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Your Web-enabled phone or PDA has picked up a new talent: helping you access files on your PC and all of its applications, in real time, through a utility from AlertWire.

You can download the program, Omni 2.0, and test drive it free for a month. After that, service costs $9.95 monthly.

How does Omni 2.0 squeeze a big Word document or an Excel spreadsheet onto your Blackberry, your Visor, or the tiny LCD display of your Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phone?

Instead of replication, the service optimizes the information you're seeking according to the device you're using. If you're using a Palm, then you get data that fits on the Palm screen. If it's a WAP phone, you get stripped-down info that's formatted for the smaller screen.

But otherwise, registered users will be able to use any wireless browser to directly connect to their desktop computer and get Web-enabled access to e-mail, files, office applications, and administrative functions, say AlertWire representatives.

A Different Approach

Other remote connectivity resources are available for mobile devices. One program, provided by URoam, uses similar Web-based technology, but it caters only to the corporate market. URoam's customers include Verizon, the wireless cell phone company; and Mobilephone Telecommunications, the Tokyo-based mobile Internet content provider.

Omni 2.0 also differs from two other remote access software programs, Symantec's PCAnywhere and GoToMyPC, which is produced by Expertcity.

"PCAnywhere uses what we call screen scraping. What they are doing is taking what you see on the monitor of your PC and rerouting it to another location," says Jeff McHugh, AlertWire's vice president of strategic operations. "Ours is different. We are converting your files and applications to Web services and URLs. Basically, we are converting your computer into your own private Web site."

PCAnywhere and GoToMyPC both require special software to be installed on both the home or office PC and any other computer that will be used to link them. Once Omni 2.0 is loaded onto a PC, however, you need only a user name and a password, and you can use any device with a Web browser to access the service via the AlertWire Web site.

Channeling the Web

"We are bringing this kind of application data and these services to the Web in ways that it has never been done before and encapsulating this into a product that anyone can use on any Windows machine," McHugh says. "We are just beginning to scratch the surface."

The company expects customers will be a mixture of on-the-go senior executives, mobile sales personnel, and even network managers who can monitor their operations by reaching their office PC with a PDA or other handheld device.

"Our first customers will be experimentalists. They are the people who go to download sites and are interested in cool, sexy network utilities. This is also filtering up to corporate executives who are always on the road and have a wireless device," McHugh says. "It can also stretch horizontally to early adopters like well-versed IT managers looking for new killer applications."

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