Back on Oct. 5, Dashwire announced an exclusive partnership with Best Buy to offer its services for free to new customers buying smartphones. Certainly a unique choice. But with Microsoft's MyPhone being nearly ubiquitous now, we suppose not so much a good one.

The bad news is for you existing Dashwire users.  Evidently on Dec. 31, 2009, Dashwire will stop working.  You apparently have the option to back up your data to a desktop and/or "...migrate your information to services from Dashwire licensees if you’re interested" -- though we're not too sure how to do that just yet nor are we sure if it'll cost anything.

Anyways, now may be a good time to explore alternatives.  Dashwire, we wish you luck with that Best Buy thing.

mIQ from Best Buy is a over-the-air means to back-up and sync your Windows phone data. Powered by Dashwire, mIQ also offers a web portal to manage your data online.

Just like Dashwire's original service, mIQ will sync photos, contacts, call history, text messages, photos and videos, and bookmarks. mIQ will also allow you to update your status on popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Unlike Dashwire, mIQ will also sync with your calendar.

The interface on your Windows phone is simple and straight forward. The main screen has controls to manually sync your Windows phone, update your status and manage your settings. Synchronization can be automatic or manual and you can choose what items to sync.

The web portal is well laid out but does have it's fair share of Best Buy ads and offers. Can't complain much about Best Buy marketing on mIQ, especially seeing that it's a free service.

mIQ uses a data stream to synchronize your data so it won't interfere with any Exchange Server relationships (unlike MyPhone) but there are no security features. In using mIQ, I did find it to move along noticeably slower than MyPhone or Dashwire both in the mobile app loading and synchronization. Synchronization didn't jumble contacts or appointments.

The original Dashwire application synchronized faster but does not include calendar synchronization. MyPhone is middle ground with respect to speed but won't sync anything already synchronized through an Exchange Server relationship.

If you are looking for an alternative to MyPhone to backup your data or need to add calendar sync, mIQ is worth a look at. You can sign up for a free mIQ account here.

Looks like Microsoft's going to continue to have some fairly major competition in the cloud. Dashwire, the popular sync service and a direct competitor to Microsoft's beta My Phone service, recently secured $1.6 million in funding. Dashwire syncs contacts, pictures and other PIM data to the cloud and can upload photos to various online services.

Said Dashwire founder and CEO Ford Davidson:

“We’re growing our business right now. We will hire a few more developers. We’ll have some new things released later in the year, and we’re cranking away on it.”

So we'll be looking for more from Dashwire in the future. Currently it runs on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, and BlackBerry and Android clients reportedly are in the works.

Xconomy via mocoNews

For anyone who has lifted a camera to take a picture of their favorite place, children, friends or a memorable event there is a compulsion to share those photographs with others. Historically, you either had to trap someone in front of an old Kodak slide projector or have the wallet photos get crushed from everything else that was in your wallet. Gone are those days of peeling pictures out from behind your library card.

Your Windows Mobile device is already fitted with a basic viewer but what if you want more?  The other day we touched on SPB's Imageer, a photo manager/editing application for Windows Mobile but what other applications are out there if you don't need the editing capabilities but do need the organization and viewing abilities?

Several photo viewers are available for your Windows Mobile device that lets you share your favorite photos without the mess of wallet photos or the torture of a slide projector. Viewers that let you organize, view, and send your photos to friends and family.  We decided to look at a few of the photo viewers that are available for Windows Mobile devices.  I've been known to take a few pictures here and there(shameless plug) so it was interesting to see how these mobile photo managers measured up.

Read on after the break to see what photo viewers made it out of the darkroom and which ones ended up being overexposed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft on Thursday announced it was purchasing a company that allows you to back up your PIM data - that'd be your e-mail, contacts, calendar items, etc. - online, as well as post directly to social networking sites, such as Facebook.

No, it's not buying Dashwire, which has been a hot topic of late.

What Redmond is buying is MobiComp, who is tight with Europe's Vodafone (Verizon's parent company), and other mobile carriers with a good number of customers in Portugal and Saudi Arabia.

A direct shot across Dashwire's bow? Or Apple's Mobile Me, for that matter? Probably not just yet.

According to a Reuters report, Microsoft intends to turn MobiComp into a research and development group and keep it in Portugal, making it unclear exactly what Microsoft will do with MobiComp's technology. Microsoft already has a number of cloud services in development and is rapidly expanding its mobile portfolio.

Hang in there, Dashwire. Chin up, Mobile Me. You've probably got a good one, maybe two years if we stick to Microsoft's "development" schedule.

Remember when we reported about Dashwire beta and raved about how great the service was. Well now it looks like their ready for their big debut. Dashwire officially launched 2.0. Engadget explains some of the great features such as synchronization between contacts, photos, and bookmarks are still available. Now you also get the share photos to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and even Friendfeed. Big ups to Scott for the tip.

I personally feel this is a must have for my fellow Windows Mobile users. Its free, it syncs seamlessly in the background, and now you can share what you sync. You can even update your status right from the Dashwire application. What more could you want? Maybe there is one more thing. I would like to be able to edit my photos through Dashwire. Till then its baby steps. You have to walk before you can run.

So I'm checking my email as usual and I see an email from Dashwire saying my phone is ready for their software. I'd like to think my phone was ready all along and it's just that their software was ready for my phone. Anyway, I have the Treo 750 so I decided to give it a try and am already loving it.

The basic idea is it will invisibly back up much of your smartphone's content to their servers with little to no interaction on your end. The thing I love about it most is the fact that it syncs your contacts, photos, text and even videos to an online web site wirelessly. Now you never have to worry if you uploaded that last picture or if you added that contact to your friends list.

The best part is that it’s all done wirelessly and you can manage a majority of the phone online. The online app syncs with your phone so for example if you delete a contact online it automatically deletes it from your phone. The online app even keeps a log of recent calls and text which is a great feature if your phone ever crashes and loses the info.

Actually, the best part might be that it's free, though exactly who's getting paid how for this service is as yet unclear.

Dashwire looks to be another step to the cloud-based data storage we've been waiting for here at WMExperts. Before you go giving your data to Dashwire, though, keep in mind that Microsoft itself may be releasing a native, more robust solution based on the Sidekick services they've acquired.