I finally got Live Mesh working on my Mac, my phone, and my fileserver.  I'm waiting on a new laptop for work, so I haven't installed there yet.

I have to say  this is very cool.  At the very basic, it does file sync.  This is what most users will see at first.  I've used several different sync applications, and within a couple of days, I've been quite satisfied with this solution.  One thing to note is that the Windows Mobile client actually does scheduled sync with your Live Mesh desktop in the cloud!

The Windows Mobile and Mac client sync with the cloud.  The Windows client has the ability to sync with the cloud, and to sync peer to peer with other Windows clients.

The interesting thing is that you can sync with other people's Mesh objects, if they invite you.  I can see this replacing Groove and FolderShare when it is release (it's a Technology Preview right now.)

More to come as I play with it.  BTW, there's a SDK as well.

I got to my office this morning to find the lights out in the parking garage, and a bunch of people milling around the lobby.  Security says that "something blew" around 4:45 am, and the building only had emergency generator power.  In theory the power company is on the way, so I decided to pop over to my local coffee shop, and get a bit of caffeine and work done.  Thank you AT&T and WMWiFiRouter.

My mother joined the Cult of Steve shortly before I did, buying the same Spring refreshed BlackBook.  She has been a long-time Palm user.  She recently retired from her public school district job, but will be continuing working as an educational consultant for National Geographic.  Upon her retirement, her IT department took back the most recent Palm that she was using, and although she has an older one she could use, she mentioned buying whatever the current model was.  I suggested that an iPod Touch may be a better choice as a stand-alone PDA.

My initial thought is that an iPod Touch will sync with iCal and Address Book.app without any Third party software.  I believe the Palm still needs Palm Desktop/HotSync manager to sync using iSync.  It seems that a bunch of people are doing this, so I need to read a bit more on it before suggesting a little more strongly.

Assuming this isn't another April Fool's Joke, Microsoft announced Windows Mobile 6.1 with some really cool features.  Unfortunately, my AT&T 8525 isn't on the list of devices to be updated.  Bummer.

I used to love OneNote on my tablet PC.  I haven't found it as useful on a normal Windows machine, so its not currently installed anywhere, but I do occasionally miss having its capabilities.  I'm currently using a mix of this blog, del.icio.us, and Google Reader's shared items to track online things of importance, but I worry about link rot. 

Enter Evernote.  It looks similar to OneNote, except cross platform and synchronized.  That's right, they support Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, the web, and even several mobile browsers, and your notes on all the devices are supposed to remain in sync.  They also have an email to note function (which should work great with camera phones.)

I've signed up for the beta, and installed it on the MacBook.  I've downloaded the version for my phone, an will install it at work on Monday.  I wonder if there's a One Note to Evernote conversion utility.

I now have a very unique set of requirements for a password wallet.  I realistically need something that is file based (as opposed to database based) and runs on Windows, Windows Mobile, and Mac OS X.

It needs to be file based, so I can use FolderShare to keep it in sync between our fileserver, my work PC, and the Mac.

The platforms are obvious.  I still have a Windows based desktop in my home office, and a Windows based laptop for work.  I won't be switching phone platforms for quite a while.

I've been using Ilium Software's eWallet for ages.  It meets all of my requirements, almost.  I actually have it working on the Mac under Darwine, however there are some issues.  Occasionally, the clipboard between X11 and the Mac has stopped working (i.e. things copied in eWallet can't be pasted into a normal Mac app and vise versa.)  It also has this totally bizarre problem where in the card view, all the text is in some bizarre symbol based font.

I went on a big hunt for a cross platform password wallet.  SplashID looked perfect, until reading the fine print.  The only way to move from a desktop platform to a handheld platform is via it's appropriate sync manager.  I don't actually ActiveSync my phone with anything except the Exchange server.  They do have this awful export/import work around, which would mean clear-text versions of my wallet available every time I needed to update it.  It's also not clear if the Mac and Windows versions are file compatible.

The last one that I checked was the open source project Password Safe.  Their tact for cross platform seems to be to go the Java route.  There's an ancient Pocket Pc version (from 2003) but that seems to be dead.  I guess I could attempt to port it to Windows Mobile and Mac OS X, but given my lame coding skills, and lack of time, this seems like a very poor choice.

I've just now seen KeePass which is another open source option, this time with active Windows, Windows Mobile, and OS X versions.  I think I know what I need to test next.  Migrating my data is going to be a bitch.

[update 03-14-2008]
Marc Tassin from Ilium Software sent me an email pointing to their official blog, and their iPhone announcement.  This quote definitely gives me something to think about:
"4. Will you make a Mac version?
I’m not allowed to give you a definite answer on that one yet, but as some technical types might already know, the iPhone and the Mac run very similar software. I’ll leave it at that for now."

Ilium Software now has eWallet 6.0 available.  256-bit AES encryption is probably enough to get me to whip out my credit card.  I mean, come on, and upgrade is only $16.95.

After a couple of days with Windows Mobile 6, I'm having some issues.

The unlock screen sucks.  In previous versions of WM, if you used the Simple unlock screen, you would enter your four digit pin, and your phone would unlock.  Now you enter your four digit pin, and then hit the Unlock softkey.  WTF?

The Today screen timeout doesn't seem to work.  No matter what setting I've tried, whenever I turn my phone back on, it flips to the today screen.

I use my phone as my alarm clock, and the default sound is just awful.  I'll need to find something else.

It seems to love to have the 3G data connection connected.  I think I have turned everything off (activesync set to manual, Direct Push turned off, Customer Feedback turned off, Error Reporting turned off, and Windows Update turned off) however, it is still automatically firing up the 3G connection on what seems like a random basis.  I soft-reset it thinking something odd was still in memory, but it came up with 3G connected.  My biggest issue with this is what will happen when I'm roaming?  I don't want one of those BoingBoing worthy cell phone bills.

It seems to take longer turning on that it previously did.

The messaging button no longer brings up a mailbox, it now brings up a screen to select which mailbox to go to, requiring you to either tap the screen, or a soft key.  Once Pocket Outlook is up, pressing it again flips through all your mailboxes.  Who thought this was a better workflow?

 

I'm sure I'll find more.

I finally got around to installing the WM6 ROM on my phone (an AT&T 8525.)  I had more stuff than this on my phone, but I decided to only reinstall the things I was really using.  Here's my list:

Diarist

eWallet

GoogleMaps

eReader

PHM regedit

Microsoft has released an update for the Mobile version of Office for Windows Mobile devices.  The primary feature in the update is the ability to work with the XML format Office 2007 documents.  Other improvements include:

• Enhanced viewing experience for charts in Excel Mobile.
• Ability to view SmartArt in PowerPoint Mobile.
• Ability to view and extract files from compressed (.zip) folders.

 

You must already have Office on your phone, but I noticed a link on that page with information on buying Office Mobile.  Cool.

via jkOnTheRun

and it can purchase and download books over the air.  I'm a big fan of eReader, having found them to have a good selection of current titles, a nice reader, and a sensible DRM scheme (encrypted with your CC#.)  This just makes it better.  Access to your online bookshelf does indeed work, and with 3G downloading a title is pretty quick.  And you can't beat the price.

thanks jkOnTheRun

Cool.  Dale Lane has posted a Pocket IE extension that allows you to add the current page you are viewing as a new bookmark in del.icio.us.

He also posted the source.

Does this work?

Horray, Scott Hanselman has added the ability for dasBlog to select a different theme for Mobile devices.  This is something I asked about a while ago, and I'm really glad to see its finally coming out.  That is, if 1.9 ever ships.

Pocket PC Thoughts points to a nifty looking piece of software, JETware Hands-free Extension.  Basically, it adds a bunch of cool extensions to the bluetooth stack, making your headset and Windows Mobile based phone work better together.  It says it supports my phone, so I'll be checking it out.

I managed to break my Pocket PC today.  Not in a physical way, just in a software way.  At one point I was trying to get the internet working on it through ActiveSync pass-through, so I turned off T-Mobile's proxy server setting.  Unfortunately, even after turning the proxy server back on, I was unable to get GPRS working again.  iMate has these nifty CAB files that you can download and install, which configure your phone for whichever carrier you are on, so I installed the T-Mobile USA one, which affectively bricked the phone part of my phone (making it somewhat less than useful.)  After hopping on the iMate support site, I notice that they recommend hard resetting before running one of their carrier settings CABs.  Oops.  I also notice that there was a new ROM (at least new to me) so I figured that if I was going to hard reset anyway, I might as well upgrade to the latest.  So now I have my phone back, GPRS still isn't working, and I don't have any of my software installed.

And no, I don't mean the fat-lady singing type.  Opera, the web browser people, have just released a beta for Pocket PCs.  Windows Mobile 5 and Pocket PC 2003 are both supported.

Features

• Open URL with auto-complete
• Zoom
• Download
• Multiple Windows
• Navigation and history
• Bookmarks
• Landscape/Portrait Mode
• Full screen/ Fit to screen
• Pop-up handler
• Pad-lock icon on secure sites
• User preferences
• Context menu

I just downloaded it using Firefox on my Tablet.  The download links do some type of magic to send you to a nearby mirror.  The first time it timed out.  The second time the web server didn't know what a cab was, and sent me a text representation of the file.  The third time, however, was a charm.  The download is 5,584 KB.  Its a cab, so you can download it directly on your device and install.  Or else copy the cab over via activesync, and install.

Upon launching it, the first thing it did was tell me I had 45 days left in my trial.  Then it asked me if I wanted it to be the default web browser on my machine.  Typing in an address, and clicking go fired up my GPRS connection.  All the reviews I've seen say how fast it is, but I have to say that nothing is fast over GPRS.  Well, this isn't fast, in fact it just doesn't work.  Pages I was able to successfully bring up in PIE gave error messages like "Can't connect to www.google.com."

I'm uninstalling for now, and will wait for the next beta.

Chris gives out a lot of information on the new OneNote Mobile.  He keeps saying SmartPhone.  I hope its not limited to phones, and will also work on Pocket PCs.