Exchange: Abandon HTC mail app and use TouchDown? - Desire General

Probably like many of my colleagues blessed with the job of supporting these shiny new phones, I'm coming under increasing pressure to find an Exchange solution that actually works... I have therefore started the process of evaluating Nitrodesk's TouchDown to see if it provides a better solution.
I will report my findings in this thread and I invite others to do the same. We need to know if, for the corporate user, the $20 fee is not only worth it but necessary.

Yes, do it.
Just getting back on this. Generally speaking, it was a no-brainer. Touchdown works. The built in client doesn't.
Couple of niggles:
Touchdown seems to have a larger storage requirement.
Contacts have to be copied (a one-time manual operation) to the phone before you get all the benefits of contact sync.
Massive array of settings and options may be slightly overwhelming for some users although generally they can be ignored.
Emails can only be composed in plain text. Ditto signatures. Rendering of HTML emails received is good though.
Apart from that, Touchdown is better in almost every respect (once you get used to the change of interface).

Interesting take.
I'm using a Desire with the stock sync apps connecting into Exchange 2007 at work and Gmail for home. Everything worked out of the box (well, email, contacts, calendar). I miss being able to search the server, but the functionality works pretty much flawlessly....at least as good as my old WM6 smartphone, anyway The built in calendar is awesome...I love having a single calendar showing items from three different accounts!
What doesn't work for you in the built-in client? Your blanket "the built-in client doesn't work" is a little harsh, to say the least...
Daern

The only thing i don't like about the exchange sync is that i can't seem to subscribe to my folders within my mailbox that I can if i set it up as an IMAP account. Other than that, the inbuilt one does everything that I want it to

Yep built in HTC mail client working quite well for me as well for exchange sync. Mail/Calendar/Contacts plus lookup on corporate address book all working with no problems to report.
Didn't see the need to switch to touchdown though I did give it a try. It did not bring anything extra to the table.

My exchange account for gmail used tu work ok but the last few days it won't connect to the server and so I've deleted the account and re entered the server settings etc and I just get a failed to create account message.
Anyone got any ideas? I'm Considering touchdown, but does it have a widget?
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Sent from my HTC Desire

Contacts have to be copied (a one-time manual operation) to the phone before you get all the benefits of contact sync.
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can you elaborate on this?

Some answers
daern said:
Your blanket "the built-in client doesn't work" is a little harsh, to say the least...
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There have been quite a few threads prior to this with testimonies of the broken DirectPush/ActiveSync/Exchange implementation. There also appears to be a fault in the IMAP client. I accept that these faults may possibly affect some environments more than others (for example, we're currently on Exchange 2003 - due to upgrade to 2010 later this year) but given the wide variety of installed userbases out there, I would have expected HTC's testing to be considerably more rigourous.
Given that the phone is touted as having DirectPush/Exchange capabilities, that puts it squarely in the corporate market. And sorry, but the corporate market it quite unforgiving of deal-breaking flaws such as the ones users here have reported. An example from my own organisation: a couple of very senior managers were hit by the "multiple re-send" bugs, causing their hapless recipients to receive hundreds (yes, hundreds) of copies of some emails. Given the personalities involved, this became more than a little embarrassing. not least because one of the users was the director of our I.T. department. ("What, your phone is broken? Guffaw guffaw!")
I totally agree that the built in calendar was a great feature. In fact one of the most awesome things about the phone was the way it pulled together diverse information streams together. Sadly we have to forego this in order to have a working corporate setup that includes task sync as well as everything else.
bakersdozen said:
I'm Considering touchdown, but does it have a widget?
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Yes, actually it has several. The "universal" widget is great - quick and easy access to email, calendar, contacts and tasks all on one screen. Plus a load of quick shortcuts etc. Very usable.
@omniwolf: within Touchdown-->Contacts-->Menu is a "Copy To Phone" option. This needs to be done once so that the phone has all Exchange contacts within its own database. Then within Settings-->Advanced, tick "Update Contact changes to Phone" {save} to keep everything in sync. You'll see that your phone's contacts acquire an additional group, "TouchDown-Exchange".

I have the problem and are now using Touchdown.
We have Exchange 2003 and reading various reports from users that the problems dont exist if connecting to newer versions of exchange.
The main problem for us is the inability to search the GAL (Company Directory) I also had strange email sending problems as others have reported.
Touchdown works but is not as cleanly integrated into the phone as the inbuilt client.

Try using Moxier instead

masi0 said:
Try using Moxier instead
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Does Moxier have better integration?

Rob Pomeroy said:
Does Moxier have better integration?
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Unfortunately not - separate contacts/calendar/email client

I've only had my Desire for a say or so and used Touchdown from the start after advice from a colleague (and after reading so many online posts about problems with the native client).
I have to say, it's working really well so far. Small problem with contact birthdays and anniversaries being 1 day out, but the developer got back to me same day and advised a fix will be out next week. Impressive.
Certainly better than the WinMo implementation of Exchange support ActiveSync just slowed down my Touch Pro 2 to the point of being unusable. On the Desire, it's burning rubber.
I couldn't be happier; confident to recommend Touchdown as a reliable alternative (after a day or so of use, I'll let you know if that changes but no reason to suspect it will).
Pete

Rob Pomeroy said:
Just getting back on this. Generally speaking, it was a no-brainer. Touchdown works. The built in client doesn't.
Couple of niggles:
Touchdown seems to have a larger storage requirement.
Contacts have to be copied (a one-time manual operation) to the phone before you get all the benefits of contact sync.
Massive array of settings and options may be slightly overwhelming for some users although generally they can be ignored.
Emails can only be composed in plain text. Ditto signatures. Rendering of HTML emails received is good though.
Apart from that, Touchdown is better in almost every respect (once you get used to the change of interface).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I beg to differ on the plain text front. The emails are composed and responded to in html.
I had no problem with the built in clients with an Exchange 2007 server, but I hated the fact that it only let me respond with text in Times New Roman 10pt when Outlook uses Calibri 11pt as a standard. So I switched to Touchdown, which allows you to set the font in the settings.
Been using it live for a bit more than a week now and am mighty impressed. Well worth the investment to not make it blaringly obvious that I'm answering my emails from the phone when I'm not in my office.

Quist said:
I beg to differ on the plain text front. The emails are composed and responded to in html.
I had no problem with the built in clients with an Exchange 2007 server, but I hated the fact that it only let me respond with text in Times New Roman 10pt when Outlook uses Calibri 11pt as a standard. So I switched to Touchdown, which allows you to set the font in the settings.
Been using it live for a bit more than a week now and am mighty impressed. Well worth the investment to not make it blaringly obvious that I'm answering my emails from the phone when I'm not in my office.
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I am surprised you find this a big deal especially when MOST mobile corporate mail user are armed with Blackberries that reply in plain text and actually advertise by default "sent from my Blackberry".
In this day and age, it is perfectly acceptable if not expected that you will have your email with you on the move. Don't try and hide the fact, shout about it so your customers can see how up to date you are.
Unless....
You are supposed to be cubicle bound and are sneaking out of the office hoping nobody will notice

@MARK said:
I am surprised you find this a big deal especially when MOST mobile corporate mail user are armed with Blackberries that reply in plain text and actually advertise by default "sent from my Blackberry".
In this day and age, it is perfectly acceptable if not expected that you will have your email with you on the move. Don't try and hide the fact, shout about it so your customers can see how up to date you are.
Unless....
You are supposed to be cubicle bound and are sneaking out of the office hoping nobody will notice
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Blackberry is a uniquely American affair that only recently began making headway in the rest of the world. They were the first to offer pushmail, but now that's ubiquitous and their solution requires servers at the operator which delayed things internationally. Now that numerous free solutions are available and Exchange offers html email support, it's just silly not to use it. Ultimately I think the user should be able to decide how his or her email looks and I for one think having the same look and feel across the board for email, regardless whether desktop or mobile gives a much more professional impression. Not only that, but many people find fonts like Times New Roman difficult to read.
For my part, I'm a freelancer and do most of my work odd hours and weekends, while I receive all my orders from 8-6. That means that I'm often out and about or can't be bothered to crack open the laptop just to answer an email, but I still want to be able to offer a polished impression - not have any potentially dislectic client have to struggle to read my email, or worse, have the guy shackled to a desk deciding whether or not to give me a huge assignment thinking that I'm always out playing (especially since I average 70 hours a week, though not always during the business day).
Moreover, it's not rocket science to implement this kind of option, just a single line of html inserted into the emails sent. It shouldn't be difficult to provide this to customers and I'm glad Touchdown realised this.

Quist said:
Blackberry is a uniquely American affair that only recently began making headway in the rest of the world.
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I am not sure what country you are in but certainly in Europe BB is huge and has been for at least the last 5 or 6 years. Here in the UK, I cannot think of any of the FTSE100 companies I work with for who BB is the primary mobile email solution.
They were the first to offer pushmail, but now that's ubiquitous and their solution requires servers at the operator which delayed things internationally. Now that numerous free solutions are available and Exchange offers html email support, it's just silly not to use it
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I tend to agree but BB is embeded in corporate land and is going to take a lot of shifting
Ultimately I think the user should be able to decide how his or her email looks
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Only if it is the users own email. Remember that most mobile email users are using their companies mail platform so it is the companies choice not theirs.

Related

Looking to buy, need advice on Blackberry features please

Hi all, I'm looking to buy either the XDA IIs or the PDA2K. Firstly, which one would you all recommend?
Secondly, my main reason for wanting this is that I have a phone and a Blackberry today (connecting to my companies Blackberry email server). If I go with one of these, will I still be able to collect my company email or do I have to use O2's email service and forward my work mails to it?
For those of you who have used a Blackberry before, how does the BB features on these devices compare? Is it easy to use etc..
Thanks in advance.
Re: Looking to buy, need advice on Blackberry features pleas
saldous said:
Hi all, I'm looking to buy either the XDA IIs or the PDA2K. Firstly, which one would you all recommend?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no difference in the hardware between the XDAIIs and PDA2k except cosmetic differences. the PDA2K is silver and the XDAIIs is black
The differences are in the ROMs which are shipped with each unit, however if you read this site you can find ways of installing different ROMs onto different suppliers machines
saldous said:
Secondly, my main reason for wanting this is that I have a phone and a Blackberry today (connecting to my companies Blackberry email server). If I go with one of these, will I still be able to collect my company email or do I have to use O2's email service and forward my work mails to it?
For those of you who have used a Blackberry before, how does the BB features on these devices compare? Is it easy to use etc..
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are mixed reports regarding blackberry support. Some people report it as working fine with Blackberry Connect for Internet mail, whilst others report its not working. As long as your BES server supports the client, and your price plan will allow you to connect to a corporate BES server, then there should be no problem.
Personally, I've not been able to get it going, mainly due to having to convince the company to add me to the BES server and also with getting the software talking to the desktop manager.
Thanks for your reply. Yes my first question was mainly around the software but if you can install from one to another etc. then great as from what I have read the PDA2K has newer drivers etc.. for the radio.
The Blackberry piece is what concerns me the most as this is the main reason for getting it.
One final point, I urrently have an iPaq in the car with TOMTOM3 on. Can I put TOMTOM3 on the XDA ok as well?
From your experience, should I buy one of these devices or wait for something better to come out? I head there may be a smaller version of the PDA2K down the line?
Blackberry Attachment Limits (Caveat Emptor)
Just to add to the debate I am on the T-Mobile BB Instant Email flavour service not BES.
It has now become apparent that attachments received or sent using the BB Instant service on my MDA III (i.e. XDA 2s/PDA 2K etc) cannot be above 36kb or something like that. Also it cannot handle scanned documents etc. In my job I deal with 50 page plus word documents so this is a killer.
T-Mobile informed me that they weren't aware of this limitation when selling me my price plan. To be fair they are being very helpful and their customer service is excellent.
We have discussed putting me onto my corporate server (Vodafone BES) which can apparently easily be done (provided we have a licence at the Server level). I will have to see what our IT guy says about that ! :wink: There is also a charge though on the device side of £35 per month (the instant email is £10).
T-Mobile are also checking whether there are any inherent device/software restrctions on attachments on either the Instant Email or Enterprise service. I cannot believe this is an inherent device issue, as Rim hardware is much less sophisticated than the Pocket PC version.
The moral of the story is check the small print and the service very carefully.
Anyone's help and advice would be appreciated.
J
Can I put TOMTOM3 on the XDA ok as well?
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TOMTOM3 work fine on my XDA2s - that's why I bought one rtathaer than any other phone; I wanted a PDA & phone all-in-one that could support a SatNav system
Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 08:41 Post subject: Looking to buy, need advice on Blackberry features please
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi all, I'm looking to buy either the XDA IIs or the PDA2K. Firstly, which one would you all recommend?
Secondly, my main reason for wanting this is that I have a phone and a Blackberry today (connecting to my companies Blackberry email server). If I go with one of these, will I still be able to collect my company email or do I have to use O2's email service and forward my work mails to it?
For those of you who have used a Blackberry before, how does the BB features on these devices compare? Is it easy to use etc..
Thanks in advance.
/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I currently have an xdaIIs, which I got a great deal on with O2, but in hindsight and if you can afford it, I would probably go with the PDA2K. Reasons? Well it appears that iMate are quicker to come out with ROM updates and fixes and it seems as a result these device are a bit more stable out of the box. The xda IIs with O2 Active interface on is particularly unstable and O2 (and most everyone on this forum) recommends using this device in 'corporate mode" This is simply done by selecting the corporate mode option when prompted toward the end of the set up process. This deactivates the O2 Active interface and makes the device more stable (i.e. less soft resets needed)
On Blackberry service, I had used it exyensively on my old xda II with T-Mobile USA. I was using the BWC rather than BES version and found it to be very fast and reliable. A couple of problems with it that I found:
1. Could not get any attachemnets to download form the T-Mobile Server
2. The "Sounds and Notifications" function was very poor. You could not set an audible, repeating alert on the device, as the blackberry client did not show up as an option in the sounds and notifications settings dialogue box..
There have been a lot of fos try to install the Blackberry CAB files on the XDA IIs, without much success of making them work. There are certainly some integration issues to ovbercome here with the device and the Blackberry client. Some sevice providers are including it in there ROM and supporting it now, but many are still not. O2 have been working for some time on a new ROM for the XDA IIs, but its release has been delayed again as there are still issues with the Blackberry client integration. Latest I heard is that it will not be out before July at this point... In the meantime, I use Smartners "Always on Mail" web client (www.alwaysonmail.com) as an alternative. You can try it free for 2 months and its $49 per year thereafter. It supports attachments and is almost as fast as Blackberry (18 seconds slower per message on random tests I have done). Also gives you the ability to set a repeating audible alert. I would say the service if pretty reliable overall, although some users have noted that it occasionally does not forward a message. I have had a couple like that and it appears that some spam filtering is going on somewhere. Altogether though a pretty good altrenative and a fair beit cheaper.
Hope this helps
Regards
Chris
T-Mobile BB Instant Email Attachments
See my mail above. Although I am speaking about the UK the same will no doubt apply to T-Mobile US.
What it comes down to is this - support for attachments is very limited on the BB Instant Email Connect Service. You need to do your homework very thoroughly before signing up.
In its favour - if you are just receiving emails without attachments or simple rtf attachments you will be fine.
As I keep saying learn from my mistakes and check out the usage restrictions on the service very carefully.
:wink:
J
My company has a BES server so I just need to connect it to that. Does that work?
I keep hearing people say that they have the Blackberry Connect for Pocket PC on these devices. Are any of them the English version and could you please post a link here?
Thanks a Bunch!
Raptor
For the xda II or xda IIs..??
XDA III iMate PDA 2K aka Siemens Sx66
No, sorry :-[ Latest I heard from O2 is that itwould be July, as they were still experiencing some issues with the integration of the Blackberry software with the xda IIs ROM...
It seems the T-Mobile MDA III in germany may have it now, so hopefully we won't be far away.
In the meantime try Smartners push mail (www.alwaysonmail.com) for siimilar functionality (free 2 month trial) Use this in conjunction with pocketmax AlarmToday, which has a WM 2003 wake up fix so the mail gets through even when the device is off.
Hope that helps
Regards
Chris
Thanks, but I need Blackberry, trying to turn my all in one device (iMate PDA 2K into an all in one device and quit carrying multiple devices on my belt...
Yes, thats what I do. All my group use Blackberry's. I keep that address and just have the e-mails forwarded to the account smartner uses and then respond from the PPC..
T-Mobile UK Released Blackberry months ago/News Rom Update
Just to clear up the confusion T-Mobile UK launched Blackberry Connect (called Instant Email in T-Mobile speak) on the MDA III months ago.
They have stolen a march on all the UK Operators on the MDAIII. The update is unofficial (in that they have been posting it out on request).
The Rom was uploaded to Wiki. As yet I don't believe anyone has it working with a non T-Mobile device.
I only wish they would be as frequent with the ROM updates. However I am told a new ROM update is imminent (my contact says end June).
Here's hoping as it is my birthday soon.... :wink:
We have a mix of Blackberry users and Good Technology users. Good Technology has a product that IMHO run circles around RIM. The server software works almost exactly the same as the BES (encrypted push technology), but the cost for the server is $0.00 (unlike the BES which can range from $1,500 to over $3,000) and it is specifically designed for PocketPCs with Wifi, PocketPC Phones and the Palm Treo. The client is a 1 or 2 year subscription which comes out to about $28.00 a month for 12 months. With my t-mobile umlimited data plan @$29.00 a month, it roughly comes out to around the same as the monthly blackberry service.
The Good client has it's own email, calendar, notes and tasks applications that is a wireless direct sync to your exchange server mailbox (no active sync required). You can tell it to add additional email folders to sync, not just the inbox, outbox and send items. It shows you every email folder in your mailbox, but will only show the emails if you either move the mail from the good client, or you have setup the folder for sync. My PDA2K phone app goes right into the good contacts or I can click on a phone number in an email or in my contacts and directly call the number. If you have any contact public folders, it will allow you to add them to your contacts application. It also lets you backup the client on to PDA storage or a card. If you do a hard reset, it takes minutes to reinstall using the recovery backup.
If your interested in this, you can go to www.good.com to get more information.
If your IT department has any reservations about this, let me know. I am the Director of IT for my company and swear by this. Their Customer Service and support are fantasic, the units are easy to setup and I have literally gone on to my Good Server twice in the last twelve months (the two times was to do the server upgrades which are also free AND easy)
Sorry if I sound like a sales rep, but this is a great piece of software.
Thanks for the info Tekhound. But my company has already invested in a BES server that has been running for some time and they won't change it.
tekhound said:
We have a mix of Blackberry users and Good Technology users. Good Technology has a product that IMHO run circles around RIM. The server software works almost exactly the same as the BES (encrypted push technology), but the cost for the server is $0.00 (unlike the BES which can range from $1,500 to over $3,000) and it is specifically designed for PocketPCs with Wifi, PocketPC Phones and the Palm Treo. The client is a 1 or 2 year subscription which comes out to about $28.00 a month for 12 months. With my t-mobile umlimited data plan @$29.00 a month, it roughly comes out to around the same as the monthly blackberry service.
The Good client has it's own email, calendar, notes and tasks applications that is a wireless direct sync to your exchange server mailbox (no active sync required). You can tell it to add additional email folders to sync, not just the inbox, outbox and send items. It shows you every email folder in your mailbox, but will only show the emails if you either move the mail from the good client, or you have setup the folder for sync. My PDA2K phone app goes right into the good contacts or I can click on a phone number in an email or in my contacts and directly call the number. If you have any contact public folders, it will allow you to add them to your contacts application. It also lets you backup the client on to PDA storage or a card. If you do a hard reset, it takes minutes to reinstall using the recovery backup.
If your interested in this, you can go to www.good.com to get more information.
If your IT department has any reservations about this, let me know. I am the Director of IT for my company and swear by this. Their Customer Service and support are fantasic, the units are easy to setup and I have literally gone on to my Good Server twice in the last twelve months (the two times was to do the server upgrades which are also free AND easy)
Sorry if I sound like a sales rep, but this is a great piece of software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Tekhound
Sounds interesting... Does Good Server support showing messages as D delivered and R read, in the same way as the RIM pagers do?
Regards
Chris
Thanks Tekhound, I agree, GoddLink service is fantastic. I was using Good on my xda III when I worked @ Cingular and had only high remarks for it. Unfortunately when leaving for one of the parent companies they only use BES so GoodLink service is not an option.
And BTW, no no delivered, read, delete receipts as RIM devices.
Raptor
Chris...
I'm not sure exactly how the rim pager does it, but I will tell you how the goodlink works:
Since the client by default syncs the Inbox, Outbox, Deleted Items and Sent Items from the Exchange mailbox, it works EXACTLY like Outlook. Once you compose a message and hit send, it goes to the outbox and the client checks to see if it has a connection to the net (keeping in mind that the current version supports regular PocketPCs with WiFi as well as PocketPC Phones). When the message is successfully sent, it puts a copy of the message into the sent items folder of the PDA. While all of this is going on with the PDA, the good server is updating the mailbox itself. I tested one day and it normally updated the mailbox within 2 minutes of makes changes on the PDA, with as little as one signal bar.
If you read a message in the PDA, it marks it as read in Outlook and vice versa. Same goes for deleting messages, but unlike outlook, it does not have a permenant delete. It will go into the deleted items folder in both the PDA and outlook when you delete it from goodlink. The good thing though is that unlike the RIM, the goodlink server understands permenant deleted items and will not orphan messages like the RIM. My policy is that all of my staff have the checkbox for "empty deleted items folder" upon exiting outlook EXCEPT for my RIM users because the way the BES operates.
Options in a new goodlink email message includes the options for Delvery Receipt, Read Receipt, High, Normal and Low importance on version 3.7 up to the current version 4.0. Accept, Tentative and Deny options are available on goodlink for things like meeting requests. I have not checked whether a task request works the same way.
You have your Outlook contacts sync wirelessly as well as the ability to do a LDAP lookup in your exchange global address list. A nice feature is that it not only remembers those you lookup like the RIM, but it also remembers everyone you receive a message from kinda like the autocomplete feature in outlook, but it's also available in the contacts list and not just in the new message.
I will stop this book now in the hopes I have answered your questions. Please let me know if you want any further information. As I mentioned in the earlier post, the server is free, so your only investment is a machine that will run Windows NT, 2000 or 2003 and the OS license. It doesn't have to be this powerful machine. You could use a PIII with 512 of RAM if you wanted. I actually have both my BES and my Good Server on two VMs (Virtual Machines) running on a PIII single processor Dell Blade Server with 1GB of RAM. They run smooth as silk with no problems.

Stop waiting for BlackBerry connect, Pocket MSN is better

If any of you of you guys are like me you've been waiting for BlackBerry connect to work for the blueangel forever. I have downloaded the software and fiddled with it a million times, the fact of the matter is that it only works for Tmobile UK right now. The rest of us are screwed. But there is an alternative, microsoft has recently release pocket MSN, it works exactly like the blackberry web client, except that after the initial 19.99 fee it is completely FREE!!!!!!. Unlike other push email alternatives where although you might get a few months grace period they are pay services. Pocket MSN pushes your hotmail account directly to your phone, and no text messaging BS like activesync AUTD. its actual push email. You can either foward your email to hotmail, or have your hotmail account search you pop mail boxes. And plus since microsft makes the phones operating system and has access to the source codes, Pocket MSN works seamlessly with the phone. Now that I finish telling the benefits, the downsides is the fact that there is no alert sound when an email comes in, or at least I dont know how to set it up. Another downside is the fact the there is no way for it to push you coporate email, unless you foward your coporate email to hotmail, which is a security risk. Another downside is having to create a hotmail account, but then again you have to create a blackberry account when using blackberry web client. The last downside the I can think of is the 19.99 freaking fee!!!, I guess a one time payment is better the monthly payments that most companies charge. Tell me what you guys think, I think its worth though
^-- thanks for the infomation. This would be an asset so long as it isn't a spamware of some kind and as long as I don't get any spams from MSN.
Is there a email server script that would do the same thing if one owns there own unix server? I will research on this, but just in case someone out there knows the answer.
So what your telling me is that:
* Pocket MSN works with my companies Corporate eMail services
* Pocket MSN works with my companies iPager (Interactive Pager) service
* that my companies multi thousand dollar BES infrastructure can utilize Pocket MSN
* That As a message is delivered to the system you get a notification
* That as a message is delivered to a user I get a notification
* As the user reads the message I get a notification
* As the user deletes the message I get a notification
* That it is instant and ready for corporate usage
* That I can attach an intranet link (not InterNET) and the receiving party can then access that link over the PocketMSN network
Or are you telling me that you nor your company do not highly depend on these features..... because ours (Large telecom company) lives, breathes, and dies by these little devices.
Thanks for your advice on PocketMSN, however I WANT and Need Blackberry Connect for Pocket PC, regardless if you are happy with PocketMSN or not.
I hope all that use and depend on the blackberry devices will continue to borrow, test, and hack the software until one of us gets it working. That's what this board is for.
Raptor
Hmm, I don't think Pocket MSN is implying on changing the face of such technology. Some of us home users don't have the capital to run a service such as yours, nor do we even use your network. I am looking for a free altrenative that works correctly with no string attached. The key word is "alternatrive", NOT replacement.
Yes I understand, was just commenting on then first comment to "Stop waiting for BlackBerry connect". I know there are other services (such I am currently using XpressMail), but those of us who are waiting on the Blackberry Connect for Pocket PC...... need just that and no other service will suffice.
Raptor said:
Yes I understand, was just commenting on then first comment to "Stop waiting for BlackBerry connect". I know there are other services (such I am currently using XpressMail), but those of us who are waiting on the Blackberry Connect for Pocket PC...... need just that and no other service will suffice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasn't aware PocketMSN was pushware. Refuse to pay £20 for the software when it will be free with magneto devices.
Patience on BB - I have been using the latest version, and all indications are that it's mostly good.... as far as BB ever goes on a non-RIM device....
8)
Might not be BES but still great software
Hey Raptor, yeah ok I understand that if your going to use blackberry to the fullest extent, then pocket MSN or any alternative does not nearly match up. But alot of us only use the most fundamental features of blackberry email, and for that this software seems to be more then enough, as a matter of fact, for those of us who only use blackberry web client, I find Pocket MSN is just as good if not better, paying 20 bucks for the software really sucked especially for a cheap ass like me. But I am not paying any extra monthly fee. Which is good. So this software might not be suitable for your coporate "MEGA" company. But for blackberry Web Client users this software is a great substitute maybe a replacement, I am not sure why microsoft did not offer this for free. Usually when microsoft tries to bully other companies to the ground (Lotus 123, Netscape, Real Audio) they give it away.
Not as cheap as me... Whenever I need to check my Hotmail, I go to http://mobile.msn.com/pocketpc/ and read my Hotmail for free...
Hope the Pocket MSN pushed email feature comes with message notification. If not, it's no better than going to the link above...
For something that's "in the middle groud" try Smartners "always on mail" (www.alwaysonmail.com) 2 months free then $4 per month. True push e-mail, so no need to keep checking e-mail accounts..
To fix the alarm and wake up problems I recommend trying Pockmax AlarmToday and PhoneAlarm (www.pocketmax.net). Great apps and great tech support form Bruce!
For something that's "in the middle groud" try Smartners "always on mail" (www.alwaysonmail.com) 2 months free then $4 per month. True push e-mail, so no need to keep checking e-mail accounts..
To fix the alarm and wake up problems I recommend trying Pockmax AlarmToday and PhoneAlarm (www.pocketmax.net). Great apps and great tech support form Bruce!
Questions About Pocket MSN
For those who have tried Pocket MSN, a few questions:
- How does this app impact battery life?
- Has anybody been able to get audible alerts working?
- Are you positive this does not rely on test messages/autd?
Thanks in advance.
David
Re: Questions About Pocket MSN
davpel said:
For those who have tried Pocket MSN, a few questions:
- How does this app impact battery life?
- Has anybody been able to get audible alerts working?
- Are you positive this does not rely on test messages/autd?
Thanks in advance.
David
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does it impact battery life, yes i guess it does. Because technically your leaving your gprs data connection on all the time. But if you compare it to checking your email every ten minutes then its way better. AS for audible alerts i have not been able to figure that out as of yet. And yes i am positive that there are no text messages, it is purely data based
To Raptor - chill out - nobody is planning to take your toys away. We aint curing cancer here.
Thanks for the quick reply. One more question. Do you know whether you can specify a "reply to" address for replying to messages recieved on your device via Hotmail? The reason that I ask is that if I go this route, I will set up a Hotmail account and have it pull my mail from my normal email accounts via POP/IMAP, but when I reply by phone, I don't want the Hotmail address showing. I know that I can do this with the standard Pocket Outlook mailbox and with the autd/exchange solution.
If this works for me, I guess the crappy thing is that it will cost me about 40 bucks. 19 fo Pocket MSN, and then another 19 yearly for Hotmail Plus since, as far as I can tell, Microsoft now makes you get a Plus account if you want to be able to have your Hotmail account pull from POP/IMAP. Kind of crappy, if you ask me. Yahoo!'s free service includes POP/IMAP.
David
Couldn't you just set up a forward from your pop3 account to hotmail?
Yes, forwarding will work. But then if I hit "reply" to the message, it will send the reply to my POP account rather than the actual sender -- at least, that's what I assume will happen.
To Raptor - chill out - nobody is planning to take your toys away. We aint curing cancer here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Obviously you do not understand.... with better communications programs we are much closer to curing caner and a host of other diseases....

[General] How do you people value your own information?

I'm asking this because after the Sony/SOE hacking (which I am somewhat affected by), it's got me thinking.
There are some online services that I've been trying to remove myself form (since before that happened), and companies make it virtually impossible in some cases to get themselves removed from these services.
The biggest example is Facebook. It's literally impossible to remove yourself from facebook. It gives you no decent way to see a list of Pages you have "Liked" and there is no way to remove all of your posts from the site.
Twitter makes this easy... Foursquare makes this easy. Loopt makes this easy...
But it seems companies that are big into Advertising make it as hard as possible for you to decouple yourself form them.
Slacker and Pandora have no such option to remove yourself from those sites after you create your account (and it's impossible to purge your personal information from them unless yo go through hoops and bounds to do so). Contrarily, Last.FM makes it as easy as a button click and some confirmations.
Yahoo! and Google make it easy to delete accounts, but Windows Live basically leaves the account sitting there for something like 4-6 months before it's deleted...
Provided there are decent confirmations, I think any online services should allow any user who willingly signed up for it to willingly walk away from it, and take their personal data and information with them. It seems like a huge power grab by the industry to lock users into them and own our information...
I've already written my Congressman and Senator following an issue with AOL where it took literally weeks of constant phones calls for them to delete my old accounts that I haven't used in forever. Finally they agreed to "waive" the "we don't delete accounts" rule because I was in the military for years following the account creation and they had it on record since I canceled my AOL service that I was doing so because I was being deployed back then...
What do people think. Do you think it's cool that companies expect to own our information after we sign up for their services and make it extremely difficult if not outright impossible to decouple ourselves from them?
Or do you want to be denied a job (or admissions into a university) because you posted something tasteless or inflamatory on facebook one night? (yes, universitiy admissions are starting to check social networks)?
For the past 3 months or so I've been trying to close down all these unneeded services that I have subscribed to in the past, and have been met with several brick walls.
It's even impossible to delete accounts on forums these days, which is uber laughable as well...
I'm thinking about quitting facebook, but getting all my stuff off of there is looking like an impossible task...
EDIT: Pandora finally got around to deleting my account... But I did send them like 5 emails today before they got around to it at 10:50 PM (first contacted them like 2 months ago).
I agree with you that all services you willingly sign up for should be as easy to leave as they were to join, it makes sense.
I'm on Facebook, several tech forums, I use several cloud based services (mail etc.) and I try not to post too many things that would make me look bad.
Facebook has by far been the most problematic to get off, you can deactivate your account but not really remove it.
/J
that's a funny question. It's not ha ha funny but it's funny to jump through those hoops. As far as information shared, on social networking, I know its vitally important to keep professionalism especially in clinical psychology. Personally, if my posts aren't related to tech or anime, I don't post it on social networking. I call a person, I write an angry email or something, but rarely do I kvetch on a social networking platform. Because it's a bad idea...
I mean I have opened a second fb account and surprisingly my first FB is still open. It doesn't bother me because it is "dead" for all intents and purposes. Honestly I just really don't mind it personally, but again that's just me. I'm not the type to post inflammatory material. I guess its different strokes.
However, I do agree, it should be easy to delete your own account. But I have to correct you on yahoo specifically. You can recover the account if its deleted. It's rather easy and I've done it multiple times. I think after a year (for yahoo specifically) then its gone. But otherwise, nope it's still there.
Yahoo! gave me an instant way to delete my account hte last time I did it. It was instant, with no recovery. I checked immediately afterwards when I did it and there was no way to recover the account. Perhaps that is a new development.
Both Yahoo! and Google allow you instant account deletion (or did, IRT the former). Microsoft keeps the accounts for something like 120 days (used to be 45, then 60, etc.) and AOL seemingly keeps them forever because the account I had to go through the run-around to delete hadn't been used for years (almost a decade), but had a ton of personal information on it that I couldn't change because I didn't remember an old secret answer so I couldn't even log in to get it off there (I used to have AOL internet access).
I went back and deleted almost all of my posts on Facebook. It took over 6 hours because you have to personally track down every comment you've made on the site (including those on walls of people no longer on your friend's list). This is intentionally convoluded compared to Twitter, where all of your tweets and retweets are there in a list and it took like 5 minutes to delete them...
As much as I despise Facebook's practice of making accounts hard to delete I've been wondering for a while if it is a result of a fragile database structure they are using. N8ter 's description of having to manually remove comments all over the place makes me wonder if Facebook's database structure has some sort of vulnerability to having data scattered in so many places removed.
Granted, it's prolly more likely they make it difficult because they can.
What do you mean, "you people"?
Nice one
Suppose I.walked right into that
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
So... let me get this straight,
You signed on to privately owned websites, handed over private information/made incriminating posts (in any capacity)... and now you're complaining about it?
In boardroom meetings in those companies, people like you are punchlines.
Nothing on the internet is private. Let me repeat that; nothing on the internet is private.
Learn it, know it, love it.
I think your missing the point.
Facebook makes it almost impossible for people to leave after they've used the service a lot. You have to track down every comment and wall post and delete them one by one, among other things before they will delete your account.
Blacker flat out refuses to delete accounts even after several emails. They don't consider email private information... ... ...
Other services just make it impossible. Google voice makes it impossible ti remove the service or your phone number. Aol generally flat out refuses to delete accounts. Windows live wants your info to stay there for six months.
Its not about it not being private, its about me not having a choice in whether or not my personal info sits on their server.
Having a ton of extra accounts increases spam email, among other things...
Hope that cleared up my stance a bit...
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
N8ter said:
The biggest example is Facebook. It's literally impossible to remove yourself from facebook. It gives you no decent way to see a list of Pages you have "Liked"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought you could see those pages in "Download Your Information"
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18830
N8ter said:
I think your missing the point.
Facebook makes it almost impossible for people to leave after they've used the service a lot. You have to track down every comment and wall post and delete them one by one, among other things before they will delete your account.
Blacker flat out refuses to delete accounts even after several emails. They don't consider email private information... ... ...
Other services just make it impossible. Google voice makes it impossible ti remove the service or your phone number. Aol generally flat out refuses to delete accounts. Windows live wants your info to stay there for six months.
Its not about it not being private, its about me not having a choice in whether or not my personal info sits on their server.
Having a ton of extra accounts increases spam email, among other things...
Hope that cleared up my stance a bit...
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
honestly, I know what you mean. Its very annoying and frustrating. But just take it all as a lesson that these are all private companies. Neither you or I have any right to an expectation of privacy. Its a hard truth to face. My Facebook profile is as dry as a bone. I never post or submit any info I wouldn't be comfortable with the whole world knowing.
Until there is a government-run social networking platform, just understand that.
Tone_ said:
I thought you could see those pages in "Download Your Information"
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18830
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No. That's only to download your pictures, videos, and stuff like that if you want a hard copy or to put it on another social network/profile.
For example, if you want to put all your facebook stuff on your Windows Live Profile, but they don't exist on your computer/smartphone anymore...
Also, that won't remove the ridiculous amount of manual labor involved in tracking down every comment/wall post and deleting them one by one...
All that information is trivially seen by clicking on "Profile" at the Facebook homepage. It shows all your activity. But you should be able to remove it by clicking on the X. Right now, you have to go to every page, track that comment down (sometimes in a sea of 1k+ comments), and manually delete it. Some of those comment feeds are so damn large, that they can crash some users' browsers or slow them to a crawl.

Mango messaging... the downside

The mango messaging system seems nice and all, but I really wonder why they did not keep it seperated.
I had my doubts and than I read this article http://wmpoweruser.com/mango-and-messaging-we-have-a-problem/ which sums up some more issues.
Basically my biggest problem is that we send more important stuff trough SMS it has a much higher value than an IM. So whenever somebody smsses an adress, i will need to scroll trough 100s of IMs which I can not clear since the address is still there in one of those messages.
Second: the media are different, you can not expect the other user to switch to FB chat to MSN than to sms because I want to change service, this still incorporate 3 different media for the majority of the users namely a WL desktop client, facebook webpage and a phone for regular texting (which also costs money so people will use it differently)
Third, we used msn when we were 12, now nobody uses it in my country but I would like to use FB chat... This is not possible, you can only switch off FB chat or switch off both. So the whole feature will be useless if I dont want to use msn/windows live messenger.
Notifications: what if smsses are inportant but IMs not, hopefully I will be able to receive a toast ONLY with sms messages and just let the IMs slide. Imagine receiving 100 messages every 10 minutes it will drive you nuts. And here comes the next problem when there is an important sms inbetween you dont know who send it, because if you open up messages they all look the same so you dont know who texted you (important) or has send you and im (which has less priority).
I wish they can make a new tab for the im conversations or atleast filter the thread down on ALL / SMS / IM. As it is now, it will be nice for kids but if you are 16+ it will become a major pain to find what is important and what is just spam.
The system right now is shortsighted and of poor value. an implementation like blackberry's is better. SMS is a different system, mail is a different system, IM is as well, you all respond differently on each one of them. It should be possible to mannage each seperately. Now ill have to be always offline and rely on third party just to im trough FB which kills the use of this native feature, but SMS messages are just to important to blend with the IMs.
This is all speculation to be fair, they have beta testers so if there are issues with notifications they will probably be aware of these. I'm happy to use a separate messaging client and keep my messaging hub for sms only as long as WLM is allowed again in IM+ and others. That would just make things easy.
On a side note people should stop complaining that nobody uses WLM, enough with that, it's the most used IM client in the world!
I'm not 12 andstill this is my number one choice for IM as I barely use my facebook account and it has integrated facebook chat anyway.
fair (and while I wrote the article)
one major issue with being in a beta of anything is that it takes time for testing and that's huge. I mean looking at Adam Lein and others, the sms interface was a bit bare and naked - save from the actual threaded view.
In nodo, we have seen the issue of some lag in the SMS window (not nearly as bad as windows mobile, but still very noticeable) and there needs to be some richer options for recall, optimization and trash collection.
I love the idea for having a central messaging hub that integrates the services I use most (microsoft specifically). I still use MSN and it's my favorite messaging tool (I used yahoo early in college, and AIM in high school) so I use MSN a lot.
The notification I don't feel is a huge issue (as Eldar contends). There are far more bigger problems with the SMS view from a variety of different contexts. All in all, there may be a big problem. I doubt it will be solved till Apollo but that is definitely a worse case scenario.
I mean yes, the sms lag is better in nodo, but not by much
One thing to note, if you dont want to use WLM or Facebook chat just change the method of communication to SMS. There is absolutely nothing forcing you to send IM's if YOU dont want to, its only there as a convenience to WP7 users so you can continue your conversation across the different mediums seamlessly. Just because someone is online on Facebook chat or WLM doesnt mean you cant just send an SMS if that is your preference.
efjay said:
One thing to note, if you dont want to use WLM or Facebook chat just change the method of communication to SMS. There is absolutely nothing forcing you to send IM's if YOU dont want to, its only there as a convenience to WP7 users so you can continue your conversation across the different mediums seamlessly. Just because someone is online on Facebook chat or WLM doesnt mean you cant just send an SMS if that is your preference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know. Thats not the problem. But it will render the built in IM useless if disabled.
The problem is the communication trough SMS is totally different than the communication trough IM. Which will occur on different devices still for the majority out there. An SMS to me is still a high priority thing in some cases, if you want to make an appointment it works fine trough sms, however if its cluttered with all IM's from other users and stuff Im afraid one can easily get lost in the received messages and not find the IM of the appointment when looking for it or trying to find it again after you have read it.
Having IMs seperated (which are in general sended way more frequently with less important stuff than SMS) would be better because now the user can decide to use the built in IM and keep it seperated from the SMS OR mix them in a thread if he/she desires. But one will still have the advantage of starting an IM out of the people hub.
Also I know you dont have to use it, I've seen all the demo's and read about it. But the thing is what if I want to use it but just Facebook and what if I still want to see my SMS messages seperated. Using just FB chat is not possible atm, it will also pull up your WLM contacts, it would be totally cool if I could set MSN status as offline and FB status as online, but as it looks right now its only possible the other way around...
To explain the problem in more detail
Picture this: you have the device in your pocket, its fine if people want to contact me trough Facebook, but if somebody sends me an SMS with the appointmet and half an hour later starts talking to me on FB chat (because he/she is on FB than), I check my phone and the SMS with the appointment has sunk all the way down since there have been 10 new IM's from this person.
Its easy to lose/forget the valuable information if you can not check your phone every minute.
Dont get me wrong, its a feature with great potential but as of now, it will need more control over the different services (individual statusses per service) and some way to filter out the SMS messages and hide the IM or vica versa.
This feature will benefit a lot more when it would also be possible for whatapp to be integrated, which resembles the SMS a lot better than IM.
Maybe Microsoft could add a filter option? For example, when the SMS filter is toggled it would only show text messages as well send only text messages .
@Marvin_S: You could come across the same situation if you get a lot of SMS's as well, same as with email. I see your point but making them separate just makes it messier, having to switch back and forth to send messages and having to determine where a new message is. If you start adding separate notifications for each protocol then it becomes even more complex to implement and manage.
Much easier to have all the messages on one screen and you can easily just scroll to find what you want and not have to try and figure out by which method the message was delivered.
SMS isn't just for important conversations. There is a reason why people run through thousands of SMS in a month nowadays, and its not because they are really important. Its because people use SMS the same way they use IM, to chat.
If you are getting something really important in an SMS (like an appointment), it might make sense to copy it over into a task or your calendar.
nice work !http://media.xda-developers.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
Why would it make anything messier? It should be optional ofcourse, so it will only help those who will need to keep it organised.
Well SMS and IM are very different. That some of us use it the same way is a choice of course, just like some people chose to use it as different media to communicate.
You can NOT receive IM's if you dont want to receive it (OFFLINE) and the other party will not be able to send you one, while with SMS it will be sent whenever somebody desires and will be read whenever the reader has the time (always delivered --> higher priority/value).
This for me is a fundamental difference and makes SMS more reliable for appointments or letting somebody know where you are on the go.
And I just wondered why MS chose to do it this way, while all the other platforms have these forms of communication seperated.
I can see this having a good and a bad side, maybe I worry too much about the negative aspect, but it can be solved easily by providing us with some more settings to have more control over how we want to receive our IM's and Texts.
Like sheltem said a switch or a pivot with All/IM/Text will make it simple for the user to narrow its search down. And maybe defaulting it to All (like email, All/unread/flag) and having the same interface to delete IM's and texts will be great.
I have faith MS will come up with a solution which will satisfy both parties and I have full faith that they will...
thank god I didn't have to reiterate my position ad nauseum
I've been doing that since the article has been written and while I don't mind spirited debate of how windows phone is versus how it could be, it's like many users sorta either focused on Eldar's contentions, the notification, or the sms window and not the total sums of each argument.
As I said before, for us, geeks, there may not be much of an issue. But consider who/what microsoft is trying to target - everyone else. Place yourself in their shoes, and of course it can lead to some frustration and some easy mistakes from users thinking hey I sent it this way when in fact it came in another way - EVEN WITH THE TEXT/FACEBOOK option open.
I don't think there is anything wrong with an extra swipe gesture to switch mode of communication. It is almost the same thing microsoft is doing, but instead of it being in the menu setting, it is in the face of the user. And sometimes, that makes all of the difference.
I'm not knocking the idea or the service, but asking everyone to consider how people without windows phone may view it. And that empathy is important for Microsoft to make it a success. So it's not a knock at Microsoft or their intentions.
domineus said:
thank god I didn't have to reiterate my position ad nauseum
I've been doing that since the article has been written and while I don't mind spirited debate of how windows phone is versus how it could be, it's like many users sorta either focused on Eldar's contentions, the notification, or the sms window and not the total sums of each argument.
As I said before, for us, geeks, there may not be much of an issue. But consider who/what microsoft is trying to target - everyone else. Place yourself in their shoes, and of course it can lead to some frustration and some easy mistakes from users thinking hey I sent it this way when in fact it came in another way - EVEN WITH THE TEXT/FACEBOOK option open.
I don't think there is anything wrong with an extra swipe gesture to switch mode of communication. It is almost the same thing microsoft is doing, but instead of it being in the menu setting, it is in the face of the user. And sometimes, that makes all of the difference.
I'm not knocking the idea or the service, but asking everyone to consider how people without windows phone may view it. And that empathy is important for Microsoft to make it a success. So it's not a knock at Microsoft or their intentions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
It might sound really stupid and exaggerated, but I can assure you this will happen and it will be annoying to constantly switch back to SMS if you do really have to SMS. Having a seperate click in the people hub for sent IM, sent SMS, or a pivot in the messaging hub will totally rule out these errors.
But this is ofcourse the downside... and hopefully they come up with something smart and think a bit outside of the box. The system has great potential, no doubt.
Marvin_S said:
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
It might sound really stupid and exaggerated, but I can assure you this will happen and it will be annoying to constantly switch back to SMS if you do really have to SMS. Having a seperate click in the people hub for sent IM, sent SMS, or a pivot in the messaging hub will totally rule out these errors.
But this is ofcourse the downside... and hopefully they come up with something smart and think a bit outside of the box. The system has great potential, no doubt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know personally even though it says the service in a tiny font, I'll cry foul because of user error. Microsoft's main goal is to sorta cease some consensual user error not increase it. There are a variety of ideas to kick around
One comment noted a notification system in the messaging hub that indicates where the user messaged you at (like the notifications portion of the people hub) in conjunction with the swipe/pivot gestures to make a fairly good solution of which service the notification is coming from and keeping it organized.
Adding to that paradigm, I can still see how the initial chat window serves a function, as a unified way the person contacted you recently. And I have to be honest, that would be really a great and refined method of implementing a submessaging system full of notification and a clean user experience.
But to ask
does a swipe really complicate the user more than a tap setting>mode>switch service to (sms/facebook/msn)
I'm sorry, I don't see how a pivot is less complex than the system that is in mango already. replacing the finger taps for one or two pivots...
imho should've posted this write up on xda
Well the thing is MS has its vision of having everything related into a horzontal scrolling panorama. Which is absolutely great.
And they want you to use the settings menu as less as possible, so in this case yeah this switch setting (which I will be using frequently) will be more annoying since its click select close than type. While the pivot swiping to the right will get you into sms directly and the user will always stay in the same "level" or layer.
And it follows the consistency of the system this way.
You will have all the options with 1 just one pivot menu:
All (which is the way it works right now) / SMS / IM / Online
if you are on all, its the threaded view with default reply option as it is now. When swipe to the right it filters the messages down to sms only with reply as SMS.
Im the same but than reply as IM.
actally that too is a good point
Microsoft has made a unified design experience focusing on pivots and wipes with metro. The idea of tapping through settings is sadly reminescent of apple and android; somethign I don't really want to go back to anytime soon
Marvin_S said:
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree that there is the potential for a problem here. Ideally, the facebook connection would be detected as idle and the OS would choose the fallback method of SMS. I haven't used it so I can't say for sure how it handles this, I'd hope it is that good. Of course, that still leaves us with the potential for problems in the window that it takes for the user to go from online to idle/away. Not nearly as big of an issue though.
It all comes down to how accurately the software can determine a user's presence. If the OS automatically sends a message via Facebook because it knows the user is actively using Facebook then I don't think there is an issue.
Personally I think ms should just separate the all and using the metro theme, sperste elm, fb chat and SMS. So you just slide. I don't use wlm, and hardly use hotmail there spam filter is awful.
Sent from my 7 Mozart T8698 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Actually, hotmaii filters out spam just fine for me. Quite well, actually.
On topic. I think we should wait and see how this works in its entirety. I don't think it's going to be as big of an issue as you guys think it may be.
And, separating the services defeats the purpose of the threaded convo view in the first place.
PG2G said:
SMS isn't just for important conversations. There is a reason why people run through thousands of SMS in a month nowadays, and its not because they are really important. Its because people use SMS the same way they use IM, to chat.
If you are getting something really important in an SMS (like an appointment), it might make sense to copy it over into a task or your calendar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This.
Seriously. If you got something important to note you probably should learn to write it down or train your working memory to recall the info instead of relying so much on technology.
Marvin_S said:
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
It might sound really stupid and exaggerated, but I can assure you this will happen and it will be annoying to constantly switch back to SMS if you do really have to SMS. Having a seperate click in the people hub for sent IM, sent SMS, or a pivot in the messaging hub will totally rule out these errors.
But this is ofcourse the downside... and hopefully they come up with something smart and think a bit outside of the box. The system has great potential, no doubt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, interesting my reasonable response and the response of others would be to hit the line of communication the person would check the most which arguably is a person's self phone.
Too each his own for sure, but I don't think it's out of the norm or rather is the norm that people would message someone on their phone first, especially if going somewhere to meet someone.

WLM and Skydrive, *!Nokia Maps integration not only WP7

Thoughts
http://m.engadget.com/default/artic...id-ios-and-window/&category=mobile&postPage=1
I thought this was the biggest plus for WP7.
However the business side of me says smart move Microsoft. The user base of WP is too small to let this integration go unnoticed.
vetvito said:
Thoughts
http://m.engadget.com/default/artic...id-ios-and-window/&category=mobile&postPage=1
I thought this was the biggest plus for WP7.
However the business side of me says smart move Microsoft. The user base of WP is too small to let this integration go unnoticed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it works like WL currently works, there's really no point. Sure, WL will do some stuff. But it just isn't as integrated as it could be to gain a lot of following.
I remember Hotmail from a long time ago...in the early 2000s...that I used extensively. Hotmail was the main online email account. I had a lot of info stored in it...lots of mails, contacts and all kinds of stuff...and MS claimed they were doing some kind of system maintenance and everything was lost. My whole account, all accumulated files, mails contacts...everything...was gone. I stopped using MS services from that point. I felt they were trying to manipulate people into paying for the non-free service.
I have a MS email account, but it isn't trusted with important stuff that I can't cope losing. It wasn't me only. A friend I know that used Hotmail suffered the same thing.
Seems to intergrate only your contacts, photos and messenger (no office, music and other things stored on skydrive), it also would be restricted to an app not the same as it being intergrated into the phone.
MartyLK said:
If it works like WL currently works, there's really no point. Sure, WL will do some stuff. But it just isn't as integrated as it could be to gain a lot of following.
I remember Hotmail from a long time ago...in the early 2000s...that I used extensively. Hotmail was the main online email account. I had a lot of info stored in it...lots of mails, contacts and all kinds of stuff...and MS claimed they were doing some kind of system maintenance and everything was lost. My whole account, all accumulated files, mails contacts...everything...was gone. I stopped using MS services from that point. I felt they were trying to manipulate people into paying for the non-free service.
I have a MS email account, but it isn't trusted with important stuff that I can't cope losing. It wasn't me only. A friend I know that used Hotmail suffered the same thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have ZERO issues with my windows live account. don't know what's wrong with yours. so back off Gmail and google fanboy lárgate!
Had a Hotmail account since 2001, no problems ever.
efjay said:
Had a Hotmail account since 2001, no problems ever.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i Have mine since 2000 and no problem either
eric12341 said:
I have ZERO issues with my windows live account. don't know what's wrong with yours. so back off Gmail and google fanboy lárgate!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
whoa.... He didn't say anything about Gmail or gogle services in that post. Relax. He had a bad experience and holds a grudge
That's his prerogative.
Btw, I've also had a hotmail account since 2001, never had an issue.
Sent from my SGH-i917 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
munkeyphyst said:
whoa.... He didn't say anything about Gmail or gogle services in that post. Relax. He had a bad experience and holds a grudge
That's his prerogative.
Btw, I've also had a hotmail account since 2001, never had an issue.
Sent from my SGH-i917 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in other threads he has. he would always tot that his Gmail would instantly sync his contact info while windows live wouldn't ni matter if he edited it or not. I haven't had such an issue on my hotmail account but u can kinda see the undertone that was hinting that Gmail would handle this better.
Ok one more thing :
Nokia Maps now on Android and IOS. Thoughts ...
vetvito said:
Ok one more thing :
Nokia Maps now on Android and IOS. Thoughts ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nokia Maps has simply made their mobile maps site compatible with Android and iOS browsers, that is all. So yes, its not anything earth shattering, but Nokia Maps are simply now compatible with their browsers. We're expecting much deeper app-based and possibly even OS-level integration with Windows Phone, so it'll be a different experience with Windows Phone.
Also, the Windows Live integration on other platforms is only an API. Someone still has to build these apps for them, so they aren't available yet till someone makes an app, Microsoft is simply opening up Windows Live to be more accessible on other platforms. You still get top-notch integration with a Windows Phone 7 device.
eric12341 said:
in other threads he has. he would always tot that his Gmail would instantly sync his contact info while windows live wouldn't ni matter if he edited it or not. I haven't had such an issue on my hotmail account but u can kinda see the undertone that was hinting that Gmail would handle this better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there was no mention, or undertone of gmail in the entire thread, until you did. giving a persons personal experience isn't being a fanboy, or depreciating another service.
where did you pull that out of. anyway ?
hotmail account since 200x, but changed to omg-alternate-service and enjoy it.
I haven't really looked into it much but this sounds like a good idea. If the right tools/apps are developed, it can allow for a seamless experience no matter what devices you're using. Moving from one platform to another won't require a change of services. The SkyDrive stuff should be interesting, could allow it to become a better alternative to other cloud storage services.
Although all that could be completely wrong as I really didn't read the blog post. It just sounds like a good idea
I have had a Hotmail account since I beta tested the MSN Internet service in the mid 90s. My Hotmail is @msn.com. I have never had an issue with lost data that I didn't cause myself. Besides, now you can use the Outlook connector and store a copy of all your mail, contacts, and calendars locally.
I also find it rather foolish to dwell on the past. Things change so rapidly that holding a 10 year old grudge against one company could mean missing out on something really great. I have issues with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. I also have devices based on all three OSs. They all have good and bad points but I am willing to overlook the bad for the most part.
What I will not do is walk around with blinders on, thinking that any one of these systems are supremely better than the other. This simply isn't true. Nothing can be all things to all people.
I think the WLM integration is a positive change, and shows that Microsoft is learning from past mistakes.
One of these mistakes being the limitations on Zune pass availability. If they'd made Zune pass widespread I'm not sure people would care today about Spotify reaching the US.
Sent from my Samsung Omnia 7 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
vetvito said:
Ok one more thing :
Nokia Maps now on Android and IOS. Thoughts ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I noticed correctly, it's the exact same integration available on our WP7 IE9, isn't it? I tried accessing the Nokia Maps site with my Focus, and it seems to work fine. I have not tried with my Android yet, so don't know if there's a difference.
SuperSport said:
If I noticed correctly, it's the exact same integration available on our WP7 IE9, isn't it? I tried accessing the Nokia Maps site with my Focus, and it seems to work fine. I have not tried with my Android yet, so don't know if there's a difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android and iOS display a more 'mobile' optimized version of the site. I've only been able to view the full Nokia Maps website on Mango (which works just great as well).
I like Hotmail but honestly it's the only service I used which has constant problems with showing embedded pictures in emails. Refusing to show them actually. On Wp7 it happened in 30% of cases. Also problems with attachements. For me Hotmail is not reliable but I wonder if it has anything to do with my location - Poland.
SuperSport said:
If I noticed correctly, it's the exact same integration available on our WP7 IE9, isn't it? I tried accessing the Nokia Maps site with my Focus, and it seems to work fine. I have not tried with my Android yet, so don't know if there's a difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's my point/question, is WP losing the little exclusives it has?
Nokia is supposed to save WP with its map service, but Nokia is making its service for everyone.
WLM and Skydrive is going the same route.
Netflix is on all the major players.
What's left Zune pass and the metro UI?
https://market.android.com/details?id=shoozhoo.sorami&feature=search_result
Already in beta.
Oh ****, its for any file.
Decisions, this or drop box.

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