A pet peeve of mine, going back to my Pocket PC days,  has  been the inability to reliably backup/sync input from a mobile device. Anyone who spent time with ActiveSuck over the years knows the frustration of channels sometimes not syncing or folders/files being overwritten or ignored. Full backups are nice, but very time consuming, and not a great solution for data I entered an hour ago. It’s especially frustrating for data entered directly onto your mobile, as regardless of the entry method, it no doubt takes more effort than a full sized desktop/laptop qwerty keyboard.

Windows Phone has some good Cloud sync features built-in for your Live ID and OneNote, but data intense third party apps generally lack a good solution to backup/sync data that you worked hard to create. Ultimately, everyone will need to restore their data someday, either due to a damaged/defective phone, some device bug requiring a hard reset, a rouge third party app or changing out SD cards. That has driven me to focus on data intense apps that do provide a good backup/restore option.

Notesly+ floats right to the top of my list. This app allows you to take typed and ink notes in the same file. And once you have saved that file you can backup your entries to a Dropbox account with a simple tap. You can view your notes in list or icon view, which actually shows the content of your note. You can also choose the default screen, text or ink, when creating a new note. When you create a note, simply add a title and type or draw whatever you like. You can add/edit text in an existing note anytime although ink cannot be edited after being saved. Notes can be sent via SMS or Email, and ink notes can be saved as images to send as an attachment. Deleting notes is a simple tap.

Tapping the Dropbox icon presents you with a screen to; Backup Changed Notes, Backup Everything and Restore Everything. You can also Disable Dropbox integration from this screen. When you tap Backup, you will see which notes are being backed up followed by a Done! message. My eight notes backup in about 5 seconds. This solution is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Notesly+ creates a separate folder in Dropbox which contains a TXT and XML files for each note entry, so there is no easy way to edit or add Notes from the desktop. A desktop Client or another method to save the data would make this app even more valuable. Last week after a hard reset, all I did was install the app, enter my Dropbox credentials, tap Restore and my six existing notes were right where I left them. What a relief that was. Note that this app does have a “Live Tile” option, but it’s only to enable push notification for app updates, news, etc. So I have it disabled.

Sure, you can use OneNote, and I do for the more intense note taking stuff, especially things that require a lot of input, like my listing of the 200+ apps I have downloaded/installed. But for things like short lists, hints or simple reminders, Notesly+ fills in nicely. And with a robust backup solution you will only need to enter data once. You can find Notesly+ under Productivity in the Marketplace here for 0.99 (sorry, no trial). Or for those cheapskates out there, or the unfortunate users who can’t yet purchase apps through the Marketplace you can find Notesly Free here, which is ad supported and can be easily migrated to the paid version at a later date.

Take this one with a little skepticism, but wireless vet, who has identified himself as a Verizon employee, posted the following in the “Called Verizon Today” thread at WPCentral:

There have been plenty of warning signs lately so this looks like it may be a lock. Get your credit cards ready.

Marketplace rolled out v1.3.0 of I’m A WP7 yesterday, a social app that brings the Windows Phone community together. Once registered, you can see how many WP users are near you or search anywhere in the world. Or try Surprise Me and let the app select a location with WP7 users almost anywhere. Database now totals nearly 4700 users in more than 84 countries. The app has moved up to #7 in the Marketplace Social category (241 overall), and has a solid 4 star rating. Some of the new features of this version include:

• Ability to use a custom name for identification
• Selection from a collection of avatars to identify your spot on the map
• Messaging feature to send a short message to any other WP7 user around the globe
• Options to allow/prevent user or group messaging
• Pie charts highlighting total users and top regions
• Search WP developers in your area and automatically search Marketplace for their apps

Future updates will include; theme support for AMOLED/SAMOLED screen, integration with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and more stats. The app is free and only takes a few seconds to register. You can identify yourself “In the Cloud”, by Postal Code or GPS Location. One AT&T Sales Rep has reported that when selling WP7 devices, he installs I’m a WP7 right there in the store to show customers the other WP7 users around them. Nice idea.

You can find the app in Marketplace / Social here or by searching for …i’m a WP7 on your phone.

It is a good day for AT&T Surround users. Reader IDrankBlueKookAid tipped me off so I plugged into Zune and there was the February update. Got the notification on my phone at the same time. February update took about 7 minutes. Without unplugging I went to check for another update and noticed the message was already on my phone screen. The March/NoDo update took a total of 57 minutes to complete, including 24 minutes for Step 6, the backup process. FYI, I have about 6.5GB of data on my phone, including about 150 apps/games, 601 songs, 680 photos and a bunch of videos.

Have not even taken a cruise around the phone but the OS, Firmware, Radio and Bootloader have all been updated:

OS – Original: 7.0.7004.0 / New:7.0.7390.0

Firmware Rev No. – Original: 2250.09.10307.502 / New: 2250.21.15204.502

Hardware Rev No. – 0003 – No Change

Radio Software Ver. – 5.51.09.06.22.30.50.09H / New: 5.66.09.09_22.46.50.21H

Radio Hardware Ver. – A.26.0.D4 – No Change

Bootloader Ver. – 1.3.2250.7(111288) / New: 1.52.2250.4(120323)

Chip SOC Ver. – 2.2.5.0 – No Change

So plug your phone in and go get those updates. I can’t wait to buy something so I can cut & paste one of those long tracking numbers. Hopefully the extensive testing was worth it. Enjoy.

1800PocketPC put together an article highlighting some of the effort that went into creating the Windows Phone soft keyboard. Aside from all the work that was done researching key presses and user habits, there are a bunch of little Easter eggs that you may or may not know about. I know, your custom keyboard is better, but guess what, this is what Microsoft thinks you should use, so for now get used to it and take advantage of some of these time saving tips. Here are a few:

- Double-tap Space at the end of a sentence to add a period and capitalize the start of the next sentence.

- Tap & hold various keys to reveal hidden menus. The period key is especially handy with – ! : ? . tucked inside.

-You will find a bunch of accented characters inside of: E – Y – U – I –O – A – S – C – N – M

- And try these Number/Symbol keys for more stuff: ! ‘ “ ? – ( ) % $ 1 2 3 0. Or with shift try: – + = | < > ^

- Typing @ \ or ‘ on the Numeric/Symbol keyboard will return you to the Alpha keyboard

- Boost your speed: Tap/hold the Shift or Numbers/Symbols key, slide your finger to the character you want, and then release. Saves you a tap. And better yet, when you tap the Numbers key and slide/select, the kb returns to alpha view, so no toggling.

- In the suggestion bar, tap “+” to teach the phone a new word.

- To undo auto-correction: tap the word, then tap the first candidate (the original word) in the suggestion bar.

- When entering an address, tap and hold .com to view other extensions, like .org or ,net.

You can read the entire article here. Or see other tips here

Thanks 1800PocketPC for the tip. 

Yesterday, I did something on my phone that took less than a minute and cost me about seven hours of rebuilding. Decided to start tinkering with Advanced Configuration, a homebrew tool from Julien Schapman. Aside from some registry and sound tweaks, the app also has a feature to create/redefine your theme/accent colors. Playing around with the feature I discovered there was no way to create a new accent color even though I (and probably you) have seen Julien do just that in his video demos. The only option was to select an existing color and then change it to whatever you desired. While I really didn’t mind losing pink, purple and lime, I still desired to keep the initial ten colors and add additional entries. Another issue, is although your tiles and built-in apps will use the new defined color, all the third party apps continued to use the original color the accent was based on. So after changing pink to Firebrick (which is a badass color btw), my Start screen and email looks great, but all the third party apps are highlighted with pink. Geezz.

So Mr. Brainac found the registry key containing the 10 accent colors, along with a key assigning the current default. I figured if I added an 1th entry, as a placeholder, I could go back to Advanced Configuration and change it to something in the app color palette. Sounded simple enough. So I created an new entry and called it Yellow, exited the Reg Editor and tried to open Advanced Configuration. Nope. Kicked me right out. Back to the Start screen. Email works, good. Opened Settings and noticed that the current stock accent color was not listed as usual under Theme. Tried tapping on it, and kicked back out. Tried going back to the Reg Editor. Same problem. OK, a soft reset and battery pull should clean this up, right? Wrong. I guess most every third party app looks at that theme list to determine the contrast color and they didn’t like yellow.

I knew there was only one solution, Settings/About/Reset Your Phone. Being my second factory reset this month I have become somewhat of an expert on the subject. An hour to reset the phone, and resync everything with Zune, manually of course because Zune forgets that my phone is still HTC Surround1. About 6GB of music, photos and videos. Another hour to dev unlock, load Schapmans three homebrew apps, and deal with the 30 pre-loaded apps, 12 of which I had previously deleted and needed to delete again, and another 5 that were loaded as trials, although I had purchased long ago. Then another two hours to hunt and peck Marketplace for the 129 additional apps/games that were not pre-loaded. Two more hours after that to go through a good number of apps and reenter credentials, retrieve backups (thank you) and enter info that I had saved earlier this month with my first planned factory reset. And probably another hour  for final review and cleanup. Still half as long as my WinMo 6.1/6.5 days, but as usual, some info lost forever.

Now that I have dealt with this a second time I am really starting to embrace the Cloud. The restorable stuff was simply a pleasure to deal with. While a full desktop backup could be an option I think it might be sort of overkill to backup media that I already have synced on my PC, plus backup all my apps, especially those that don’t actually store any data, sort of seems senseless. And unless you do a backup almost every day, you are always going to lose significant info, not to mention newly added apps, deleted apps, etc. I think a better solution is Cloud backup of third party data, where it’s appropriate, and a better Marketplace app reinstall solution of course. I compiled a list of apps that needed some attention after being reinstalled. Let’s see how they fared:

Clever ToDo – Just started using this app recently, specifically because of it’s great Live Tile feature. The app does have a backup solution, but not knowing where the data file is going I was hesitant to try it. After exchanging a few emails with the developer who has been very responsive I am comfortable enough to give this a try for the next time. Fortunately, I am running my tasks concurrently with WinMilk (see below).

Fuels – Not a biggie, but I have been trying to keep track of my mileage (and rising fuel prices). No backup here so I had to recreate a dozen entries from scratch, some that were harder than others to tack down. Will be looking for, and willing to pay for, a backup solution.

Ice Alert – I know, no one will look at this anyway on my phone, but it makes me feel better. Took about 10 minutes to reenter everything, again

i Heart Radio – I only have10 favorite stations but it was a pleasure to login and watch them reappear on the screen. Thank you.

IMG News Reader – I use this app for my daily dose of basic news and only had 6 RSS feeds to reload, but would still have preferred a backup solution, using SkyDrive or Dropbox. How hard could it be.

Internet Explorer – yeah Microsoft, I’m talkin to you. I purposely do not save many links cause I know I will lose them eventually. The few I do  want to keep around, like the Seminole County Water Commission, to check on “don’t drink the water” alerts, I have backed up to my PC. The rest, send me a link. BTW, took me a good chunk of time to find this link the first time so reentering is the lesser if two evils.

Location Finder – This developer is actually planning some kind of backup solution, which is a good thing. If you have been somewhere and save the location info or save an entered address, it would be nice to hang on to this often irreplaceable data.

My Favourites – Recently started using this speed dial app and only had 9 entries. Good thing. There is a sort of backup solution where you send the info as an email, and then need to convert the content into an xml file, which can be uploaded to SkyDrive for eventual restoring. Too much work, and too many chances for error. Just back the file up to SkyDrive in the first place. As far as I know SkyDrive does not have a Troll that charges developers a toll to use it. So use it.

Notesly+ – Only started using this last week to replace Lists and Notepad Plus. The app backs up your txt/xml files to your Dropbox account. I crossed my fingers and a few seconds later my 6 files were back on my phone. Well worth 0.99. And now I am comfortable using this app for more stuff.

Remember All – Been using this app to take photos and add descriptions of items for comparative shopping or future purchases. Needless to say, it didn’t remember. A post it and the corner of my wallet would not have forgotten, but too late for that now.

Resco Radio – Think these guys can take a queue from i Heart Radio. Great that you have thousands of channels to choose from. Not so great when you have to navigate through those long lists to recreate your 6-7 preferred stations that took a long time to find the first go around.

Smart Shopping – This app does have a feature for sharing shopping lists that I will need to look into. While I don’t plan to share any lists, if I can use it to backup that works for me. Had this database built up well before my first reset earlier this month. Now I have to start over, again.

Sound Recorder/Tape Recorder – Glad I don’t keep any meaningful recording on my phone, which can’t be backed up, btw. Come to think of it, not sure why I even have these apps.

SkyWallet – I knew how this was going to turn out because it worked perfectly a few weeks ago. Entered my SkyDrive credentials and all my password, ewallet info was just as I left it.  And with a desktop companion app coming soon, damn near perfect. Thank you very much.

Stocks – Fortunately I only track a few stocks but it would be nice to back this up to the Cloud. But then again HTC and software don’t do well together, so maybe I should look for a better solution.

Today Counter – You know, a novel app to tell you how many days you or your kids have been around. Or how many days its been since whatever. Getting a little tired of reentering data here so this one might just have to go.

Traffic Cams – Not that big a deal to re-favorite a dozen or more traffic cameras, but these guys already have a website. So give me a login so I can sync my favorites, or just take the SkyDrive/Dropbox route.

Weave – Another RSS reader app with hundreds of available feeds, so not much to enter. But you still need to select your preferred categories and deselect the feeds you don’t want. Additionally, I have a category for Local News where I manually enter a few feeds, and of course Mobility Digest. I don’t expect the developer to support a dedicated server but a simple backup of preferences to SkyDrive would be nice. The whole file is probably about 1K.

WinMilk – Entered my Remember The Milk credentials and everything was as i left it. With this app not seeing a Live Tile till at least Mango, I am keeping it around for recurring tasks but have put my day to day stuff into Clever ToDo. Still good that I was able to recover.

So bottom line for developers is, I and probably a good handful of others would be willing to spend a few dollars for a data intense app that also provides a simple backup solution. Everyone’s time is valuable, not to mention the risk of losing important detail and data. I know I will be using this as a determining criteria for future app acquisitions and suggest you consider the same. We all know that a factory reset is not as much an “if” as it is a “when”.  Be prepared. 

Back on April 14th I wrote about a new app from HTC, Hidden Wi-Fi, that allows a user to define up to three hidden Wi-Fi Access Points. Problem is when you open the app an error pops up stating, “This application requires the latest Wi-Fi software. Please update your phone to the latest system software”. Well carlcamera in the HTC HD7 Forum has posted a workaround and by golly, it works. I don’t have a hidden network to fully test it, but I had no problem defining a hidden network. I think the app still needs some work (like all HTC software) because after creating an entry you can’t actually see it, even though there is a “delete” button at the bottom of the screen to remove entries.

So if you need this free app, simple follow the below steps. Nothing to lose.

Wow. I saw this hack (workaround is really too generous a term here) in the comments of the Hidden WiFi app in the Windows Phone app store. This actually worked!

1. Launch the HTC Hidden Wifi app

That infuriating "latest Wi-Fi software" error message appears — DON’T tap OK

2. Tap the Windows Key at the base of the phone (Windows Logo)

Nasty error dialog about navigation appears briefly (Note: I didn’t see any error dialog)

Then Home Page appears. Stay with me.

3. Tap the <– Back button at the base of the phone

If successful, you will see a fairly blank screen with "settings" and "hidden wi-fi" displayed.  click the plus (+) icon in the toolbar and add your hidden wi-fi name.  It won’t appear on this page after you enter it. Then go to Settings|WiFi and look for the name of that hidden Wi-fi SSID.  Good Luck!

Thanks carlcamera for the tip. You can find the app in Marketplace here. Oh, and HTC, please get your shit together and fix this app or at least read your own Forum. You would be amazed what you could learn about your products.

UPDATE: As Brianna reported below, the HTC Firmware Update, which came bundled with the NoDo(March) Update on my Surround does in fact remove the error message and make this app functional. That’s a good thing.

With the NFL Draft underway, thought it would be a good time to highlight Sports Calendar, an app that pretty much offers complete schedules for any and every sporting event you can imagine. Not sure of that. Ok, how about: Baseball: AA (Eastern, Southern, Texas), AAA (International, Pacific Coast), MLB and NCAA, Basketball: NBA, NCAA and Women’s NCAA, Fighting: Mixed Martial Arts (Bellator, Strikeforce, UFC), Football: Arena League, CFL, NCAA and NFL, Golf: LPGA & PGA, Hockey: NCAA & NHL, Racing: Motorcycle (AMA Motocross, AMA Supercross, MotoGP, World Superbike), Open Wheel (NHRA, Formula 1, Indycar), Stockcar (NASCAR, NASCAR Nationwide, NASCAR Truck), Soccer: English Premier League, Euro 2012, German Bundesliga, La Liga, Major League Soccer, Scottish Premier League and Serie A. Don’t see your league of choice, ask the dev. The app is already available on webOS and Android, and now we get some WP goodness.

Navigation is simple. Select a sport, league, team and the season schedule pops up for you, scrolling as close as it can to the current day. Nice touch. The default view is All games, but you can also pivot to Home games/Away games only. Tap on any game and you get some additional information like start time, location and other information which could include TV broadcast networks or game status.

The Home screen has an option to view all of Today’s events so at a glance you can see the schedule for every sporting event, grouped by league. Oh, btw, tapping on any league header collapses the list allowing you to quickly navigate to the sport or league of choice. When viewing any individual sport or team you can tag it as a Favorite. So, if you like NASCAR, tag it. The Yankees, tag it. Back on the Home screen, tap My Events and you get a view of all your favorites, grouped by Today, Week, Month, All & Teams.

But wait, it’s NHL and NBA Playoff season. What about that. Glad you asked. All playoff rounds are included in the app, so for example, with the NJ Devils playing golf for the past month, I am tracking the NHL Playoffs. Sports Calendar can also provide “push notifications” for all of your Favorites. Once activated, all of your favorite events will be sent to you via Toast notification 10 to 60 minutes (your choice) prior to the scheduled start time. There are other features planned, like dropping all your Favorites into your Calendar, but you will need to wait for the Mango API’s to get that.

The app is a little pricey at $2.99 and it does not offer a trial, which is a bummer. And I will admit when I took the risk and dropped my cash back in February I was somewhat disappointed. But the developer has been very responsive and open, addressing each of my issues, improving the app with each update. You can find it in Marketplace here under Sports or by searching on your phone for Sports Calendar app.

Here is one you are going to want to take a look at. And priced right at FREE. I have tried a few drawing note apps but this one combines the best features of the others, and adds a few new tricks.

InkNotez lets you draw or take notes using your finger tip, or a capacitive stylus I suppose. When you open the app you are presented with a blank writing surface, or the last image you were working on, which is automatically retained for you. To clear or save the last image, open the popup menu and select the appropriate option. The “brush” tool is selected by default, but tapping it brings up an option screen to select 6 different colors or brush diameters. Any changes to the defaults are saved till you exit the app. You can draw anywhere on the screen. Tapping the “eraser” tool allows you tap or erase any part of the screen. It erases any stroke you touch so you don’t need to be very thorough. There is also an “undo” tool, that will either remove recently drawn strokes in brush mode or add recently removed strokes in eraser mode. The help icon brings up some basic, but helpful instructions.

Bet you thought we were done. Not even close. The popup menu includes options to; Load, Save or Clear Page. Tapping load brings up a dialog box with six different style drawing surfaces; three different lined sheets, a grid sheet, a blank sheet and a To Do sheet. Tap any style sheet, then Done and your background will change, with any existing brush strokes remaining on the screen. If you want to save your note or drawing, tap Save and your image gets placed in your Saved Pictures folder. Clear Page will do what it says and display the default yellow lined background. But there’s more. Lets say you saved an image, like a To Do shopping list, but want to go back and add something to it. Well, tap Load, then Browse and the app takes you to your Pictures Hub, where you can import any image into the app. That’s right, you can annotate any image on your phone and then save it as a new image. Import a photo, draw a heart on it, save it,  and email it off to that special someone. Brilliant. So back to the To Do list. Tap the image, tap Done and you are back in the app. Add those eggs and then check off each item when you get to the store. You can’t edit any of the existing ink, but you can add new items, check them off, draw, whatever.

The app is ad supported, but the developer has done a nice job with that as well. Ads only appear; on the Load screen, on the brush selector screen, on the Help screen and a double dose on the About screen. So basically never really in your way. Another little feature that I appreciate is the top WP7 info bar is visible, so I can see my clock, check battery, etc. while in the app. Overall, really well thought out. The developer, SimzzDev, has offered to build a paid version if he get’s requests, but I really can’t think of a reason why. There are a few things I would like to see. Like a way to save preferences for; brush thickness, color and background image. And maybe a way to delete the current image. But otherwise, this little app has everything you might want. You can find it under Productivity in Zune here. Or search for inknotez app with your phone.

Here is a fun little FREE app that just hit the Marketplace. I’m a WP7! shows you WP7 users nearby or around the world. You start out by having the app identify you by current location or via Postal Code. Or for the really paranoid, you can list yourself as ‘In the Cloud” so you can be counted without giving your location away. Everyone is labeled WP7 user so no personal information is revealed. But there is an option for developers to identify themselves as well as their developer name. The app uses a pivot format to move from the Community, which includes users from throughout the world, to Nearby which you can define by distance. There is also a screen for Search that allows you to define a radius up to 100 miles of your current location, or any postal code you enter.

There are a few settings to define your nearby search radius along with the max number of users to display for the nearby and community screens. Tapping any user opens a map zeroing in on that users location as well as anyone nearby. Finally there is a statistics screen identifying the total number of users and developers.

Simmons, before you get started, the app was only released yesterday and a few more sites will have to pick this up before the data becomes meaningful. But I know you have to know, so right now it’s 61, 52 users / 9 developers. Actually not bad for a few hours. Oh, and I did a 40 mile search from midtown and found a developer and a user in Brooklyn, plus a user in Teaneck. So if your not doing anything this weekend I might be able to point you in the direction of your first WP7 sighting. Damn, you might even bump into Ramon. I also found two users within 11 miles of me. Not bad as some of the other users are from; Copenhagen, Singapore, Germany, Philippines, Mexico, etc. The developer is from Richmond, TX and the app has no ads, and as noted it’s free.

Future updates include; Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn integration, plus the ability to send messages to other WP7 users around the world. So have some fun and download i’m a wp7! today. And don’t forget to spread the word so we can watch these numbers climb. You can find the app in Marketplace here or search on your phone for …i’m a wp7! app. Update, just hit 64, and counting

UPDATE: LuiD reported below, as of 5:40MST the app has reached 1,000 registered users. And as of 6:17MST, it’s up to 1,036, including 11 users within 25 miles of my home. Not bad for the first day in the marketplace. BTW, the developer has informed me that an update should make it to your phone with some tweaks and more stats in the next week.