One application on my Blackberry that I use every single day is Pocket Express. I may have mentioned it before, but I don’t think I have given it as much spotlight as it deserves. Pocket Express is a free application by Handmark that has a whole host of features to offer.

One of the biggest benefits of Pocket Express is that it places all sorts of information in one spot, saving you tons of time loading a browser and various websites. Your options range from news and entertainment to games and ringtones. Also, I should note that Pocket Express runs on many mobile platforms, not just Blackberry.

Pocket Express is organized in an extremely intuitive manner; split into two pages: Page One and Extras. Page One features nine extremely handy applications and Extras contains various special deals, information and downloads. I’ll go into each page in a bit more detail below.

Pocket Express Page One Options

Page One contains nine excellent, useful sections: News, Sports, Weather, Market News & Portfolio, Entertain, 411 Search, Travel, Maps and Assist. Here’s how they break down:

• News: The news section has ten categories from which you can choose. You can choose to display as few or as many of the categories as you want. You can also choose how many stories you want to view in each category (three, five or ten).
• Sports: This one is pretty self-explanatory. You can get news, scores and information for many popular sports.
• Weather: This section is extremely thorough. Not only do you get overall weather news, you can specify several locations (including internationally) to view either the regular 7-day forecast or the ski report. The ability to easily add and delete locations makes this an excellent feature for frequent travellers or those with long commutes.
• Market News & Portfolio: If you are ready to kill your mood, this section contains all sorts of up-to-the-minute stock market information.
• Entertain: One of my favorite sections, Entertainment includes news options (music, tv, film and News of the Weird) as well as Dear Abby, Astrology and a great Movie Showtimes & Reviews section. You can read reviews for current films, check box office returns and check the latest movie news. My favorite feature here is that you can add your favorite theaters to easily check your local showtimes without having to input your information each time. Also, the advanced movie search options let you find movies by title, theater, zip code or city/state.
• 411 Search: The search section includes yellow pages, white pages as well a handy Oxford reference dictionary and thesaurus.
• Travel: Perhaps the most jam-packed section, Travel has everything you’ll need to easily search, travel and even convert currency no matter where you are headed.
• Maps: Another self-explanatory option, really. You can view maps of anywhere with the ability to move around and zoom in/out. Driving directions are also available.
• Assist: If you upgrade to the Elite Pocket Express ($9.99) a month you can have access to the Mobile Concierge Service. From what I understand, MobileCierge is just like a concierge at a hotel, connecting you to a live person 24/7 who can answer your questions, give recommendations and provide directions and services.

Pocket Express Extras Page

The Extras section changes periodically but always features plenty of fun and productive downloads. You can choose from games, ringtones and various other apps. They are reasonably priced and you can download directly from the Pocket Express application.

Once you register and enter your payment details once, Pocket Express will store that information. This way you can choose to pay using the saved details or enter new payment information each time you purchase from the Handmark store.

There are almost always great specials going on for game and application downloads from the Handmark store. I don’t think I have paid full price for anything I have purchased. Right now you can get 20% off using a code shown on the Extras page. They also already have the mobile version of Sims 3 ($9.99) and some other great applications and games.

There is another very important thing about Pocket Express that I want to mention. It runs smoothly and quickly even on my Blackberry Storm. If you have a Storm or have done any research you may know that despite being an extremely cool phone, it sometimes experiences some memory issues. When I am using Pocket Express I have not encountered these problems at all. This is very important to me because it is such a common occurence with many other applications.

Finally, I should share that Handmark has an advertising network attached to many of their mobile applications. This means that you can advertise your product or service to a very targeted and/or local market. Through the Express Advertising Network, you can get your product or service in front of thousands of interested, often hard-to-reach prospects. Definitely something to think about.

If you have a mobile device I highly recommend you check out Pocket Express. It is packed with features and what’s better than free? And, no, the links aren’t affiliate links, I just really love this application.

photo credit: StrebKR

The stars aligned this weekend and I now own a shiny new Blackberry Storm. It was a truly wonderful combination of perfect timing and a killer promotion. My best friend and I share a Verizon family plan and she was due for an upgrade. The plan was for her to get a new phone (she was considering a Crave) and then I’d take her old EnV since I abhor my Juke. It’s cute as hell, but basically useless because the screen is about thisbig. The EnV is way cooler and you can actually see the screen so I figured I was getting a pretty good deal.

The plan changed when we got to the store and discovered that Verizon was having a buy-one-get-one-free deal on the Blackberry Storms. Because she was due for an upgrade the deal was too great to pass up. We ended up with two new Storms plus all the accessories for less than half of what one Storm would cost reguarly. Pretty damn sweet.

So I unexpectedly found myself with the coolest smartphone ever. I have always been a Blackberry lover and I’m not charmed by the overly advertised iPhone. Now that I have the ability to do a ton of amazing things with my phone, I immediately went looking for applications, themes and other neat extras. The phone came with Facebook, a browser, IM apps and some games, but I knew right away that I needed to check out the free apps available.

I have two basic pieces of advice regarding smartphone applications that interface with online services. First, keep in mind that even though these apps reside on your phone, they still use data transfer to “talk” to the online sites. I recommend that if you plan to spend any substantial amount of time (like more than five minutes a week) using any of these applications that you add unlimited data transfer to your cell plan. If you don’t want to pay for an unlimited data plan, then there is really no point in having a smart phone because most cell providers don’t offer very good rates on a pay-per-minute basis.

The second piece of advice I have is to take care of your registration online. While smartphones are fairly easy to surf and type with, a PC is still much easier. So when it comes to filling out all the basic registration information, I recommend using your PC to register and set up accounts. This is especially true with CellSpin because you’ll need to enter the type and details of whatever account you want to update.

There are endless sites packed with free smartphone downloads. I found out quickly that I needed to figure out my priorities and get those taken care of first. The three I came up with were: feed reader, Twitter and mobile blogging. Over the next few weeks I’m sure I’ll be sharing a ton of mobile loveliness, but here are the three free apps I am currently trying out to cover those bases. So far I’m very happy with them.

Viigo RSS Reader

I haven’t had a smartphone since I left my job last July, but one thing I loved about it was being able to read feeds during dead time (waiting in line, riding in a car, etc.). So my first search was for a good feed reader. I use Feed Demon on my PC which is linked to News Gator online. Though they do offer a mobile application, it costs $24 and I was sure there must be a free option that was just as good.

Right away I read in several places that Viigo was the best newsreader application for smartphones. I was able to easily download it to my Storm. I then verified my email address and was able to point My Viigo online to the OPML file of my New Gator account. That might sound a bit techie, but I promise it is super-easy and you are walked right through it. Within minutes I had all my regular feeds from FeedDemon/FeedGator to go. So far Viigo – both the Blackberry and online interfaces – has been very easy to use and I have no complaints.

Tiny Twitter

There are a few choices when it comes to mobile Twitter applications. I chose Tiny Twitter because I read good things about its user interface. So far I couldn’t be happier with it. All functions are easy to complete and the menu has all the options you could need. You can easily follow, unfollow, reply, retweet, etc. I know that TwitterBerry seems to be the favorite among Twitter Blackberry apps, but I find Tiny Twitter to be just right.

CellSpin

When I watched the CellSpin demo I thought it sounded too good to be true. But it completely delivers. You can upload to blogs, Twitter, YouTube and many other integrated social media sites. And along with basic text, you can also record and upload both audio and video. Or you can just upload media you already have on your phone. And according to the CellSpin FAQs it will always be free.

The one problem I had was that when I first signed in it asked me if I wanted to download the newest version. I accepted and everything seemed to go smoothly. However, once my phone rebooted there was an error running the application. So I deleted it, re-downloaded the first version (1.3.4) I’d installed and everything went fine. Not sure what the issue was, but the first version I installed worked just fine so I’ll stick with it. CellSpin is packed with features so I expect to be dedicating an entire article to it if I still love it this much in a week or so.

Though I am very happy with these applications I do plan on trying out others that serve the same purpose. Also, I’m looking for a password application like Roboform. Roboform for the Blackberry lets you view your login information (and you can copy and paste it), but it doesn’t actually fill forms. This seems sort of like a point-killer for me so if anyone has a suggestion for a real auto-filler for passwords I’d love to hear it.

I’m considering a series on the best free mobile apps in each of the categories I have covered here. Leave a comment and let me know if you would find something like that useful?