What you’re looking at is a utility from Fido that syncs data from my trusty hiptop to my new PC notebook. For the first time since switching to the walled garden of the hiptop OS I now have a current and complete local copy of my address book on a computer, and it’s all thanks to Microsoft Outlook, the killer app for Windows.

In and of itself Outlook packs a powerful punch, similar to Entourage for Mac but much more secure. Instead of lumping all your critical info into a monolithic database it allows you to split it up into smaller, more manageable archives.

But here’s the knockout blow: Because Outlook is the gold standard PIM for Windows, every conceivable smart phone on the market will sync to it—BlackBerries, hiptops, Treos, this thing… With Outlook, the universe of wireless devices is your to command.

And to a mobile junkie like yours truly, that’s great news!

While T-Mobsters are happily thumbing away on their new Sidekick 3s south of the border, we poor Fido users up here in the Great White North have to settle for an over-the-air software update that’s about six months overdue.

If you’re not up to scanning the ten pages of posts on the subject over at the hiptop.com forums, here’s what I think about the OTA update:

The Good

• Add-on apps can now be temporarily deactivated to make room on the device for new purchases from the built-in software catalog. This is great news for me as I’ve been dying to try out the hiptop drum machine!
• Fido has thoughtfully included a free multimedia messaging app, bringing my hiptop up to spec with the Sony Ericsson handset I was using two years ago.
• The web browser now supports javascript, so I can click through to the comments on Ray Deonandan‘s blog—w00t!
• The same browser no longer mangles multi-column websites, like this one!

The Bad

• There were all kinds of rumours about MSN and Yahoo! chat clients coming with this OTA; sadly it didn’t happen. A bit weird considering Fido’s heavy marketing campaign for the IM services on their new phones…
• Though the browser now sports javascript, I still can’t use mobile.aircanada.com!
• The browser will now select and copy text, but it’s all or nothing. And phone numbers on sites and search results can’t be clicked on and dialed—a bit retarded for a smartphone!
• Again with the browser… It still can’t display WAP sites.

Despite the gripes, this latest OTA update is a welcome addition to what I maintain is the best handset and service available in this part of the world—w00t!

Just after midnight last night (or this morning, for you time Nazis) a flurry of hiptop/Sidekick 3 reviews showed up on my favourite gadget sites. Here are the best pics from the bunch:

• Engadget: T-Mobile Sidekick 3 hands-on!
• Gizmodo: T-Mobile Sidekick 3 Hands-on

Along with some video:

• CNET: T-Mobile Sidekick 3
• MobileBurn: T-Mobile’s Sidekick 3 Launched, Reviewed, and Videoed
• PC Magazine: T-Mobile Sidekick 3 Video Review

The official T-Mobile SK3 site is, surprisingly, nothing special. Even worse, there’s been nary a peep from the only Canadian carrier that sells the device…

It doesn’t look like much, but this grab from Industry Canada‘s website is huge news for Fido hiptop users… What it means is that the hiptop3 has been approved for sale in Canada!

It’s a bit of a shocker, as the hiptop3’s very existence was confirmed only two days ago by documents online at the FCC. Here’s what it looks like, courtesy of Engadget Mobile:

Improvements over my current hiptop include a 1.3 Megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity and removable memory. If it were up to me I’d nix the Bluetooth in favour of UMA, so I could make roaming-free international calls using my hotel internet connection on the road. But I guess this’ll have to do…

I should have known that my trusty hiptop, which requires a persistent connection to the internet, wouldn’t make the best companion for my trip to Bermuda.

Here at home—in fact, anywhere on the continent, plus Hawaii—I can check email, surf the web and sync my personal info to my heart’s content, all for the same flat monthly data charge. But not so anywhere else, Bermuda included. Even with all my graphics and attachments disabled and one or two short online sessions a day I still managed to rack up a hundred-dollar data roaming bill from Fido.

And no, I wasn’t downloading porn!

Somehow I’ve managed to squeeze six days worth of changes into one duffel bag (and one gay backpack—see previous post). I couldn’t have done it without leaving my beloved Powerbook behind.

This is actually the first time I’m going overseas without a laptop—since I’ve had one, anyway—and it’s really only because there won’t be a high speed internet connection where I’m staying. Still, it will prove to be the biggest test ever for my Fido hiptop and the Danger data servers. I’ve got all my calendar, contact and confirmation info stored on the little critter, and if it crashes on me… Well, it won’t be a total disaster, but I’ll be plenty pissed off.

The photo above, by the way, is a record of a brief moment when yours truly had three hiptops in his possession, due to somebody’s screw-up at Fido. Unfortunately, I did have to send the other two back…

File this one under “misery loves company”, I guess…

Since Sunday evening I’ve been without data on my precious hiptop, and I’m not alone—hiptop users around the world are still dealing with an as-yet unexplained technical issue on Danger‘s servers.

You’ll remember from my first post on the subject that the Danger servers are where hiptop users’ personal data is backed up. Because of the persistent connection between the two, no servers equals no data on my hiptop!

And yet, this four-day outage didn’t stop me from ringing up Fido first thing Tuesday morning and ordering a new hiptop2. That’s just how good I think the hiptop is—even when it doesn’t work, I still want one!

Yesterday I got this secret email from Fido announcing the forthcoming availability of the hiptop 2—the very same device owned by no-talent Paris Hilton, and compromised by someone who hacked into her T-Mobile database.

Am I worried that my own personal data won’t be safe? Hell, no! First of all, the hiptop itself is relatively hack-proof, provided that you lock it down with a passkey. It’s T-Mobile that’s clearly to blame here, as their web servers have been infiltrated before.

And I could be wrong, but I somehow don’t think that anyone would be all that interested in seeing candid topless photos of me…

A new cell phone? What a surprise…

I took advantage of a Fido fire sale this past week and got myself a hiptop handheld on a fifteen-day trial. And despite some severe limitations with the device, I just may keep it…

The hiptop is equal parts PIM, phone, and data device. It’s about as big and ungainly as a your typical DingleBerry or Treo, but any similarity ends there.

Like the Treo, the hiptop has its own operating system. Unlike the Treo, the hiptop OS is, as we would say back in nerd school, a “walled garden”. Software can only be installed on the hiptop by direct download to the device itself, and beyond games and ringtones, there isn’t much else available. This isn’t entirely a bad thing—because the device is locked up the hiptop has no reason to crash like so many Treos do, although there is a reset button on the hiptop just in case.

The DingleBerry is sold through carriers with an unlimited data plan. This is a necessity for “push email”, the feature that makes DingleBerries so attractive to business users. Basically, the device is constantly in contact with mail servers so it can deliver email in more or less real time. DingleBerry email also travels back and forth through a hack-proof VPN, so nobody but your intended recipient will be able to read that important message: “Hey, this meeting sure is boring, eh?”.

For this dubious feature DingleBerry users—in reality, the ignorant companies that buy them by the truckload for their employees—pay as much as ninety dollars per month for the persistent data connections that get them their precious emails on their tiny screens. Danger meanwhile, has cleverly built marketed their hiptop as a DingleBerry for civilians. The transparent scroll-wheel on my hiptop flashes multiple colours to the accompaniment of pulsing vibrations and synth swirls—and that’s just when the phone rings! More importantly, Fido has a special unlimited data plan solely for their hiptop users, for a mere twenty bones/month—take that, you DingleBerry dumb-asses!

Now here’s what I wasn’t prepared for… Everything on my hiptop travels through Danger’s own servers. This makes browsing on the hiptop a bit of a drag; that big (by PDA standards) landscape screen is perfectly suited for full web pages with graphics, but it takes forever for a graphics-laden page to go through Danger and get re-formatted to fit the hiptop screen. Thankfully, there’s an option to turn graphics off, which makes pages load about three times as fast, though still only on par with a 56K dial-up modem.

And the real shocker… All of my calendar and contact info is now sitting on the Danger servers as well! To get my info on the hiptop I exported my calendars and address books into a suitable file, then uploaded all of it to my Fido hiptop Jump Page.

I don’t really have any concerns about privacy or security with Danger or Fido, just a vague uneasiness about entrusting critical information to the internet itself. The nice thing about this setup is that any information changed on either the hiptop or my Jump Page is synchronized immediately with the other. The fear of corrupted data and/or syncs going wrong is completely out of my hands, which is actually a huge relief. The not so nice thing is there’s now no easy way to export my data; the only way I can back it up for myself is to print or save a whack of web pages.

I remember reading this article in WIRED magazine many years ago, predicting that the future of computing would have all critical applications and data on the network, accessible from any device. Danger and their hiptop are helping to make this a reality, and two days in, that reality is both scary and tempting…