Every once in a while, you come across a killer app (or service) that you cannot believe that you’ve lived without for so long. I’m sure many of you have been using Evernote for some time, and will find this review a day late and a dollar short; if so please head straight to the comments. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing what Evernote has to offer, keep reading.
Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much at Microsoft's CES booth that we hadn't seen before. The HTC HD2 and yesterday's official announcement that it will be available "this spring" on T-Mobile was on the tip of everyone's tongues. But other than that, there were no new Windows phones announced.
We did take a spin with Ford Sync, which is Microsoft's system that will pair just about any device -- Bluetooth or otherwise -- with a new Ford or Mercury vehicle. Voice commands are the key to the whole thing, so you keep your hands on the wheel.
The Zune guys were more than happy to hear that we're hoping to see Zune software integrated into Windows Mobile in the next year or so. But we could get neither them nor the Windows phone folks to spill the beans as to what might or might not be coming in Windows Mobile 7.
Awkward moment of the morning: Our pal Rene Ritchie from The iPhone Blog hits up the Bing team to ask about the Bing iPhone app. And they'd never heard of it.
Photos of the exploits after the break.
Let's talk the Cloud a little more, shall we?
To recap: A large number of Sidekick users learned that their data — e-mail, contacts, calendar, etc. — had gone up in smoke, on the server side. The Sidekick ecosystem once was run by Danger, which is now owned by Microsoft, which has taken responsibility for the outage and/or data loss. T-Mobile's sending $100 "customer appreciate cards" for the trouble, if you permanently lost data.
Microsoft now says "we have recovered most, if not all, customer data." (Read Microsoft's full statement from T-Mobile's forums [via Giz] after the break.)
So, let's ask the obvious: This has been a high-profile outage and data loss. And as often is case after an event such as this, we'll see alot of "Is the Cloud safe?" headlines. Oh, and lawsuits. Our take? The Cloud is a service, and an important one. But reliability and redundancy go hand-in-hand. Any service that puts all its eggs in one basket is just asking for trouble. And we're not even getting into the reported trouble surrounding Project Pink, and more recent claims that the Sidekick snafu was sabotage. Unsubstantiated at best, though certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
For most services — Gmail, Exchange, whatever — it's pretty simple to export your contacts and the like and back them up elsewhere. jkOnTheRun offers a few tips on backing up your Gmail e-mails themselves. Have other tips? Let us know in the comments.
By now you've undoubtedly heard about the rather catastrophic data loss involving the Sidekick. If not, the short, short version: All of the data on the Sidekick is stored on the device or on servers run by Danger (which, of course, was purchased by Microsoft). During a recent upgrade, the Storage Area Network, or SAN, wasn't backed up before being upgraded. Basically, standard operating procedure was ignored. (This is, for the same reason, why we repeat over and over to backup your data before upgrading your Windows phone.)
Today, Microsoft issued the following:
REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 13, 2009 — We are thankful for the continued patience as Microsoft-Danger works to preserve platform stability and restore all services for our Sidekick customers. We have made significant progress this past weekend, restoring services to virtually every customer. Microsoft-Danger has teams of experts in place that are working around the clock to ensure this stability is maintained.
T-Mobile and Microsoft-Danger continue to do all we can to recover and return customers’ lost personal content. Recent efforts indicate that recovering some lost content may now be possible. We will continue to keep you updated on this front; we know how important this is to you.
T-Mobile will send a $100 customer appreciation card to those who have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content. This appreciation card will be in addition to the free month of data service customers have already been given. The card can be used toward T-Mobile products and services or a customer’s T-Mobile bill. Details will be sent in the next 14 days to customers who fit this category — there is no action needed on their part. We, however, remain hopeful that personal content can be recovered for the majority of our customers.
Sidekick customers can visit T-Mobile Forums regularly to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.
So how much is your data worth? Apparently $100, though some users are getting their data back.
Is this damning on cloud computing? Yep. On Danger and Microsoft? Double-yep. Does that mean the end of cloud computing, Danger, Microsoft, or the world as we know it? Certainly not.
Back up your data. Period. Nothing is infallible.
Heads up, all you My Phone users out there. The service will be offline starting at 8 a.m. EDT Monday through sometime Tuesday morning while Microsoft upgrades the service.
From the My Phone blog:
On October 5th, 2009 at 5AM (Pacific Daylight Time) (check your local time here) the Microsoft My Phone service will be unavailable while we upgrade the service. The service will come back online on October 6th, 2009 Tuesday morning PDT. Stay tuned for more information. You can also follow us on http://twitter.com/msmyphone for updates.
We're expecting My Phone to play a big part in the Oct. 6 Super Duper Windows Mobile 6.5 launch day events, so an upgrade outage is not expected. Stay tuned, folks.
Here's an interesting tidbit about Microsoft's My Phone sync service, which is still in beta but will go mainstream as part of the Oct. 6 Super Duper Windows Mobile 6.5 launch day. According to this pic posted on Twitter by I Started Something's @longzheng, a fee "may apply" if you need to "locate a lost phone on a map, remotely lock it or wipe it clean" using My Phone.
The reasoning behind that? Your guess is as good as ours at the moment. Maybe it's to prevent overuse. Maybe it's to prevent abuse. Maybe it's just a pain to do. Anybody have a better idea?
The European cellphone market, led by the European Commission, has adopted Micro-USB as the standard for cellphone charging/sync ports. We first made mention of this movement back during the 2009 Mobile World Congress and it appears the movement has picked up a little steam.
Cellphone manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, Motorola, NEC, LG, RIM, Qualcomm, Samsung and Texas Instruments support the standardization. The surprising name on this list has to be Apple because of its long-standing and widely used licensed, proprietary connector. The most noticeable company missing from the list is HTC, which uses the mini-USB port.
The standardization should be an across-the-board savings from reducing production costs, eliminating everyone's drawer full of chargers, and reducing waste at the local landfill. The first devices under the new standard should hit the shelves in 2010, eventually leading to devices and chargers sold separately.
Now if we can only get that pesky 3.5mm headphone jack as standard.
Via SlashGear
Geeks (like myself) tend to have a lot of gadgets. Those gadgets tend to come with an assortment of cabling for power, audio and synchronization. Trying to sell a geek more cabling can be like pulling teeth, unless that cabling helps cut down on the existing cable clutter.
Smartphone Experts produces a number of Sync & Charge solutions for various Smartphones, including several that offer retractable cabling that allows for easy storage and transportation. The problem with these types of solutions can be that they are locked down to one device manufacturer or model. This problem is handled elegantly by this option.
Stick around for the full rundown.
On my computer, you will find nary a sign of any Apple software as iTunes stopped being a "neat" app about, I dunno, 4 years ago.
But for those of you who still load that behemoth and want to sync with your trusty Kinoma Play on WinMo (see update), looks like your dream is now a reality due to some third-party freeware by Salling Software.
According to Kinoma, which is officially supporting this method, Salling Media Sync "...automatically identifies phones running Kinoma Play and syncs all the audio formats that Kinoma Play supports."
The app is "free" for basic use but will cost ya' $22 beans for you heavy sync'ers and those wanting faster sync times (I'd imagine that would be everyone?). Hey, if the Pre can do it, so can WinMo. Hmph!
Update: Looks like Kinoma has rolled out a small update from previous v5.1.46 to v5.1.48.
Mostly looks like a "cleaning up" update after the big one just recently, as this tidies up some naming conventions, UI interaction, G-sensor adjustments and just general patches. It also seems to be a bit speedier, though I still have to wait 2-4 seconds to go back to the launcher on my Treo Pro. Hmm.
Other changes include:
Get the update now via
Menu --> Player --> Check for Updates!
That little maintenance outage Microsoft My Phone underwent? Turns out it was an update to the Web portal. And alongside that will come an update to the phone client.
Oh, and the service is moving to an open beta. From the My Phone Team blog [via]:
With today’s release, we’re opening the beta to all users -- no more waiting list or promotional codes!
Can't put it any more plainly than that. So if you're looking for a way to sync your contacts, photos, text messages and more to the cloud and didn't get in on the closed beta, head on over to myphone.microsoft.com and give it a shot.
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