Several months ago I had opted to receive SMS Live alerts for a variety of services that included headlines, scores, stocks, and new emails. Unfortunately I was getting mail alerts at all hours of the night and this was frustrating me, and more importantly my better half.

So a quick look at the Mobile options on Live showed that I can select blackout times where I do not want to receive SMS alerts. Additionally you have the option to send alerts after the blackout period or simply discard them.

If your cell phone service has a cap on text messaging, you can reflect that in the number of alerts you receive from Live in a given month. I am really jazzed about it … here is to a good nights sleep.

Live Mesh is now in general availability for the Windows Mobile devices. I am really glad about this, I had blogged about a long winding method to circumvent the limited roll out some months ago. Now the only problem is whether to use Live Mesh or My Phone. Personally I am going to settle on which ever service integrates with Live SkyDrive first.

UPDATE: If you are getting this error: “Time mismatch with server” then your version needs to be updated.

I have been reviewing Live Mesh recently and simultaneously helping my wife synch information between her notebook and PC, my music workstation and the cloud. There are a couple of things that I think need additional polish (interface for synching any folders) but overall it is doing a good job of replacing the functions of FolderShare Live Sync.

I had heard rumor that there were a few fortunate folk who have added there Windows Mobile phones to the Mesh after successfully downloading and installing the Live Mesh software. Unfortunately when I installed the software I was politely informed that it could not add my phone to the mesh.

Coincidentally I had recently tried to sign up for the Tech Preview of Azure, I actually thought it might be fun to try and develop a couple of apps that relied on Azure Cloud services we have been hearing so much about. Almost immediately after signing up for Azure I was able to add my phone to the mesh and I have been happily synching my pictures and documents from my phone to my Live Desktop.

So if you have a Windows Mobile phone and often lament the lack of automated synching to the cloud or your desktop try:

1. Sign up for the Azure Tech preview.
2. Download and install Live Mesh to your mobile device: http://m.mesh.com.

Your mileage may vary, this may have been a pure coincidence, but this worked for me!

Sweet!!

There are a gazillion great things about the new Windows Live updates that are just pure social love. I have the ability (if interested) to pull in Twitter feeds or blog feeds for all my social network to share and review. All the various services SkyDrive, Hotmail, Spaces, etc used to feel like different companies cobbled together. Now they really feel like one cohesive Live offering. Just seeing Twitter feeds from various members of my network arrive in my Home page is really sweet.

The one critique I have is the lack of integration with Windows Live and my Mobile phone. I do not use the Calendar on my mobile phone because it is completely disconnected from the rest of my online world unless I dock my phone at the PC.

In order to bridge that gap Live provides a set of rudimentary SMS commands, as shown on the left. This is really disappointing! I was hoping for something more integrated and reflective of the new found symbiosis that is the Live experience.

Things they have already got right:

   - My contacts sync from mobile to web and back again.
   - Live Messenger on my mobile phone is an enjoyable and easy to use experience.
   - Hotmail is directly integrated into the mobile experience.

With the abundance of these great Live features the mobile experience still feels like a second class citizen in the Live world. If we have to wait for WM 7 for this to be resolved I will be really disappointed.