Very exciting news!

Microsoft has formally introduced My Phone, a free service that enables users to sync content between their Windows smartphones and the Web.

My Phone, backs up a phone's contacts, calendar, text messages, media, Office documents and tasks once daily or on demand. It also lets you edit your PIM information or upload photos to your phone using the Web. On your phone, you can select which items you want to back up.

Bottomline - My Phone helps you manage your phone, sync your information, back it up, all to the Web.

Here’s some screenshots:

View Full Album

Here’s the details:

• My Phone is NOT a hosted e-mail server – it just syncs data. My Phone users get a 200MB online space for their data. For now, My Phone (which is in a private beta) is free.
• Microsoft sees My Phone as an easy way to upgrade from one Windows Mobile phone to another, as the service can turn two phones' data sets into copies of each other.
• Microsoft wants to work with cell-phone carriers and manufacturers to make sure they accept My Phone as a universal service on Windows phones, Microsoft product director Scott Rockfeld said.
• "Microsoft is a mobile operator and OEM friendly company, so we're always looking at opportunities," he said. My Phone doesn't bring together Microsoft's various syncing services and online data stores, though. For instance, it doesn't sync with any Windows Live services. That's a goal for the future, though, Rockfeld said.
• "This is a beta, not a final version. For version 1.0, I would love it to sync with all the online assets that we have," he said.
• My Phone is based on technology from Microsoft acquisition Mobicomp, so it doesn't use the Danger syncing technology that Microsoft paid $500 million for last year. Danger's service, as seen on the Sidekick phones, syncs a phone with the Web in a moment-by-moment fashion—there's always a live copy of a user's content on the Web. My Phone is more of a backup program.
• "We're absolutely using [the Danger] investment and it will be, in the future, across a number of products," Microsoft marketing director John Starkweather said.

My Phone is available by invitation only at the moment. Here’s the link to the site: https://sn1-p3.myphone.microsoft.com/mkweb/Start.po?mkt=en-US

Check out the original article at PCMag: “Microsoft Rolls Out 'My Phone' Syncing Service - News and Analysis by PC Magazine”

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog