Petr Šourek It is still winter, but slowly but surely spring is approaching and the opportunity to wander outside. Many of us will part ways or go off into nature, for various cultural experiences, both in the Czech Republic and abroad. We can certainly use something useful to tell us what is happening when and where.
There are many sites on the Internet, but they mostly deal with only one area of cultural enjoyment, be it cinemas or various festivals. However, few of them offer a varied offer in one database. Such are, for example, pages qool.cz, the mobile version can be found at m.qool.cz.
Here you will find various events that you can sort by location, date and so on. However, the authors of this page have gone a little further and have made, or have made, an application that conveys this content even on our favorite iDevices. This free app is called Cool and the following review will highlight its advantages and also mention its disadvantages.
We are looking for a place to go
The application will offer you several search options when you launch it. You can find events that are close to you, or what is happening where today, see what movies are currently in cinemas or try to find interesting places in your area. After selection, the data is loaded and divided according to the relevant groups. In each group it is written how many events were found and can be opened to find out more details.
In the details of individual events, you will see information about the event, such as its description, the address where it takes place, or the website of the object where the event is being held. I do not even mention such things as calling the given number or creating an email to the given address, because I consider them a necessity and this application fulfills them. I find the solution of saving the given event to your mobile phone very interesting, which will only show you a QR code that you can read with a QR reader and have the event "always at hand". The application can even search for connections, it redirects you to the iDOS website and, based on the GPS coordinates of both locations, it tries to find all possible connections.
There is also a map where individual events or cultural objects are loaded and shown using "pins", or if there are more of them, then there is an indication with a number, how many events/objects are located in a given place and after zooming in on the map to a sufficient distance will appear "pins". It should be noted that the pins are displayed according to the selected radius in the settings, so if you are in Liberec and set 20 km, you will not see what is happening in Prague.
current and it's happening in the next few days, unfortunately I haven't figured out what key cultural events get to this tab, at the time of writing this review only 2 news can be found there, namely Antropofest and Australia day.
On the tab Settings, where we choose the radius, in which neighborhood we should search and we can change the language as to English so Czech, or turn on shake recovery, or see who prepared the application.
We briefly described the capabilities of the Qool application, which appear to be very decent, but unfortunately this application also has its drawbacks.
Choose
The application has a good database, the Qool team updates about 10 events, mainly from Prague and the surrounding area, every month. Unfortunately, the rest of the country is very sporadic. Cinemas are only in Prague. Here in the north of Bohemia, where I am at the moment, there are not many events, but as far as institutions that offer cultural enjoyment are concerned, it is better, but certainly not all of them. On the other hand, it is easy to criticize such a thing, but it must be noted that it is not exactly easy to ensure a sufficient number of people so that all events and businesses are in the application or on the website, that is a superhuman feat. It is a fact that it would help if the authors of the sites agreed with the individual servers that take care of the individual cities and merge their databases, which would save them a lot of work. However, I know from practice that such an idea is beautiful, but it is difficult to implement.
This error is a bit below the belt, as it is not directly the fault of the authors. They just use the API, but it's certainly useful as an observation. The application uses the popular Apple Maps. A lot has been written about these maps, but even so it should be mentioned that not all names are 100% correct. Evergreen 'Gottwaldov' is a matter of course, but it is followed by 'Leitomischl' or 'Wszetyn'.
The app has a link on every page Classic display. It is placed at the end on a few pages, but there is one more control after it Up and so you can click on it. This is a classic page view qool.cz directly in the application, but on pages where the element Up missing, this link is hidden under the bottom control menu and cannot be clicked. The concept itself is bad in my opinion for a few reasons:
- the application is not able to recognize the zoom in and zoom out gesture, so the pages are displayed by dragging the page with your finger,
- the app is not able to rotate to the width of the iPhone, so a very small part of the page is visible,
- there is no back button, so you are unable to exit this view until the application is restarted,
- I was only able to test this on the "News" tab, anyway the site jumped to the news tab on the site qool.cz, not on the details of the given action.
QR codes are a wonderful thing, but why have a reader in your phone or a second phone? Wouldn't it be better to save the link to favorites in Safari or directly in the application? Or save an offline version of a favorite site, which would also kill the fact that not everyone has a cellular connection on their iPhone.
The application has its small flies, but I think these suggestions could serve the authors to improve. If they manage to tweak the app, it will be usable and functional. I don't know how many similar apps there are on the market, but I know that once these bugs are fixed, the app will be fully competitive.
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