Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

If your job has to deal with managing mobile devices in the workplace, a ComputerWorld webinar on the subject may be of assistance. It isn't just about Windows Mobile either. They will cover Blackberry and the iPhone as well. In fact, the point of the webinar is to help allow your company to enable multiple device support without killing the IT department.

It is on June 30th at 11am ET. Registration appears to be free and can be found here along with more information on the topics to be discussed.

"Flash Format is a full featured memory card management utility for Windows Mobile powered Smartphone devices. It supports all SD and ATA and compliant storage cards, including SD cards, Mini SD, Micro SD, Compact Flash cards, Multimedia cards (MMC), MicroDrives, SmartMedia, MemorySticks, etc. With Flash Format you can get detailed information and statistics about your storage cards, including file system characteristics (FAT type, sectors, cluster, etc.) and analysis of file allocations (slack space). Flash Format lets you perform integrity checks, repair allocation errors, and re-format storage cards to original conditions, with the file system settings that best suit your needs, directly on your Smartphone, wherever and whenever you need."



Flash Format lets you manage your storage card from your mobile device. While Pocket PC users have had access to this tool since 2001, the Smartphone version has just recently been released. You can download a trial version or purchase a copy for $10.95 from our affiliate store.

"Good Technology, Inc. (www.good.com), the leading provider of industry standards-based enterprise handheld computing software and service, today announced the immediate availability of GoodLink 4.8. The newest version of the popular, award-winning messaging software and service enables enterprises to deploy, centrally manage and secure growing smartphone deployments with greater flexibility and ease, unlocking the power of mobility for businesses worldwide. Additionally, users can now choose from a broad range of Palm OS� and Windows Mobile devices, including the new Palm� Treo� 700w smartphone from Verizon Wireless and PPC 6700 from Sprint."



Last time I looked the Treo 700 wasn't a Smartphone but hey. You Good users out there might be interested in this. Are there any Good users here? I have no experience with this. Those of you that do use it how do you like it?

"I've been rooting around looking at photo services lately. My new phone (T-Mobile SDA) has a decent camera and I've been travelling a bit so the issue of what to do with my camera phone pix is a real issue. The current solution means syncing my phone to my PC and then doing something with the pix - email them, uploading them to Flickr, etc. A tedious process which frankly leaves the vast majority of pictures on phones. Shozu is a service brought to you by Cognima, a small UK compnay that has been around for few years. ...Shozu, which provides a "zero-click" way to get pictures off your phone and onto a service. First, you download the app for your Windows Mobile phone. Set it up to point to your photo service of choice (Flickr, Buzznet, Webshots, etc.). Next, every picture you take will get zapped up to the service automagically - no muss, no fuss. You can add titles, tags, etc."

It's hard to avoid camera phones now. They seem to be in every phone, and if it's not in your current phone, chances are good that it will be in your next. The Shozu service is a lot like the Splash Blog but it uses your own Flickr account as a file store. If you already have an online picture gallery, it sounds like Shozu is a great solution to capture and log your pictures.

"iAnywhere Solutions, a subsidiary of Sybase, today announced the latest version (5.3) of Afaria, the company's mobile device management and security software for enterprises. Version 5.3 of Afaria adds support for the newest version of these operating systems, including Windows Mobile 5 for Smartphone, Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone, Symbian 7.0 with the UIQ and Series 80 shells, and ARM Thumb Processor devices. Another new feature is outbound connectivity. Administrators can notify a device or group of devices to connect for critical updates. Notification retries are automatically made when the initial notification is not successful."

Security is a hot topic for the mobile world, and while Microsoft's upcoming Exchange update will allow devices to be remotely wiped if lost or stolen, Afaria sounds like it offers so much more. From support for Microsoft's SMS server, and patch management, to email and GPRS configuration, Afaria looks like they can really empower the administrator. This tool isn't for the average every day users like some of us. It's really focused on managing a large Smartphone install-base. If that's you, then you might want to check into iAnywhere's Afaria.

"I am making this site available to help folks who have a PDA (Pocket PC or Palm) to better use their PDAs for effective time management. Much of what is said herein also applies to a laptop/desktop or Tablet PC environment as well. The advice provided herein has been distilled from my 28 years of professional experience, participation in numerous seminars, reading of numerous books, and over four years of very active use of PDAs."

This is a useful site for those of you who want to apply principles of time management using your Pocket PC or Smartphone. There are articles worth reading on the site - now if I could only download a Self Dicipline 1.0 upgrade to stay focused on things that I know I need to do. :roll:

"SiDiary makes the control of diabetes so much easier. Data capturing is a cinch and analysis will help to improve your therapy. SiDiary will show you weakpoints which should be improved and together with your health-care professional you can adjust your whole treatment. You can increase the quality of all parameters within a short time. With the program versions for mobile devices you can track and analyse your data everywhere at any time. You will become much more motivated to continue tracking data because of imme- diate feedback for your readings. The smartphone version enables you to get your diabetes managed even with a cellphone. This version also follows the one screen data tracking philosophy so that you can enter all data like bg levels, carbs etc. for the whole day on this single screen. Your data will be synchronized automatically to any other device and can be graphed on any machine. Of course you can print your logs for discussion with your physican, but even an electronic data exchange is easy and completed within a few seconds."

I've previously reported on SiDiary for Pocket PCs on Pocket PC Thoughts. Happily, the developer is porting SiDiary to the Smartphone platform as well, and it is currenty in beta. You can get it from SiDiary through an email request, and help Alf Windhurst in creating a great diabetes management tool for your Smartphone. So if you're interested, don't hesitate to contact Alf.

SMS Notify 2004 is basically a new front end for the SMS functionality of your device. Features include Out Of Office messages, Sender Display, Out of Office, and a improved UI, just to name a few. If you're are serious SMS user, you might wand to check out this application.



SMS Notify 2004 requires Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphones. You can download a trial version, or purchase a copy for $14.50 here. [Affiliate]

"iAnywhere Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc. (NYSE: SY - News), today announced at Microsoft's ITforum an early adopter program for enterprises looking to extend the configuration management capabilities of Microsoft's Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 to a broad range of mobile devices used on the frontlines of business, including Windows mobile-based Smartphones"

While this is geared to the enterprise I hope it spurs wider use of smartphones and hence more development by the manufacturers of them.

"Quickly and efficiently keep track of your daily spending with GreenThumb. Designed for Smartphone 2003, GreenThumb eliminates the need to carry receipts by providing an easy and intuitive interface for your Smartphone device that will store them for you."



� Store and edit monetary transactions
� Import into Microsoft Money, Quicken, or Microsoft Excel
� Intuitive design for quick transaction entry

You can check out the online demo here and purchase a copy of GreenThumb for only $10.95 here. [Affiliate]

"ArcSoft, Inc., the leading provider of digital imaging software, today announced the availability of a unique version of their PhotoBase Mobile Edition product, developed for the Microsoft Smartphone operating system. ArcSoft PhotoBase Mobile Edition for Smartphone allows users to manage, edit, and share digital photos on their MS Smartphone enabled devices.

ArcSoft PhotoBase Mobile Edition for Smartphone provides a range of options for viewing and organizing images, allowing for intuitive categorization of photos by subject, date, event, etc. Additionally, the application contains advanced features that allow users to easily enhance, manipulate, share, and send multimedia content by way of Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Bluetooth, or infrared.

Features Include:

� Image panning and zooming.
� Brightness and contrast controls.
� Album functionality -- allows intuitive image categorization by subject, date, event, or caption.
� Multiple view modes -- album content can be viewed as a file list, photo thumbnails, or full-sized images sorted by name, date, or file size.
� Slide show feature -- perfect for sharing photos.
� Editing tools -- flip, rotate, and crop photos with ease.
� Photo enhancing -- add text, frames, and graphics.
� Additional downloadable, theme-based graphical content.
� Support for sharing images via email, MMS, Bluetooth, and infrared."

Looks cool! We'll probably never get a review copy though - ArcSoft doesn't consider sites like this one legitimate media, which inspired this classic rant. So I guess I'll have to wait for someone at C|NET to tell me if this software is any good. :wink: