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Visit Handmark at CTIA Wireless 2006, fill out a form, and you're all signed up to possibly win a 2007 Porsche Cayman S, a bright red example of which is sitting right in the middle of the software publisher's booth. The fancy sports car is the vendor's ploy to entice people to learn more about the latest edition of Pocket Express for smartphones, now on version 3.0.

Pocket Express is a wireless information service for the Palm OS (Treo), Windows Mobile, and RIM BlackBerry platforms. It uses a channel metaphor, rather than a browser, to deliver Internet content to PDAs and smartphones. Handmark says Pocket Express is faster than mobile web surfing by orders of magnitude and, with the 3rd edition, now offers more than twice the number of services for the same $6.99 per month price.

Handmark demonstrated Pocket Express to PDAStreet using Motorola's Q smartphone, due to arrive from Verizon Wireless, well, eventually. The RAZR-thin, Windows Mobile-based Q is one of the most highly-anticipated BlackBerry-like communicators with QWERTY thumb-keyboards. It was supposed to ship this month, but is rumored to have been delayed once again (see bottom image).

After an initial two week trial period, you can continue to use Pocket Express's News, Sports, and Weather channels for free, but those who subscribe get access to more than 14 services.

Handmark bets the trial should get most smartphone users hooked. If not, the company's chief marketing officer Douglas Edwards thinks the continuing free access to the aforementioned channels will.

"Free ongoing access to the Pocket Express news, sports, and weather channels will give them more time to consider what they’re missing. Most customers tell us that the 411-directory search and its ability to add any listing directly to the built in address book without typing is worth the price of the subscription, but free news, sports, and weather will keep them coming back everyday, ” according to Edwards.

Pocket Express works by basically downsizing the Web to make it more manageable or 'usable' - a theme running through CTIA. With it, information becomes more accessible to the consumer. In addition to the channels mentioned above, Pocket Express delivers stock info, movie times, maps and directions, and 411 directory search offerings.

New features include much-expanded sports, stocks, news and showbiz coverage, News of the Weird, Dear Abbey, Scott Burns financial advice, Last Word in Astrology, and the American Writer’s Thesaurus and New Oxford Dictionary.

With the new version of Pocket Express, users can select a SHARE option to send an SMS text message with a link to access a free trial to anyone they like. If the recipient decides to give Pocket Express a try, the sender is re-entered into the Porsche sweepstakes, which ends with the close of the year. The picture below shows this feature running on a Motorola Q.


SHAREing Pocket Express with Motorola Q