The folks over at FileMaker have delivered one brilliant iPhone app. Bento for iPhone is an iPhone port of Bento - not some cut back imitation.

If you're looking for powerful information management on your iPhone then it's a no-brainer - buy Bento for iPhone. For $5.99, it can replace several other iPhone apps. Sure, there are a couple of rough edges but we're sure these will be sorted in the fullness of time.

My full review can be read over at Australian Macworld.

Apple's .Mac service has been down for much of the day. Email access has been non-existent and the .Mac customer site has been unavailable intermittently. The Mac user group I'm a member of, iMug, has had several members reporting issues throughout the day. Syncing my iCal and Address Book data doesn't seem to have been affected.

100% of members were unable to access mail using an IMAP client. Normal service has been restored.
5.30.2008 :: 22:00 - 01:00 PST Due to scheduled maintenance from 10:00PM to 1:00AM PST, Some .Mac members could not access .Mac Mail. Normal service has been restored. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Access has been restored new but with all the hoopla about Apple renaming .Mac and registered about a bazillion new domains, many registered in Montenegro so that they get a .me TLD I wonder if some of today's hassles have been driven by preparations being made for a change-over.

I'm reviewing a popular, premium mobile phone at the moment. The phone is quite beautiful and very nice to use. However, it lacks one important feature - the ability to sync with a Mac.

I read today that Apple's market share is around the 7% mark and that they're now the 4th largest computer maker on the planet. In other words a major manufacturer of computer accessories has decided that a large market, that has shown itself to be supported by customers that don't mind paying for good products, wants to miss on a stack of potential sales.

Creating iSync plug-ins might not be a trivial task but there's obviously some significant benefit - just ask Nokia. Visit http://www.nokia.com/isync and you'll find iSync plug-ins for most of their new models.

So, to all those manufacturers that don't bother with iSync plug-ins, every mobile phone that I review that skimps on Mac support will get marked down. Support for the two most popular OSes is a mandatory feature in my view.

 iSync • phone sync

New from Common Time

I've been a long-time Common Time customer, using their mNotes software for syncing Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices with Lotus Notes. If you're looking for a Notes sync solution these are the guys to see.

This new product according to the press release provides:

... real-time mobile e-mail, messaging and line of business applications, the combined solution offer will feature Microsoft's System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 solution for security and device management with CommonTime's industry-leading mobile messaging and Notes database access products, mNotes and mForms.

If you're looking after an enterprise or corporate Notes environment with Windows Mobile then this looks like something you'll want to run your eye over.

 Common Time • Lotus Notes • mForms • mNotes

My friend Simon Sharwood just Twittered this comment and it got me thinking.

Now, ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center do have their problems. Bit so do other sync solutions. For example I use iSync on my Mac with my Nokia N95. However, in the office where I work most of the time we use Windows XP and Lotus Notes so i sync the same N95 using Nokia's PC Suite. Both PC Suite and iSync work exactly as specified - as long as you use only one.

As I like to have only one diary I need to sync the N95 with both systems. In effect, the N95 is the hub and my Mac and the Win XP system are spokes. The problem is that after I sync the N95 with the Mac, the only way I can get it to sync with the Win XP system is to reset all the sync settings. Fortunately, PC Suite is smart enough to not wipe all the data off the phone and star over - it just does, what I think is a normal sync. It's just that i have to go through the initial set up every time. What a colossal waster of my time. Just to be really safe I don't sync contacts between the systems as they would be very tricky to rebuild. The calendar is easier as all the meeting invitations can still be accessed so i could manually update things if the situation was desperate.

What we need is a standardised sync protocol. For example, for appointments and meetings, you'd need IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Novell and a few others to define a minimum data set that must be synchronisable across platforms (Description, Start/End Date and Time, Last Modified Date/Time, etc). They can have extra fields to make their software different from the others but standards for the minimum data set need to be defined. The same should be done for contact and task items.

Sync software would then have to support that minimum specification so that a device that is used across more than one platform will sync correctly.

It strikes me that most of the pieces of such a protocol already exist. There's the ical standard (not to be confused with Apple's iCal application which is an implementation of the ical standard) for calendar data and vCard for contacts. PIM applications need to re-written to use those data standards and sync software needs to be designed to use them.

Is it that hard? I work in the Australian energy industry and we managed to get 40 companies to agree on standardised communications protocols for transactional data. There are only a handful of major players in the PIM business and the same in mobile operating systems. If they supported the standards in the software the sync software would follow suit.

 iSync • Mobile Data • PIM • Sync Software • Windows mobile