Technology in Mind

I heard that Google labs had launched 2 way SMS from within Gmail on Twitter and immediately had to try it out.  I went and enabled the feature and sent several text messages between the computer and my phone. It worked fast and was flawlessly.

The messages are sent and received through the embedded chat application.  You would have thought that this would be available in their external Gtalk application as well, but I’ve found no evidence of this to be true. Currently, the beta is limited to U.S. phones.

Comments on Techcrunch’s blog mentioned that this has been available through AIM and Yahoo IM for some time. I do know that there was the capability to send 1-way SMS’s (from the chat application to the recipients phone) but I didn’t think that 2 way was possible, except by using an IM SMS application. 

In other words, the recipients of the IM’s on those platforms would have to either have a GPRS IM application like Fring, MunduIM, Palringo, etc.  Or they would have to be using Yahoo’s or AIM’s SMS texting system which would require the person on the phone to have an AIM account or a Yahoo account.  (I stand corrected, at least with Yahoo Messenger 9.0. I just tested it, and it appears that 2-way SMS is available through their Messenger as well, regardless of whether the person has a Yahoo account or not, and they aren’t required to be signed in either.)

Granted, if you’re the average Joe who uses his Windows Mobile device as received by the  Mobile provider then you probably aren’t in need of such a utility.  In fact, you probably wouldn’t buy a Windows Mobile device. I s’pose an already laid out iPhone or Blackberry would be more your style. I know alot of folks who have a Blackberry Curve or Pearl who haven’t loaded anything new beyond what the mobile provider initially loaded. (And yes, I realize there are those who will tweak out their blackberries and iPhones as well.)

But if you’re like me, you’re never happy with the phone ‘as is’. I received my HTC S621 Excalibur phone from Suncom nearly a year ago. It came loaded with Windows Mobile 5.0 . I quickly realized that other providers were shipping phones with Windows Mobile 6.0, but not my carrier.

Therefore after finding the XDA-Developer’s discussion forums I learned quickly how to upgrade my phone, initially using a ROM meant for Canadian Roger’s customers.  I was amazed how much better Windows Mobile 6.0 was, but even more astounded when Windows Mobile 6.1 came out with sliding panels.  These sliding panels made the phone so much more useable, so I reflashed the ROM using one made by a developer on the site named Kavana. This ROM served me well for a long time, but then the itch for newness presented itself yet again, so I then upgraded to a later customization of the 6.1 ROM.

The problem with reflashing your ROM however is that each time, it wipes all your programs, all your data, and you have to reconfigure everything.  So the decision to flash isn’t taken lightly.  Beyond that, there are frequent times when I’ve loaded various pieces of software that didn’t work well, and didn’t uninstall correctly. Most recently, I installed some weather applications that didn’t work out and wouldn’t uninstall cleanly. I ended up reflashing the phone to start over cleanly.

That’s when I decided I needed a backup solution.  After some queries I came across Spb Backup. I installed the demo which gives a trial of 5 uses before expiring. It was flawless and fast, backing up everything to my phone’s storage card in a compressed manner.

I’m not going to go through a full fledged review of the product since information can be found on their site, as well as reviews by others. But suffice to say it was worth the purchase price, as I’ve already utilized it to restores several times after installing applications that didn’t settle well.