Windows Phone Thoughts: A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and My Pocket PC

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Friday, March 12, 2004

A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and My Pocket PC

Posted by Jimmy Dodd in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:00 AM


Overview
The Wine Enthusiast Guide for Pocket PC (version 1.1) is a comprehensive tool for researching and cataloging wine data as well as a tool for learning about wine. The interface splits these tasks between multiple tabs so it is relatively easy to navigate to the correct feature you need. Major features include a Buying Guide, a Wine Cellar, a Vintage Chart, and a learning tool for novices: Wine 101. We'll look at each of these tools in turn.

Buying Guide
The Buying Guide consists of a large database (over 10,000 different entries) of wines reviewed in Wine Enthusiast Magazine. The wines are presented in an alphabetized list along with their retail price, their score, or their vintage (selectable via a pull down list). The entries cannot be displayed in anything other than alphabetical order.


Figure 1: The Buying Guide

Selecting a wine from the list brings up a tabbed dialog displaying more detailed information on that wine. Details of each wine include the producer, variety, name, winery, region, bottle size, alcohol content, vintage, style, total production size (in cases), retail price, and any special designations assigned by the maker. A wine score (on a scale of 80-100) rounds out the individual details of each bottle.


Figure 2: Wine details.

A separate tab gives access to a complete review of each bottle including tasting notes.


Figure 3: Wine review.

A nice feature within the details pages is that you may navigate among different vintages without exiting the details page. This makes it easy to compare different vintages of the same wine. Also, from each detail page, you may easily add a bottle to your personal Wine Cellar and/or record your own notes on the wine.

With such a large database to contend with, one could easily be overwhelmed by searching for a particular bottle, but the Wine Guide provides two methods of finding what you are looking for. A simple look-up feature allows you to enter a winery name and the list scrolls to match your entry as you type. The fact that the list is alphabetical means that you only have to enter the first few letters to get close to your desired designation quickly. If you don't know what you are looking for the Wine Selector is a powerful search tool allowing you to filter the database on up to seven criteria: upper price limit, rating (filter out lower ratings), vintage, style, varietal, region, and qualifiers. Qualifiers are special Wine Enthusiast designations for wine that is deemed Editor's Choice, Cellar Selection, or Best Buy. Multiple criteria can be selected for style, varietal, region, and qualifiers so a single filter can narrow down a wide variety of wines. The Wine Selector retains the filter until it is cleared (or modified) and a set of criteria cannot be saved for later use (although the filter can be turned on or off without losing it). Three built-in selectors (Editor's Choice, Cellar Selection, and Best Buy) can be activated from the Guide's list view.

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