Dashwire: Manage your cell phone on the Web

It takes a second to realize that what you see on Dashwire.com's cool gray interface is content from your mobile phone. That's probably because you're not used to reading it so easily.

There on Dashwire's spacious Internet dashboard are your photos and videos, contacts, bookmarks, and SMS and call history laid out in movable AJAX tiles. There are ringtones you can click on the Web to play on your phone, and text messages you can reply to with your keyboard, and which are tagged with your identifying phone number so your friends know who sent it.

You can e-mail photo links from Dashwire, too, without your friends having to sign up to the service to view them online. Contacts you add online materialize in your mobile address book. Another groovy part: Dashwire auto-saves your content, effectively backing up your phone.

Now it's time for the secret sauce: how your content gets there. Dashwire begins as a mobile app that most users will probably download over the air. It installs, and then syncs to your personal page on Dashwire.com, which you've configured by registering your screen name and number on sign-up. The synching took a little time, and might take more if your mobile network is lagging. Photos and videos take the longest to upload, and even longer the more you've got. Have patience; the wait is worth it.

Dashwire works remarkably well, but it doesn't do everything yet. For the moment, it only supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6, and subscribers have to specify their carrier and device model when they register. Dashwire doesn't manage files or programs, or perform certain small tasks like deleting photos from the phone or reading and initiating e-mail. You can't expect perfection from early closed betas, but you can expect novel ideas.

Read mail, SMS, and back up phone content from Dashwire's dashboard.

(Credit: CNET Networks)