Who needs a notebook when you've got a Treo or Blackberry to help you while you're out of the office? After all, they weigh less and work perfectly well for e-mailing and other basic tasks. Besides, you can't attach a notebook to your belt clip. But if you rely on your smartphone too much, you might find yourself banging your head against its limitations. Here to help is Premiere Global Services with two applications for solving common problems.

PremiereAnywhere (formerly called PrintAnywhere) runs on Treos, Blackberrys, and other devices, letting you turn any fax machine into your own personal printer. Imagine you're out of the office and your assistant e-mails you updated sales projections for a meeting. Normally, you'd have the option of either memorizing them or glancing down at your handheld during a meeting. But with PremiereAnywhere, you can print out e-mails and attachments with ease, simply by forwarding the document to a nearby fax.

We tested PremiereAnywhere on a Blackberry, where a small application integrates the software into the handheld's built-in e-mail program. Start by visiting the Web site to sign up for the service, which costs $4.95 per month. You'll get a confirmation e-mail with a download URL. Downloading took us only a few seconds, and installation requires a reboot.


To use PremiereAnywhere on a BlackBerry, open a message, click
the thumbwheel, and select the Print option. You'll then get a form
where you can enter your fax machine's number.

Once it's installed, you call up PremiereAnywhere by opening an e-mail message and clicking the thumbwheel to call up contextual options; one will be for PremiereAnywhere. Select it to call up a form where you can input the fax machine's phone number. Your message is sent to Premiere Global Services, where it and any attachment is relayed to the fax.

We had a brief bit of confusion while testing because the program wouldn't print out status e-mail messages we'd gotten from Nextel, the Blackberry's provider, and so we didn't think the program was working. A call to the company's tech support line didn't help, as the person who answered didn't seem to know the software all that well. But we soon learned that the program works as it should with standard messages, and that it, for some reason, wasn't seeing the Nextel notes as e-mail.

Treo and other device owners can use PremiereAnywhere, but there's no software to download. Instead, users forward messages by creating an address, such as (fax number)@PremiereAnywhere.com. It's still an easy solution.

ConferenceAnywhere
Another program from the same company, ConferenceAnywhere, works only with Blackberry smartphones and cell phones now, but will be available for Treos later this year. It makes the job of creating multi-person phone conferences simple.


                  The ConferenceAnywhere main screen.

Blackberry owners start by visiting the Web site and signing up for the service, which costs $4.95 per month for 50 minutes (additional time costs $0.18 per minute). You'll get a confirmation e-mail with a link to download the application.

Once installed and rebooted, you select the ConferenceAnywhere icon to launch it, then input the conference number that was sent to you. You can quickly select people to invite to your conference by picking names from your contact list. Attendees will get a number to call and an access code.


      ConferenceAnywhere makes it easy to set up an instant
      phone conference and invite people to it.

Word of mouth is the best advertisement for these programs, so they have refer-a-friend links built in. Select the option to send a friend an e-mail with a download link for a trail version. Your friend can then print five documents with the PremiereAnywhere trial, or conference with 150 moderator minutes with ConferenceAnywhere.