Orb and Treo 700w

I’ve heard of Orb, but wasn’t fully aware of its capabilities.  Seems
like a good way to access photos and such from your home PC, but if you have a
Media Center or record video to your PC, you can stream that to your Treo 700w
as well. 

Orb is both the name for the service and the software itself. You
install it on any Windows XP-based computer, and it transforms your computer
into a powerful solution for serving up your media from any browser, anywhere
– including the one found in your Windows Mobile device. The service was
initially fee-based at launch, but is now free and advertising supported. Orb
is made even more useful when installed on a computer with a TV tuner as I’ll
explain below, but will work fine without one.

Full story at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/articles/orb.mspx.

Orb also gets a mention in an episode of Hanselminutes (http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=11). 
If Hanselman uses it, it must be good.

Fox uses Treo to break N.Y. plane crash news

I keep telling people how much the Treo 700w rocks, but here’s more proof:



Scott Wilder, a cameraman for the network, had been about 20 blocks away on another assignment when the crash occurred. Wilder ran uptown and reported live from the scene using a hand-held Palm Treo smartphone that uses the existing mobile network to transmit video to the Fox News control room. From there, Fox News sent it out live on TV to supplement other video being shot by local traffic helicopters



CometVision runs on a Palm Treo 700-series PDA via the Windows Mobile operating system. The technology is able to transmit video over non-3G networks, using much less bandwidth than would normally be needed, Comet CEO Howard Becker said.


Full story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061013/wr_nm/treo_dc.

WebIS Releases FlexMail 2007

WebIS has released FlexMail 2007, a
replacement for the Pocket Outlook which ships on Windows Mobile 5.0
devices.  This is a significant upgrade to the FlexMail 2006, which I’ve
used for several months now on my Treo 700w, but found myself wishing for a few
more features and faster performance.  My few wishes and then some seem to
have been taken care of in this new release.

FlexMail is far and above better in how it displayes messages with HTML
formatting, and handles IMAP accounts better than Pocket Outlook.  GMail
POP3 SSL is supported, as is storing messages on an SD card.  The
featurelist is long, and everyone likes different things, so just go check it
out for yourself.

Full story at http://webis.net/products_info.php?p_id=mail.

verizon treo 700w imap deleting problem

This is one from the SE referrals in my logs.

There does seem to be a problem deleting messages when an account is set up as IMAP.  The “empty deleted items” option doesn’t seem to delete the messages from the server, and they come back with the next sync.  I’m not sure of the technical details, but in Outlook, deleting messages from an IMAP account is a two-step process—first, the delete, then the Purge Deleted Messages.  The empty deleted items on the Treo seems to be only the first step.

I have no problems deleting messages when I reconfigured the accounts as POP3 accounts.

<update 2006–07–30>

If you want your IMAP to work properly, look into .  FlexMail is a complete replacement for Pocket Outlook, and then some.  IMHO, FlexMail handles IMAP accounts better than desktop Outlook does.  In addition to properly deleting items in IMAP accounts, FlexMail will perform POP before SMTP, which is a requirement to send e-mail on many hosts.  Pocket Outlook does not have this option.

If you sync to an Exchange server, set that up in Pocket Outlook and let FlexMail automatically import the settings.  If you have POP2 or IMAP accounts alreadey set up in Pocket Outlook, just delete them and set them up again in FlexMail, since there are more settings for these accounts than are available in Pocket Outlook.

Free Sharpcast Sync Service: One to Watch

has a review today
of sync service. 
What sets this service apart is that no only will it sync with PCs, it will sync
with your cell phone.  Specifically, Walt used a Treo 700w for his
tests.

Now, a small Silicon Valley start-up called Sharpcast is introducing an
impressive, free service that synchronizes data among PCs, phones and a Web
site at lightning speeds. I tested Sharpcast for several weeks, and found that
it works really well.

The service is limited to photos right now, which means it’s more mashed
potatoes than gravy:

With Sharpcast Photos, any change you make to an album of
photos on one of your devices is replicated within seconds on your other
devices. If you add a photo to an album on your PC, it shows up within seconds
on your phone and on your Sharpcast Web page. If you rotate a photo on the
phone, the same photo is rotated within seconds on the PC and Web page. If you
delete a photo on the Web page, it’s immediately deleted on the PC and the
phone. And if you take a photo with the camera on your Sharpcast-enabled
phone, it will show up in seconds on your PC and your Web
page.

It’s not a huge leap from instant replication of modified photos to instant
replication of spreadsheets, Word docs, etc. 

You can also share your albums with other Sharpcast users, and receive
shared albums from them.

Sharing = collaboration.  MS’s next version of SharePoint will be mobile
enabled, but there’s a large buy-in and overhead, not to mention connectivity
issues.  Instead of sharing a photo album, imaging sharing a project
folder.  By the time your plane lands, you have the updated files on your
phone, and will get them as soon as you connect your laptop to the
Internet.  Sweet!  And, probably with less overhead.

Planned improvements include sync of contacts, appointments, etc.  Not
such a huge issue for me, since we have an Exchange server, but very useful for
a lot of people I know.

Full story at http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060713.html
The possibilities are exciting–this is definately a company to watch in the
near future.

What Happpens When You Remote Wipe a Treo 700w?

When you install the MSFP on your Treo 700w, you can use Exchange 2003 SP2 to
enforce security policies on the PDA functions.  One policy includes an
access PIN, which locks the phone after a certain period of inactivity (5 min
doesn’t seem bad in testing, but you might want to make it longer in
real life).  This policy seems to be a must for the remote wipe to work
correctly.  Additionally, in case the phone is ever lost, you can send a
command from Exchange to the phone to wipe it clean of data the next time it
tries to sync.

As a proof of concept, my phone was wiped 7 or 8 times yesterday. 
Here’s a short overview of what happens:

  1. The phone retains full functionality.  Whomever finds the phone is
    free to make all the calls they want if you don’t have a PIN policy. 
    This means that if you do get the phone back, you don’t need to go through
    that Verizon configuration procedure again.
  2. Even if you enforce a PIN policy on the PDA functions, the phone can still
    recive calls.  The ringing phone can be answered without entering the
    PIN, but no caller ID information is displayed.  Calls cannot be made
    from the phone until the PIN is entered.  You can set the PIN policy to
    wipe a device after a certain number of failures, too.
  3. The phone basically undergoes a hard reset.  Any aftermarket software
    that was installed is removed.  Any data stored in system memory is
    lost.  All configured e-mail accounts (be they POP3 or Exchange) are
    deleted, as is all the e-mail.  All contacts, appointments, tasks, etc
    are removed.  Registry settings are removed.  The MSFP is
    retained.
  4. Custom ringtones and other add-ons are also removed.  I have to find
    that WAV of the Monday Night Football theme again.
  5. Data stored on a storage card is not lost.  Don’t
    put confidential/incriminating information on the storage card, or at least
    don’t leave the cards in your phone all the time.  There is an option to
    store e-mail attachments on the card, and it appears these are removed when
    the e-mail is wiped.
  6. If you get the phone back, or get a new one, your contacts, tasks, etc.
    will be restored with the next ActiveSync.  You will probably have to
    reinstall the software yourself.  Make sure you keep good records of your
    registration codes.

The Remote Wipe will not function if the device doesn’t have MSFP
installed.  The Remote Wipe functionality is an Exchange plug-in,
apparently something you need to download separately from SP2, but I’m not the
Exchange admin.

The PIN policy (called the password policy in most of the forums) seems to be
key in getting the wipe to work.  If you don’t set this policy, then the
user is prompted to apply a security setting when the wipe is triggered. 
Choosing No means the device isn’t wiped, and this is a very common thing in the
forums.  Also key is that the phone is sync’d directlty to a Windows
2003/Exchange 2003 SP2 server.  Our bastion Windows 2000 server
doesn’t pass out the policies to the phone, but the phone can be sync’d against
the bastion server, and the wipe is passed through the server as well.  But
we had to sync against the Win 2K3 server once (and probably every time we want
to upgrade the policies).

Treo 700w Users: Don’t Automatically Upgrade SplashBlog

If you use a Treo 700w and SplashBlog, don’t perform their automatic
upgrade.  Their upgrader installs the wrong version of the software on your
phone, and the client won’t start.  There are two versions for Windows
Mobile devices, one for those without a touchscreen (which they call the
SmartPhone version) and a separate version for devices with a touchscreen (which
they call the Pocket PC version).  Treo 700w users want the Pocket PC
Version of SplachBlog.

Get the correct version at http://splashblog.com/portal_download.aspx.

Opera 8 Beta 2 for Treo 700w Almost TiddlyWiki Compatible

In his “Replacing
Start/Run
” episode, Scott Hanselman talked about TiddlyWiki as a great little organization
tool.  Pocket IE doesn’t support JavaScript, so there’s no hope of using
TiddlyWiki with that.  Opera’s latest release is so tantalizingly close to
working with TiddlyWiki (which would make both a very useful app for me). 
Opera can almost render the page correctly in full page mode, and the rendering
leads to navigation difficulties.  But it’s soooo close.  I’m not sure
if it’s an issue with Opera or TiddlyWiki.