It’s nice to have your personal information with you wherever you go, but there are some things that are easier to do on a PC. Whether you’re working with contacts, viewing photos, or configuring your mobile device, tapping the screen and pressing small buttons can be a time-consuming drag.

Enter Dashwire, a new online service that creates a mirror image of the data and files on your Windows Mobile device, and allows you to interact with it using the Web browser on your PC. Text messages, your contact list, call logs, and even photos and videos stored on your phone are all available from your PC’s Web browser (Fig. 1). Best of all, you don’t even have to connect your mobile phone to your PC!

Fig. 1: Dashwire allows you to access critical information on your Windows Mobile phone, (like text messages, contacts, calls, and digital photos) through an intuitive Web-based interface.

How it works

Dashwire works OTA (Over the Air) using your phone’s wireless data plan (the same type of technology that allows you to surf the Web wirelessly). You install a small application on the Windows Mobile device, which connects to the Dashwire Web service and provides a “gateway” to all of your information. After you install the software, it makes an online backup of your contacts, photos, music, and videos, which would be invaluable if your device is ever stolen or misplaced.

Once the data is uploaded, you can view any of the items from your PC’s Web browser, and any changes you make to the Web version will be copied back down to your mobile phone. This is a huge advantage for updating your contact information or other typing-intensive tasks. It also makes data synchronization faster because you don’t have to wait for an entire sync to complete—you can simply make the edit to the information in the Web version and Dashwire syncs it with your phone.

Taking communication to the next level

While wireless synchronization is a great feature, Dashwire doesn’t stop there. Text messages received on your device are displayed on the “My Dashwire” page on your PC, and you can read, reply to (Fig. 2), delete, or forward them. This is a great feature if you’ve left your phone in your car and want to be kept up to date on the wireless messages you receive.

Fig. 2: Responding to a text message is fast and easy with the integrated SMS service.

In addition, your My Dashwire page features a call log which shows missed, dialed, and received calls. (In the near future, they will be adding the ability to listen to voice mail.) Although you cannot return phone calls from Dashwire’s Web-based interface, there is a button to send a text message to people who have called you. It’s a nice way to say “Sorry I missed your call” and continue the conversation with text messages using the Dashwire service.

Finally, you can create or change the speed dial buttons on your phone using Dashwire’s Speed Dials pane. Clicking on any speed dial button brings up a data entry screen to enter a person’s name and phone number. When you click Save, the new information will be copied down to your phone’s speed dial pad.

Making photo and video sharing fun and easy

When you install the Dashwire software on your mobile device, all of your photos and videos are copied to the Dashwire Web server. Once they’ve been uploaded, you can view them on your PC by double-clicking their thumbnail preview; the pictures can then be rotated with a second click of the mouse, which is easier than rotating them using the Pictures & Videos application in Windows Mobile.