During a day of shopping with my wife, I was blessed to be allowed to visit some brick and mortar retail stores, with the hopes of finding a gadget or two to catch my eye.  We stopped at Best Buy and Office Depot.  Were they friendly?  Sure. Did they have anything I really *needed* to look at?  Nope… not really.

But what was nice while looking over the netbook accessories was the opportunity to reminisce about some favorite tech store experiences.

There was the CompUSA store that was a thrill to shop at while I was a Palm and CLIE user.

Prior to that there were the Staples stores in my hometown and another.  What a rush to view the handhelds on display.  From salivating over the Palm Treo 90 and being oh so thrilled when my wife purchased me the Diamond Mako – the US badged version of the Psion Revo Plus.  Oh, to reminisce.

What are your favorite brick and mortar tech stores, present or past?  Share your thoughts with us below.

Deals are great, but free is definitely better.  That’s why were really happy to report on today’s offer of Handango’s Free App Friday.  They are offering Chess Pro II for free today.  It’s available for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android.

You can check it out here!

Today’s JAMM Store Deal of the Day is Pocket Informant 9  for Windows Mobile.  You can register Pocket Informant for half the regular price, so be sure to check it out.  The sale price is $9.99

You can download a trial and/or register your copy here.

The programs details and specifications are below:

Pocket Informant™ is the only #1 Personal Information Manager (PIM) on Windows Phone that has been around since 2001. For years Pocket Informant™ has won every productivity award, every sales record, and most importantly – our customer’s hearts.
Pocket Informant™ 9 furthers our lead over the built-in Pocket Outlook and continues to improve your productivity by focusing on getting out of your way and letting you do your work. 9 polishes the user experience, adds “Getting Things Done” (GTD) support, and on Windows Phone 6.5 devices adds full Touch Gesture support throughout.
We don’t simply let you work with your daily events through lists and grids, but with the new Events and Journal views you can also look at your life’s past and future in an easy cohesive environment. You can even have Contact Links directly in the subject of any task or appointment!

When you have the best PIM on the market you may wonder what else could we do to make Pocket Informant™ even better? You won’t be overwhelmed by a new look/feel just for the sake of change or by dozens of new options or a dizzying array of new views. Instead we focused heavily on the user experience with hundreds of improvements throughout the application. All your favorite features are still there such as the innovative 12-Key Search Pad, interface scalability with our Roles including a “Pocket Outlook with Benefits Role).

Features:

• Windows Phone 6.5 Support
• Getting Things Done (GTD) support in Tasks
• Inbox – Collect your tasks quickly
• Context Groups
• Project Groups
• Next Actions
• Starred Tasks
• Bounce Scrolling
• One month Date Picker based off the full month view
• Month View Free Time Finder
• Editors are now touch friendly
• 6.5 Only: Swipe left and right in Day, Agenda, Month View, Week, Task View, and Date Picker to navigate between time periods
• 6.5 Only: Swipe left and right in Editors to navigate between the editor tabs
• Many more Touch mode improvements throughout the app
• Full PNG support within PocketInformant and for icons
• Over 1200 icons (VGA, QVGA, square screen) now included as a separate download within Pocket Informant
• Icon picker now has a size filter to see only the icons you want

Minimum Requirements:

• Pocket PC 5.0/6/6.1/6.5 with a 32MB RAM device minimum

Display Dimensions
240×240, 240×320, 240×400, 320×240, 320×320, 400×240, 480×480, 480×640, 480×800, 640×480, 800×480
Operating System
WM5, WM6, WM6.1, WM6.5

Today we are bombarded with communications from others both welcomed or unsolicited, and many expect us to always be available.  Do you welcome this or is it a source of conflict, a source of stress perhaps?  For me, while I do appreciate being able to talk with my wife when necessary, there is a desire for me to not be bothered otherwise.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!

Today’s JAMM Store Deal of the Day is MobileNavigator 7 North America for Windows Mobile.  You can register MobileNavigator for half the regular price ($39.60 ), so be sure to check it out.

You can download a trial and/or register your copy here.