The price point is simply fabulous too — $39/month or a one-off lifetime fee of $499. That’s going to seriously annoy a lot of mobile developers who make a good living converting blogs into apps. It’s also going to put a lot of pressure on the larger players in the industry who routinely charge a lot more for this kind of service.

Appifier is a new service, previously in beta, that turns WordPress sites into mobile apps. That’s not mobile websites, mind you, but actual mobile applications complete with push notifications, offline access, Twitter and Facebook sharing, plus a native look, feel and speed.

via Appifier Launches New Service That Turns WordPress Sites Into Mobile Apps | TechCrunch.

I came across MobDB the other day thanks to one of those beta lists that I completely forget the name of. When I remember, I’ll update the post. Anyway this one really caught my eye as I think I could seriously use it for a number of applications.

Let’s take a step back. What’s the one problem every single interactive mobile application has? At some point you’re going to want it to hook into a back-end database, right? To store everything. And that’s where it gets annoying. You work really hard on the app, then you have to build a flipping API for it. And unless you’re doing something with a pre-existing database, the chances are you need to construct a whole MySQL (or similar) back-end infrastructure to link to that API.

It’s a bit of an arse.

Doable, yes, but a bit of an arse. It’s just yet one more thing you have to remember. And often it means almost double the work for an application developer — because he’s got to figure out both the app front-end then develop this back-end bit.

That’s where mobDB comes in. They’ve done it all for you. They’re using Amazon in the background and they’ve simply designed a lovely front-end API for your app to talk to the database. You do this via HTTP-POST. It couldn’t be any simpler. Within that HTTP-POST, you include some uber-easy XML that executes your query and you get the results back in XML.

For instance, if this table existed on mobDB…

Then all you’d need to do to access it is send this XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <request>  
  <key>CIWWP3-1Ss-Vy7mOvi36kGTtDU-G0210JFRsWoBSoScBJpadeatrtTYy5Qqa</key> 
    <sql> 
     </query>SELECT * FROM employees</query> 
    </sql>   
 </request>

Easy.

Making a query is simple too:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <request>  
  <key>CIWWP3-1Ss-Vy7mOvi36kGTtDU-G0210JFRsWoBSoScBJpadeatrtTYy5Qqa</key> 
   <sql> 
      <query >SELECT name, address, photo FROM employees</query> 
   </sql>   
 </request>

The service is in beta right now and therefore it’s totally free to use.

Why not check it out at mobDB.net?

Update: The website I mentioned at the start but couldn’t remember the name of? http://www.betabait.com/

NetQin, in case you were wondering, is one of the leading providers of mobile security — something that’s becoming more and more of an issue for enterprises and consumers alike. (indeed, their software is practically required for any enterprise handing out Android devices given the susceptibility of the platform.)

The company is one of the biggies — indeed one of the most influential mobile focused security firms around — with about 100m registered users growing at 300k a day!

The company is also about to implement a change of brand: NetQin is now NQ Mobile. I didn’t have a problem with NetQin myself — in fact I’ve rather admired it over the years, however I see the logic in terms of international expansion. “NQ Mobile” is far more accessible in a wider variety of markets.

So standby for the all new NQ Mobile branding to be unleashed shortly. I’m looking forward to it!

Did you catch this story doing the rounds and picked up by The Telegraph today? A Canadian chap used his iPad as a passport to get into and out of the country:

Martin Reisch said on Tuesday a slightly annoyed US border officer let him cross into the United States from Quebec after he presented a scanned copy of his passport on his Apple iPad.

Mr Reisch was a half hour from the border when he decided to try to gain entry rather than turn back and make a two-hour trek back home to Montreal to fetch his passport.

He told the officer he was heading to the US to drop off Christmas gifts for his friend’s kids. He said that true story, the scanned passport and his driver’s licence helped him get through last week.

via Man enters US without passport – thanks to his iPad – Telegraph.

You can bet that somewhere there’s a National Security Director having kittens at this news.

However I’m pleased for the chap — I’m pleased his technology was able to help him out. Since he had his driver’s license to confirm his ID and since (I’m sure) the immigration officer was able to a quick lookup on the passport number to verify, all was good.

I doubt the Americans — or any Government — will want to encourage this sort of behaviour. Surely* this kind of issue is bound to occur all over the world every day?

How long must we do the silly dance with the immigration officers when we’re moving from country to country.

I find it rather silly that I have to stand in line nowadays when I visit the States given the amount of verification that takes place. I recently had to renew my ESTA application for a trip. It went through in miliseconds but they wanted every single piece of information possible to verify my ID. That *MUST* be presented on screen (or on some big ‘orrible massive computer) when I turn up at the immigration desk and present my passport.

When will we get a Passport app for the iPad? Bring it on.

[*And don't call me Shirley -- for any fans of the movie, Airplane]

Finally — just in case you find yourself at SFO minus your passport but with other forms of semi useful ID, make sure you’ve got a high-res scan of your passport in either Evernote or DropBox…

And yeah, I look shocking in that passport photo. So bad that when I was leaving Germany a while ago, the immigration officer helpfully told me he thought I looked like an Axe Murderer. And folk say the Germans don’t have a sense of humour!

Here’s the video:

Thank you to reader Iain Mercer who emailed this morning about Starbucks. As a loyal fan of Starbucks filter coffee, Iain has using their reward card enthusiastically along with the hundreds of thousands of other caffeine addicted Brits.

For a while now Iain’s been using the Starbucks iOS app to easily locate his nearest shop during his regular travels across the UK.

Now, however, things are going to get even more exciting from a geeky mobile perspective: Starting tomorrow, the update to the Starbucks iOS card will enable customers to use their iPhone to pay directly for drinks at all Starbucks outlets.

The email update that Iain forwarded me over from Starbucks contains this revealing sentence:

The good news keeps coming. If you have an iPhone, be sure to download our new app tomorrow. You’ll be able to scan your iPhone to pay for your favourite drink.

We’ll need to wait until tomorrow to see how Starbucks have integrated payments into the app.

This is rather exciting. It’s a potential landmark moment, I think, provided they make it super-simple to use. I’m sure they will. It’s Starbucks, after all.

If you sit back and think about the millions of iPhone users in the great metropolitan cities of the UK, a large proportion of them will regularly visit Starbucks. I don’t think it will take long for even your normob iPhone users (“normal mobile users”) to catch on to the coolness and convenience of simply waving/scanning your iPhone to pay for your coffee.

If correctly implemented, I think this could be a runaway success.

Paying for coffee is a flipping arse. You have to CONTINUALLY make sure you’ve got some sort of shrapnel (“coins”) or paper money on your person at all times lest you miss out on a caffeine fix. Or, you have to walk to the sodding cash point. And even if that’s just 15 seconds away, that’s a big no-no for lots of people when they’re working.

I hope that the payment mechanism will enable you to swiftly pay — there could be substantial efficiencies in the Starbucks queues if all you need to do is a quick 1-second scan to pay. Both you and the coffee chappy won’t need to mess around counting coins.

Let’s wait and see what tomorrow brings.

And if you’re a big Starbucks fan, make sure you get hold of the app. I think it’ll be this one (iTunes link) that’s updated tomorrow morning.

Remember the Milk (“RTM”) is an online todo list service (and it’s available on multiple platforms including mobile). I’ve recently adopted it as my default to do list service and I’m pleased to report I’m getting a lot of value from it.

What’s rather cool, though, is that you can connect Siri to RTM.

This is particularly useful for me. Throughout the day I am forever remembering stuff that I need to do. Sometimes they’re stupid little tasks, other times they’re important points that I don’t want to forget. I usually do. Unless I write them down. Or email myself. Or use some todo app that I never read again.

So I’ve committed to RTM. And I’ve got Siri. I’ve connected them both so all I do now is tell Siri (words to the effect of):

“Remind me to buy some sausage rolls” *

Siri then brilliantly translates your text, asks for confirmation and then pushes the reminder straight into your RTM todo list.

I’ve been using it loads this week. Brilliant!

Here’s the RTM video demonstrating the functionality:

* You can read all about these sausage rolls here.

If you’ve slightly older children, though, I think they might appreciate Santa’s Big Helper for iPhone or iPad. It’s got a wealth of functions — the most important I reckon being the Santa Tracker and the sleeps-til-Christmas counter. You can write to Santa, receive Elf updates via video and you can even see the “Elf Cam” which shows Santa coming down your own Chimney (or similar, if you haven’t got one of those) — it’s basically a super-imposed X-Ray-style video of Santa that you then superimpose over your fireplace/living room. I think your average 5 year old will certainly buy it.

This could well be one of those apps that helps up the ante of excitement and expectation for the coming festive period. It’s $0.99 on the App Store and you can find it here.

Fast forward to today and all of a sudden I am receiving tons and tons of invitations to use it. It seems the zeitgeist has caught up — so I’ve taken another look and, goodness me, version 2 is rather cool.

It’s a mix between Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The developers have clearly thought very carefully about what they want from a sharing experience and delivered it. The user interface is a delight — an utter delight. They’ve cut down on clutter and got everything out of the way. I’m particularly intrigued by the ‘awake’ and ‘asleep’ functions (you can announce to your followers when you’ve gone to sleep, or when you’ve woken up — this also serves to avoid pinging you with updates whilst you’re resting). I haven’t quite remembered to properly activate this function yet but I’ve been noticing a few people I’m following really using it.

You can, of course, opt to have your updates sent to the usual suspects such as Twitter and Facebook as well. Combined with the new Facebook Timeline, Path integrates beautifully. It makes everything look lovely.

The experience is clearly in tune with Apple. If anything, Path could even be an Apple product. Here’s an email reminder I received from them today:

Even the emails are gorgeous.

The company’s website is pretty startling too. The whole site is a video! Check it out at www.path.com — very innovative.

The iPhone is one of the WORST possible handsets to use for real time communications because it’s such a SHITE, SHITE experience (for me, anyway) waiting for apps to have to boot up all the time. [I really, really enjoy BlackBerry's persistent background and multitasking capabilities -- Android too.] That said, Path delivers probably about the best messaging and sharing functionality on the iOS platform that I’ve seen.

A number of my friends have already adopted Path as their only mobile/social sharing facility. They’ve dumped everything else. I could see myself doing similar.

Here’s the introductory video:

Path – Introducing Path 2 from Path on Vimeo.

What do you think? Have you had a look yet?

Last night I was on the phone to my father catching up on the week’s excitement. Of course, the Christmas period is arriving fast and one of his particular tasks this weekend is to pick up Gran. This means driving from Essex to Glasgow, staying overnight and then driving back with Gran. My father quite enjoys the opportunity, I think, to free his mind from BAU (“business as usual”). And as one of the last weekends before Christmas, the big roads should hopefully be reasonably clear of holiday traffic.

When he’s been working hard, my mother likes him to take a few days off up in Scotland before picking up Gran. This helps him get into a bit more of a relaxed mood in the run up to the festive season and also gives him the opportunity to rest before doing the return journey.

On the phone to me last night he explained that he’d not yet had the opportunity to book anything. Time is running out before we approach the weekend and I urged him to sort something out.

“Let me have a look,” I said, reaching for the iPad.

I tapped on the Kayak app, selected “Hotels”, entered “Glasgow” and waited. 10 seconds later, all the results had populated. For the fun of it, I had Kayak remove all the results except for 5-Star. I was expecting a bit of a shock.

However, one of my favourite hotels in Scotland — Mar Hall — was listed there at the top. Total cost for three nights? £432 or £144 per night. Good deal, especially given that the official Mar Hall site was quoting a minimum of £225 for the same Deluxe room.

I consulted my father. Predictably he was delighted. He read his card details over the phone to me and I booked it right there-and-then. It took me about 4 minutes in all. Very, very easy.

Nice work Kayak and nice work eBookers (who processed the transaction)!

ARRRRGH!

I simply cannot stand it when someone shows me their iPhone for some reason or other. You know, to demonstrate an app, or to show me a photo — and then I end up seeing the front screen.

I can’t stand it.

Because invariably I am forced to see that the person has updates waiting — and it’s never one or two — it’s usually TENS of updates!

I can’t stand this!

It really winds me up.

When I point it out to people, they invariably respond with something like, “Oh.. yeah, I’ll need to update those.”

Now and again I meet people with crazy amounts of outstanding updates. It winds me up something chronic.

Let me tell you why: I remember, you see.

I remember back in the horrible old Symbian days when actually getting an application ON to a consumer’s phone was punishingly difficult. The attrition rate from the ‘download this app’ web page to actually getting the app installed on the phone was shocking. It was seriously difficult to imagine any normob (“normal mobile user”) actually using third party apps. It was SO difficult that Nokia executives used to line up to tell me that I didn’t understand the app ecosystem — that the best apps would rise to the top — and what they meant by this is that Nokia would preload them.

Geez it was difficult.

I used to meet developers all the time who had super ideas but who were continually beaten by the distribution problem. Getting apps on phones was nothing short of a miracle feat during the dark days.

And now… NOW! NOW it’s easy. Too easy. So easy that folk don’t bother updating apps!

Gaaaaaaaaaah!

It’s fine for consumers. I don’t mind the normobs not quite understanding the importance of updating. But industry executives? Folk who’ve been around the block in mobile? Come on! You were there. You remember the utter pain of third party apps? Come on! Think about the poor developers. You OWE it to those who have struggled with signing certificates and buggy custom operator firmware to upgrade your apps whenever you can!

Here’s how they describe it:

Uwar, Urban warfare in augmented reality, is a multiplayer first person shooter game in Augmented Reality, for smartphone and tab (Android e iOS). The game engine can reconnect up to 8 simple “marker” printed on the t-shirts of the players up to lot of meters can calculate with a server side logic who we’ve been hit by: Enough to create a new amazing way of playing digital games with friends.

Have a watch of the trailer:

When I was a boy I used to enjoy running around the neighbourhood with the other children playing games like this. The frustrating part was shooting someone (“Bang, bang”) and them either not noticing or — worse — noticing and choosing to make believe that your fantastically placed imaginary shot missed them! There’s no doubting with UWar!

It’s coming first to Android — there’s a closed beta live at the moment — and then we’ll see it on iPhone too. I could see this being very well received.

Are you rubbish with remembering names?

I am.

I routinely introduce myself to folk at mobile events before being told that we met 3 weeks ago or something like that. It’s profoundly embarrassing. But help is apparently at hand. I’ll need to try this out.

Take a moment or so to watch this rather humorous video that introduces Namerick:

And download the app here.

Waiting. Walking. Watching TV. Working out. Winding down. Waking up. We check email pretty much everywhere these days. And when we do, we want easy access to our important messages so we can respond quickly and get back to life — or slinging birds at thieving green pigs.

With that in mind, we’ve created a new Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. We’ve combined your favorite features from the Gmail mobile web app and iOS into one app so you can be more productive on the go. It’s designed to be fast, efficient and take full advantage of the touchscreen and notification capabilities of your device. And it’s one more reason to switch to Gmail.

via Introducing the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch | Official Gmail Blog.

Why the obsession over apps for iOS when there are 70 million folk with a BlackBerry whose Gmail app you’re about to kill?

Fascinating.

Adobe’s Carousel is along the lines of what I wanted from Apple’s Photo Stream service — the ability to capture, edit and seamlessly disseminate photos across my devices. That’s precisely what Carousel does. Install the app on your desktop, iPad and iPhone and you’re instantly able to share images between them.

This is an amalgamation of a number of applications and services I’ve seen and used before — not least ShoZu and Photo Stream. It’s brilliantly implemented by Adobe, and it’s reasonably priced. I could see myself moving to use this permanently instead of iPhoto, actually. I’d be very interested in your feedback on this point.

The apps are all free — it’s the subscription you pay for, conveniently, via your iTunes account.

Here’s how Adobe describe the service:

Adobe® Carousel is the only photography solution that gives you access to your entire photo library from all your iPads, iPhones, and Macs — no storage issues, no manual syncing hassles. Enjoy all your photos anywhere you are, and make them look terrific using the same powerful photo-processing technology as Adobe Photoshop® Lightroom® software.

Subscription is free for 30 days and then it’s $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year for unlimited storage. Well, here’s how Adobe describe that:

Enjoy all your photos on all your devices
Access your entire photo library on your iPad, iPhone, and Mac. No need to sweat storage limits or bother with syncing — just enjoy the freedom to browse your entire photo library or show off any shot on the device you have handy.

Don’t upload 100TB a month and they won’t bother you.

I do, however, agree with this point from Adobe:

Easily create the ultimate family photo library
Skip the hassle of sending emails and handing off drives. Give family members full access to your library so they can add photos via their own Carousel apps, flag favorites so everyone can find their best-loved shots, adjust photos, and more.*

Regular readers will know this has been something I’ve been looking for.

Here’s a screencast look at the desktop version:

I’ve decided it’s high time we had a PlayBook application for Mobile Industry Review. I’ve been deliberating on this issue for far too long. I’ve made noises. I’ve written occasional tweets, but now I’ve decided to do it.

I really do like the PlayBook. I love it. It’s the right size, it’s super-super powerful. I very much enjoy the user interface. But…

You know what’s coming next. Apps. The app experience isn’t quite there yet. It’s certainly getting there. I’m pretty impressed with the (unofficial) DropBox app, BlueBox. I’m delighted to see PressDisplay’s PressReader there. InstaPhoto is pretty neat. I just need to see more. I want to see more. The platform is hugely capable.

So I thought I should put my money where my mouth is by building a Mobile Industry Review app. Just a simple newsreader — like I did for the iPhone platform a few years ago. I hired a nice chap called Pavel to sort it out.

Now then, I spent a whopping $440 on that application. I’m wondering if I can do similar for the PlayBook. I don’t know if that’s possible though. I’m not sure what the going rate is. There’s a chance the average PlayBook developer wouldn’t code the front screen for less than $500. We’ll see. I’ve set the budget to $500 and I’ve published an elance.com entry soliciting bids.

I wonder if the PlayBook developer marketplace is too small to support this kind of work? I don’t know.

Programming for the PlayBook definitely looks straight forward, especially if you use WebWorks. And I’m not asking the world — it’s a simple app I would like in the first instance. If I had more time I reckon I could definitely code an HTML5 app (that could be easily submitted to App World.

What kind of experience do you think I’m likely to have? Any predictions before we begin the journey?

Here’s a video introduction I made earlier…

I’m having a wicked time now that I’ve got myself a Best Buy Connect MiFi unit. If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you’ll have seen the videos I’ve been publishing about how much I’m enjoying being free from the stupid mobile data roaming rates that my operators are trying to foist on me.

In New York, I didn’t have that much fun unless I was near a fixed WiFi hotspot. I refused to give in. I refused to reward my British operators with money for roaming. Indeed you can watch me going slowly nuts in this video discussing this very issue.

So when I got off the plane in San Francisco airport last night I did a double-take as I walked by one of those funky Best Buy vending machines. They’re a brilliant, brilliant addition to the world. They contain all manner of headphones, headsets, USB memory sticks, iPods, iPod Touches and so on. They usually also have a variety of phones, accessories and so on.

I spotted a MiFI unit though. That’s what turned my head.

It was $99.

I checked the label next to the MiFi that said “powered by Best Buy Connect” — that’s the name of the Best Buy MVNO. The sticker pointed out that service was provided by Sprint. Good. I do find Sprint highly reliable especially from a data standpoint.

I looked at the offer: Buy the MiFi unit for $99 and you’ll also get 3GB of prepaid data to use across 30-days. Plus the ability to prepay for more data if you need it.

I did some quick sums in my head and then got out my credit card.

Here’s the first video I made giving the overview:

Here’s another video demonstrating how I’ve been using the MiFi unit:

In terms of data costs, here’s the chart:

$50 gets you 3GB of data to use across 30-days — that will probably be the option for me.

The next time I’m back in the States (probably November) I can imagine topping up the MiFi unit when I arrive.

I’m seriously pleased with the experience. The purchase was ultra easy. I had the box in my hands about 10 seconds after deciding to buy — and I opted to have a receipt emailed to me.

Then when I got to the hotel room, I unboxed it, charged it up and went through the registration options in about 3 minutes and — boom — the connection was activated.

I didn’t have to speak to anyone, call anyone, panic about anything, it just worked. Brilliant.

And today I’ve been walking about San Francisco with my own personal hotspot. It’s just making my life that bit better because it’s nice to be able to check email, do map lookups, do search queries and so on when you’re out-and-about.

To know that I’m not being absolutely nailed for data is such a pleasure. I’ve had the device live for 10 hours and I’ve used 300mb already. Admittedly that’s been more than normal as I’ve uploaded three Socialcam videos with it too. But it’s working away brilliantly.

So there you have it — a top tip for US data roaming!

Note: I’ll need to check but historically, whenever I’ve been into a Verizon or a Sprint store, they’ve either *never* had MiFi units available or they’ve been strictly for 2-3 year contract customers only. They haven’t stocked prepaid units whenever I’ve been in. So I do recommend buying through an MVNO like Best Buy Connect. I’m no doubt paying a bit of a premium but I don’t mind ($50 for 3GB is quite a lot — but it’s nothing compared to what I’d be paying my UK operators).

1. It’s a tangible offering — real apps, real brand names
2. It’s a recognition of the annoyance and frustration that many did feel
3. It’s highlighting App World in the press
4. In order to take advantage of the deal, the consumer will need to have App World installed and activated — I’m sure there are still quite a lot out there who don’t have this properly setup yet, so this should convert a few more folk
5. It’s not actually $100 credit, indeed it should be quite cost effective for RIM
6. It draws a line in the sand for RIM — many that I’ve spoken to have already forgotten the outages

Now then you’d think that the $100 of apps would be in the form of a credit, right? Not quite. RIM has been very clever with the offer. Here are the apps you can get for free on Wednesday:

SIMS 3 (Electronic Arts)
Bejeweled (Electronic Arts)
N.O.V.A. (Gameloft)
Texas Hold’em Poker 2 (Gameloft)
Bubble Bash 2 (Gameloft)
Photo Editor Ultimate (Ice Cold Apps)
DriveSafe.ly Pro (iSpeech.org)
iSpeech Translator Pro (iSpeech.org)
Drive Safe.ly Enterprise (iSpeech.org)
Nobex Radio™ Premium (Nobex)
Shazam Encore (Shazam)
Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant (Vlingo)

Anyone that’s been around the BlackBerry ecosystem for any length of time will recognise every app there. I’d go so far as to say that it looks to me like RIM will have put together a really good deal for those developers to avoid having to pay anywhere near full price to include the app in this compensation offer. Each of the developers in the list is exceedingly well known to RIM.

The app list is well chosen. They’re all good ones.

If you’re an enterprise customer, then you’ll apparently be shortly getting details about how you can qualify for some free tech support from RIM. That is perfectly fine. It’s a line drawn under the sand. Although I suspect most of the enterprises in question will smile nicely and move on. Memories are short and I suspect a lot of enterprises are already getting on with life now that things are back to normal.

So good move RIM!

All you need to do is turn up on site with the app code (A “COD” file bundle, whatever the hell that is) and some assets (e.g. image/icon/logos) and baam — the team there, on site, will help you go through the deployment process there-and-then.

If you’ve got everything ready beforehand (like your file assets and whatnot) then the process will take just minutes. You will be able to more or less walk out of the App Express zone with your app deployed into App World.

Obviously there are bound to be one or two kinks in the process — especially if you’re like me and don’t quite read all the instructions in advance — but there will be a team of developers in the App Express area standing by to help out.

And if you haven’t yet picked up a PlayBook, just by registering and attending DevCon next week, you’ll be able to pick one up free of charge! (More details here.)

As for me I still haven’t had any success at getting a Mobile Industry Review app developed for the PlayBook yet. I’m going to see if I can hire a chap to sort that out. Perhaps I’ll try and get someone to make an HTML5 news reader ‘app’ that I can have deployed to the PlayBook next week? We shall see.

It just a week-and-a-bit before I arrive into San Francisco for the BlackBerry DevCon event. I’m in Houston first, followed by New York, before flying into the Valley. So that means I’ve been doing the usual jiggery-pokery with hotels and flights. In many cases, I’ve been lucky enough to have a colleague or agency take part of some of the scheduling and booking. In other cases, I’ve sorted it out myself.

Mid-way through I thought I should really try out BlackBerry Travel properly. I’ve had a wee look previously but I’ve not really had the opportunity to use it in anger since the new Bold 9900 arrived.

It was about time.

BlackBerry Travel is a key offering on the platform — just like Facebook and Twitter. It’s a ‘super-app’ — that is, it makes full use of the device capabilities including calendar and messaging integration.

And it’s magic!

Perhaps the most challenging element of business travel nowadays is juggling everything and having the right information at your fingertips, *all* of the time. My schedule next week is a good example. I’m on 6 different flights, 4 different hotels, 3 cities. Trying to keep all the booking numbers and timings in order gets challenging. You end up having to print stuff out and place it in chronological order just to make sense of it all. Not any more.

Once activated on your phone (and entirely free of charge), BlackBerry Travel scans your inbox. The moment it comes across a booking record email — or any of those long complicated corporate travel confirmation emails, it springs into action. It’s really fast. The app parses the email and extracts all the relevant bits and builds a trip for you.

Now, I knew this. I’m sure I’ve actually had a briefing on this too. But seeing it in the flesh, using it in anger? Amazing.

The first part of my upcoming journey to be confirmed by email were the outbound flights. The email arrived and almost simultaneously, I received a prompt in my inbox from BlackBerry Travel telling me that it had added them.

I clicked through. And, I’m delighted to say I was stunned. Boom! There was the flight schedule and ticketing information organised beautifully. The app then pointed out that although I was due to arrive into Houston on the 10th, I didn’t have any accommodation arranged. Would I like some help with that, asked the app?

Geez! Yes. I clicked. Boom! Again! All of a sudden I saw a list of available hotels along with prices in my local currency. Unfortunately I couldn’t book them as that was being done for me via another email.

When that booking was made — woosh — the BlackBerry Travel app was updated immediately, now with all the relevant hotel details.

Simply phenomenal.

Plus, my device calendar now has the various flight details programmed in. Excellent.

My week has continued like this. As another booking is and received by my email, it’s automatically integrated. So now I have a beautiful itinerary on my phone. Hugely, hugely valuable.

I’ve hooked it up to LinkedIn so it helpfully tells me who amongst my network is nearby at the particular locations in my itinerary. Yelp is also directly integrated too so finding restaurants and the like is that bit easier.

Plus, weather is integrated as well. Useful, because it looks like it’s going to be rather hot in Houston.

I’m seriously impressed.

You’ll no doubt have seen similar from the likes of TripIt (which I also use) however the super-tight and seamless integration with BlackBerry Travel is nothing short of astounding. When I think of the amount of hassle I’ve had to go through in the past writing all this stuff down or printing sheet-after-sheet and placing it all into a special plastic cover.. I’m simply delighted with the app.

If you’re a BlackBerry user and you travel regularly, I strongly recommend taking a look and trying it out.

You can find out more at blackberry.com — you’ll get it on any modern BlackBerry.

One of my regular BlackBerry apps is BeReader. It’s a really nice Google Reader client for the BlackBerry platform. I bought it via App World last year and I’ve been a regular user ever since.

I very much enjoy the BeReader experience — I use it a lot when I’m in restaurants or on the train or delayed.

The company behind BeReader, Bellshare, are — as Kevin from Crackberry put it earlier — one of the best RIM developers out there.

So all is good.

Now, I am using lots of BlackBerries all the time. Whether it’s the Curve, the Bold, the Torch, I’m swapping between them regularly for evaluation purposes. I’ve 6 BlackBerries on the desk at the moment.

Normally when I’m properly testing a BlackBerry device, I will transfer everything to the phone. It’s quite a nice experience. Type in your RIM account details and all your apps come flying down and, if you wish, your email account settings/BBM details are all copied over.

BeReader is one of the first that I will re-install.

For a variety of (I’m sure) perfectly valid reasons, Bellshare integrated copy protection on to BeReader. That is, you need to have a license code to run the app. One would hope this is not needed given I bought it from RIM’s very own App World, however it’s still there. When you download the app, you’re assigned an activation license number and you need to cut/paste that to make BeReader actually work. Fair enough. Convoluted, especially in the “it just works” world.

I tried to do this on my new Bold 9900 and got an error. Apparently I’ve activated the license far too many times now. That’s it. Game over. Go and use our online form, the app reported, to tell us you’re transferring to a new device.

I went and hunted for my BlackBerry PIN number. I visited the non-mobile enabled Bellshare site and filled in the form.

My patience was already shot to shreds. My frustration palpable. Fair enough, I know what I’m doing, but my wife? A ‘normob’ (“normal mobile user”) — she’d have given up and started screaming by now.

I’m already cooking on gas with annoyance when the form returns an error. Nope, it says, you really need to email us. You’ve activated too many times.

I exploded.

I can’t stand exceptions. I really can’t. I just want this shit to work. I bought it through App World. You KNOW this.. I really, geez, come I can’t be doing with this level of involvement, not when Reeder — a brilliant, brilliant iPhone alternative — is about 0.5 milliseconds away from me.

And you know what? I’ve had this issue for a little while. I solved it by using my iPhone instead. Because I carry both.

It was only this evening that I thought I’d actually bother clicking through to the form as I had a bit of time sitting on the train.

As I pointed out earlier, Bellshare has an excellent reputation and the BeReader app is second to none.

What really took me by surprise was my total lack of tolerance for the process not working as I expected. Now then, is this just me?

I think it’s possible it could be.

I emailed Bellshare’s support and got a confirmation reply from their ticketing system 12 minutes later. Now I’m finding myself thinking, “What are they doing? Why are they taking so long?”

I almost want an instant response from them.

Goodness me.

I think it’s just me. Other folk would have more patience, right?

I have no doubt that I’ll get a note from Bellshare shortly rectifying the situation. In this particular case, it has to be an exception given the amount of devices I’ve been using.

I wanted to make the point about exceptions though. I wonder if I’m the vanguard for the rest of the world becoming completely intolerant to anything other than “it just works”.

What’s your view?

I’m off to Houston, Texas, next week. I’m going to the Internet Retailer M-Commerce Forum and I’m very much looking forward to that. My intent is to speak to as many participants as I can to find out how the field of M-Commerce is moving in the States.

My airline of choice is British Airways. Someone asked me why, the other day, pointing out that they very much enjoy Virgin Atlantic. I’ve flown with Virgin now and again but my heart remains with British Airways — and here’s the rub, if I sit and examine why I feel this way, it’s primarily because of their iPhone application.

I have always found their staff attentive, professional and kind — and I do like how their pilots tend to sound serious and competent. I don’t need jokes at 50,000ft. Give me the calm confidence of a British Airways pilot.

Anyway it’s all about the app for me. From the mobile app, the rest of the experience unfolds before me. The fact that I can check-in for a flight whilst in the cab on the way to the airport is an utter joy — and the ability to then be able to call-up my boarding pass and walk straight past the legions of confused and stressed folk checking in on the machines, ahh, pleasure. It makes the business of flying that bit nicer for me.

I really do miss the app experience when I’m flying with other airlines — for instance to Cork recently with Are Lingus. I had to dick about with an A4 piece of paper as my boarding pass. Annoying. Very annoying.

More and more airlines are beginning to get with the programme. However I think it’s fair to say that in terms of integration, British Airways are very much the pioneers. Is that right? I know Lufthansa have been doing a lot in this area. I do enjoy the fact that British Airways have managed to spread mobile boarding passes to a veritable ton of airports now. I should check out the other airline mobile offerings.

Meanwhile today I got my flight details through from the very nice lady who booked the travel. She asked for my executive card number before she did the booking. That was useful because I checked earlier and — boom — the flight is already registered there in the app.

Love it.

(If you’ve had good mobile experiences with other airlines do let me know.)

You can pick up the BA iTunes app at this link.

When you want the night’s festivities to continue beyond the 11pm cut-off imposed by most places, it’s often a TOTAL arse to try and find an alternative venue. It’s even more frustrating when you know that the chances are one of the places around the corner is probably open late — you just don’t know about it.

That’s where 24hourlondon is incredibly useful. The app contains a list of venues nearby (located via your current position) along with a brief entry for each — and of course, opening/closing times. Helpfully, they also include the number of a local taxi firm that serves the area too.

Each entry is manually verified by the 24hourlondon team for accuracy. That makes me feel good. (Although, I have to say, since we’ve had a baby, I think I’ve been out late in London about twice…!)

But if you’ve got a social life in the city, you might well find this app highly useful. You can find it in the iTunes app store here (£1.49).

I did a quick video overview — here it is:

James Parton writing over at IT Pro Portal has discovered a genius little app.

It’s called “iHi” — and it’s really, really simple. Here’s the description James uses:

Put simply, iHi is super simple visual communication. You can pick from a list of pre set words or phrases:

When selected, the phrase is displayed as a striking white Arial font on black background for maximum contrast and visual impact.

The free version is limited to a few phrases. Upgrade to the premium version and you can type in your own messages.

But, let’s just stop there. Watch this video and toward the end, the value of the app will be come clear — especially the reaction of the girl once she gets off the tube. Trust me:

Every success to the chap behind the concept, Neil Stanley.

Here’s Neil himself introducing the app:

Pick up iHi+ on iTunes for £1.49.