Comments on: Turn Your Gadgets Into Work Tools: Windows Mobile Professional

By: Performancing Stream of Consciousness – Wed Apr 9, 2008 : Performancing

Performancing Stream of Consciousness – Wed Apr 9, 2008 : Performancing — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:39:10 +0000

[...] To have financial success as a freelancer, it’s important to separate want vs need purchases. But sometimes wants are also needs, or can be justified that way. Check out Skellie’s 12 guilt-free purchases for home offices. Gadgets tend to be one of my regular guilt purchases – when I had money – and one way to justify gadget purchases is to make sure they’re good for work tools. [...]

By: djizz

djizz — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:12:37 +0000

geez i remember you writing this! I wish i had paid the attention im am now to your work. and I would really love it if you would continue.

By: Daily Links

Daily Links — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:33:05 +0000

[...] Web Worker Daily » Archive Turn Your Gadgets Into Work Tools: Windows Mobile Professional « (tags: productivity windowsmobile pda) [...]

By: Make Your iPhone Work for You | Gear Diary

Make Your iPhone Work for You | Gear Diary — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:44:29 +0000

[...] follows her excellent look at turning a Windows Mobile device into a web warrior, capable of making sense of the diversity that is the World Wide [...]

By: Web Worker Daily » Archive Make Your iPhone Work for You «

Web Worker Daily » Archive Make Your iPhone Work for You « — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:00:31 +0000

[...] A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how you could optimize a Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone for web workers. [...]

By: Adam Z Lein

Adam Z Lein — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:28:05 +0000

Sorry, I got to this article through Google and didn’t realize the scope was intentionally so limited.
If your work is only to surf the web and communicate with others via web-enabled services, then you should also mention the ability to transfer information between applications. For example, if you found some bits of research in a web browser and you needed to communicate to others or prepare a report that includes references to your research, you should mention which browsers enable that the best. Also, I would think the ability to document inter-personal communications would be another very important feature of an individual web worker. Is it not?

As for VoIP, you know Windows Mobile 6 has native support for SIP VoIP (just like Symbian s60)? It’s only enabled if the manufacturer chooses, but there are other ways to enable it if you do a search. The native Windows Mobile VoIP support simply connects your regular phone dialer to an SIP VoIP service. So you can dial your contacts with Microsoft Voice Command, or any other normal dialing method. I.E. Just type the person’s name from the Today Screen. I’ve since uninstalled Skype because of the excellent integration of VoIP in Windows Mobile. Also, the VoIP call history is saved along with the regular call history, so you can reference and back-up that data in the same way (Jeyo Mobile Companion works well for that.)

I wouldn’t consider the Nokia N810 to be much of a “work” device either (though apparently my concept of work is different than what is discussed here). The N810 seems like more of a sitting-in-bed-watching-videos type of device. I haven’t carried a non-converged device since 2001 though.

By: Jenneth Orantia

Jenneth Orantia — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:00:01 +0000

Stephane A: I’ll be covering the Nokia N810 in an upcoming article.

By: Jenneth Orantia

Jenneth Orantia — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:59:20 +0000

Good to see you here too, James! :) Thanks for the link – I’d love to give the Celio Redfly a go.

Adam, this article is written from the perspective of an individual web worker rather than an enterprise, and a lot of us do trust our data to web services like Google Calendar and Evernote.

And the concept of work is subjective. As a writer by trade, I regularly use instant messaging and Skype to keep in touch with editors and fellow writers, and about half of my day is taken up with web browsing in the name of research.

All of the things you mention like Word and Excel editing, tracking billable time and maintaining servers are indeed functions that Windows Mobile is capable of, but they’re out of the scope of this article, which concentrates on web-enabled software.

Joe, emoze looks great! I’ll definitely try it out on my HTC Touch Dual.

By: Joe Krause

Joe Krause — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:09:39 +0000

I’ve set up my wife with http://www.emoze.com to synch calendar/mail and it’s been working well for her.

By: Stephane A.

Stephane A. — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:42:38 +0000

What you need is a Nokia N810 device. It’s not a cell phone, but you can connect to any WiFi network or using Bluetooth to use your cell phone as “data connection”.

By: Adam Z Lein

Adam Z Lein — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:18:59 +0000

I don’t think I would consider browsing the web, using Skype, instant messengers, and syncing calenders to really be “work”. That’s more like kid’s stuff, isn’t it? And why would a business trust their data with 3rd party services like Google Calender and Evernote?

How about editing Excel or Word documents, previewing Powerpoint files, approving PDFs, accessing SharePoint sites/database lists/etc.? What about tracking billable time and expenses? What about maintaining servers using SSH, Terminal Services, VNC, Aton Connect, etc.? What about documenting meetings with voice recording?

I also use Live Search, Google Maps, TomTom and/or CoPilot Live to chech traffic on the way to/from meetings.

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:08:48 +0000

Jenneth, nice to see you here! As a web worker and writer myself this is a subject dear to my heart. One of the most exciting products I’ve seen recently for us is the Celio Redfly, which simply takes the Windows Mobile smartphone and extends it to a small yet functional laptop format. Kind of a smarter Palm Foleo if you will. I did a video review of it that might help demonstrate my point:

http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/03/jkontherun-vi-2.html