Webware

Question: If you didn't have to use your Symbian Series 60 phone every time you sent a text message, shared a photo, or listened to your voice mail in the order you received it, would you?

Ford Davison, the entrepreneur behind Dashwire, hopes you answer "no." Starting late November, the online phone manager will embrace Symbian Series 60 phones in a private beta. That will put it about three months behind the timeline we were quoted, but it so far looks like the wait will be worth it.

(Credit: Dashwire)

Dashwire's free application, currently available on Windows Mobile handsets, acts as a conduit between the details on your phone and your online dashboard from which you'll be able to text your contacts, add new contacts and bookmarks, share photos and videos, and enter a status message that updates to Facebook and Twitter.

Dashwire will become even more like a social networking site when it debuts a few key additions in November for both Symbian and Windows Mobile phones. First it'll get the Mobile Application Storefront, a section of the online dashboard to filter popular applications based on your phone's make and model. Specialized app stores are now popping up everywhere, from Apple's iTunes App store to the Google Android and BlackBerry stores. This integration makes sense for Dashwire's revenue stream and status as a connected mobile service; for consumers, it provides another outlet for discovering apps that are all but guaranteed to work on their handset.

Next up is what Dashwire is calling the Network Address Book, a reworked contacts list that archives your text messages, calls, notes, and photos with your friends. There are so many players trying to do this with social address books that I'm initially a bit skeptical of its utility. This is one of those features whose role will become clear when it's implemented.

Finally, there will be true integration with social networks, a feature we've been anticipating for some time. If you set it up, you'll be able to authorize your photos to auto-upload to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and FriendFeed. Dashwire says multiple image uploading will also be wrapped into the package.

Another App Store hopeful.

(Credit: Dashwire)

While a lot of these features represent large strides for Dashwire, we'd be happy if some of the more mundane managerial omissions received half as much attention. Dashwire still doesn't govern files or programs, for instance. It doesn't perform small, essential tasks like deleting calls or conversation history or mass delete voice mail. Despite the capability of higher-end models, it doesn't read or initiate e-mail. These don't detract from what Dashwire does well, but as the product offerings grow and multiply, the ability to at least clear your contents on the phone or on your online dashboard are low-hanging fruit that have been sadly overlooked.

As someone who tires of cramped menus, I've been impressed with Dashwire's service so far. For those of us who tend to let voice mail pile up, being able to prioritize messages via CallWave's visual voice mail is a windfall; for the compulsive sharers, the auto-uploading feature adds a lot of social value.

Symbian Series 60 owners can sign up to join the first-come, first-serve private beta via Dashwire.com.

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.

Dashwire, a small Seattle start-up eleven employees strong, continues to impress with its growing service for managing and interacting with the contents of your cell phone online. To recap an earlier review, Dashwire synchronizes your cell phone to an online account, displaying on a flexible dashboard your call history, images, profile, texting history, photos, ring tones, videos, and contacts. You can roll up your sleeves and muck around with your phone from Dashwire, a much happier experience than crouching over your two-inch cell phone screen and tapping or clicking away through on-device management programs, particularly if you're not on the go and are sitting comfortably in front of a computer, thank you very much.

Since Dashwire is linked to your phone via a downloadable client, everything you do online also occurs on your phone, and vice versa. Therefore, you can view, tag, and share media, send text messages, listen to voice mail, and add bookmarks from the comfort of your online dashboard. It's cool. But in the last month, it's gotten cooler.

(Credit: Dashwire)

There have been quiet roll-outs of tweaks, even a few big changes. For a start, Dashwire has drastically improved its search tool. Users can now push photos to friends' phones, e-mail addresses, and Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Bebo. (In Twitter, most photos are converted to a TinyURL.com link. It doesn't work 100 percent of the time, and Dashwire's working on that.)

The service also now supports data transferring when users switch phones, which was the top request among private beta testers, and a great new feature for quickly assigning speed dial settings.

The big thing, though, is integration with CallWave, a service that transcribes voice messages to text. This is a smart move, and it makes perfect sense for Dashwire, which is all visual management, to provide visual voice mail.

Coming up
Dashwire will be introducing a few more additions in stages over the next six months. Starting Friday, text messages will be threaded by contact, in a manner much like the iPhone. In about four to six weeks, a new, dynamic phone client will replace the current app, which is currently limited to a few syncing options. The new, richer Dashwire client will peform all sorts of party tricks, like pulling in media when you switch to a new handset, push status updates to Facebook and Twitter, and pull in content from the Web.

The final announcement in this cascade of upgrades is that Symbian S60 users will be able to get their hands on Dashwire if they can hold their horses until late August or early September.

Dashwire runs equally well from your phone memory and storage card, and it's now in public beta for Windows Mobile users. Get out there and try it.

>>See all the latest news in cell phones and mobile software coming out of CTIA Wireless 2008.

Share photos via SMS, e-mail, or post online.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

It takes a second to realize that what you see on Dashwire.com's cool gray interface is content from your mobile phone. That's probably because you're not used to reading it so easily.

There on Dashwire's spacious Internet dashboard are your photos and videos, contacts, bookmarks, and SMS and call history laid out in movable AJAX tiles. There are ringtones you can click on the Web to play on your phone, and text messages you can reply to with your keyboard, and which are tagged with your identifying phone number so your friends know who sent it.

You can e-mail photo links from Dashwire, too, without your friends having to sign up to the service to view them online. Contacts you add online materialize in your mobile address book. Another groovy part: Dashwire auto-saves your content, effectively backing up your phone.

Now it's time for the secret sauce: how your content gets there. Dashwire begins as a mobile app that most users will probably download over the air. It installs, and then syncs to your personal page on Dashwire.com, which you've configured by registering your screen name and number on sign-up. The synching took a little time, and might take more if your mobile network is lagging. Photos and videos take the longest to upload, and even longer the more you've got. Have patience; the wait is worth it.

Dashwire works remarkably well, but it doesn't do everything yet. For the moment, it only supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6, and subscribers have to specify their carrier and device model when they register. Dashwire doesn't manage files or programs, or perform certain small tasks like deleting photos from the phone or reading and initiating e-mail. You can't expect perfection from early closed betas, but you can expect novel ideas.

Read mail, SMS, and back up phone content from Dashwire's dashboard.

(Credit: CNET Networks)