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FoneLink 2.0 license giveaway!

28 May, 2008 - 19:14 — Sami

The FoneLink application for cell phone management for Macs has been updated to version 2.0, and the friendly folks at nova media are offering 5 licenses for Mac.sis readers – the only requirement is that once you try the software out, please provide feedback / review as a reply to this article.

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As I have already grabbed one of the licenses, that means that there are four left. They will be handed out on first come, first serve basis, so if you've got one of the supported devices and you are willing to provide a bit of feedback, please drop me a message via the contact form and let me know. Only one license per person, thank you.

And, as an added bonus, I have five licenses of nova media's lauch2net for OS X as well, so if you're looking for wireless connectivity, let me know as well.

Myself, I will provide feedback & review as soon as I take FoneLink through its paces.

Comments

10 November, 2008 - 22:41 — Andreas Becker (not verified)

Hi, do you still have a

Hi, do you still have a license left?

I found the application yesterday and it seems to be a great one.
i also tried the bluephoneelite, but couldn't sync my adresses.....

fonelink connected easily to my w800i and got all the stuff onto my macbook.

great!

greetz from germany,
Andy

12 November, 2008 - 19:36 — Sami

Sorry, all gone already:(

Sorry, all gone already:(

23 October, 2008 - 20:57 — Sami

Here's a review from a

Here's a review from a Mac.sis reader (thanks Dave, sorry it took so long to publish – somehow the message got buried in my inbox over my vacation).

Mac:
MacBook Pro running Leopard (10.5.3)

Phone:
Nokia E61

- Installer works nicely, creating a folder in Applications that has a custom icon - nice touch!
- Launching app for first time prompts to register or use demo - app 'phones home' on port 80 and 443
- confirms license type and advises reading user guide for more details, and you'd better read it!
- connection center discovered phone after brief delay
- prompted to back-up iCal and Address Book data before syncing - great advice!
- user interface is not as 'Mac like' as it could be and it is inconsistent.
- it was easy for me to get the program stuck into a loop where I had no option but to force quit it.

Organizer - Contacts
- had FoneLink running and left computer. When I returned, FoneLink wouldn't re-connect to phone. Quitting app and restarting was solution.
- Addresses for contacts are on phone, but are not recognized by TomTom. I don't know why this happens, but it is a MAJOR issue for me.
- Addresses duplicated in Address Book and on phone - removing from Address Book did not remove from phone
- Fonelink displays addresses in wrong order and missing details.
In my instance: Street address, Postal Code, City, Country.
It should be: Street Address, City, Province, Postal Code, Country
- Some descriptions for phone numbers are displayed incorrectly in FoneLink. e.g. home fax number is labelled "Home privat"

Organizer - Events & Tasks
- Notes for iCal events are duplicated.
- displaying every iCal event is a waste. I don't need to see every birthday for every year since a person was born! It is a repeating event that started many years ago. All I need to know is that it is on my phone.

Organizer - Notes
- worked exactly as expected
- sync warnings when making changes can be annoying, I don't have many notes on my phone so I was always exceeding the 5% threshold.

Organizer - SMS
- SMS messages sent from FoneLink are not listed in Sent folder on phone. Am I supposed to remember every SMS I send from FoneLink when I'm away from my computer?
- messages deleted from FoneLink remain on phone. What does this do for us?
- Scanning phone every few minutes for messages is redundant. The phone has to be within Bluetooth range of computer, so it is close enough that you already know that you have a new message unless your phone is in a silent profile and is hidden from view.

Media Center - Sync iTunes
- does not automatically launch iTunes

------------
At this point I had to give-up on this software and return to using iSync. The inconsistencies, data corruption and issue with TomTom are not worth any other benefits or features that the program may offer. This software has promise, but it simply is not ready for serious use yet.

29 July, 2008 - 14:55 — Ali Rantakari (not verified)

Okay, here are my

Okay, here are my experiences with the FoneLink app so far:

Basically, the whole application just seems ridiculously rushed, and it kind of feels like no real thought went into anything in it. The whole thing is just buggy and confusing all around. Standard UI practices are eschewed in favour of ridiculous and stupid trickery (e.g. superfluous and annoying effects and such) and at times the UI is just so confusing that it feels impossible to even begin to think of how to use it. The layout of the UI is usually fine, but the graphics and the UI copy (i.e. textual labels) are not. The overall feeling I got was that I couldn't trust the application to do anything reliably, and that it was a bit hostile towards the user. I just wouldn't recommend this to *anyone* in its current form (version 2.1.2). Below are a few specific issues I wrote down:

- When launched, the app adds its own item to the menu bar. This item will stay there even after the app itself has terminated, and there seems to be no way to remove it. Oh, and it also seems to add it to the current user's startup items list. BAD, BAD APP!
- The custom window background graphics in the "Time Tunnel" section are ridiculously nonstandard and confusing, and not to mention .. uh, well, awful. Just awful. I just can't get past it to even try one single feature in this section of the app because of the horrendously confusing (and ugly) look of the UI.
- Clicking the "Home Center" toolbar button in the "Time Tunnel" doesn't take you to the "Home Center" view, but instead the "Connection Center" gets shown, the custom "Time Tunnel" window graphics are not cleared, and some toolbar buttons in the "Time Tunnel" are not removed from the UI.
- Lots of SMS messages were marked as "not read" even though I have, in fact, read all of them on my phone. Did not find any way to "mark all as read" or "mark selected as read".
- Updating the SMS messages from the phone got stuck after updating to 2.1.2. It just says "opening connection...". Pressing the "x" button for the "Updating (SMS)" operation in the "Action Master" section simply hides it (the button, that is). Restarting the application and trying again worked, though.
- Ordering the SMS messages in the list by date doesn't work -- the ordering is messed up (i.e. a bit random) no matter what I do. The same problem appears in the list of Events & Tasks.
- I keep getting Growl-like notifications with the title "FoneLink SMS inbox" between regular intervals (a couple of minutes) about one specific (and random, I might add) SMS message that's in my inbox (yes, it's the same one every time, and it's not even the latest one).

21 July, 2008 - 22:13 — qpiec (not verified)

I still have 4 lauch2net

I still have 4 lauch2net licenses too

28 May, 2008 - 21:25 — Sami

One more note: I still have

One more note: I still have 4 lauch2net licenses, so if that's what you want, keep emailing :)

28 May, 2008 - 21:03 — Sami

OK, all licenses are now

OK, all licenses are now gone in record time :)

Based on the flurry of emails, I will ask for 2 more licenses for current applicants (Dave and ivo, please hold on).

14 August, 2008 - 11:46 — AriK (not verified)

Hi, I'm trying mainly to

Hi, I'm trying mainly to find an app to archive the sms/mms messages from my phone(s). Kind of a Nokia Lifeblog app for Mac, with a timeline view or msg-thread-per-user, search, etc.

Contacts, calendars, images and such stuff sync to and from Mac seems to be handled with other apps already. No real need to that functionality in an app.

However, Fonelink does not seem to fulfill this need well. It syncs with N82, but at least dates do not appear/sort correctly, does not work without existing bt connection, funny backup concept.

Nor does Blue Phone Elite (http://mirasoftware.com/BPE2/) work ok, some discussion on their forum on that.

Any ideas or hints for a simple phone message archiving app in Mac?

30 August, 2008 - 09:37 — Sami

The Psiloc GSync might serve

The Psiloc GSync might serve your purpose:

http://shop.psiloc.com/en/Application,262287,Psiloc+GSync

I have not tried it myself, but the idea in general seems clever.