JeffKirvin.net

I’ve long had a “holy grail” of sorts with mobile computing. Back in the day, in my first stint with Palm OS (1997-2000), I had a recurring problem. I was just starting to put internet content on my Clié, and all too often I would format the content for reading on the device later (via iSilo, if I recall correctly) and then end up picking up the Clié and leaving my desk before I actually Hotsync, thus not having the new content with me. Alternately, I would remember to press the HotSync button, only to find the sync process took so much longer than I expected that I’d be late for my meeting.

Handhelds have come a long way since then. From the beginning, Microsoft ActiveSync has provided a “no thinking required” approach to syncing your data. Whenever something changes on either end, the device and PC sync automatically. Works great, except for one thing. You still have to remember to plug the device in to the PC in the first place. I usually do this, because I like to keep the battery topped off, but I do miss from time to time, usually when I’m in a hurry. And when I’m in a hurry, of course, is when I need flawless syncing the most.

Enter hosted Exchange, courtesy of 4Smartphone.net. There are a variety of hosted Exchange providers out there, but I’ve found 4Smartphone to be the best balance of price and service. Feel free to click the associate banner ad to the right and try them out for free. And the ad endeth.

Regardless of which provider you choose, here’s how hosted Exchange works. Instead of using the POP3 or even IMAP4 mail service provided by your ISP or webmail like Hotmail and Gmail, you set up an Exchange account with a hosted Exchange provider. You don’t have to know anything about running or maintaining the Exchange server yourself, but you get all the benefits of having your own installation of Exchange: not just push email, but also calendar, contacts, tasks, public folders, the works.

This is as big a jump over IMAP email as IMAP was over POP3. When I first really gave IMAP a shot, I was floored. What makes IMAP different from the POP3 email most people use today is that IMAP keeps messages on the server and all clients sync to the server. So if I moved an email from my Inbox to Filed on my PDA, that message would already be in Filed in Outlook when I got home. I hate having to process anything twice, so this was a revelation for me.

Hosted Exchange is just like this, but for everything.

When I create a new contact on my device, it’s in Outlook at home within seconds. If I reschedule an appointment using Outlook Web Access on my PC at work, that change shows up almost instantly on my phone. I don’t have to think about syncing, it just happens.

On Windows Mobile, you can control how often this happens and find your own balance between Blackberry-style immediacy and battery life. I have my phone set to update items immediately from 7 am to 10 pm, Monday through Friday. At night and over the weekend, my phone only syncs up once an hour. This gives me up to the minute info when I need it and doesn’t bug me when I don’t.

Unfortunately, hosted Exchange doesn’t sync everything. Notably, it doesn’t sync notes, IE favorites and files, three items that wired ActiveSync does sync. So I have to find a way to either sync those things wirelessly or do without, and I’ve met with varying success. I don’t use the handwritten or voice aspects of notes, so those I’ve been able to find another way to keep these always available. I’ve sent all my notes as emails to myself. Now, these will stay in my mailboxes on Outlook Web and the desktop version of Outlook at home, but what about my phone, which only keeps the last two weeks worth of mail at any given time?

Here I reach a bit outside of what hosted Exchange can do alone. My email address, jeff@jeffkirvin.net, is really just an alias. It points to my Gmail account, jeff.kirvin@gmail.com and then Gmail forwards all traffic not held as spam to my Exchange account. This little detour allows me to use Gmail as a central storehouse of all my email, and provides me the ability to quickly search for stuff that’s fallen off my radar. If I want to look up a note, all I have to do is go to http://m.gmail.com and type in the search term. It’s all there.

I also use this technique for journaling. I have a custom email address that I use for journal entries. When I want to write in my journal, I just send an email to that address. It is filtered and tagged by Gmail, then forwarded to Exchange, where yet another rule moves it to my Inbox\Journal folder. It’s nice and it allows me to journal from anywhere I have email, knowing that everything I’ve written can be found in my Gmail account under the Journal tag.

Lastly, I also use email for reading my RSS feeds. I’ve talked about R-mail before, so just a quick summary here. At www.r-mail.org you can find a service that will allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds by email. Any time a new post shows up on a blog you’re subscribed to, you get an email from that blog with that post in the email body. While I could set up a rule in Exchange to route these into a subfolder, I like processing these along with the rest of my inbox. I delete the ones I don’t intend to read in more detail, then each message, RSS post or email, goes one of three places:

• !Respond: A folder right up at the top of my Inbox subfolders for things that require me to do something that I’m not going to do right now.
• Filed: I don’t have dozens of different file folders for reference. I just have one, and even that one is probably unnecessary given my Gmail solution. This is basically for things I want to keep close by for the next few weeks but that I don’t have to actually do anything about.
• Deferred Reading: A lot of blog posts end up here. This is for things I think are interesting and want to read, but don’t have time to read right now. When I get free time I come back to this folder and cherry pick items for discretionary reading. Unlike my old iSilo solution, I can never leave these behind as they’re part of my email.

It is absolutely amazing how all of this works together to create a solution that is unquestionably greater than the sum of its parts. This is the system I wanted all those years ago when I was struggling with my Clié and iSilo.