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.