Dashwire Beta Goes Open

Posted on 28 March 2008 by


So let’s say that you have a Windows Mobile phone and you have a desktop computer. Dashwire allows you to “automatically mirror the content on your phone to the web, helping you access and share your mobile experiences – no cables required.”

Now…in plain English please?

Dashwire is a free service which synchronizes your contacts, text messages, photos, videos, calls and voicemail with a private web account. Once your phone is synchronizing with Dashwire, it is an easy thing to control it via your desktop. One of the key features is the ability to create, read, forward, reply to and save SMS messages on your computer, while using your phone’s plan. Texts sent will actually appear to have been sent from your mobile number, and you can also, “view messages on you computer as they arrive on your phone.”

dashwire

Let’s take a deeper look and see if this might be something you would want to try…

From an email I received tonight:

Dashwire is focused on becoming the central hub that seamlessly bridges the mobile phone and web worlds, simplifying experiences and making it easy to access and share the world captured on your phone. We have a number of new things we will be sharing at CTIA in Vegas next week that we wanted to share with you first:
- Open access to the Dashwire service – you sign up, you get in
- Media sharing to social networks (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Bebo)
- Instant status updates (Facebook, Twitter)
- Threaded SMS
- Automatic phone-to-phone transfer (contacts, phone settings)

Jenneth and I, along with other press, were given a sneak-peek at Dashwire last fall. At the time, it took a while to get access to the program once you had signed up for it, and once in, it was almost scary (for me anyway) to see how much information was pulled from my mobile phone and displayed on my computer.

But convenience has a way of looking more and more attractive; after seeing some of the new improvements, I can definitely see the temptation of a service such as this. After all, who wouldn’t want to access and control nearly everything on their mobile phone, with the convenience of a desktop’s larger screen and the ease of mouse navigation?

Dashboard
click photos to enlarge

Below is a quick summary of what’s been added or improved since last fall:

PHOTO SHARING – Easy sharing of photos captured on your phone to friends via:
-SMS
-E-mail
-Social networks (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Bebo)

Dashwire Sharing

Sharing via email…

Photo Share - Email

…and sharing via social sites.

Photo Share - Social Sites

INSTANT STATUS UPDATES
- Update your Facebook and Twitter status from Dashwire.com or (coming soon) the Dashwire Mobile client on your phone.

Status update

INSTANT MESSAGING-STYLE THREADED SMS ON THE WEB
- Improved SMS experience through conversation threading by contact

SMS Compose

Dashwire Threaded SMS - wide screen 2

PHONE-TO-PHONE TRANSFER
- Automatic transfer of contacts and phone settings (bookmarks, speed dials) when Dashwire Mobile is added to your new phone
- Currently only supports transfers from one Windows Mobile phone to another, but will enable WM to S60 transfers when we launch our Symbian client.

IMPROVED PHOTO VIEWING
- Easier and faster to browse and title photos on Dashwire.com

Shared Page

Media Manager

Individual Image

OVERALL PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS
- Load time and usability improvements on the web and mobile client
- IE7 usability improvements

IMPROVED NAVIGATION AND ACCESS TO FEATURES
- Context specific menus when hovering over messages, calls, or contacts, allowing actions like reply via SMS, call via Skype, or share photo

CONTENT SEARCH
- Spotlight-style account search
- Improved tile search

VISUAL VOICEMAIL
- Visual voicemail and voice to text transcription via CallWave iFrame (for US Customers only). Exploring additional voicemail solutions for customer choice and global coverage.

MOBILE CLIENT IMPROVEMENTS –build 299 on http://m.dashwire.com
- Added progress bar
- Added sync on/off for roaming
- Added ability to select items that are synced
- Support of phone-to-phone transfer
- Manual or automatic sync, though manual sync doesn’t currently support sending SMS from Dashwire.com
- Improved sync messaging
- Faster performance

You should be aware that since Dashwire is a constant information stream from your mobile phone to Dashwire’s servers, similar to an Exchange account, this is a service best used with an unlimited data plan – and that’s exactly what they recommend.

Although I think that Dashwire looks really slick and the interface is lovely, I’m not going to lie to you: the idea of having all of my mobile phone information sitting on the web makes me nervous, and the legalese in the Terms of Service doesn’t much help:

You acknowledge that you are responsible for the information and material that you (or your representatives) submit to the Service or transmit through the Service (your “Content”), and that you, and not Dashwire, will have full responsibility for each of your Content, including its legality, reliability, appropriateness, and originality. Unless otherwise expressly stated in this Agreement or in the Dashwire Privacy Policy, you agree that any Submission provided by you in connection with your use of the Service is provided on a non-proprietary and non-confidential basis.

Further clarification about the security of your information is given here:

Dashwire user accounts are secured by user-created passwords and HTTPs when signing in. Please note that Dashwire cannot guarantee the security of user account information. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors may compromise the security of user information at any time.

and

Dashwire does not guarantee error-free performance under this Privacy Policy. We may not always catch an unintended privacy issue, despite our efforts to do so. Accordingly, we welcome your feedback regarding any privacy concerns that you may have, including how we can improve this Privacy Policy. We will use reasonable efforts to comply with this Privacy Policy and will take prompt corrective action when we learn of any failure to comply with it.

In other words, people like this guy might really need to watch themselves. People like you and me will have to decide if our contact lists, our call records, and transcripts of our text messages (with replies) are safe when held behind an HTTPs and “minimum of four” characters password.

Call me an alarmist, and tell me why you think I am wrong – if you do. But I’m just saying…

This post was written by:

- who has written 1699 posts on Gear Diary.

I started Gear Diary on September 30, 2006, and my goal was that this not be an easily labeled site. We all have gear that we use daily – some of it electronic and some of it organic. I think it is fascinating to explore the equipment that makes our lives easier, more entertaining, more productive, and more manageable. My hope is that Gear Diary visitors will find this site to be a comfortable and friendly place to discuss interesting topics – and not only those that are tech related, as well as a location to discover various types of gear – whatever that term may end up implying – that they never knew existed. My specialty is in-depth reviews written in a layman’s terms, because everyone can understand technology, sometimes it just takes a little translating. +Judie Stanford

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  • http://www.clintonfitch.com Clinton Fitch

    Judie, I don’t know if you remember but I was on that initial call with you and Jenneth as well and I think the three of us ALL had a small freakout when it came to this service. It did feel like you were exposing everything out there to be had should Dashwire get hacked.

    That said, the improvements in version .299 are substantial and I’m far more comfortable with it now than before. This new build will allow ME to control what I synchronize with Dashwire. So if you are not comfortable with your SMS or phone records being out there, you don’t have to synchronize them. It’s really straightforward in the new build to do that.

    Ultimately it is giving up a bit of control and/or exposing yourself, that I can’t argue. However you have a lot of control over it now versus the inital release.

  • http://www.geardiary.com Judie Lipsett

    I do remember very well, which is why if you tell me that you are more comfortable with this version, I might be willing to give it another try. :-)

    I will affix a L-O-N-G password however, and watch what I synchronize. ;-)

  • Jerry Raia

    I’ll pass.

  • http://www.clintonfitch.com Clinton Fitch

    Judie, give it a try. Like I said, you can control it a lot more with this version. Besides, it is a beta – let ‘em hear your voice on things you don’t like (or like). :smile:

  • http://www.magnusson.ca/blog.html Chris Magnusson

    I’m with Jerry. Except I’ve already tried it and didn’t like it.

  • http://www.geardiary.com Judie Lipsett

    Hey all, I have received a reply from Ford Davidson of Dashwire, which he has agreed to allow me to republish here. For the sake of history, I’ll post the email I sent him, first:

    Hi Ford,

    I am preparing a post about the open beta, and I just wanted to know if you could discuss the security measures you all have taken to protect the users’ data on the web. If you could give me a sentence or two quote, I would really appreciate it.

    Best regards,
    Judie :-)

    His reply:

    Hi Judie,

    Awesome! Thanks for the mail. Read the article and thought it was great.

    Sorry for the delay – mail got filtered into junk folder and just received.

    Re: security, you captured some great points, and have been, and will continue to follow the discussion thread. T&Cs are similar to lots of large and small companies out there. As a standard practice, Dashwire periodically conducts rigorous network and application security audits via a 3rd party who does work for many of the top companies out there, and will continue to evaluate the best ways to deliver a great service with right level of security as we build out the business.

    Keep the feedback coming – appreciate it!

    Thanks,
    Ford

  • http://www.clintonfitch.com Clinton Fitch

    Coolness!

    I don’t envy the position that Dashwire is in from a security perspective. It has got to be hard to find that balance between service and security. It is good to hear though they are working on it on a consistent basis to keep working on that balance.