To combat this, app developers have taken advantage of mobile broadband access to bring free texting to your smartphone. And they’re not-surprisingly some of the most popular apps available. While many of the free texting services are ad-supported, it’s still a small price to pay for a new phone number where you can send and receive unlimited texts.

We took a look at the best smartphone messaging apps for all major platforms. Each one offers unlimited text messages or instant messages and are either free or cheap to download. Either way, you’ll save.

Tip: Make sure you enable push notifications for each of these apps so you receive your new messages instantly.

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Kik is a BBM alternative that works with iPhone and Android.

Kik takes what people love about BlackBerry Messenger and brings it to all three major smartphone platforms. Like BBM, messages on Kik are sent almost instantly and you get a notification when it is delivered and received. The app is free, and you get unlimited messages.

Kik scans your address book for new friends, so be sure to add your phone number when you register so they can find you.

Follow these links for the free iPhone and Android versions of the app. The BlackBerry version has been pulled from the App World store, but we hope it returns soon.

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Google Voice gives you a new number to text from

When you sign up for a Google Voice account, you’re getting more than an alternate phone number. You can also send unlimited free texts from Gmail or your phone. Google Voice’s smartphone app sends you alerts when you receive new texts, just like the app that came pre installed on your phone. Your conversations are saved online too, so you can view them later.

Click here to get the app for Android, iPhone, and Blackberry.

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Fring will connect you to the major instant message networks

Fring is a messaging app that connects to the major instant message networks such as AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, and Facebook. You can also make voice and video calls to other Fring members for free, even if they are using a different phone. Chances are, your contacts use one or more of these networks, so running this smartphone app in the background is a good move.

Follow these links to download Fring for iPhone, Android, and Nokia Symbianphones.” (via gizmodo.com ) by Steve Kovach – Business Insider

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to read the rest of Use These 8 Apps To Ditch Your Expensive Texting Plan

Whether you just got your iPhone and are feeling adrift or you’re a salty old dog seeing what you might’ve missed, here are 50 absolutely essential apps…( Here’s a peek at some click link below to see all of them )…

Social…

Twitter: Twitter thankfully didn’t make too many changes when they gobbled up the already-great Tweetie 2 from Atebits—same clean interface, same Tweet swiping, and the same it-feels-so-good pull to refresh mechanism. Free…

Facebook: The new, panel-based interface takes a little getting used to, but once you’re acclimated it’s the most effective way to throw yourself, fingers first, into the black hole timesuck that is Facebook. Free.

Meebo: Meebo is the king of iPhone messenger apps right now, with support for AIM, Google Talk, Facebook and the like (as well as an impressive list of smaller networks) all packed into a pretty, polished package. Free.

Instagram: Take a photo and dress it up with one of the supplied Hipstamatic-esque filters, Then you share it over the usual suspects—Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, etc —or, and here’s the interesting part, over Instagram’s built-in social networking service. It’s new and ambitious and that’s why we like it. Free.

Entertainment

Netflix: All the joys of Netflix in your pocket, all the time—including the power to battle that always growing Watch Instantly queue. Streaming’s silky smooth over Wi-Fi, less so over 3G, but the app itself is indispensable. Free.

Remote: Apple’s official app for controlling iTunes from wherever your butt might find itself planted is pretty much perfect. Browse your entire library by artist, song, playlist, whatever, pick a tune, and there it is, playing in your iTunes. Free.

Flixter: While it blows my mind that I can watch movies on my phone, one thing I need it to do, and need it to do well, is find movie times for theaters nearby. Flixter does that and much more, packing box office charts, Rotten Tomatoes reviews, DVD releases and what seems like a thousand other movie-related features in one extremely handy app. Free.

StreamToMe: A lightweight client on your computer catalogues the videos of your choosing, as well as all your iTunes playlists, and then lets you easily stream the files in them easily to the app on your iPhone. The best part: all the transcoding is done on the fly, and pretty much any video format plays back superbly.

Kindle: Just because you don’t own a Kindle doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be buying Kindle ebooks—especially when Amazon’s iOS app is this good. While it looked for a while like iBooks might come along and disrupt Amazon’s ebooks hegemony, well, that didn’t happen. Free.

CameraBag: Every iPhone photographer needs a catchall filter app for adding some artistic flair to their shots. Hipstamatic can make them look, uh, hip, but CameraBag can make them look like everything else. $2

Hipstamatic: Why do everyone’s iPhone photos look so damn hip while yours look so, you know, not. Probably cause they’re using Hipstamtic, the preeminent “make my photos look cool” app which lets you mix and match films and lenses (available for in app purchase) to make your iPhone photos look more analog than ever. $2.

Games

Angry Birds: Probably the world’s most popular iPhone game, and for good reason. There’s something about launching these different sorts of aviary ammunition into the precarious pig pens that just never gets old. There are always new birds and new stages coming out the pipeline to keep things fresh, too. $1.

The Incident: With excellent pixel art and an admirably morbid sense of humor, twisting your iPhone around to avoid falling objects is way more fun than it sounds. And you have to appreciate anything that makes the apocalypse this enjoyable. $2.

Productivity

Instapaper: Perhaps the most universally loved of all iPhone apps, Instapaper, in conjunction with a bookmarklet on your PC, strips websites of all that crap and leaves just the text, synced to your iPhone and pristinely awaiting your eyeballs. Free with ads, or $5.

Reeder: The best all-around RSS reader, Reeder syncs flawlessly with Google Reader (not as common as you’d think!), includes intuitive, swipe-friendly controls, and has a spartan interface that gets out of the way of the stuff you care about: your feeds. $3.

Lifestyle

Google Earth: It’s, like, the entire world…on your iPhone. Google Earth is cooler than ever when you’re using your fingers to manipulate it, seamlessly zooming around the globe and diving into various places to take a closer look. Free.

MotionX GPS Drive: A solid turn-by-turn navigation app for $3 a month with no long term commitment. There are others that are richer (and far more expensive), but if you just need turn-by-turn directions once in a while, MotoinX GPS is the ticket. $1, $3 a month.

Google Mobile: Yeah, there’s no two ways about it: you have to have Google’s Swiss Army Knife app on your iPhone. Search the internet by voice, location, or now, with the recent addition of Google goggles, by picture. Free.

Yelp: Everyone’s a critic when it comes to bars and restaurants; Yelp puts that impulse to work for you. Search for food, drink, or whatever else by location, price, style and then read up on what people have to say about it. Free.

Wikipanion: If you aren’t using your iPhone to settle petty disputes, what’s the point? Wikipanion gives you iPhone-optimized access to all of Wikipedia, that great argument-ending resource, with added features like bookmarking, quick wikitionary lookup, intelligent search and more. Free, $5 for Wikipanion Plus.

How To Cook Everything: OK, the name of the app is sorta an exaggeration, but not by as much as you’d think. For those of us who aren’t concerned with preparing gourmet meals and are just happy with making something, How To Cook Everything, adapted from the excellent cookbook of the same name, is like the Holy Grail. $5.

Epicurious: A food app with a bit more context than How To Cook Everything—it lets you find recipes based on what’s in season, create interactive shopping lists, etc.—it is well designed and packed with utility. Free.

Adobe Photoshop Express: It’s not the powerhouse that the desktop version is, but for basic edits like crop, straighten, rotate and simple tweaks like changing exposure, saturation, and tint, this stripped down Photoshop does the trick. Free.

Mixologist: The gold medal winner of our best drinking apps battle, Mixologist is an encyclopedic database of drinks searchable in a variety of ways. At some point, you will impress someone by following this app’s instructions. ” (via  gizmodo.com) by Kyle VanHemert

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to read the rest of Updated – The Best iPhone Apps

Currently 200 apps are available for free download…

Apps for iPad, iPhone and iPhone Touch…

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to go to Top Free apps at Apple App store – for iPad, iPhone and iPhone Touch

We’ve used this on our Blackberry, cell phones and iPhones. Works great -amazing product and low cost..

InvisibleSHIELD™ is a thin polyurethane film originally created for the military to protect the leading edge of helicopter blades…

50% off Site-wide Cyber Monday sale on November, 29th, 2010 thru Tuesday Nov.30.

What’s unique about this military-grade, patented film is how tough it is – it doesn’t scratch… With this technology, it also allows it to curve and contour around an entire device (not just the screen) and adhere to the device unless you want to remove it (without leaving adhesive).

Great for PDA, cell phones, iphones, iPads, Blackberrys, computers etc.

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Digital versions of such classic Beatles albums as “Abbey Road,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!,” “Magical Mystery Tour” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” were selling for $13 each, with double albums like the “White Album” going for $20.

Also available is a massive Beatles box set for $150, while individual tracks are selling for $1.30 each.

The Beatles, of course, were one of the last remaining digital music holdouts, and rumors of the Beatles arriving on iTunes (or going digital in any way whatsoever) have been circulating for years.

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to go iTunes Beatles page

Please note that all of these links go directly to the page in the iTunes store so clicking them will launch iTunes.

Live Flight Tracker: Powered by FlightAware.com, Live Flight Tracker will allow you to check on the status of any flight and get updates on where the flight is, how much time left until it arrives and more.  Use of the app requires free registration with FlightAware, which can be done in-app if needed.

Restaurant Finder: Find restaurants around you either by style of cuisine or just by looking at what is closest to you geographically.  You can sort the information in various ways, and as an odd bonus, you also get the current weather for your current location during the startup screen.

Sit or Squat: Bathroom Finder: Finding a bathroom when in a strange town can be infuriating, but thanks to this app sponsored by Charmin.  This free application will not only locate bathrooms near you, but you can also see what hours it is open, read & leave ratings on the various restrooms, leave comments and more.

Taxi Magic – Book Instantly: Taxi Magic allows you to book taxis directly from your iPhone in 25 major cities in the USA (and tape to call options for thousands of cities in the USA and Canada), and then you can see your cab’s progress to your current location.  The app also allows you to pay for your fare securely without ever handing over a credit card.

Wi-Fi Finder: Finding Wi-Fi when you’re away from home can be a pain, but with Wi-Fi Finder you can find both pay and free hotspots near you so you can always stay connected no matter what city you are in.  Currently you can find over 200,000 hotspots in 135 countries all across the world.” (via iphonetouch.blorge.com ) by Sean P. Aune

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to read the rest of -Top 10 best free iPhone and iPod Touch travel apps

available for iPhone, Blackberry, Laptops, Phones, iPad, iPod & MP3 etc.

Personalize your devices with incredible art from their collection of over a hundred artists or upload your own images in The GelaSkin Creator.

Patented 3M adhesive make GelaSkins easy to apply with no residue left behind. The adhesive allows you to reposition the skin so you can easily get a perfect fit.

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to learn more about – GelaSkins are removable covers for protecting and customizing your portable devices.

You might say I am now tweeting a different tune. At every turn during my vacation overseas, I was relying on apps. And while I’m still a believer in disengaging, I’d like to recommend a few ways to make the trip smoother with technology.

Like FlightTrack Pro, an app that enabled me to follow flight delays and cancellations with my phone. And then there’s GateGuru to help you figure out the best airport food and shopping options as you pass the interminable hours before your flight actually leaves.

I’ve long been skeptical about the shoeless trips through metal detectors and other antiterrorism tactics of the Transportation Security Administration. They manage to make flying even more stressful, often without actually doing much to prevent airborne attacks. I do, however, appreciate the agency’s MyTSA, which provides updates on security wait times.

Once you put your shoes back on and settle in at your gate, you can consult the Weather Channel’s free app. Current weather, extended forecasts, and even pollen counts at your destination are all at your fingertips. It’s like having Al Roker in your pocket, but not nearly as heavy.

After my plane touched down and I collected the bags, my weeklong obsession with Google Maps and Google Earth began. Using the former gets you the shortest route to the hotel – if only to keep a cabbie honest. Speaking of which,

Taxi Magic will help you book a cab and even track it as it makes its way to pick you up. Or, if you’re taking public transportation, use MetrO to plot the course. Then you can check out an aerial image of where you’re headed using Google Earth.

If you’re concerned about the safety of the neighborhoods around your hotel, use SpotCrime to pull up what is essentially a Google Map dotted with icons indicating where misdeeds have been committed. A fist means assault. An ominous stick figure signals a theft. ” (via  philly.com) by Michael Smerconish

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to read the rest of – Using Apps for a more enjoyable vacation

Valid Fri. 8.20.2010 to  Mon. 8.23.2010.

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These apps leverage advanced technologies, that work extremely well on iOS. Ocarina will blow your friends away when they see you’re playing an instrument with your breath. ” (via 9to5mac.com ) by Mark Gurman

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to read the rest of  Apple’s new “Apps to Impress your Friends”