Smartphone Tools
In a previous post, I said how sexy my new phone looks. Well, I've had a few days to play with it, and I thought I'd mention some of the tools that I've downloaded to it, what they do and how useful I think they are going to be:
fring
Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM® all from my phone (and supports voice chat over all of them except Yahoo! and AIM). It supports Windows Mobile 5 & 6, Symbian, iPhone, etc. No BlackBerry support, currently, which is a bit of a bugger, but I've already successfully text-chatted to
sweet_sarniaover the G-Talk (Jabber, XMPP) protocol to her sexy new BlackBerry Pearl. It will roam and connect over wifi (and manage your wifi connections, if you have different WEP/WPA addresses for different WLANs), use your data plan (if you have one), use 3G, Edge, even.
WorldMate Live
This is a travel planner. It sorts your itinerary, syncs it, can notify you of flight delays, etc. It also features flight schedules, car rentals, maps, world clocks and a currency converter. Unfortunately, although it supports Windows Mobile 6 and BlackBerry, my new phone is Windows Mobile 6.1 with a higher resolution screen. I've emailed their support line, and they said that they can notify me when they've updated it for my phone. Perhaps, when I start my new job, I'll see if I can get a business subscription
Lightsaber
A bit of fun, and a port of an iPhone application. I've already booked a lightsaber fight with
darkmoon at Con in September :P
FinchSync
All my previous PDAs have come with a full version of Outlook. It seems that, with Outlook-2007, the new Microsoft policy is to only provide a 60-day licence. I was annoyed-enough at this to download, install and use Mozilla Thunderbird on my personal laptop, which I also linked to my gmail account, so it can be my main email system. Obviously, Microsoft Activesync won't support synchronisation with a third-party email system, so I had to look elsewhere. I selected FinchSync, which does an admirable job. Along with Lightning (the calendaring extension to Thinderbird), it syncs my calendar and contacts very nicely. It took a few minutes to set-up, as you need to know things like the IP address of your PC to get it synchronised, but hey - synchronising over wifi is something that Microsoft disabled in ActiveSync a couple of years ago, and I'm delighted to have that facility back!
Are there any other Smartphone tools that I should be looking at?
fring
Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM® all from my phone (and supports voice chat over all of them except Yahoo! and AIM). It supports Windows Mobile 5 & 6, Symbian, iPhone, etc. No BlackBerry support, currently, which is a bit of a bugger, but I've already successfully text-chatted to
sweet_sarniaover the G-Talk (Jabber, XMPP) protocol to her sexy new BlackBerry Pearl. It will roam and connect over wifi (and manage your wifi connections, if you have different WEP/WPA addresses for different WLANs), use your data plan (if you have one), use 3G, Edge, even.
WorldMate Live
This is a travel planner. It sorts your itinerary, syncs it, can notify you of flight delays, etc. It also features flight schedules, car rentals, maps, world clocks and a currency converter. Unfortunately, although it supports Windows Mobile 6 and BlackBerry, my new phone is Windows Mobile 6.1 with a higher resolution screen. I've emailed their support line, and they said that they can notify me when they've updated it for my phone. Perhaps, when I start my new job, I'll see if I can get a business subscription
Lightsaber
A bit of fun, and a port of an iPhone application. I've already booked a lightsaber fight with
darkmoon at Con in September :P
FinchSync
All my previous PDAs have come with a full version of Outlook. It seems that, with Outlook-2007, the new Microsoft policy is to only provide a 60-day licence. I was annoyed-enough at this to download, install and use Mozilla Thunderbird on my personal laptop, which I also linked to my gmail account, so it can be my main email system. Obviously, Microsoft Activesync won't support synchronisation with a third-party email system, so I had to look elsewhere. I selected FinchSync, which does an admirable job. Along with Lightning (the calendaring extension to Thinderbird), it syncs my calendar and contacts very nicely. It took a few minutes to set-up, as you need to know things like the IP address of your PC to get it synchronised, but hey - synchronising over wifi is something that Microsoft disabled in ActiveSync a couple of years ago, and I'm delighted to have that facility back!
Are there any other Smartphone tools that I should be looking at?