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Our phones do so much for us now. Some of us do online banking, read our local newspapers with RSS Feeds, and a million other things. The Apple iPhone(3G) really upped the ante, by giving us a cool all in one device that looked nice and was pretty functional. Don’t get me wrong I love my Blackberry 8830, but the iPhone has really become a very popular multi-faceted device.

So I was reading that cameras will be getting another boost in the near future in cell phones. Of course this is an evolutionary thing and was bound to happen, but with 32GB SD cards becoming available at retail, our phone will soon also be our camera and our multi-media device. It is bound to happen, and when our kids get older and have these all in one devices they will make fun of us for carrying 5 things around.

So we are not where I hope we will be yet, but I can squeeze hours of entertainment out of my Blackberry when I need to. I know people can do the same with iPhones and high end Nokias, Helio Oceans, and so on. If you have an iPhone sync your Itunes and put some music on there, or use the great Roxio media manager for your Blackberry and let it convert your files for you.

So hopefully next year, I will be writing this blog on my phone, uploading high resolution pictures to Myspace, and be able to use a super intuitive interface to control all my media.

I was looking at some pictures on Flickr.com and I found a picture of a Blackberry, by terren in Virginia, and it was titled Modern Camping Tool. I thought it was funny, not because it was so ridiculously far fetched, but because it was fairly true.

When I used to go camping if something bad happened, you had to hope you could make it to a payphone or a nearby store for help. With a cell phone you can send a text from most places, or try to make an emergency call. Now when it comes to GPS you all know who my favorite is, TELENAV, and that could usually get you where you are going or where you want to be.

What else can you use your phone for? Maybe if you have an Otterbox you can crack open shelled nuts with it’s extra strength case. I know I am not the most outdoorsy person, so if I saw a snake, a nut, or plant I was thinking of getting close to or eating, I would try to look it up using Google on my phone and get an guess on how safe or unsafe it is.

So yes, it is not a shovel, or a tent, or a compass, but it is a great tool to have for everyday life, and it should help out for camping too. So Terren in Virginia, thank you for the picture and the inspiration!

.teFor me the Blackberry is about as close to perfect as you can get. I have had other phones, and I am not knocking “dumb” phones because they did serve me well. A Blackberry, in my case the 8830, does most things I want a device to do. It makes my calls, has my e-mails, calendar, music, videos, pictures, web-browsing, and so on.

With all the great things they do and they have there are a few minor issues that have some fairly simple fixes. I had something called Memory Leak that prevented me from receiving new text messages. Something happens where your phones internal memory starts dwindling. The easiest way I have fixed it is deleting some old text messages, make sure I do not have 100 applications running, and take the battery out and put it back in. If you are not a fan of taking your battery out, you can press ALT, THE Right SHIFT Key, and DELETE. I do it twice in a row, so I can be rebooted.

The good folks at Crackberry.com put together a great list on some other common issues and easy fixes. Check it out, if you have any questions or need any other human help, contact us.

For those of you that read this blog, you know my love of Telenav. It has really come to my rescue on several occasions and is an application on my phone I will not live without. I like it so much in fact that I will buy( or not buy) a phone on its inclusion of Telenav. Now there are some people out there that do not have a carrier that provides the Telenav service, or they do not have a phone that has it integrated. For some of these people I recommend Google Maps.

If you have ever used Google Maps on your computer it is very similar. You can change between map view and satellite view, and it helped me on my trip over the weekend. Google Maps is another great application that helps you find where you and are, and helps you find where you are going.

Like Telenav Google Maps has a search built in, where you could search for restaurants, gas, streets, and so on. Google Maps follows your location and shows you which streets to turn on. It does not have spoken navigation, so if you did use it, I would recommend having a partner to help you navigate. I have not exploited all the features of Google Maps, but since it is a free application you can’t lose!

I am sure many people that work in any type of environment where there is billing, have people come back to you and say your bill is too high. Many of the times all it requires is an explanation of the charges and that usually fixes some of the issues. In the Wireless industry, at times billing becomes more of an issue, and sometimes it is because of an older billing system, or an error in the system.

That is where we come in. We believe in serving our customers that may not be able to get help anywhere else. We serve regular customers and small/medium businesses. We understand the difficulty a small business owner might have when their bill is too high, he/she wants to get it fixed, although they do not have 6+ hours to dedicate on the phone with customer service. We pride ourselves in being able to not only resolve this issue in many cases, but audit the bill and find a more cost effective solution.

All we ask for in return is that the customer we helped save $100, $500, $24,000 do business with us. We have employees that specifically look at bills and help customers save money by rearranging their plan. So next time your bill is too high, let us know. Let us take a look at it and see what we could do for you!

As some of you may know I live in Victoria Texas. If you have been following the hurricane, we were on its path to be hit hard two days ago. We have a few retail stores in the Rockport and Victoria area. So I gathered some of our important things like money, phones, and computers. I drove them to safe keeping around our corporate location in San Antonio.

So after that the plan was to head to Beaumont, it was out of the way of the projected path at the time and we were going to visit my father in law and try to wait for the storm to pass. Sure enough when we were close to Houston plans changed. My father in law called and said the storm’s path had changed and Beamont was being evacuated.

It was my wife, daughter, and 2 dogs, and we were not too sure what to do next. We did not know where we were, and how to get to our plan B, Dallas. Thankfully Telenav was guiding us to Beaumont and it guided us to the Dallas area. There was no lag, and without it I would have been in a bad situation. There are many applications out there and Telenav is an application that has worked very well for me many many times.

If you do not have the option for Telenav there are many other decent GPS alternatives out there. It worked out so great for me, we didn’t have to go to a store and fight all the people evacuating from Houston for a mao. Telenav got me and my loved ones to a safe place, and I will continue to use it as long as I have a phone.

I have been in the wireless world for several years now and something that always intrigued me was the idea of tires that were integrated with bluetooth. Now with fuel consumption being such a hot topic, I was thinking of how something normally associated with the wireless world would help this dilemma out. Bluetooth tires were the first thing to come to mind and maybe one of the weirdest sounding useful things around.

Now, like many people we all lead busy lives, even if you do not work maybe you are a stay at home mom that has to manage the kids which is like 50 jobs. They say our tire pressure is something that can make a very significant difference when it comes to our fuel economy. I do not have time to check my tire pressure everyday, and sad to say even weekly. I know I should, but there is just a slew of things that I feel are more important.

Enter the Bluetooth Tire. The Bluetooth Tire alerts you when your tire pressure is low. It is not integrated to work with wireless devices yet, but should be easily introduced once it becomes more mainstream. Just think you get into your car in the morning and your tires send your phone a message as to what your tire pressure is. Or you get an alert on your Blackberry (or other Bluetooth phone) when you are dangerously low. This is a really cool and useful technology that we should be on the lookout for. To learn more about this product read this article.

We have written a few times about the Samsung Instinct (M-800). It has always been a phone we have anticipated and one I was really looking forward to coming out. It won a few best in shows at some tech conventions earlier this year and we had seen some videos on its performance. The question is did it deliver. The short answer is yes.

The Instinct has been out for some time, and being in the retail world I feel like I can assume it has stood the test of time. It has sold to many many people, and there are not any significant, or even small issues I have faced when dealing with this device. As we all know the iPhone is a media darling. The iPhone is cool, don’t get me wrong, but when you compare it to a more competent device it does not stand up.

In my opinion the biggest issues with the iPhone are the battery, “3g” network, and case fractures. The battery being removable is a bummer, but the real dagger in the heart is the battery life when you are in 3g mode or you have Wi-Fi on. The 3g network with ATT is not as large as Sprint or Verizon, and for such a beautiful device you will probably get small fractures in the plastic shell of your iPone soon after you purchase.

So yes, I think the Instinct is the winner. It is a great device, very responsive, and Sprint has this cool website for more comparisons (I like the music in the removable battery video). If you have not seen an Instinct yet check it out, or contact us and we will gladly set you up with one.

I know there are a lot of awesome ways many people customize their telephone. If you have a phone like all of your friends have it is a definite must. It is funny, I see a lot of friends come in our stores with phones like the Razor and they have the same color and the same phone.

There are several options like the standard leather case, skin, and hard plastic shell. On my phone I opt for the Otterbox, but some people send their phone to Colorware. Colorware is an awesome company that custom paints some smartphone devices. Naturally since I am writing about it, it is offered for Blackberry. The level of quality that Colorware provides is unmatched. They have great colors and offer a high gloss scratch resistant paint. Some celebrities like Mariah Carey and Jay-Z have their Blackberries customized by Colorware.

Colorware offers their services for some Sidekicks, iPhone, and Blackjack. So if you are not partial to Blackberry, send in your iPhone or Sidekick. They also paint computers, game consoles. music players, and HD Tvs. As always if you have any questions let us know.

I love my Blackberry, but since it is completely wireless I usually do not connect it to my computer and see some of the other stuff it is compatible with. This weekend I was determined to get some movies on my Blackberry.

I have Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.5. I can change the option to synchronize, transfer data from a device to a Blackberry, load applications, backup and restore, and manage my media. This particular version has Roxio Media Manager. Anyways, I was ready to have to Google how to convert files and “hack” my Blackberry to play my media back the way I wanted. I dragged the media to the Media Manager and Roxio did the rest. It asked if I wanted to Convert for Optimal Playback, I checked yes. And a few minutes later I was done. So no extra work required, just drag and drop.

Soon after I was watching Gotham Knight on my phone, I had a ton of music, and was easily able to put my daughter’s cutest pictures on my phone. So I love that my Blackberry helps me save so much time, but I also love that it helps me pass the time as well. As always any questions contact us.