World Watch
| Published date | 01 February 1996 |
| Date | 01 February 1996 |
| Pages | 165-166 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045462 |
| Author | David Raitt |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Software Review
World Watch
David Raitt
World Watch is a nifty little software package for Windows which displays world
and regional maps showing cities and the local time for various locations selected
by the user. In addition, a dynamic illuminated pattern in the centre of the map
shows those areas of the world currently experiencing daylight. The pattern high-
lights the progress of seasons, displays sunrise and sunset as they happen and auto-
matically adjusts to summer or daylight saving
time.
World Watch also doubles as
a very nice screen saver which utilises all the functions of the program.
The package contains a 3.5" disk and user manual (pretty good), and installing
the program
is
simplicity itself — simply insert
the
diskette and follow instructions,
and in an instant the program is ready for use and/or customisation. There is the
possibility to use small fonts (as opposed to the Windows system fonts), though
these fonts are not mentioned in the
manual.
Besides how to operate and customise
World Watch,
the
user manual
also
provides some technical information
on
how the
program works, a glossary of
terms,
and the coordinates and time relative to GMT
of the cities included in the package.
World Watch allows the user
to
see the
time in any of over 300 cities and loca-
tions throughout the world (and if that
is not enough, you can always add
your own locations). The clocks dis-
played (maximum of
12
and shown at
the bottom of the World Watch map
window) take into account the cur-
rently known daylight savings times of
the cities chosen. Actually, to say that
the program allows you to see the time
in any of over
300
cities
is
slightly mis-
leading: although that is theoretically
true,
you can actually only see the time
in a maximum of 12 places at any
given time. It would have been nice to
be able to click on any city location
and get an instant readout of the time
there.
Besides the large world map dis-
played in the main window, it is also
possible to have 'zoomed' views of
different regions. These regions are
North America, South America, USA,
Europe, Asia, South East Asia, Africa,
Australia and the Atlantic Ocean. The
program allows you to display interna-
tional borders, the international date
line,
latitude and longitude lines, cities
(or islands) and the clocks. These can-
not be customised to individual
zoomed maps and I found that the dis-
play gets a bit messy if the latitude and
longitude are also included.
Pull-down menus allow you to
change the appearance of the maps.
World Watch comes with a prese-
lected number of cities shown and you
can keep or discard these on both the
world and regional (zoomed) maps.
You can also add other cities to both
the world and zoomed maps, from a
list of over 300 cities available. This is
very easy to do. Beware, though —
there is a limit to the number of cities
you can display
on the
maps,
and if you
add too many too close together (for
example in Europe) then the names
will overlap each other. Although the
cities entered for the world map are
separate from the regional maps, the
latter are not customisable individu-
ally. Thus, if you add a lot of cities to,
for instance, the USA map and several
to the Europe map, you may find that
you cannot add more cities to the other
maps,
so you will have to delete a few
from the maps where you have a lot.
That there is a limit
is
mentioned
in
the
manual, although the actual number of
cities is not given (in fact
it seems
to be
70 for the world map and 140 for the
zoomed maps). This number really
The Electronic Library, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 1996 165
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