Dashwire Beta Goes Open
Posted on 28 March 2008, at 1:00 am, by Judie Lipsett
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.”
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?
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)
Sharing via email…
…and sharing via social sites.
INSTANT STATUS UPDATES
- Update your Facebook and Twitter status from Dashwire.com or (coming soon) the Dashwire Mobile client on your phone.
INSTANT MESSAGING-STYLE THREADED SMS ON THE WEB
- Improved SMS experience through conversation threading by contact
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
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…
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March 28th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
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.
March 28th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
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.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I’ll pass.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
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).
March 28th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
I’m with Jerry. Except I’ve already tried it and didn’t like it.
March 30th, 2008 at 8:33 am
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:
His reply:
March 30th, 2008 at 11:23 am
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.