Phone Home.

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Author: Rupley, Sebastian

YOU'RE ON THL GO. YOU NEED A presentation that's on your home PC, and all you've got is a cell phone. What to do? A new crop of online startups is solving such remote-access problems â€" and you don't need a smartphone or a phone running Microsoft Windows to use them. SoonR (www.soonr.com) and Awenu (www.avvenu.com) provide nocost solutions for retrieving and sharing anything on your remote PC, even if you're carrying a cheap phone.

SoonR's service is in beta now, but that hasn't stopped tens of thousands of people from signing up. The service requires you to load a small client on your PC, but no software is needed on your phone. That, in addition to SoonR's focus on business users, differentiates the service from big players such as Citrix Online's Go To MyPC and Orb Networks' Orb.

"There are almost a billion phones out there that aren't considered smartphones," says Song Huang, SoonR's cofounder and VP of marketing. The service's only phone requirement is a WAP browser, so you might, for example, access your remote files using Opera. SoonR has also integrated its service with Google Desktop Search and XI, so you can quickly find files by typing queries on your phone. The service will remain free, although premium extensions will be available.

Avvenu offers similar services, also costs nothing, and integrates with the free Motorola Share service for sharing images. If your phone is your constant companion, take note.

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By Sebastian Rupley