(This isn’t a Windows Mobile-specific application, but it is such an awesome product I couldn’t give up the chance to write about it.)

So, your child comes home and you ask her how school was, she replies with “fine” and walks out of the room. This of course is the typical answer and you wanted a less generic one so you pull out your cell phone and send a text message to your child’s school and in a few moments you have a message with all your child’s up-to-date grades. Now, don’t start pulling out your cellphone right away, but this may be in the future for your school, and many other businesses, in the near future. How, you ask? Well, thanks to Nick Bolton and Mobile Data Now, you will be able to get data from any company by SMS, IM, and Email very soon.

I got the chance to talk with Nick over the phone the other night (Nick is in New Zealand so it was around lunch a day ahead of me there) about his new application and he sounded very excited about his product. Truthfully, when I first heard about Mobile Data Now, all I could see it in was a business situation, suits and all, but after talking to Nick I saw all the possibilities that could open up with Mobile Data Now.

The idea is simple: A company, group, or organization sets up a server that will intercept the messages received and installs Mobile Data Now (MDN) on it, MDN now takes that message and runs the query on the server. Once the query is run the reply is sent immediately and the user has her information right when she needs it. The service can be set up to receive messages from “named” users, users specifically named in MDN’s admininstration console, or it can receive and process messages from anyone, making MDN a very versatile system to get information out to as few or many people as your organization needs. Nick also said that in the next version you will be able to access web services (such as Amazon to search for book prices).

MDN is free to download and use for one user, all you need is an SMS Modem (if you want to use the SMS functionality) and a PC running either Windows XP, Windows Server 2000 or Windows Vista. Linux and Mac support is coming soon, Nick said. If your organization is larger than one user, you’ll need to contact their sales department for pricing.

If you have anyquestions about Mobile Data Now, you can contact Nick Bolton. I’m sure he would be more than happy to help you with any questions you might have about MDN.