Month: July 2006

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.  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.

Walt Mossberg has a review today
of Sharpcast 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.

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).