Judging from the e-blizzard of press releases coming out of CTIA, you could spend from now until next year trying out all the new stuff available on the “third screen.”

Here are a few items that caught my attention.

Maybe not the sexiest application, but a strong contender in my book for the most useful is Fremont, CA-based ABBYY’s Business Card Recognition (BCR) utility for smartphone Symbian, S60 or UIQ platforms. The software captures data from business cards using the built-in digital camera, extracting contact information from the image directly to the telephone address book.

Another interesting product is Telular’s Wireless PATH (Premise Access Transport Hub) that lets you use cellular networks instead of conventional wired networks for voice calls, high-speed data transmission and faxes. The company is promoting the PATH to “enable rapid deployment of wireless services in emergency or disaster situations, and when business operations are disrupted.” I for one would be happy to have a pocket-sized version that I can take on the road.

Motorola’s new MC35 Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA - new acronym alert☺) adds a barcode reader to the growing suite of mobile applications. This makes mobile data entry simpler by eliminating the need for special purpose devices.

Atlanta-based Firemobile aims to unchain online banking from your PC. Now in addition to yakking on the phone while you’re sitting in a restaurant or walking down the street, you can also check your account balance and make your mortgage payment.

If you’re stuck in traffic you’ll be interested in INRIX Traffic for Windows Mobile devices. The service delivers real-time and predictive traffic conditions on Windows Mobile devices in about 60 U.S. metropolitan markets, with additional markets planned in the coming months.

If you get caught in a traffic jam anyway, fastmobile will help you stay on top of email with its push email that lets you receive, reply to and send email from a handset. Currently available for MetroPCS subscribers, fastmobile also lets users save and sort messages and synchronize email accounts.

Don’t feel like checking email? You could use the time to do some “photo flirting” with FunMobility Flirt Pix service, a cross-carrier application that lets subscribers view photos and exchange visual messages anonymously.

Motorola makes it easier to listen to music in your car with the Automotive Music & Hands-free System T605 car kit that streams music from a Bluetooth phone directly through your car’s sound system. Available only through Verizon, the system puts phone calls through the sound system as well, pausing the music while you take the call.

Finally, San Jose, CA-based Pinger this week expanded its voice messaging service to include most US mobile customers and Blackberry users. The company has also expanded the service to allow members to ping anyone’s mobile phone, regardless of whether the person is a Pinger member.

Now, just don’t get into an accident while you’re doing all this stuff on your phone.

Since I first wrote about Pinger, I have to confess that I haven’t found any pressing need for voice IM. But maybe this technology is going to find its way into our lives is through time-sensitive group communications.

This year the fourth annual Mavericks Surf Contest in Half Moon Bay, CA is using Pinger for contest communications, Pinger announced last week.

Frigid water, monster waves, notorious rip tides, jagged rocks, and Great White sharks all combine to make Mavericks one of the surfing world’s most demanding competitions, drawing surfers and spectators from around the world.

Unlike the Stupor — pardon me — Super Bowl last Sunday, Mavericks isn’t scheduled years or even months in advance. Instead, the contest can be any day between New Year’s Day and March 31 that waves achieve a contest-worthy 30 to 40 feet. When that happens, a chosen 24 of the world’s finest surfers are given just 24 hours to arrive in Half Moon Bay ready to challenge the waves.

This year when that green light comes, Pinger will be instantly sending the message directly to surfers and fans that sign up. They will also receive ongoing voice updates about weather and surf from Stormsurf.com’s Mark Sponsler.

I asked Pinger founder and CEO Joe Sipher why this couldn’t be done with conventional telephone mass broadcast technology — you know, those annoying prerecorded calls we all get from politicians these days.

“Those calls are not personal,” explains Sipher. “If someone picks up, it just plays.” The message could be playing to a three year-old or a voicemail system.

Pinger is “intentional messaging,” he says. People who have opted-in to the communications have visibility that a message has arrived without wading through prompts or messages they don’t want. And, recipients have the choice to listen now or later.

For these reasons Pinger is popular with sports teams that use it for critical communications like game cancellations. “As you start using Pinger,” adds Sipher, “there are a lot of reasons and ways to use it.”

I was telling a friend of mine about “talk and send” SMS messages and his not-too-interested reply was “yeah, it’s called voicemail.”

The incremental ease of spoken SMS messages wasn’t something he was going to be writing home about. But he likes to idle away weekends fiddling with his network so he can turn on the living room TV from his computer, too. Added steps and complexity, if anything, stack up as positives on his value scale.

However, despite my friend’s dim view of it, VoIP and cell convergence via “talk and send” SMS seems to be picking up steam and uReach isn’t the only player out there. Last week San Jose, CA-based Pinger unveiled a public beta version of its instant voice messaging for cell phones.

The company was founded in late 2005 by former Handspring execs Greg Woock and Joe Sipher.

“There are synchronous ways to communicate with both your voice and text with voice phone or Skype calls and text instant messaging,” says Sipher. “Then there’s asynchronous text communication through e-mail. But there hadn’t been innovation in asynchronous voice communication. Sure, there’s voicemail, but it’s clunky and missing basic features like simply replying to a voice message without calling. We kept thinking, ‘Is there another way?’ That’s what we’re doing with Pinger. We’re making voice messages fast and easy, and we’re filling this gap for voice that was already filled with text.”

Pinger marries spoken messages with email. You get messages on your phone and in your email, letting you easily save - and forward - the new location of the softball game or the grandchildren’s first words. Another feature of the service is Web-based account management that can import contact lists from Outlook and other programs, although - alas - not Apple Mail.

Pinger’s service is carrier- and device-independent, which gives it an edge on uReach which is delivered through a service provider. Sign up on the website, create a contact list, add the Pinger number to your phone (put this on speed dial) and you’re in business.

To send a message, call the Pinger number, say the name of the person or group (which works like email groups) you want to send a message to - a real help when you’re driving - and say your message. Voila - it’s sent.

Pinger lets you send a message to anyone with an email address, although only other Pinger members can receive messages on their phones. Retrieval is flexible. Messages can be picked up by phone, email and the Pinger website. In addition, Pinger has an application for the Palm Treo that further simplifies use for that PDA.

Messages are announced on your cell phone with a text message. You call the number and the message plays - no menu, no prompts. To reply, simply press ‘1,’ speak your message and hang up. The message is sent.

Because Pinger also sends your messages to email, you can save them. If you pick up the messages on the website, you can annotate them - “Mark Foley drinks invite” - for future reference, say, when you’re called before the grand jury for a deposition.

Pricing for the service hasn’t been nailed down. The company says it will continue to offer a free service with a limited number of messages. Beta users who signed up before Oct. 1 get six months of free use. However, I signed up today and wasn’t asked for a credit card. Maybe they meant Nov. 1.