If your company runs an Exchange email server, but you have had trouble connecting to it from your Windows Mobile device, you are not alone. Many companies block the mobile features of Exchange, often because they don’t want to support it, or because they set a preference for BlackBerry devices. Shame on them!

Chronobis is a utility that is a nice workaround to this problem. Chronobis accesses the Outlook Web Access data, and synchronises it with a Windows Mobile calendar client. The only requirement is that you are able to access Outlook Web Access from a public or home computer. This should be available to most people.

Chronobis is still in Beta development, so there are a lot of things lacking over a direct Exchange connection. The sync currently only works with calendar, and it only transfers data to your device. If you add new calendar entries on your device, these changes won’t be transferred back to your Exchange account. This problem can currently be solved with an ActiveSync connection when you are next at your computer. This makes it convenient enough to use.

I look forward to seeing Chronobis evolve. Of course mail, tasks and contacts are important features to sync. There are lots of hints in the software and the forums, that these features will be made available in the future, and that the sync will occur both ways. This will be a real gem if all these features become a reality.

This program is of no use to you if you are already able to connect directly to an Exchange server directly from your device.

Get your copy of Chronobis for free from Chronobis.com.

Wireless time is a utility that lets you schedule when the Bluetooth, Wifi, Audio or GSM is active on your Windows Mobile device. This utility can be used to automatically turn off your phone during weekly meetings, or enable a Bluetooth sync via ActiveSync at a set time.

The interface looks a little challenging at first, but once you change the language to English, it is much easier to navigate. There is a grid showing each hour of the day, with icons for GSM, Bluetooth, Wifi and Sound next to each hour. All you need to do is enable or disable each component, telling WirelessTime when you want things turned on or off. You can edit this screen for “all days”, or each day individually. There is even profile support. 

I was happy to find this as I can now put my phone in “flight mode” overnight, to ensure my clock radio doesn’t make weird static noises while I sleep. The phone turns itself back on in the morning and enables Bluetooth and Wifi to allow any required synchronisation to occur.

I was searching for a utility that would do this same task a while back, but didn’t come across anything. I think this is a good little find. If you use any scheduler that does the same thing as Wireless Time, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

WirelessTime is available for free from FreewarePPC.com.

Have you ever wanted to control your Windows Mobile device from your desktop computer? Well there are a few programs that will let you do this, but none are as feature rich as My Mobiler.

My Mobiler allows you to use your keyboard and mouse to enter data into your device, via your desktop PC. This will greatly speed up your data entry.

There are 6 hot keys down the bottom of the window that load up your calendar, contacts, email or notes, or you can pick up/hang up calls, all very quickly from your desktop.

One feature I thought was fantastic is the drag and drop file management. If you want to copy a file from your desktop to your device, simply drag it from Explorer onto the My Mobiler window, and it will do the rest.

If you write how-to articles and the like, you may want to take advantage of the inbuilt screen capture or video capture options on offer.

To connect your computer to your device, My Mobiler can use your ActiveSync connection, or an IP connection. With these options, all bases are covered; IP, USB or Bluetooth.

This program is ideal if you find the screen of your device to be too small to use comfortably. This program lets you zoom the screen to whatever size you want.

It is fairly responsive compared to some of the other programs I have used that do the same job. There are some requests in the forum to make this program a sidebar gadget. That would be great. I’ll keep my eye out for future versions of this program, and keep you posted if I find something else to share with you.

MyMobiler is available for free from mymobiler.com.

Searching Google from a Windows Mobile or Symbian device normally takes a few clicks. You first need to open the browser, open up Google, and only then do you get the opportunity to start your search. It is all a bit slow and frustrating.

Google has released a today screen plugin that makes searching so much faster. Once it is installed, you have the Internet giants search bar directly on your today screen awaiting your every whim.

I have always found the Internet to be a little awkward on hand held devices. This is really going to help me get over my mobile Internet phobia. It is now so simple to find the information I want quickly.

The search bar is available for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices. Simply go to http://mobile.google.com from your device and select “Search (Download)” to install the plugin.

We are often slaves to our mobile phones, jumping to attention whenever a call comes in. Wouldn’t it be a nice change to have some peace and quiet every now and again?

Call Firewall may help you control who you speak to. It uses caller ID to detect if a caller is someone you want to talk to, at that time.

Call Firewall is extremely easy to operate. There are numerous modes that you can predefine.

• Accept all calls
• Accept calls from My Contacts only
• Reject all calls
• White List – Accepts calls from contacts in White list
• Black List – Accepts all calls apart from blacklisted contacts

You are even able to respond to rejected callers with a predefined SMS. It sits in the background doing its job, allowing you to get on with whatever you were doing before you were interrupted.

Call Firewall runs on Windows Mobile devices and is available for free from Logic Unlimited.