My Favorite Mobile Sites & Apps
Here's yet another one of those "what's on your device?" posts. I'm on the road as part of the MEDC 2007 worldwide tour, and will have visited nearly half a dozen countries over the last 2 weeks. My Windows Mobile 6 device (currently an HTC Excalibur) keeps me connected with personal and work information, saves me time triaging email, and does all sorts of useful things like wake up calls, currency conversions, play music, track business expenses, locate frequent flyer numbers etc. So I thought I'd share a list of the software and web sites I'm constantly using - in taxis, airports, cafes, hotels and wherever else I may roam:
Microsoft stuff:
- Messaging, Contacts, Calendar - out of all the time I spend on my device, 70% is in Outlook Mobile. Without Outlook and Exchange ActiveSync my life would be in chaos. This stuff is free - as in, it comes with every Windows Mobile device.
- Office Communicator Mobile - someday it'll do VoIP, but for now helps stay in touch with co-workers, exchange quick IMs for stuff that is too urgent for email, check people's presence or availability. The client is free, but it requires Office Communications Server.
- Office Mobile - I use an internal dogfood version that supports Office 2007 (as well as 2003) formats. Great for practicing PowerPoint decks, read Word & Excel attachments and making BlackBerry users in the business class cabin jealous.
- Live Search Mobile - find nearby businesses, get directions to anywhere, find phone numbers for airlines, rental cars, hotels etc. Unfortunately only works in the US and UK at present. Free.
3rd Party stuff:
- EzAlarm - nice and simple. never have to tinker with hotel alarm clocks, some of which can be too high-tech to experiment with when you're falling asleep.
- FlexWallet - stores my frequent flyer accounts, credit card numbers and stuff that I don't want just sitting around on my device unprotected.
- CorePlayer - watch short clips or music videos when there's nothing better to do. I use this for MPEG files only. I think there's a free version called TCPMP.
Web services: (all these are mobile optimized websites that are easy to browse on slow networks and tiny screens):
There are a few more that I use occasionally, but the above are those that I'm on constantly. If you're looking for more mobile friendly sites, check out Derek Snyder's huge list here.
Accessories:
