Dashwire 2.0 improves phone-management software

Dashwire (review), a dashboard for synchronizing and managing the contents of your mobile phone online, has let loose with Dashwire 2.0 for Windows Mobile 5 and 6. Tuesday's release enriches the syncing client application with photos and with Facebook and Twitter updates.

Sharing media and status messages makes Dashwire way more fun.

The previous version of the downloadable Dashwire app, which opens the syncing channels between the phone's content and the online dashboard, was pretty much a blank placeholder--all back-end functionality and very little front-end personality. Now the screen displays your primary photo, status message, and a media ribbon of the photos and videos stored on your online dashboard.

The status entry field on the Dashwire client can easily become a direct artery to Facebook and Twitter. After a quick setup from the dashboard ("Your status"), status updates made from the phone can automatically supplant a user's Facebook status, post to Twitter, or both.

Another addition sees the media ribbon along the bottom edge that serves as an on-demand photo and video gallery, but which also has new privacy and interaction controls. The content can now be titled, shared, or set as wallpaper directly from the phone. When privacy mode is on, photos are invisible to the public unless they're given individual permission.

Privacy controls keep you in charge.

In another twist, photos will soon be able to climb up from the Mac or PC to the dashboard, then autosync to the media ribbon on your phone. When that happens, users will be able to upload full-size images through the Photo tile. Dashwire will then autosync a much smaller scale version of the hosted image, about 20 KB, to the client. The result is a neat feature that grants access to media not even stored on the phone. Translation: more precious memory for you. Unfortunately, it's only running on Dashwire's development servers at the moment, but is expected to bridge that gap with a general release within three weeks.

To get Dashwire 2.0, point your Windows Mobile browser to http://m.dashwire.com, and to sign up for an account, visit www.dashwire.com from your desktop. Support for Symbian S60 is expected to debut within the next two months.

[be_jahani]