This one is dedicated to all the Black and White Hiptoppers. Aaron (one of the original Hiptop pranksters) fished out some old stuff from back in the day and we thought we’d share it with you. First up is a smoking hot ad for the Hiptop that makes me want to go out and buy 2 Black and White Hiptops even now.

A man known for his great jokes, Aaron once fooled a lot of people into thinking he had the much-coveted color hiptop before anyone even knew what it looked like:

image via Flickr

And noone can forget when he got the original OTA:

And we leave you with your “Fun Fact of the Day” – Aaron was the originator of the Cat Remote rumor that kind of launched Hiptop3.com

Here’s a blast from the past. It’s the old Snoop Dogg Sidekick II commercial. It reminds me of a terrible joke:
Q: What does Snoop use to wash his clothes?
A: Bleeeyaaach

You can check out some other Sidekick commercials, including the old Johnny Chase ones in our previous post on Sidekick commercials.

Stanford University has posted an interesting video of a talk given by Joe Britt, one of the founding members of Danger. He talks about the design of the Sidekick/Hiptop and how it became what it is today. It’s not a short watch since it clocks in at over an hour, but definitely interesting to gadget freaks that like to learn about this stuff. Here’s the info on the video from Stanford:

May 25, 2007 lecture by Joe Britt for the Stanford University Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (CS 547). When mobile phones became within the financial grasp of the everyman, the value was easily understood. Telephone-accessible “content” could now be enjoyed from a car, while waiting in line, or from a table at a restaurant. In this talk, Joe discusses several key aspects of the platform’s development and shares the design philosophy applied by the team. Strong belief in the importance of hardware/software integration and an organic, iterative design process were critical for success. Lessons learned at companies like Apple, General Magic, and WebTV provided the team with a context for partitioning a complex problem across hardware, software, and a powerful back-end service.

We were surprised by T-Mobile bringing back the Sidekick iD last month. Just in time for Christmas, they’ve brought back another old friend, the Sidekick Slide. T-Mobile is offering the Slide again for $99, $200 off the retail price. It’s the same price as the newer Sidekick 2008, so this is probably only interesting to people who like the form factor of the Sidekick Slide. So if you’re a fan of a smaller more compact Sidekick that doesn’t have the characteristic flip, now is your chance to grab one! With these recent “returns from the dead”, it makes us wonder when we’re going to see the Sidekick 3 available again!

T-Mobile is tight with the Grammy people. You might remember earlier this year when they threw a bunch of concerts and gave out tickets to Sidekick users to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grammys. Well, the 51st Grammys are coming up and T-Mobile is holding a contest for an all-expense paid trip for you and a friend to attend. Let me tell you, if it’s anything like my trips to the concerts, they’ll pull out all the stops and it will be a blast.

The awards ceremony is in Los Angeles on February 8th, 2009. There will be 5 winners, and each gets to bring a friend. You should get an SMS on your Sidekick that you can use to enter, or you can just go to www.sidekick.com and enter there. You have until Jan 16th, 2009 to get your entries in. After you enter you’ll also get a chance to get up to 5 additional entries by spreading the word to your friends too.

Sorry gang, looks like the rumors of a ZunePhone unveiling at CES next month have been squashed. Gizmodo is quoting Brian Seitz, the Group Manager of Zune as saying “No Zune phone at CES.” This doesn’t necessarily mean the ZunePhone doesn’t exist, just that it’s not coming to CES. Guess we get to keep on waiting to see what Microsoft and Danger have up their sleeves.

Set aside a few minutes on Saturday, December 13th to swing by your local T-Mobile store. You’ll score 100 free minutes just for walking in the door or you can land 200 minutes if you bring a friend. Got someone you know that’s about to buy a Sidekick (or one of those other T-Mobile phones)? Tell them to hold off for another couple of days and then take them in on Saturday. You’ll get $25 off your bill for referring them! And finally, if you sign up for @Home on December 13th, you’ll get the first month for free.

Of course the typical sort of disclaimers apply: Limited time offer, participating locations, see store for details, blah blah blah. One thing to note though is that this is only for postpaid and FlexPay customers. Sorry prepaid crew, you’re out of luck on this one.

Thanks to TmoNews for the word.

Rumor has it that the keynote at CES 2009 will be given by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, where he will officially unveil a new product that combines the features of the Zune with the Danger Sidekick handhelds. This is all according to Trip Chowdhry from Global Equities Research. He also says that there’s “some motion enhancement features” using an accelerometer in the device. I guess we’ll see what’s in store in a month!

via

Price check on blog post #462… price check on blog post #462.

Just wanted to let you guys know of the current prices for Sidekicks from T-Mobile.

Sidekick 2008: $99.99 on T-Mobile – Check eBay

Sidekick LX (Brown): $149.99 on T-Mobile – Check eBay for both brown and blue Sidekick LXs

Sidekick LX (Tony Hawk Edition): $199.99 on T-Mobile – Check eBay

Sidekick iD: $49.99 on T-Mobile – Check eBay

T-Mobile has a couple designer Sidekick shells available that look pretty sweet.
Jessica Gonacha

Susie Ghahremani

iLK

Aleksander Velasevic

Check them out here. What do you guys think?