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.

RSS feeds are a great way to see all the latest updates on your favourite websites. Unfortunately, not all sites offer RSS feeds, and sometimes it would be inappropriate for them to do so. So how do you know when sites have changed their content without having to constantly visit them?

WebMon is a small utility that sits in your task tray, and alerts you if any of your predefined websites have been updated.

You can set it up to monitor any number of websites, and then define the frequency that each of your websites will be checked for updates.

WebMon stores a copy of a web page, and then after a predefined time, it will download another copy and compare the two. If there have been any changes, you will be alerted with a sound, or a pop-up.

WebMon is going to be great for me as I look at the same sites regularly doing research for this site, only to find no updates have been made. I will no longer need to visit each site individually or repetitively, thanks to this program. I read how someone else uses WebMon for alerts when the box office opens. Now he can buy tickets as soon as they are made available. 

WebMon couldn’t be any easier to use. It is also highly customisable. The only concern I have with WebMon, is that it is downloading pages regularly in the background. This could chew into your monthly bandwidth. You can specify how often the sites are checked for updates. Setting your update checks to happen every few days instead of every few minutes, will ensure your bandwidth is not wastefully consumed.

Get your copy of WebMon for free from Colin Markwells website. 

Thanks for the tip Matthew. This will be program I wondered how I ever did without.

Think of this scenario; You are lying in bed and just finished watching a movie that you were streaming from a computer downstairs. You want to sleep, but you need to head downstairs to turn the computer off. Save some time, and do it from the computer upstairs.

There are a number of ways that you can restart or shutdown remote computers. You could use a remote desktop connection, but there are quicker ways and we will look at them today.

This article will show you various methods you can use to shutdown or restart computers on your network. We will look at:

• Command Line/Shortcuts
• Windows Tools
• 3^rd Party Applications

As well as looking after the environment and your pocket by saving electricity, it is surprisingly easy to achieve. This article is very much aimed at a home user. Most server operating systems have much more powerful tools available.

I have learnt a thing or two researching for this article.

Read the rest of this entry »

A web server is a system that helps you deliver pages from your computer to other computers via a web browser. Inspect My Gadget is delivered to you through one. If you want to host your own material from your own computer (perhaps photos or music to share with friends and family), you will need to setup a web server on your computer which will do this task. Setting one up doesn’t need to be too daunting or expensive.

There are a number of free web server packages available, but I have not found any which are as easy to use as SimpleServer:WWW. Once you download the tiny 187k installation file, you can launch the installer. You can have a fully working web server up and running in less than 2 minutes. I wouldn’t suggest to my grandmother to try and install Apache, but I reckon she could handle this one.

There really isn’t much to this program – looking at it from a users point of view. SimpleServer sits in the tasktray. There is a start/stop button to enable or disable the server. The only other control it has is a browse button so you can select which folder the server will host. SimpleServer can be launched with Windows by placing it in your startup folder.

SimpleServer is a great web server. The only thing it lacks is security. The website will be open to anyone in world who knows the address. This shouldn’t be a huge issue, but if it is running and you are serving up a lot of music or movies, be aware that they might end up in the wrong hands. Unlikely, but worth mentioning.

If you have a home network, you will probably need to set up port forwarding in your router. For more information on this, check out this article. If you want to access this site from a computer out of your home network, I suggest you sign up with DynDNS so that you don’t need to remember your IP address everywhere you go.

Get your copy of SimpleServer:WWW for free from AnalogX

AnalogX has made a number of useful utilities which are all available for free. I have used a number of these utilities over the years and they have all worked flawlessly for me. It is a shame that the site doesn’t appear to be updated anymore.

Network Folder Plugin allows you to map your network folders and access them easily from your Windows Mobile Device. The interface is simple, and the program is quite snappy.

Generally, mapping to folders from the Windows Mobile platform is not very practical, as you need to be near your computer for it to work, (so you may as well use your computer anyway). But, if mapping is something you think will be useful for your setup, check this out.

I figure that transferring photos and music might be quicker on Wifi rather than on Bluetooth. Mapping network folders is an important step in accessing these files and to get the better results.

Windows Mobile devices let you connect to network folders. The default software which is built in to these devices is very clumsy and primitive to use.

Once you have installed it, you can access it from Settings/Connections. You then see a blank list which will eventually stock all your selected shares. Click new and either type in the share name or browse. Find the share you want, hold down and select “map drive”. Enter in your password and username, and you’re done!

Once you have mapped network folders, they will show up in file explorer, under a new folder called network. The files can then be copied to your device, played in a media player or you can copy files to and from your device. A feature I like in this program is that you can save passwords so you don’t have to re-enter it each time you want to connect.

To install the file, copy the cab to your device and then run it. Network Folder Plugin is available for free from FreewarePocketPC.net.