REDFLY Mobile Viewer Enters Beta

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.celiocorp.com/viewer/' target='_blank'>http://www.celiocorp.com/viewer/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Celio Corp, makers of the REDFLY Mobile Companion, today announced a public beta of the new REDFLY Mobile Viewer PC software for Windows XP and Vista. The REDFLY Mobile Viewer is a software product allowing smartphone users to conveniently use their favorite Windows Mobile applications at full size on their PCs. To download the free beta, visit www.celiocorp.com...The REDFLY Mobile Viewer works with all current REDFLY-compatible smartphones. The software gives users access to all of the smartphone's applications and features via a Windows PC, including the ability to send and receive SMS messages and e-mail in a full-screen window. The REDFLY Mobile Viewer is a great tool for multitasking, allowing users to interact and use both the smartphone platform and the PC platform simultaneously via the PC."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/ppct/auto/1239141335.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>This is an interesting inversion of the basic RedFly concept: connecting a less powerful devices (the smartphone) to a more powerful devices (a laptop/desktop PC) rather than the concept of connecting the more powerful/connected device (the smartphone) to a dumb terminal. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it could be promising. Although it does beg the question of why you'd use Word Mobile on your smartphone if you had it on your laptop/netbook. Maybe it's more for the smartphone-only apps that benefit from the hardware in the smartphone (phone radio, GPS, etc.)?</p>

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I was thinking it's a serious case of tunnel vision, but I suppose it might be useful for a few people. For starters, tethering is like a crime in the US; this sort of works around it.

[Jason Lee]

I've played with it.. It works well. Though like others, I'm not really sure where they are going with this.

I love my Redfly. Take it on every vacation and trip with me now instead of my laptop.

Maybe if you could run this off of a flash drive... I could see plugging into a public computer and running the viewer from your flash drive. Say you were at a library or some other shared computer. I think that would be a great use for it. You could have secure access to all your data while a nice large keyboard and monitor. (if you didn't happen to have your Redfly with you).

One thing i did notice is that it had a presentation mode. Basically just fullscreened the program. So I guess you could also use it to on a shared computer at some location you were going to give a power point presentation or something.

Ok, now i really gotta try installing it to a flash drive. :)

[emuelle1]

I just sold my Redfly. I bought it in October and used it quite a bit. It was very useful, but could only operate up to the limitations of Windows Mobile. I sold it to a friend to make up the difference I needed to get an iPhone.

This viewer would have been useful. I enjoyed my Redfly, but when I traveled I had to take my work laptop and usually left the Redfly home. This viewer would have made up for that.

[r@dimus]

I don't get it. This thing looks like an answer to a question no one was asking, or has already been answered by the basic functions of ActiveSync (Vista's mobile device thing) or any number of free apps that are already out there.

[buutruong]

I tested this out and actually liked it a lot. I can't tether without paying $15 extra per month so this is a decent workaround. Hopefully the final version will work with Bluetooth Activesync with my Treo.

[Menneisyys]

Also, you might want to read my review at http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/f323/review-benchmark-comparison-remote-controller-presentation-suite-redfly-mobile-93339.html