Better Productivity on the Move 

Last month we looked at the new O2 XPhone II-a Windows Mobile 2003 powered smartphone that runs -you guessed it-Windows! This business phone is good to have since it supports all major connectivity options at a competitive price. This month we'll look at some business applications that you can install on the phone, and are useful when on the move.

AgileMessenger



You can install this multi-protocol Instant Messenger application on your smartphone. It allows you to connect to ICQ, Yahoo, MSN etc from the phone directly over GPRS, simultaneously. All your current contacts in each type will show up in a list where you can quickly browse over to any one and start a new conversation. You can download the beta version from www.agilemobile .com/agile_messenger.html. Each conversation has a separate tabbed window that you can select very quickly using the navigation pad on the phone. Then you have all the most commonly used features of an IM conversation literally on your fingertips. You can type in a message using T9, send smileys etc. You can even leave the application running and go back to the main screen or run other programs. When an instant message from a contact comes in, you will be notified by a small sound. You can then switch back to AgileMessenger and resume your conversation.

AgileMessenger allows you to be connected to your contacts at all times even when you are not near a computer and can very easily hold instant message conversations. 

Battery Pack Pro



This is more of a utility than a business application. However, being an essential tool for this device we recommend that you install it anyway. There are six separate 'modules' to the application. The first is called the 'Battery Bar'. This shows you detailed information about the phone battery such as percentage of charge, and time remaining along with other information such as the space used on main and storage memory, bytes downloaded over GPRS etc. You can click on any of these to get even finer details.

The second module is called the 'Programs Bar'. This is like a favorite applications menu that resides on the home screen itself. You can put all the applications you use frequently on this bar and then launch them from the bar instead of having to go through the Start Menu each time. 

You can even have multiple rows of programs-displayed all at once or use a scroll bar. The other modules are Power Task, Power Clean, Power Store and Power Alert. These let you stop running tasks, clean up temporary and unneeded files on your phone, give detailed information about the storage space and let you create alerts with different sounds. In all, this is one utility pack that you must have. For more information, refer to

www.omegaone.com

Ilium Software NewsBreak



If you like to read news items from the Internet all the time, this is the program for you. This RSS aggregator lets you quickly set up RSS feeds and downloads the headlines and news items from the Internet over GPRS. You can categorize these into different sets such as World News, Business and Entertainment. You can also set a schedule at which the news gets downloaded from the different sites. Once the feed is downloaded, you will be shown the number of unread entries in each feed that you've chosen. Clicking on a feed name takes you to the feed where all the headlines are displayed. Selecting and clicking on a headline takes you to the complete news item that you can read, including images and formatting. If the item contains links, you can open them in the Pocket IE. 

Worldmate Pro



This application for frequent business travelers has been around for quite a while on the PocketPC platform-and is now available for the Windows smartphone as well. It gives you many different travel-related facilities under one roof. The first and the foremost is the multi-location clock. You can set the city where you are based as the 'home city'. You can also set a number of other cities whose time you want to see, and can see them all in one go. 

Worldmate also provides the weather forecast for the next five days, which gets downloaded automatically from the weather sites on the Internet. You can select the cities that you wish to see the weather for. You can see real-time satellite maps of the region you select on your phone and a world map lets you quickly browse the world to see the local time and weather at a selected location as well. 

There is a built-in currency converter too where the latest exchange rates are automatically downloaded for all currencies. You can then select the currencies you are interested in converting, enter a value in the currency you wish to convert from, and immediately the value in other currencies will show. Finally, a flight status check module lets you select a particular flight and check the current schedule of the flight, on the phone itself. Unfortunately,this useful module does not have updates for Indian flights.

TranCreative MxConverter



This program can perform various types of conversions-currencies, areas, lengths and weights. As in Worldmate, the latest exchange rates for all currencies are available and you can select the ones you wish to convert between. You can select any of the different categories and then select the units with them. For instance, you can select the category Lengths and select Miles and Kilometers within that category to convert between the two. 

Westtek ClearVue Suite



Opening e-mail attachments is one of the most essential business-related activities that you need to do while on the move. Popular attachment formats include Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and so on. Strangely Microsoft decided not to include Pocket Word and Pocket Excel in the smartphone edition of Windows. To rectify this omission in the Windows smartphone, Westtek has come up with a range of products that let you view different file formats on the smartphone directly. 



You don't require any additional software on the desktop or even copy the files across. You can read the files from your storage or directly from an e-mail attachment on your phone. 

You can get individual products for each format type you wish to view or you can get the entire suite, which consists of viewers for DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF and multiple image formats. You can go through any e-mail attachment you get in Pocket Outlook without waiting to see the mail on your desktop. 

Vinod Unny



Enterprise Info Tech