Which phone for your Pocket PC?

I think that having Windows mobile on your Pocket PC makes choosing your mobile phone much easier.
The point is that features of Pocket PC are above even latest phones (of course, Windows Mobile smartphones may have comparable features, but still have smaller screen and sometimes not even touchscreen), and thus you have less to worry about some of the phone characteristics. You will probably do personal management on Pocket PC (the only reason to do that on phone is that you might have auto sound off on meetings on some phones like Nokia), listening to the music on it, surfing with it, sending and checking mail, reading text/e-books, entering any kind of data, and possibly even playing games (though this may depend on the response of your pad and buttons, as some Pocket PCs are not good for this use). So, you don`t need to think on all of this when buying phone.
According to my experience, the focus in buying your phone should be in small size (you already have one gadget with decent dimensions, so you have advantage of buying complementary small phone), calling functions, connectivity with your pocket PC (I strongly suggest Bluetooth phone if you have Bluetooth on your Pocket PC), battery life, screen that is readable on direct sun light, and features not included on your Pocket PC (like camera).

Take the clips

If you are extensive web surfer (or even better reader), you are probably aware of the fact that you forget many things you should remember, and that you have trouble in finding some important articles you have read. And you might feel the need to take these clips on your mobile device.

First solution for this is EverNote, which is capable for taking of all sort of notes, though I think it is best suited for clips. The most valuable thing is actually very simple - every time you open EverNote, you will see your latest clips, and that way refresh your memory. Second interesting thing is that you can reformat text, so that you can mark which part of the text is important to you with color. Then, it integrates well with browsers (both Internet explorer and Mozilla Firefox), so you can take clips directly from there. Finally, options to recall articles are nearly perfect. You have hierarchally sorted topics on the left, and every clip can get into several topics (popularly called tagging). Clips are also automatically sorted according to source (web, office document). And on top of that there is search as you type.

If you need those clips on Pocket PC, you will have to pay for full version, which also includes handwriting recognition.

Firefox users has one more interesting option: extension called Scrapbook. As every good product, it does just one thing - stores web pages or portions of it on your computer. Integration with browser makes the page look "as is" - EverNote has text with some formats and images, but not more than that. Marking with colors, adding comments and erasing is very easy. On the other hand, options to find articles are limited compared to EverNote - just simple folder structure and text search (but not as you type).

Both programs deserve attention - Scrapbook is ideal for storing full pages and articles, or for collecting data for one work. But when you collect a bunch of small clips, then EverNotes wins. The best thing is that you can use them both.

AOL mobile search features

AOL made interesting twist in mobile search. AOL mobile search (located at mobile.aolsearch.com) doesn't deliver some spectacular search results. These are just ordinary search results from Google, formatted, more or less, as other mobile search providers do.

What it does is that it reformats the page you visit after clicking search results much better than any other engine. It replaces all navigation it identifies with Quicknav link, and do some more smart rearrangements, letting you to step into content without scrolling (well, in general, some weird designs may confuse AOL mobile search). It also reformats all content to avoid horizontal scrolling, as Google does. Unfortunately, this is not usable on every single site, as AOL may hide the content you want to look... Still it is worth to test it with your favorites.

Play some music

If you take Pocket PC or Windows Smartphone with you, then you probably don't want to carry another gadget just for playing music. All you need is just decent memory card to store your music, and... a good media player program to play it.

Windows Media Player comes with every Pocket PC, and it might be used for playing music. Probably the best tip for its use is to go to Tools/Settings/Buttons in menu, and to map functions like play and stop to hardware buttons, as they would be much more useful that way. It is specially important to map "Screen Toggle" function to one button, as disabling screen during playback will significantly prolong your battery time.

unfortunately, you can't do more than this with Windows Media Player. It won't remember to start in shuffle or repeat mode. You'll probably want your music volume to be higher than your volume in other programs, and with Windows Media Player you'll need to switch the level every time you start and stop playing music. And the list of songs is not so accessible. You don't even know what song will be next played.

With all of this in mind, try MortPlayer. It fulfills all of the requirements above and has many other useful things (like full screen mode with big buttons so you can easily command with your fingers; automatic screen toggle after several seconds, option to start with the song that was interrupted during last playback), or features that I don't find useful, but some people might (like mp3 alarm clock; digital equalizers which sometimes add up to sound, but sometimes just distort it).