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The Smartphone Round Robin is nearly done, everybody, as each site works on its final round 'away from home.' This week, Kevin at CrackBerry.com throws some hate down on the HTC Fuze. Apparently, like Rene at TiPb, he's not a fan of the reponsiveness of the touchscreen, which appears to be causing the majority of his problems with the UI.

That's actually a complaint I've heard elsewhere as well and I've also heard that the Euro-version, the Touch Pro, is better in this regard. For me, the trick for 'getting' how the Fuze's touchscreen works is that there seems to be a significant different between how it deals with flat-finger swiping and fingertip tapping. If you use the flat of your finger and swipe, it almost always registers correctly as a swipe. To tap/select, you use the tip of your finger and press just a little harder. To be sure, neither is as responsive as a capacitive touchscreen would be, but it is a pretty elegant way of dealing with the resistive limitation -- once you know about it, that is.

What say you, did we mess up going with the Fuze for this year's Round Robin? Would a BlackJack II have gotten a better reception? Comment here on that or any other Round Robin subject to be entered to win a Fuze and a Redfly C8N.

Speaking of Fuze giveaways, our Fuze Sweepstakes Extravaganza ended on Friday and we've randomly chosen a winner: dlevymd! dlevymd looks to be currently using a Tilt, so this will be a nice upgrade:

Hands down, the thing that attracks me the most to the Fuze is the out of the box memory. I run my medical practice from my device and have very large databases. I also use NotifyLink and I have UpToDate mobile loaded in. Even with everything loaded on my storage card, my ATT Tilt gets into low memory states.

Congrats dlevymd, expect an email from us very soon!

We love Windows Mobile for a lot of different reasons. It

We

ReadWriteWeb.com is reporting the MP3 search engine Seeqpod will release a Windows Mobile application that will allow users to search for and stream music through their Windows Mobile phones. The application will sell for an introductory price of $10 (regular price will be $15) and will include playable music search, discovery, Wikipedia articles on the artist and updating collections of playlists. The company claims that this will turn any Windows Mobile phone into an iPod

SeeqPod is a search engine that seeks out playable web content including video, audio, slideshows and Adobe Flash files. SeeqPod will let users call up specific songs and artists, include links to purchase songs and a fully skinnable player. In tinkering with the website version, SeeqPod is an interesting service and it will be equally interesting to see how they adapt this service to the Windows Mobile environment.

If SeeqPod is as popular as the company expects it to be, it will also be interesting to see what legal issues develop. SeeqPod asserts safe harbor under the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA for short?). In a nutshell, SeeqPod promises to adhere to search standards set forth in copyright laws in a fashion not to uncover copyrighted/protected material that has been illegally loaded to the internet. According to their website, Seeqpod

There's been another sighting of the T-Mobile Shawdow II, and this time we have a release date to go with it, courtesy of TmoNews.

When last we saw the Shadow II, we were reporting a delay past the holidays and into the first quarter of 2009. The TmoNews post is in line with that, citing Jan. 28 as the day to mark on your calendars.

It's also looking more and more like this thing won't have T-Mo's brand of 3G out of the gate. But there should still be WiFi and T-Mobile @Home access, so that's still better than nothing for you data hounds.

The story also specs the phone with Windows Mobile 6.1, so we're still in search of the first device to launch with the fabled Windows Mobile 6.5.

One group of questions we get a lot of around here deals with various types of syncing with Windows Mobile (see other guides: "How to sync with Google", "MediaCenter", "LiveMesh", "Calendar/Live Mail") . Often we know a solution but every once in awhile, one of our readers has a unique trick up their sleeve like that cool ActiveSync "Gues Mode" hack.

In this case, rc46 is a big "Notes" user on his phone and computer (Outlook), but he found the lack of syncing options to be...lacking.

Specifically, WM Notes does not support categories, offer a way to organize and is even "off" by default (yeah, you need to turn it on). Luckily with some elbow grease he figured out a way around these limitations and greatly enhanced his Notes use.

Care to know how he did it?

Read on for details. (And if you have a cool trick that only you know about, share it with us!)

There look to many steps here, but in reality, most of these are straight forward, so don't be alarmed.

Part I: Enable Notes in ActiveSync

• Perform an ActiveSync and leave WM device connected to PC.
• On PC in Active Sync go Menu -> Tools -> Options
• Now check the box that says notes and wait for the sync to complete.
• Now disconnect WM device from the computer

Part II: Organize Your Notes

• On the WM Device make a folder inside My Documents called "Notes"
• Move all the notes that are currently in My Documents into that new "Notes" folder
• Next inside the "Notes" folder make sub-folders for categories such as "Personal" "Business" and so on.
• Now on the WM Device move the appropriate notes into these folders.

Part III: Time to Sync Again

• After you sync look in Outlook on the desktop and you will see all the notes are automatically renamed with the folder structure as part of the name.

For example, the note titled "Christmas List 2008" will be changed to "Notes\Personal\Christmas List 2008"

This allows the notes to be sorted by category on the desktop as well as the WM Device even though no Outlook categories are really assigned on the desktop.

One downside: rc46 mentions is that the "Notes" application on WM won't show this new structure, so he recommends browings your notes and opening directly via File Explorer/Resco Explorer

Part IV: Adding New Notes

• Open Notes and write away
• New notes will then be saved to the folder "Device\My Documents\Notes\"
• Open File Explorer and move new Note to appropriate sub-category created earlier

Part V: Creating/Modifying Notes on the PC

• Create new Note as usual
• Save as usual (do not attempt to add to sub categories)
• Sync with your device --> Note synced to "Device\My Documents\Notes\"
• Later, move Note on device to appropriate sub-category

Finally, rc46 has some closing advice:

I know this sounds like a bit of a hassle but in reality it isn't. Personally I just wait until I have about 10 or so un-catagorized notes in either the "Device\My Documents\" folder or the "Device\My Documents\Notes\" folder before I even bother with organizing them. Then I just do them all at once. Its really not a big deal once your used to it.

One weird little data point is for some reason sometimes you need to un-plug your handheld (disconnect it from the desktop) and then plug it back in before the notes will sync correctly after moving around notes in different folders. Just clicking the sync button in active sync wont do it. Must be an active sync bug?

Another little trick to quickly finding the note you are looking for is to use Resco Explorer instead of WM File Explorer. Just click on the binoculars and type some of name of the note and click search. You will find it right away.

This has been working for me for months now and I sync to 2 different PC's and have over 2000 notes.

So there you have it folks: the best way to sync and organize all your notes, with believe it or not, very little effort.

Thanks rc46 for the great tip!

In our morning rounds, WMExperts came across two touchscreen tricks for those who have found their touch life becoming a little stale. In line with such holiday classics as fruitcake and musical greeting cards, we share them with you, knowing full well that most people don't much like fruitcake -- but there's always that one crazy aunt who can't get enough. Consider these tips in the same category:

Un-docking your keyboard: Our friends over at Pocketnow.com are offering a registry hack that will allow you to undock your screen keyboard, allowing you to move it to top, side, etc. You

Behold, thanks to the cagey cats at the Boy Genius Report, a rendering — as in not yet a prototype — of what BGR says will be an upcoming phone on Verizon.

We're getting very few details on the lineup, except some code names (that's the Flash, above) and that we should see them in 2009.

What caught our eye (and that of a keen BGR reader) is what appears to be a Windows logo as the second button on the bottom of the Flash.

The next question: If this indeed is a WinMo-destined phone, will it launch with Windows Mobile 6.5 — or even make the leap to (and wait for) Windows Mobile 7? We can only hope that this radical a style from Motorola would feature the newest Microsoft has to offer.

The thing that always scares me about Consumer Reports is that their smartphone recommendations always seemed a little ..off.. to me, so I would worry that their preferences for things like washing machines would also be off and I would never know it.

This year, though, Matt Miller points out that they gave some love to Windows Mobile and kindly lets us glimpse the important deets from their January paper-edition to see what their top five are:

1. BlackJack II
2. T-Mobile Wing
3. Motorola Q9c
4. T-Mobile Shadow
5. BlackBerry Pearl Flip

Some kudos to ya, CSR -- the BlackJack II is probably one of the most under-rated smartphones out there. It's fast (though not fast enough for me), solid, well-built, and has great battery life. I'm also inordinately fond of the T-Mobile Shadow and the Motorola Q9c is pretty darn good too. All around, these phones are a great mix of power and affordability, a factor I have to assume kept such phones as the Touch Pro and, yes, even the iPhone 3G out of contention -- though it could also be, as Miller surmises, that they just didn't get to them in this round.

I have to ask, though, T-Mobile Wing? Really? It's a great phone and all, but build quality and speed leave much to be desired.

Bottom Line: Windows Mobile is a better choice than most people assume at first blush, especially in its non-touchscreen, Standard edition.