T-Mobile has officially launched the rollout of their 3G network with New York City. The plan is to have 3G rolled out to the major cities in the US. We haven’t heard anything on when we’ll see 3G Sidekicks yet (most likely not on the Sidekick Gekko), but we hope T-Mobile realizes that Sidekick users would be the ones to benefit the most with the high-speed network. We have our fingers crossed. The press release is below:

NEW YORK and BELLEVUE, Wash. – May 5, 2008– T-Mobile USA, Inc. today announced that the company has taken the first commercial step in the rollout of its third-generation (3G) wireless network by launching its UMTS/HSDPA network in New York City. T-Mobile plans to continue the rollout of its 3G network across major metropolitan markets through the year. By year’s end, T-Mobile expects its high-speed data network will be available in those cities where a majority of its subscribers currently use data services.

“The launch of our 3G network comes at a time when 3G phones and services are more affordable, capable and appealing to our consumer marketplace than ever before,” said Cole Brodman, chief development officer, T-Mobile USA. “We benefit not only from the economic scale of 3G, but also from the extensive commercial experience of 3G in our European markets. Today, T-Mobile USA customers already have among the highest adoption of data and messaging services in the industry. Through our 3G network, we look forward to delivering a rich portfolio of new and meaningful services to enrich our customers’ lives.”

T-Mobile’s 3G network supports voice and data services consistent with available service and handset offerings. The company today offers multiple phones that are able to operate on the UMTS network. The phones are designed to automatically connect to the best available network (3G or GSM/GPRS/EDGE) to provide the great call quality and rich communication services customers expect from T-Mobile.

Customers using a 3G-capable handset from T-Mobile will also experience faster data speeds when accessing the Web, or downloading content from the T-Mobile t-zones content portal, for example.

In the coming months, T-Mobile plans to offer its first HSDPA device, along with new and compelling data-centric, all-in-one devices that help make the most of T-Mobile’s high-speed data network.

The launch of the 3G network also enables T-Mobile to accommodate and serve more customers more efficiently through the use of its AWS spectrum, effectively doubling T-Mobile USA’s spectrum position, and laying the foundation for the company’s future growth. T-Mobile and the U.S. government, namely the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, continue to work closely and effectively together to make available AWS spectrum that will give consumers access to the 3G network.

As the 3G service rolls out in targeted major markets, T-Mobile will continue to build upon its
T-Mobile® HotSpot Wi-Fi network — its wireless high-speed Internet offering that launched in 2003 — and its nationwide voice and data network, to empower customers to effortlessly stay connected using the best available network.

T-Mobile International is following a common technology path across all of its markets in Europe and the United States, from GSM/GPRS/EDGE to UMTS/HSDPA. T-Mobile USA greatly benefits from
T-Mobile International’s 3G experiences in Europe, where adoption of non-messaging mobile data is growing dynamically; and with more than 120 million customers worldwide, T-Mobile International is able to generate significant global procurement synergies.

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

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

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

So I was going to post this yesterday, but figured I’d hold off with it being April Fool’s day and all (did everyone get Rickrolled? good). Plus I was so busy pranking a coworker that I had no time! But now that it’s safe, and I have my travel info in hand, I’ll officially announce that I’m going on tour for these shows! That’s right. T-Mobile is sending me around to Chicago, New York, and Miami to go see all the performances and blog about my experience. Here’s the lineup so far:

Chicago - Cat Power, Colbie Caillat, and John Legend
New York - Missy Elliot and Busta Rhymes (yes, my jaw dropped too)
Miami - Kat DeLuna, Ozomatli, and Pitbull

I’ll be blogging about all of my adventures over on the official tour blog, and you can follow along on the journey via my Twitter feed. If anyone is in these cities, I really want to meet you guys! Go out to the T-Mobile store and get tickets, or enter in the VIP contest. If you’re going to make it to any of these shows, or have any suggestions on what to do in these cities, leave a comment and let me know! I’ll only be in town for a short time in each city, but I want to make the best of it.

The first stop is Chicago tomorrow.

check out the Official site for more info.

The 50th Grammy Celebration tour that kicks off in April is going to be sponsored by the T-Mobile Sidekick LX. The tour is going to hit 5 cities, with a different musician performing in each one. The press release says “The tour will provide music and Sidekick fans exclusive access to a concert tour featuring a broad lineup of GRAMMY-nominated and -winning artists”. T-Mobile is being hush hush about who is actually going to be performing. So far we only know the first artist is going to be John Legend, an R&B singer/songwriter/pianist who has won a handful of Grammy Awards. As for the other artists, it’s still unknown for now. Here’s what we do know so far though:

April 3rd
Chicago, IL
John Legend @ The Vic Theatre

April 9th
New York, NY
???? @ Webster Hall NYC

April 16th
Miami, FL
???

April 23rd
Dallas, TX
???

“Early May”
Los Angeles, CA
???

A limited amount of tickets for each of the stops on the tour will be available through special in-store contest giveaways at select T-Mobile stores in the 5 cities. But don’t worry, if you miss out on those opportunities in stores, you’ll have a chance to win the “VIP concert package” through Sidekick.com.

So you didn’t keep an eye out for a Sidekick thief while texting on the subway like we told you to and now your Sidekick is gone. After reporting it to T-Mobile and the proper authorities, what is one to do? Well, if you’re like NY teenager Yudelka Polanco you’ll start doing detective work. The great thing about the Sidekick is that you can still log in to your desktop interface and find out how the person that stole it is using it (as long as they didn’t pull the sim and login as a different user). Most thieves are dumb and will leave behind some clues. Yudelka was able to get ahold of her thief’s email address and through a search on MySpace pulled up his profile. Through some additional detective work online she was able to get some pictures an information on the guy and took that info to the police. The police were able to identify 16-year-old Victor Hernandez and busted him for the theft of the Sidekick Slide as well as a number of other charges. Way to go Yudelka!

via gothamist