Looks like the T-Mobile Sidekick is on a sponsoring spree! They’re just finishing up the Grammy Tour (last show in L.A. on Wednesday) and as I was looking for more info on the Tony Hawk Limited Edition Sidekick LX, I found out that they’re also sponsoring Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huckjam this year! The tourdates are up, and if the Grammy tour is any indication of how T-Mobile throws an event, then you’ll want to hit this one up. Here’s a list of the dates, cities and the venues:
Fri • Jul 18 San Antonio, TX Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
Sat • Jul 19 Corpus Christi, TX Concrete Street Amphitheatre
Sun • Jul 20 Houston, TX Sam Houston Race Track
Wed • Jul 23 Birmingham, AL Verizon Wireless Music Center
Thu • Jul 24 Atlanta, GA Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sat • Jul 26 Harrington, DE Delaware State Fair
Sun • Jul 27 Boston, MA Great Woods Amphitheater
Wed • Jul 30 Moline, IL I Wireless Center
Thu • Jul 31 Detroit, MI DTE Energy Music Theatre
Tue • Aug 05 Virginia Beach, VA Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
Wed • Aug 06 Washington, DC Nissan Pavilion
Thu • Aug 07 Long Island , NY Nikon at Jones Beach
Fri • Aug 08 Philadelphia, PA Tweeter Center
Mon • Aug 11 TBA TBA
Wed • Aug 13 Chicago, IL First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
Thu • Aug 14 St Louis, MO Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
Fri • Aug 15 Kansas City, MO Kemper Arena
Sat • Aug 16 Denver, CO Fiddlers Amphitheater
Mon • Aug 18 Boise, ID Idaho Center Amphitheater
Tue • Aug 19 Seattle, WA White River Amphitheatre
Wed • Aug 20 Spokane, WA Spokane Fairgrounds
Fri • Aug 22 San Jose, CA Shoreline Amphitheatre
Sat • Aug 23 San Diego, CA Qualcomm Stadium
Sun • Aug 24 Irvine, CA Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre

Anyone that keeps tabs on which celebrity uses a Sidekick will know that Tony Hawk loves the Sidekick. The press release for the Sidekick II even quotes him:

“I can’t live without my Sidekick,” said skateboarding icon Tony Hawk. “I take it everywhere with me. It allows me to answer emails as they come in instead of coming home to 100 different messages.”

So it’s not too big of a surprise to hear rumors that he’s going to get his own Limited Edition Sidekick LX. We hope he’s still not stuck on the Sidekick II, but if so, this will be more than enough reason to upgrade.

No official word from T-Mobile on this yet, but rumor has it that the Tony Hawk Limited Edition Sidekick LX will launch on July 16th. This is perfect timing as it is 2 days before the first stop on Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huckjam presented by T-Mobile Sidekick. Yes, another event with a name just as long as the 50th Grammy Celebration Concert Tour presented by T-Mobile Sidekick. We’re not even sure of the color of this one yet, but as soon as we find out more info, we’ll let you know. What color do you think it should be?

TmoNews says it so it must be true, right? 🙂

This is definitely one to take with a grain of salt, and there’s not really a whole lot of meat to salt! Tmonews is reporting that there are is a new device (possibly two) on the way in July. They say there’s evidence (but not what the evidence is) of a device named “SK Gekko” due on July 27th and a “Sidekick Aspen” launching on July 30th. Like everyone, we’ll have our eye on the FCC site to see what sort of info we can find on these devices if they are in fact real. Could this be the 3G Sidekick we’re all waiting for or maybe just limited edition devices? We’re putting our money on some new limited edition devices since the LX hasn’t had any Limited Editions yet and it would be silly not to offer those since they sell like crazy. Who would you guys most like to see a Limited Edition from?

Thanks for the heads-up Shawn

A topic of conversation was brought up a couple times while I was “on tour” with the T-Mobile/Grammy Concerts. What would you like to see on the Sidekick the most?/How could it be improved? I conveyed some of my own thoughts and wishful thinking (GPS and Google Maps). But I want to open it up to you guys. I can’t guarantee this will have any impact on the future of the Sidekick obviously, but I’m curious to see what everyone out there thinks the Sidekick (LX or Slide) needs. Drop your thoughts in the comments!

T-Mobile is running a campaign to get more people to switch over to paperless billing to help be more “green”. T-Mobile is partnering with The Arbor Day Foundation and will be planting at least 150,000 trees in honor of those of you who choose to go with paperless billing. Not only are you saving trees, but you’re helping plant them!

If you want to switch over to paperless billing and stop clogging up your mailbox, head over to my.t-mobile.com/plantatree before things end on April 25th. If you’re a smart one and already on the paperless billing bus, just jump over there and confirm that you want T-Mo to plant a tree in your honor.

via

The blogs are abuzz with rumors of T-Mobile finally launching a 3G network here in the US. According to TmoNews, New York will be the first city to get the coveted high-speed connections in May. Another 24 cities will also be outfitted with 3G in the coming months. Of course this is all rumor and not confirmed, so take it with a grain of salt. And it means jack squat for us Sidekick users, until a 3G version of the Sidekick comes out. But with T-Mobile supporting 3G in the near future, that means there is more motivation for them to get out a 3G version of the Sidekick in order to keep that market going. Don’t get your hopes up yet, I’m sure the dust from the Microsoft acquisition of Danger will have to settle first.

Here’s the list of 25 cities to get 3G first according to TmoNews:

New York City
Austin
NJ and Long Island
Las Vagas
Minneapolis
Miami
Dallas
Chicago
Houston
Philadelphia
Denver
Detroit
Orlando
Kansas city
Atlanta
Los Angeles
New England
Portland
Sacramento
San Diego
Seattle
Washington DC
San Francisco
Birmingham
Memphis
Tampa
Phoenix

According to TmoNews (an unofficial blog about T-Mobile) the new Sidekick Slide color is going to officially be called “Scarlet” and should be available May 15th. They’ve got what looks like to be an internal memo about it.

I just posted my last post over on the Sidekick Grammy Tour blog. It was a ton of fun and I got to meet all sorts of great people as well as the musicians. My photos and bog entries are all over on the site, so I won’t bother reposting them here. If you’re bored, go check it out.

There are still two concerts left, Dallas and L.A. If you’re in either of these cities (or near by) I highly recommend hitting up these concerts. If nothing else, once you’re in and you show your Sidekick, it’s free food and drinks! Plus Kid Rock, Seal, and Sean Kingston are totally worth seeing for free!

It’s official in the eyes of the lawyers and paper pushers, Microsoft has fully acquired Danger. Here’s the press release:

Microsoft Completes Acquisition of Danger, Incorporates Company Into Premium Mobile Experiences Group
New business group strengthens company focus on innovative mobile consumer experiences.

REDMOND, Wash. — April 15, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. has completed its acquisition of Danger, Inc., the company announced today. Danger’s expertise in building great, intuitive client software for mobile handsets connected to powerful hosted back-end services fosters rich consumer experiences in communication, media sharing, entertainment and personalization. The combined force of Danger and Microsoft strengthens the company’s ability to provide innovative mobile experiences to more consumers.

Danger will become a part of the new Premium Mobile Experiences (PMX) team, a group within the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. The PMX team focuses on consumer-facing mobile projects and is led by Roz Ho, corporate vice president of Premium Mobile Experiences, reporting to Andy Lees, senior vice president of the MCB. Danger co-founders Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt will join the new organization, reporting directly to Ho.

“We imagine a mobile experience that embraces sharing and celebrating relationships and personal moments,” Ho said. “Combining Danger and Microsoft talents together in the Premium Mobile Experiences team is how we’re going to deliver cool, new, fun mobile experiences to consumers. We want people to smile every time they look at their phone.”

The Danger mobile Internet platform, which connects people to their social circles and other rich content, is an integrated end-to-end solution that enables people to interact with their friends, social communities and content through the Internet and Internet services.

“At Danger, we created a fun and easy-to-use mobile experience for today’s Internet-savvy consumer,” Britt said.

Hershenson added, “As we combine our team and technologies with Microsoft, we see a clear path to evolving that experience and delivering it to an even broader group of consumers.”

Danger employees will continue to work from their current offices. Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Press Release

A lot of the tech blogs have been buzzing about the Nintendo emulator that runs on the Sidekick. Here’s the real scoop. Yes, it exists and you can play Nintendo games on the Sidekick 3/LX/Slide as evidenced by the video above. It’s slow and more of a proof-of-concept sort of thing rather than a truly viable gaming application. It was basically taking an existing Java NES emulator (Vampant) and wrapping it for loading on the Sidekick since the Sidekick OS supports java. No, it is not going to make it into catalog unless T-Mobile gets real friendly with Nintendo and the license holders of all the roms that you would want to load. The application is a developer app that is only available to Sidekick developers. So basically if you don’t know how to write java, you’ll never get to load it on your Sidekick. When asked for comment, the developer simply stated “HOLLA!”