have pluses and minuses. Vindigo is free and great for pinpointing exactly where you want to go. CitySync costs more, but it provides a lot of data the others don't, such as museum hours, emergency numbers and even street maps. If I were visiting a city for the first time, I'd want CitySync with me. Modo is the priciest, and its search functions are weak, but it is full of quirky finds you would never see elsewhere.

One thing I don't need a gizmo to tell you: if you're looking for a dark, comfy neighborhood bar in New York City, you still can't do better than Scratcher.

For more gadgets and gizmos, drop by timedigital.com . Questions? Comments? You can e-mail Lev at lev@timedigital.com