My Phone beta team chimes in

It's been a couple of weeks now since Microsoft's My Phone beta first went live. Some of you are loving it, some of you are loathing it, and some of you are still waiting to get your confirmation code. And Microsoft's not ignoring you.

One of the biggest gripes we've had is that if you're already syncing with an Exchange server, you're SOL as far as syncing your PIM data with My Phone. But Microsoft is taking a look at that, as well as more selective syncing.

Here are three FAQs the beta team says, in its blog,  it's paying attention to:

  • Tighter integration with Windows Live services: Window Live suite of services provides a fantastic user experience around Contacts, Calendar, Photos and other user needs. We too are big fans and ardent users of these services and it is natural for you all to ask for tighter integration so that all of your personal data is consolidated in one single view. The initial goal for My Phone service was to test the concept and validate that we are solving a real problem for the users. Now that we have a resounding vote of confidence for the service our future plans are moving in this direction.
  • Support synchronizing additional data: Your phone is a very personal device for lot of us. For some of us it is akin to having all of life in your hands and it is not fun thinking about losing all of this information. We have tried to support syncing the most frequently used data types keeping in mind the current and future trends but at the same time we have room for growth in this area for syncing additional information. There has also been active discussion around providing flexibility to select folders and files from the phone for syncing it with the service and also providing the option to sync Contacts, Calendar and Tasks even though they are managed by Exchange/ActiveSync.
  • Suggestions on improving the experience on the My Phone Web Site: There have also been number of suggestions on further improving the overall usability of the web site along with the phone application. These are being evaluated on case by case basis and we will be taking those into account for future updates.

What say you, fair readers? How's My Phone treating you?

Dieter Bohn