by Frank McPherson, author of How To Do Everything With Windows Mobile

 
One thing that I lost when I gave up the Blackberry and switched to Windows Mobile was the ability to have custom alerts for email from specific users. By default a Blackberry either vibrates or plays a sound whenever you receive an email. I immediately found that behavior annoying and I turned off those notifications, however the downside is that then I may miss an important email.

A co-worker showed me how I could create rules using the Blackberry desktop software so that I could have the Blackberry vibrate whenever I received an email from a specific person. I therefore created rules to vibrate when I received emails from my boss, or when I received emails flagged for high importance.

Unfortunately, Windows Mobile does not have a similar feature built-in. You can configure text messages and email separately, and I played around with creating rules to have Exchange send me a text message whenever I received an email from a specific address, but I couldn't figure out a way to either not forward the entire message to my phone or not send a copy of the text message to the person who originally sent me the email.

Watchflag is a new program for Windows Mobile that provides the ability to create custom alerts for email messages. You can create rules that alert you for email received from specific addresses, or with certain words in the From field, and you can create rules that have certain words in the subject. The rules can also be specific to whether you receive email marked for high importance.

Watchflag provides several different alert options, including Light Up The Screen, Wait For Acknowledgement with or without a repeating alert, Vibrate, light the LED, or play a sound. You can define different sounds for different rules, and the sounds can be MP3 files in the /My Documents/My Music folder on the device. One thing I think the program should do is use the /My Documents/Ringtones folder for alerts as well since ringtones are usually smaller in length. The program also doesn't provide a way to only make rules active during specific times, though the program's author has stated this is a feature they plan to add.

I've been using this program for about a week now and have been pleased with the results. It does seem as though there is a small hit on battery life, which the program author acknowledges particularly if you have rules including Wait For Acknowledgement, which I have found seems to be needed to be sure you actually notice a vibrating alert. If you transitioned to Windows Mobile from Blackberry you might want to try this program out!

Labels: 2008, software

posted by Frank at 6:33 PM

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