Share Data Via Web, Cell, and (or) IM

Ever wish you could grab a phone number, a group calendar date or any other type of information on your cell phone--or, for that matter, post information from your phone to the Web so you could save it via a desktop browser later on? MyGads.com, a Web site and service that opens for business today, is one of the more interesting and potentially userful new services I've seen at CTIA Wireless 2007. It lets you easily store and access information via either a desktop browser, text messages, or a Jabber-compliant instant messaging client such as Google Talk.

You store the information you wish to share on a personal MyGads.com Web site, which they call a Gad. You can populate your Gad with text or HTML-formatted information (the Web site has tools for creating simple tables, or you can cut and paste from other HTML documents). Then you can query, view, or add new (text) information using SMS messages (sent using a short code) or a Jabber IM client that you've authorized as a user.

You can password-protect your Gad and assign different rights to authorized users (some might only be allowed to query the Gad, while others could have permission to update the information).

The beauty of the scheme is that neither the data nor your queries have to be in any particular format. Teragram, the site's developer, has expertise in search, and the service appears to understand even the simplest of queries. In the screenshot below, you can see how the query "Denny office" returned my (fake) office phone number, submitted as the statement "Denny's office number is 555-555-1212."

I could see MyGads.com being very useful while traveling--for example, PC World might put its phone database (password protected, of course) online so I could access a colleague's phone number quickly on my handset (I don't keep PC World's entire phonebook on my Treo 650).

MyGads.com will be a free beta until midyear, when it is expected to become an ad-supported Web service. I've already got my GAD up and running.

For more CTIA show coverage, go to PC World's Cell Phones and PDAs Info Center.

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