Financial Times has an interview with Hank Nothhaft, the CEO of Danger. Not a whole lot of substance in it other than he mentions his love for horses a lot, and a couple of business mistakes he made. The part that has us interested in is the first question he was asked:

What’s in your pocket?
A prototype of the next Sidekick (mobile-cum-internet device). It’s thinner and less wide but has a bigger keyboard. Now I no longer keep it on a belt, I’m always losing it. I was known as the “absent-minded professor” as a student.

A prototype of the next Sidekick? Could this be the Gekko/Aspen that we’ve been hearing about? I’m trying to wrap my head around how they could be making the keyboard bigger AND make it less wide. But then again, he might be comparing it to a Slide.

thanks for the tip Ricky

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

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!

I just got back from Chicago yesterday afternoon after fulfilling my duties as a Sidekick Roadie. Those duties included meeting the artists, hanging out with the VIP winners, and having too much fun. Colbie Caillat, Cat Power, and John Legend put on a great show and it looks like everyone had fun. I’m sure T-Mobile will have all sorts of pictures and video up on www.sidekick.com shortly. If you want to read about the trip, head over to the Tour blog where I’m posting about my experience going on tour with T-Mobile. If you’re in New York, we’ll be heading into town next week so look out!

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

Grant Duval, from The Connection (a student newspaper in Sacramento, CA), has put together an editorial titled “What does your cell phone say about you?” In it he mentions Sidekick users:

Sidekick owners have a ton of friends. Even their phone is their “Sidekick.”

People who own Sidekicks are addicted to their friends, not the ones they are with, but the ones at the receiving end of their witty texts.

Sidekick owners are young and may or may not idolize Jay-Z. They are also highly lazy. If spelling out words without using abbreviations and predictive text is too hard, what else is too hard? Getting a job? Paying taxes? I’m on to you Sidekick owners.

Personally I would have said Lil Wayne (based on the number of Lil Wayne Sidekick themes out there) and I’d disagree that we’re lazy and don’t have jobs. How else could we afford such expensive devices? What do you guys think?

If you live in Boston (or anywhere else for that matter) you may want to pause from IMing and texting your friends every now and then to make sure you aren’t about to be robbed! Bostonist is reporting that Sidekick users who are distracted by typing are a target for phone thieves. WBZ TV reports that 23 Sidekicks have been snatched in the last two months from users riding the T (Boston’s subway system).
“Basically they have their heads down,” said Transit Police Sgt Michael Rutledge. “They’re not paying attention to their surroundings and people are taking advantage of that opportunity. When the train doors or bus doors open they’ll snatch the cell phone or Sidekick and run off with it.”

So keep an eye out next time you get sucked into an AIM conversation with the hottie you met last night at the club. Before you know it you may have lost her screenname AND your phone.

A recent patent application from Research In Motion, makers of the ubiquitous Blackberry, shows a mobile phone with a “handheld device with trackball navigation and Qwerty hide-away keyboard”. Sounds kind of familiar, eh?

via gizmodo