Back in June, Jason took at look at the Poynt application for the Blackberry OS.  He called it a “staple” on his Blackberry and one of the best applications available.

Well Poynt is back, this time with a release for the iPhone OS.  The free application hit the iTunes App Store early last week, and I’ve had some time to play with the all-in-one location based search powerhouse.

Has Poynt become a staple on my iPhone like it did on Jason’s Blackberry?

Read on to find out.

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Let’s face it, no one enjoys contacting their IT department at work.  By the time that call comes it is usually preceded by a lengthy bout of frustration, swearing and pounding of fists.  While it used to just be your PC or Mac giving you fits, now you are probably just as exhausted trying to get your new smartphone to work properly.    Add to the fact that you may be miles — if not an entire continent! — away in today’s global work environment and your aggravations multiply ten fold.  At the end of the day you just want the @#$%! thing to work.

As more and more people bring smartphones into their lives, these mini-computers that surf the web, check email and even make a phone call now and again become our lifelines for both work and personal business.    If you are lucky enough to use one of these devices — be it BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, or Windows Phone — you probably cannot imagine going back to when you did not have this convergence of functions with you at all times.

But what happens when you do run into problems?   It will always occur when you’re traveling or during the most important meeting ever scheduled.   One tool that I’ve been using lately could very well be the thing you need.  It’s called LogMeIn Rescue+Mobile, and it lets you support and manage smartphones remotely right from your computer.   It doesn’t matter if the person having a problem is in the next room or on the other side of the globe.  You can remote into their device and fix the problem, saving them from lengthy aggravation and (hopefully) leaving them  once again loving their smartphone of choice.

Interested?  Let’s take a closer look at a great remote management tool for mobile users.

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There are plenty of choices when it comes to screen and body protection for your electronic devices and I think I’ve tried them all.  Clear Coat might just be the best of the bunch.

What is Clear Coat?  Here’s how the company describes it.

Simply put, Clear-Coat is the only protection you’ll need for your devices. Forget those awkward, ugly cases! Clear-Coat keeps your device scratch-free without adding bulk or changing the look of your device. Clear-Coat is meticulously designed in-house, and then custom cut for every device. So an iPhone Clear-Coat fits the iPhone perfectly, and a Blackberry Clear-Coat fits the Blackberry perfectly. We design Clear-Coat to fit over almost every part of the device – so you get protection everywhere – on the screen, sides, front, and back!

How thin is Clear-Coat? Less than 1/100th of an inch, that’s how thin! Most people can’t even notice it on their device, and it will not interfere with docks, cases, or accessories – it’s like it isn’t even there!

I recently spent some time with Clear Coat and walked away very impressed.  Their shields are the clearest of any I’ve seen and they do not suffer from what’s commonly referred to as the “Orange Peel” effect.  The shape of the shields, which mirrors the natural contour of your device, makes installation a snap.

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It’s usually a very sad long waiting game to get decent smartphones for folks who aren’t already on a major carrier like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T or T-Mobile.  Sometimes, though, that waiting can pay off.   Alltell customers  — well, those of you not already swallowed up by ported over to Verizon in many market areas — this may be one of those times.   If you have a qualifying plan (e.g., eligible to upgrade or opening a new line/account) you can grab the BlackBerry 8530 to run on Alltel’s 3G network for a mere $49.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate.  Yeah, we’re not big fans of the mail-in rebate way of doing things either, but $100 bucks isn’t exactly chump change.  The best part?  It’s only a 1-year contract.

So, while it’s not the most revved-up BlackBerry on the market with it’s 2MP camera,  you do get to take advantage of the new Curve form factor, trackpad (no more gunky trackball problems, yay!), social networking with Facebook and Twitter, and the Wi-Fi/ GPS enabled goodness any respectable smartphone sports these days.  Throw in your own microSD, and your 8530 can be used for video recording with expandable storage up to 32GB.  Not too shabby.

Press Release follows with even more details on Alltel’s BlackBerry 8530.

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While we patiently wait for a new — hopefully WebKit-based –  BlackBerry Web Browser, RIM just filed a stop-gap measure patent to help speed up their mobile browsing experience.  The patent details using a proxy server to compress data from web requests and  serve up standard HTTP while automatically downloading and caching images.  Sound familiar?  Opera Mini does the same thing today.

We’re all for improving web browsing for BlackBerry devices; but hopefully this is something that RIM is doing to complement a forthcoming overhauled browser  — and not just compensate by merely speeding up a mediocre browsing experience.

[WSJ, IntoMobile]

Are you concerned about cell phone radiation? Radiation is a form of energy. Your cell phones antenna emits powerful radiation in order to send and receive signals to and from its wireless network. According to researchers the problem with this is some of this energy radiates from the antenna into your head.

Sound scary? You might want to check out the Pong radiation at reducing cell phone case for the iPhone.

While at CES 2010 I met with the makers of Pong, and they presented me with one of their cases for review.

Here are my thoughts …

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If you follow any of the Gear Diary editors on Twitter, you know that during CES 2010 we were constantly tweeting our location. One day during the show, after tweeting that I was near the South Hall, I received an @ reply from one of the vendors on display there. Phone Halo asked that I swing by their booth for a demo. So I did.

What is Phone Halo? Phone Halo is a new product, that’s available for pre-order, which helps you safeguard some of your most valuable possessions, like your keys, your cell phone and your wallet. If you’re constantly losing things, then this might be the device you need to get back on track.

Designed to fit on your keychain and meant for small wireless devices, the Phone Halo communicates over Bluetooth with your cell phone keeping track of your location. If the two devices become separated the Phone Halo alerts the user with an audio or a vibration tone on both devices.

Each Phone Halo uses software which gets installed on the user’s wireless device and helps manage settings including enabling GPS and e-mail notifications. Additionally you can use the software running on your phone to track the location of your Halo. So if you’ve got it attached to your keys and you lost them they will be easy to track down. The GPS function of the device plots where the phone and the haloed item became disconnected marking it on a map.

The Halo’s built-in rechargeable battery lasts for approximately 2 weeks with a single charge.

To learn more about the Phone Halo or place an order had to their website here.

As the battle of the Smartphones rages on, more consumers are making the smartphone switch every day. People are trading up their RAZR’s for something with a touchscreen, keyboard and high dollar data package. Comscore conducted a survey back in October to find out the Mobile OS market share as of Q3 2009. The survey was only conducted on users above the age of 13. The results show that 36M Americans are using a smartphone, while 196M use a standard style phone. The numbers in the chart reflect the amount of phones in use at the time of the survey, and not the amount products sold.

Looks like Blackberry (RIM) is still holding on a dominating lead with almost half of the pie. Apple is moving up of course while Android is still just fighting for a small share. The stats are about 3 months old now, so I can imagine things are looking better for the Android team and probably Apple too. RIM has been gaining momentum throughout the year and really shows no signs of slowing down.  The other three OS’s need to step it up and reclaim some smartphone market share. WinMo has not changed entirely too much since a survey in February, and the Palm scored does not reflect the recent Palm Pre WebOS. Hopefully we’ll see some game changing new releases next year.

Via FierceDeveloper

Image Courtesy of Soft Sailor

BlackBerry users got a surprise Tuesday night in the form of another service outage. Ahhh, it seems like only last week there was an outage. Oh, wait, it was just last week. A platform and brand that used to be synonymous with reliability is definitely faltering.   Impacted users were left without email delivery/receipt, BlackBerry Messenger was down, and even browsing from your ‘Berry was impacted.  Both the consumer-side BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and business side BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) services were impacted.   In a nutshell, your BlackBerry was a nice paperweight for 10 hours or so.  Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry Christmas!

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Want to throw BlackBerry users into a fit of the shakes?  Take away their on-device email.  Just watch the convulsions as the LED stops the soothing Red pulse of a new messages being received on a BlackBerry.  What’s wrong?!? The device must be broken, right?  Nah, your ‘Berry handheld is fine.  It’s just that RIM’s BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) went down — again – this morning.  The outage impacted all carriers in the U.S.  The official statement from RIM:

Some BlackBerry customers in North America may be currently experiencing delays receiving email.  Our technical teams are working to resolve this issue for those impacted.  Phone services, browsing and PIN-to-PIN messaging are not impacted.  We apologize for any inconvenience.”

You could almost hear the sighs of relief today as the email flow did begin hitting BlackBerry handhelds across the country.

[image via TheBestDigital.com]

Looking for a new phone for Christmas?  Really want a Blackberry but they have always been slightly above your price bracket?  Well, has AT&T have a deal for you.

AT&T is going something nice for Christmas this year but offering 50% off ALL (and that means ALL, including the new 9700) Blackberry smartphones.  This is with a new sign up with AT&T and requires the standard two year agreement, but its still 50% off of some really good phones.  There is also a mail-in rebate going on as well.

It looks like a really good time to become one of those “Crackberry” users.

Thanks to Boy Genius Report for the heads up!

The uber-popular social networking site Twitter, which lets people update their status with a 140 character messages has launched a brand new mobile version of their web site.

The site, which is available by heading to http://mobile.twitter.com on your mobile phone, has an all new look.

It’s just a preview so Twitter says the site works best on @Webkit browsers – Android, iPhone, Nokia S60 and Palm Web OS phones all come with these browsers installed. Other browsers like @BlackBerry work too, but they haven’t done all the fine tuning yet.

With the countless amount of full featured Twitter apps available in the iTunes App Store, I don’t see many people jumping to use this instead; but on other phone’s where Twitter applications are not as plentiful, perhaps.

My T-Mobile Blackberry Curve 8900 gave up the ghost tonight.

For the last day or so, the OS on the phone was acting sluggish, so I did a standard battery pull.  This usually “reboots” the phone and clears up any issues the OS may be having.  Well, when it came up, I got the dreaded Reload Software 552 error.  Translation: Reload your OS.

Well, I tried many ways to restore the OS:

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Out today on AT&T is the BlackBerry Bold 9700. A few of us at Gear Diary have already got our hands on the newest and best BlackBerry and will be running them through their paces.

In the meantime, here is a quick unboxing…

If you haven’t already rushed out the door to pick up a shiny new BlackBerry 9700, you may be able to snag one for free come this Friday.   Wirefly’s Black Friday deal has leaked, letting new subscribers pick up the AT&T-branded 9700  for $0. Existing AT&T customers lusting after the latest BlackBerry can get it for $29.99.  You don’t have to worry about crowds or lines, either since you’ll be able to take advantage of this deal beginning this Friday, November 27th through Monday, November 30th.

If you’d rather pick up a Storm2, Wirefly will be offering a similar deal come Black Friday only — $0.99 for new Verizon subscribers and $29.99 for existing customers (Note: if you miss ordering a Storm2 on Friday from Wirefly, the price will to $9.99 for new Verizon customers & $49.99 for existing customers Sat-Mon).

Need another reason?  Wirefly is waiving activation fees for all AT&T and Verizon phones through Midnight 12/1.

[Wirefly via BoyGeniusReport]