Looks like maybe the Sidekick is going to get support for more document types. In a press release put out today from Iseemedia, their President is quoted as saying, “We are excited to be working with Remoba to deliver a complete PC experience on T-Mobile sidekick handsets.” He’s talking about the announcement of T-Mobile’s deployment of their product, iseedocs.

What is iseedocs? Their webpage says: “iseedocs enables mobile users to instantly view and interact with all common email attachments – regardless of file size – as if they were sitting at their desks.” So in short, it will be a way to view all sorts of document types that aren’t natively supported by the Sidekick as long as you have network connectivity. What will it support? Their site says they can handle everything from Office dovuments to PDF, audio, and video. A lot of documents are directly supported on the Sidekick, but iseedocs will take the responsibility off the Sidekick OS and allow for future document types without having to update the Sidekick.

Here’s the full press release:

iseedocs(TM) Goes Live on Major U.S. Carrier Network with Remoba Email Service

TORONTO and SANTA CLARA, CA, Jan. 5 /CNW/ – iseemedia Inc. (TSX-V: IEE), a leading provider of technology and services that allow mobile phones to be experienced like desktop devices today announced that it has begun commercial deployment of iseedocs(TM) on the T-Mobile Network in the U.S. with Remoba. iseedocs enables instant attachment viewing and navigation without having to download content. Handsets provide access to enterprise email, calendar and contacts. The combined offering is now being rolled out to T-Mobile customers as a choice download with affordable email data plans.

“As more people travel and work from multiple locations, mobile phones must perform more complex tasks and access email with sizeable attachments,” said Anthony DeCristofaro, President and CEO, iseemedia. “iseedocs is the ideal solution to perform this task on mobile phones. We are excited to be working with Remoba to deliver a complete PC experience on T-Mobile sidekick handsets.”

Unlike most email attachment handlers, iseedocs delivers a document index which is also the document management system. All pages, images and graphs are accessible on demand. Unlike other attachment viewers, iseedocs does not download the document to the mobile device, but streams pages as they are requested. The user can also zoom and pan the document, providing a higher degree of information than is normally available on mobile devices.

Using a Smart Adaptation Engine, iseedocs maintains virtually all document formatting and content. So if a chart embedded in the Word document is too small to see, the user can zoom in to view more detail. If a 30-page document is being viewed, and the reader needs to view page 21, they can access the page directly through a table of contents or page thumbnail navigation.

“We provide the Smartphone alternative for consumers and business users without the costly data plans, proprietary devices and IT infrastructure modifications,” said Guru Thalapaneni, President and CEO of Remoba. “iseemedia serves as the perfect complement so users can readily manage their everyday activities directly from their mobile phones. More importantly, we help network operators to control their bandwidth costs while allowing them to offer new services on mass market devices. We look forward to expanding our efforts with T-Mobile as we make steady progress with this launch.”

The mobile phone application allows users to access business on their mobile phones. It can securely access email stored on servers and perform almost all the functions through the mobile phone just the way one would do from a home or office computer. The application can be downloaded to the phone like any ring tone or game, and setup by entering username and password.

About Remoba

Remoba is a leading developer of high-value, and affordable mobile phone software that makes “Every Phone a Smart Phone”. Remoba provides Wireless Access to Email, Contacts, and Calendar from the Desktop, Corporate Server, or Hosted Server on most Cell Phones. Remoba is based in Hayward, CA with a development center in Bangalore, India. For more information please visit www.remoba.com.

About iseemedia

iseemedia Inc. is a software development company focused on the commercialization of a Service Delivery Platform (iseemail(TM)) for delivering Blackberry-like email services to the mass market and an advanced Content Delivery Platform (iseedocs(TM)) for rich media adaptation and extremely cost-efficient delivery to mobile devices. The Company maintains a broad portfolio of issued and pending patents that support authoring, streaming and interactive viewing. iseemedia is publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange (Symbol: IEE).

Via press release
Thanks Mike!

I woke up this morning to several reports from people saying they had gotten an OTA for their Sidekick LX 2009. It’s looking like this update is a combination of the bug fix OTA I mentioned awhile back and the new Mobile Backup support. You should hopefully see less crashes in your Sidekick LX 2009 once this update is applied. The OTA may cause your device to hard reset. Don’t freak out though, all your data should be backed up to Danger’s servers, so it’ll come back. And once you have Mobile Backup, your address book will be backed up to T-Mobile’s servers as well! Hooray for backup!

For those hardcore geeks, the new OS version is 5.0/270115. A couple more screenshots:

T-Mobile has dropped the price of Sidekick Sync down to $2.99 a month. If you already bought Sidekick Sync you should go into the Catalog and upgrade in order to get the lower monthly price.

What is Sidekick Sync?

Sidekick Sync provides secure access to your Exchange Active Sync (Outlook) e-mail. calendar events, corporate directory and contacts on your Sidekick LX 2009. Read, reply and forward your e-mail, and accept calendar invitations just as you would on your PC.

Remember how back in October you had a little bit of trouble with your Sidekick? Well T-Mobile continues to do their best to make it up to the people that stuck with the Sidekick through those troubling times. You probably got a free month of data service for October, several of you got $100 $50 cards that you can use to pay your bill or upgrade your phone, and now T-Mobile has put some free stuff in the Catalog to show their appreciation of you as a customer.

If you jump into the Download Catalog (which has thankfully returned), there’s a section at the bottom called “Customer Appreciation”. We haven’t checked the other devices, but on the Sidekick LX 2009 it contains Twitter, 2010 NFL, Animated Screensavers, Crossword HQ packs, Prank Box packs, Sudoku HQ packs, a couple of Backgrounds and Themes, and a handful of Sound FXs. If you pick up Twitter, be sure to follow us: @hiptop3 and @skringers

If you don’t have an InvisibleShield on your Sidekick (or whatever device you’re using) then you risk getting scratches on the screen. Not only does this get super annoying since bad scratches make it hard to see what’s on the screen, but it also reduces the amount you can resell the device for later. My friends and I all swear by InvisibleShields to protect our screens. If oyu don’t have one, you can buy one through Sidekick Shopper and get 15%.

ZAGG, the makers of the InvisibleShield, have recently come out with a new thing called ZAGGskins. Skins are nothing new, but now there are skins that actually protect your device because they’re made of the same stuff as the InvisibleShields. Unfortunately they don’t have skins for the Sidekicks, so shoot them an email telling them that you’d buy one if they had them! In the meantime if you want to protect your iPod, Blackberry, iPhone, or laptop head over to ZAGG’s site before November 30th because they’re 50% off!

T-Mobile is sending out emails to customers that bought Intellisync letting them know that it is back up and running:

Dear Sidekick Customer,
We show you previously purchased the Intellisync application. We are happy to notify you that this application can once again connect to your Sidekick account to sync your Sidekick Address Book, Calendar and To Do data with Microsoft Outlook.

Just wondering if anyone out there actually got the $100 gift card that T-Mobile said they would be sending out to people that “have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content”. If you lost your data and got a $100 gift card, let us know in the comments!

It took a large scale data disaster, but looks like Microsoft/Danger/T-Mobile will finally be giving Sidekick users a way to backup their data to something other than Danger’s servers. An OTA is rolling out to users that will allow you to backup your Address Book to T-Mobile’s Mobile Backup service. The announcement on the T-Mobile forums makes it look like this might only be for Sidekick LX 2009 users, which is a little worrisome for people with other devices.

Here’s what T-Mobile is saying:

T-Mobile will begin rolling out Mobile Backup for Sidekick LX 2009 customers via an Over The Air (OTA) process. All Sidekick LX 2009 customers should receive the OTA in the next few weeks.

What is Mobile Back up?
Mobile Backup is a free service via My T-Mobile that allows you to avoid manually re-entering contacts into a device in the event you need to replace it or in the event it’s lost or stolen.

How will I know I have it?
T-Mobile will send an Over The Air (OTA) update in phases over the next several weeks. You will receive a message that says “System Update Notice”. Once you receive the message, please accept it. Upon successful receipt of your OTA, you will receive a T-Mail confirming that you have Mobile Backup.
Another way to verify receipt of the OTA is to navigate to your device’s Address Book and select Menu. Under the drop down you will see Mobile Backup.

What if I don’t have it right now?
Don’t worry. T-Mobile is rolling this update to our customers in phases. All LX 09 customers should have it by Dec 10, 2009.

So am I at risk of losing my data again until I have the update?
Microsoft/Danger has taken steps to help ensure all data is readily available. This is an additional enhancement to backup your contact data should you change your device in the future.

For more info on Mobile backup check out https://support.t-mobile.com/doc/tm23951.xml

Good news! As we posted on our Twitter account (@hiptop3), the Download Catalog came back online this weekend. There was much rejoicing.

Also, we heard from T-Mobile directly and they were very happy I’m sure to be announcing that Sidekicks were no longer “Temporarily Out Of Stock” and were up for sale on T-Mobile.com again! You can snag a Sidekick LX 2009 for $149.99 or a Sidekick 2008 for $49.99. And if that’s not cheap enough, you can even get an open box Sidekick 2008 for $34.99. (All with 2 year contracts of course)

I know, I know.. this post is almost blasphemous, but I thought it might be helpful for some of you out there. After all, Android is another project by the same guy that helped bring us Danger! (I’m talking about Andy Rubin) Don’t worry, I’m keeping my Sidekick LX 2009, and hiptop3.com will continue running. We ain’t going nowhere.

That said, the Sidekick Disaster of October had a lot of people start thinking about leaving the Sidekick, but the big question is and was: which device to jump to? It seems like there are three solid choices: iPhone, Blackberry, and Android. Each one is different in its own way, and none of them compare to some of the features that the Sidekick has. From my experience and talking with people it feels like the Android platform comes the closest to the Sidekick.

So I sat down and put together Android Shopper to help compare all the different Android devices on the market right now. If you’re thinking about buying an Android device but aren’t sure which one, I’d recommend checking out the comparison of Android phones. If you’ve already switched to an Android device (or tried one in the past), please leave a comment on the “More Info” page for the phone you tried telling everyone what you loved/hated about it!

BTW, anyone want to start a petition to get Android on the Sidekick platform? 🙂