While most of you know me as Clinton Fitch, writer for Gear Diary and owner of Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!, I do have a day job. That would be the Unified Communications Product Manager for Spanlink Communications. While we are not the biggest Cisco Systems partner on the block, we are one of the best when it comes to applications in Unified Communications and Contact Centers. As you can imagine, I have email constantly flowing into my inbox and thus onto my HTC Advantage on a variety of different topics, customers and solutions. My answer to managing all of this email are sub-folders. I love them. I have them for just about every category out there and it makes it quick and easy for me to find a message. This is great on my Windows PC but by default Windows Mobile does not synchronize any folders other than your Inbox via ActiveSync or Over-The-Air (OTA) Push Mail. Fortunately this is somewhat easy to change and in this How-To I’ll show you.

Now for a word of warning: What I’m about to demonstrate requires that the folders you are wanting to synchronize are on your Exchange server. This will not work if you are trying to synchronize folders that are stored in your PST file on your PC. It could also be that your Administrator does not allow folder synchronization beyond the Inbox through policies set in place. You will need to check with them if this does not work for you. Secondly, this will require a lot of bandwidth depending on how much you have to synchronize so make sure you have an unlimited data account. Gear Diary is not responsible for your $5,000 data bill!

Continue Reading

Looks like Apple is again experiencing issues with their MobileME email service (synchronization of calendar and contacts seems to still be working). I just tested my MobileMe account and was unable to receive any email. Users on the TUAW web site are reporting that email has sporadically been unavailable since Friday with one commenter indicating that Apple told him the outage could stretch for another day or two.

MobileMe is the replacement service for Apple’s .Mac online suite of tools. One component of MobileMe offers push email directly to the recently update iPhone OS version 2.0. Ultimately the MobileMe outage is opening Apple’s iPhone to the same criticism that I have levied against RIM. With push email dependent upon outside third party products you have an additional point of failure in your email delivery — that is prone to breakage at very inopportune moments.

TUAW

BlueWhaleMail launches today with a free mobile application promising to simplify the delivery of push email to your Nokia Series 60 or SonyEriccson phone. When you provide BlueWhaleMail with your email address and password, it does all the “behind the scenes” work to configure the system with the proper mail servers. Your phone vibrates when you get an email, the way it does for a Text Message. Your email is on your phone all the time - no need to log in and keep checking mail. The software also pushes Facebook alerts and notifications to your phone. If you absolutely need to get your Facebook pokes and read hilarious wall posts in real time - this is the solution for you.

Link: BlueWhaleMail
Link: Access BlueWhaleMail via your mobile phone