trydaTM Directory Assistant

Frequently Asked Questions about trydaTM


SET-UP AND GETTING STARTED:

What do I receive when I download trydaTM?

trydaTM is currently available for Palm OS-based mobile phone users. When you download trydaTM to your PC or mobile phone from TelePages you will receive a file called tryda.prc. Once you load tryda.prc on your Palm device, and then activate the software by filling out the registration page and agreeing to the End User License Agreement (EULA), that is all it takes. Afterwards, you can find businesses and residential listings in a geographic area that you specify. The results are free of charge from TelePages. Furthermore, you can initiate calls from your phone to the number listed with any result, obtain a map or directions to that result and save the result to your Saved Favorites list and/or add the result to your device's Contacts list.

When you have successfully loaded trydaTM (tryda.prc) on your device, you can launch the program by clicking on this icon in the upper-left most corner of your Palm desktop:

tryda


How does it work?

trydaTM uses your device's data connection to accept your queries and delivers results in a simple text-based format, which greatly decreases the time required to deliver such results to you and ensures less data consumption if you are on a limited data plan with your service provider.

How much does trydaTM cost?

The TelePages service is free of charge. We do not require you to make any payment in the form of monthly subscriptions, up-front fees, usage charges or donations. You must have a data plan through your mobile voice/data service provider to use the service. Using trydaTM may affect the amount of the bill from your wireless carrier, unless you have an unlimited data plan, also sometimes referred to as all-you-can-eat data plans.

Can I load a new version of trydaTM with an older version still on my phone?

TelePages encourages users to delete the older version of the application before loading the latest version to avoid any unexpected conflicts. Any saved Preferences in the program will be lost, though such settings in older versions of trydaTM are very few.

How can I be notified of updates?

You will be automatically notified of an update to trydaTM. When a new version of trydaTM is available, you will see a button on the Main Menu screen called 'Info/Update'. If you click on this button, you will be asked if you would like to download the new version from our mobile Web site. Of course, you can decline, and download the new version later using your PC and synchronization process. Either way, you will know that a new version is available and can decide what action to take from there.

Users that have entered a Corporate ID may not receive this notification. They will be notified of approved updates by the organization's individual or group responsible for supporting their mobile device.

I used to use Directory Assistant, but experienced service outages. How do I make the previous version work? And how do I know this won't happen again?

TelePages recently upgraded the trydaTM application software, data hosting infrastructure and queries result delivery mechanism to deliver a more robust service to trydaTM users without interruptions; this required us to implement changes to our previous trydaTM software. Although these changes require users to download a new version of the software in order to access the TelePages service, we are confident that this step allows us to provide a much better experience to our user community in general, and delivers more reliable results in particular.


REGISTRATION:

How do I register?

You will need to create a TelePages account before using the service. You may do so by following these steps:
  1. Fill in the Registration form: You may do this either on our Web site at http://www.tryda.com/Public/RegistrationLogin.aspx or within trydaTM (you will be prompted to log in or register the first time you use the software).
  2. Click the link in the confirmation email: After you have submitted the Registration form, you will receive an email at the email address you used to register. Click on the link in the email to validate and activate your account.
  3. Account is verified: When you see the 'Welcome' page on our Web site after clicking the link in the email, that means that your account has been verified and activated.

If you register from trydaTM on your mobile device, please skip to Step 8. If not, please continue with Step 4.



  1. Go to Download page: From the 'Welcome' page, click on the Download link, which takes you to our Home page.

  2. Click, agree to EULA: On our Home page, click on the 'EULA' link which opens the License Agreement in a new window. Please read the agreement, then select 'I Accept and Agree' and click the 'Submit' button at the bottom. This will close the License Agreement window.

  3. Download: You should now see our Home page again, with the Download button now activated. Click the green Download button to begin downloading the software, which you will then find on your computer's Desktop.

  4. Install trydaTM on your mobile device: Please follow your normal routine for installing software applications on your mobile device. For most users, you will simply double-click on the trydaTM file ('tryda.prc') on your computer's Desktop. For further help with installing applications to your device, please see your device manufacturer or mobile service provider's Web site, your Owner's Manual, or (if you are using a company or group-issued device) your organization's individual or group responsible for supporting your mobile device.



  5. Launch trydaTM and Login: Click on the trydaTM icon on your mobile device's list of programs, such as the Applications screen of your Palm device. The icon will be first on the list, allowing you to simply click on the center-button of your 5-way navigation button, or just press it with your finger. Since you have already registered, please log in to trydaTM on your device using your verified login (email) and password. You will only have to do this once after installing the software.

  6. Enjoy!

If you are unable to create your account and would like assistance, please see the Registration troubleshooting question below for next steps.

How do I enter my email address with an underscore (_) in it, which is not on my keyboard?

Open the soft keyboard in tryda. With the cursor in the email field of the Log In or Registration screen, press the Menu button on your device and select Edit / Keyboard, which will bring up the onscreen soft keyboard. At the bottom of the screen, select "abc" next to the Done button, then Shift/_ (underscore, to the right of the on-screen space button).

Why am I asked to provide the information in the Registration Screen?

In order to keep trydaTM free, we need to be able to prove to our partners 1) how many unique users we have (and show that we have eliminated duplicates and erroneous entries) and 2) describe the summary demographics of our user base. To do this, we need a minimum of two unique identifiers provided by you (since most names are not technically unique) to cross-reference. Again, this is done to enable us to provide you the best service possible at the best price possible (free!). But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to use that information to spam you. As stated in our Privacy Policy, we will not sell your individual information, nor send you unsolicited messages.

I am having trouble registering. What should I do?

Please send an email with a detailed description of the problem, including any error messages, to .

How do I update my email address or password?

On the Main Menu of trydaTM, select Options from the drop-down menu, then Edit Registration Info. To protect your personal data, you will be asked to log in to this screen. Once on the Edit Registration screens, you can change your email address and/or password. You will be asked to enter this information twice in order to ensure that this vital data is entered correctly. Press Next to proceed to the second screen and confirm the rest of your information.

If you updated your email address, you will be sent two emails after you press Update - one to your old address and one to your new one. In order to complete the process, you must retrieve the email sent to your new email address and click on the activation link inside.

I forgot my password. Can you send it to me?

Yes. You can do this from our Web site here. You can also do this in tryda by selecting Options / Edit Registration Info from the Main Menu.


QUERIES:

How does the Airport feature work?

We list 450 of the largest airports in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. If you are traveling in a location, but don’t know the ZIP code or you aren’t sure of what city you are in, you can use the airport code instead. That way, we can use that airport’s ZIP code for the query.

How does “Clips” work?

The clips feature is essentially like the Clipboard on your PC, except that it allows you to store multiple frequently used items, and permanently. You can create a Clip by highlighting a word and then selecting Options / Create Clip.

Then when you want to insert a Clip into a field, place the cursor in that field, and click the Clips button (or select Options / Use Clip), which will present a pick list of the Clips you have saved. The Clips button is not presented on the Directions page due to space limitations.

You can delete individual Clips, as well as add them, by selecting Options / Manage Clips List from the Main Menu.

I loved the old “Neighbor Search” feature. Why did you remove it?

We haven’t – it’s still there! The Neighbor button is on the bottom of the Reverse Query screen, but it only shows when you select “Search by Address”, since the address information is required for it to work.

RESULTS:

When I receive multiple results, how can I delete the extra ones I don't need so that only the one (or few) that I want are visible?

In the Results box on the Results screen, highlight the listing you want to remove, press the Menu drop-down button on your keyboard and hit "D" or select Delete Record.

Is it possible for me to save the results of my query so that I can instantly access it in the future?

Sure, you can save the results you obtain in your Saved Favorites list by clicking “Save” and/or add them to your Contacts list by clicking “Copy” and use them later as many times as you want.

What is the “YP Listing” button?

The YP Listing button on the query results screens is a placeholder for Yellow Pages-style listings that will be included with your results in the future.

I searched for a business but did not receive a result. Why is that?

We are constantly working to improve the quality of the data we provide to our users. However, it is not perfect. One reason is that collecting such a vast amount of detailed information, then inputting it in the system and tagging it appropriately may take several months. We are working on several initiatives to further improve the quality of this data.


I have discovered an incorrect listing in your database. How can I get this corrected?

Currently, we are not able to update the listings database. However, we are exploring several options that will allow us to do that.

I have a newer Treo model and it came with GoogleMaps pre-installed in ROM. I can install a more recent version into RAM or onto the SD card and run it from the launcher, but trydaTM always runs the OLD copy. Is there a workaround?

trydaTM now looks on the SD card first for a version of the GoogleMaps program and runs it, if found. If there is not one there, it attempts to run the device-resident copy. So placing the latest version on the SD card is a workaround that allows you to use the latest version of GoogleMaps with trydaTM.

I have the GoogleMaps application installed and when I try to Map a query result, the screen just flashes and returns to the application launcher. What's wrong?

This often means that you have an uncompressed copy of the GoogleMaps.PRC file stored on your SD card and installed directly into the PALM Launcher directory. The reason this causes a problem is that any recent version of the GoogleMaps.PRC file is actually a self-decompressing archive, not the executable program itself. If you use the application installer or download the PRC from the Google site directly via your Palm device, you will see it automatically decompress itself. What is left behind is still GoogleMaps.PRC, but this time it's the actual program, ready to run.

A work-around, should you suspect that this applies to you, is to use the Application Launcher's Copy function to copy the PRC to RAM from the SD card. This will cause the file to decompress itself. You can then Copy it back to the SD card and delete the RAM copy.

How do I get the Directions button to display results in the Google Maps application the way the Maps button does?

Unfortunately, Google Maps does not support this. As a result, pressing Maps opens results in Google Maps, while pressing Directions opens results in tryda by default (using this option, you can view the last Directions results retrieved and displayed in tryda by choosing Options / Last Directions Result on the Get Directions page), which can also be changed to opening results in a Memo, or opening results in the browser on the Google Maps mobile Web page. You can select which of these Directions formats you prefer in Preferences, available in the Main Menu's drop-down Options menu.