With OpenTable for iPhone 3.0, you can now:

* Search for and book OpenTable restaurants by name — around your current location or in another city.

* Save and manage favorite restaurants right from your iPhone.

* Reserve further in advance (more than 30 days).

* Scan recently viewed restaurants plus detailed restaurant profiles, including photos, parking options, etc.

* Find 1,000-point restaurants in the search results easily, so you can earn free meals faster.

Download OpenTable for iPhone 3.0 today to enjoy all these features and others, including enhanced maps, in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. To visit iTunes, click here.

OpenTable Mobile, which has helped seat more than 2 million diners since November 2008, will continue to evolve with new updates and releases (for our other platforms, too!), so please keep sending us your feedback — and stay tuned.

We want to hear your stories about how OpenTable’s mobile applications have helped you. Tell your true tales here in our comments section, over on Facebook, or on Twitter.

You can nominate OpenTable’s Android app now through midnight, PST Friday, December 4. The Crunchies Committee will then choose five finalist companies for each award category from all the nominations. Voting for finalists opens Monday, December 21 through Wednesday, January 6 midnight PST.

Click here to nominate OpenTable (up to one time per day per IP address,) and stay tuned to see if we’re selected as a finalist. And, if you don’t have the OpenTable for Android app, download it today!

With mobile applications for the iPhone, Palm, Blackberry, and Android operating systems, there’s an OpenTable app for almost every device. If your phone doesn’t support any of these apps, you can still book reservations on the fly through OpenTable by pointing your browser to our mobile-optimized Web site at http://mobile.opentable.com.

Download the free OpenTable mobile application that suits your smartphone now — and start making reservations wherever you are.

• Find nearby restaurants and see real-time availability
• Display restaurants on an interactive map
• Refine by cuisine, price, points and availability
• View restaurant profile pages with detailed information, including photos, menus and diner reviews
• Send an invite to fellow diners via email
• Get directions to the restaurant
• Earn Dining Rewards Points including 1,000 Dining Points on eligible dining times.

OpenTable for Android also leverages the Android platform’s unique integration capability between applications. Using this feature, WHERE® and GoodFood, two location-based applications in Android Market™, now enable their users to make restaurant reservations via OpenTable when they are on the go.  WHERE® users on Android powered-devices will not only be able to search for restaurants nearby and read reviews, but they will also be able to book reservations while on the go. The GoodFood application makes it easier and faster to find and share restaurant recommendations.

Download OpenTable for Android for free from Android Market on Android-powered devices today. To learn more about OpenTable’s mobile applications for smartphones, click here.

• Make 1,000-point restaurant reservations to earn free meals even faster.
• Modify reservations to change the date or party size.
• Make “Special Requests for the Maitre ‘D.”
• Read restaurant menus and reviews from recent OpenTable diners.
• Invite fellow diners via email.
• Get directions.
• And more!

Download the latest version of this free app today to start making the most of your dining out experiences tonight.

Download the OpenTable app on the BlackBerry App World, and put all the power, convenience, and perks of OpenTable in your pocket.

Josh Garnier is an OpenTable Product Manager.

Of course, if you’re taking a “staycation” in your own city, OpenTable can help you explore new neighborhoods and find first-rate restaurants, too.

• Reserve Bonus Point times – that’s right 1,000-Point reservations!
• Access our “Special Requests for the Maitre ‘D” feature.
• Read reviews from fellow OpenTable diners about the restaurant.
• Add reservations to your Palm’s calendar.
• Modify a reservation with an updated time or party size.

We really hope OpenTable diners enjoy this app. Please tell your friends about it using the “Share/Save” tool below, and read more about it here.

Josh Garnier is an OpenTable Product Manager.

In a few weeks, OpenTable will be launching our upgraded 2.0 application for the iPhone. We’ve got a sneak peek at what this upgrade will mean for diners below. But, I thought it would be a great time share with our foodie and techie fans how we got here from there.

By “there,” I mean 2001, when the mobile Internet consisted of a handful of WAP-enabled sites with pokey, stripped-down interfaces. Few, if any, were useful, let alone transactional. At that time, OpenTable was still in the early stages of building its network of restaurants in major U.S. cities, and yet, the allure of the mobile web was already there. My predecessors put a toe in the water with the logic that to beat the old way of making restaurant reservations — the telephone — you had to fight fire with fire.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and we all know that the mobile web in 2001 wasn’t ready for prime time – the UI was ugly, the input method cumbersome, and the speed of mobile networks was laughable. Eventually, six long years later, most of these issues had been worked out, but there was still one item missing to make it a killer platform and Apple capitalized on it: location.

By offering location access for free, Apple allowed developers to offer users context. What if I could quickly find restaurants around me and find out if I could snag a table? How about last-minute reservations on the weekends when I am out with friends and away from my laptop? OpenTable seized the opportunity, and in November 2008, we released OpenTable for iPhone 1.0. This time, the mobile stars aligned, and, to date, we’ve seated half a million diners through our iPhone app.

But OpenTable isn’t stopping there. We’re enhancing the online reservation experience on the iPhone with a new version. With OpenTable for iPhone 2.0, you’ll be able to:

• Make 1,000-point restaurant reservations to earn free meals even faster.
• Modify reservations to change the date or party size. No more cancelling and hoping you can quickly rebook.
• Make “Special Requests for the Maitre ‘D” – such as, “Please seat me outside if a table is available,” or “We’ll be dining with a child and will require a high chair,” just as you can on OpenTable.com.
• Read restaurants reviews from recent OpenTable diners for reliable recommendations.
• Move the maps – Apple now supports moveable maps so you can see restaurants at any zoom level you like.

We hope you’ll enjoy this new app. Be on the lookout for it on your App Store application updates. And, for all of you non-iPhone smartphone users out there … Don’t worry! Your time is coming very soon, so stay tuned.

Josh Garnier is an OpenTable Product Manager.