I am still surprised and flattered when someone asks my opinion so that is probably why I said yes when I was offered the chance to evaluate a cell phone handset for a major cell phone manufacturer. As the blogger/podcaster I did not really do my homework. I assumed that the company was asking me because I do a travel podcast. So I assumed the handset was one of their new video enabled phones which I was anxious to try out. That was not the case. The phone was a music player phone aimed at a young audience. This is not the sort of product that I blog about. I am not the sort of blogger/podcaster that writes for their target audience so it was obvious that they did not do their homework either.

When I finally got around to trying out the phone I was also surprised that the music library contained some surprising choices. Am I a prude? Yes, probably I am. I was not expecting that their list of music genres would include a very Anglo-Saxon word for the sex act. I was expecting to see words like rock, pop, or blues. When you are sending a phone to someone to review who also happens to produce a bible study podcast I also wonder about the wisdom of songs with artist labels like “Anti-Christ”.

I don’t feel the need to slam the phone or the phone’s maker because I think this mismatch was partly my fault for not asking more questions. I also feel no need to endorse the phone as I think this is a product that might be a bit “off-brand” for me. A little more homework on my part or theirs might have prevented what was a waste of time and what could have been a PR disaster.

An application that turns your iPhone into a piano! I have not seen this in real life but when Gabe from God’s Mac showed me this video my first thought was “is this real!”. How very cool. Apparently Gizmodo thinks this is real. They also have a link for PocketGuitar which turns your iPhone into a guitar. It may be time for me to jailbreak my iPhone if cool apps like this are out there. Apple, where is that SDK?

I have fallen in love with a service from a website called jott.com. With jott.com I use my (cell) phone to send myself or others emails. I pick up the phone and dial a central number and leave a voice message for someone in my jott.com address book. To leave myself a message I simply say “myself”. Then an email with a message transcription and an attached audio file is sent to that email address. The voice recognition works surprisingly well. When I dictated part of Richard the 3rd as a test I got this phrase:

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York

The only word it got wrong was using “sun” for “son”. Not bad.

What I like about this service is that as someone who is middle aged who is always thinking about 10 things at a time I just have to pull out my cell phone and leave myself a message to get the idea out of my head and into my email. As a email addicted person with a cell phone, a laptop Jott.com helps tie my life together. Cool.

Gizmodo has a great idea on a spec ad for a rumored cell phone from Apple, the iTalk. This is the kind of product that would produce the response “I want one!”.

That was what I heard them say on the radio, “New Cell Phones More Dangerous Than Thought”. So… stop thinking!

Gizmdo has an article about the Samsung M800 cell phone with WiMAX.

Uhhhh, hows that again? Perhaps they meant to say something in terms of bps instead of kph, because I am guessing that the speed of transmission since this is radio is closer to the speed of light and completely meaningless.

43Folders has some great ideas on how to use a camera in your cell phone in useful ways:

Perverts beware. There was a recent story about a guy on the New York subway caught in the act of exposing himself with the aid of modern technology:

The NYPD have arrested a guy for exposing himself on the subway. The woman he flashed took a cameraphone picture and posted it to Flickr, and then it got picked up by the New York Daily News. Not long after, the police identified and arrested the man.

The hardest part about being a couch potato is that sometimes you actually have to leave the house. What can you do? Get a life? That is no longer necessary as Verizon has rolled out V CAST . V CAST lets cell phone users watch TV on their cell phone. The service costs $15 a month and you have to live in one of 30 major metro areas in the U.S.

BusinessWeek reports :

For a new service, V CAST offers impressive content. Users can stream minutes-long news reports from NBC and CNN, sports highlights from ESPNews and Fox, stock market updates, city-specific weather reports, movie trailers, even short clips from the previous night’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. One note of caution, though: Getting these goodies isn’t as simple as turning on the tube. It takes 30 to 90 seconds to summon a clip — a considerable amount of time given that most videos last only a minute or two.

Is it big screen TV? No. Is it Tivo? No. But it should be able to help you continue to avoid interacting with real people.

According to PC World Samsung has a new Phone Senses 3-D Movements. Why you say?

Samsung Electronics has developed a cell phone that can sense movement in three dimensions and respond to those movements by performing actions such as dialing numbers or ending a call, the company says.

The SCH-S310’s motion sensing system allows users to, for example, draw a number three in the air to dial a three, says Samsung. Shaking the phone twice will end a call or delete a message. Other movement functions programmed into the handset include a sharp move to the right or left to tell the built-in MP3 music player to skip forward or back a track, while drawing a “O” or “X” in the air makes the phone say “Yes” or “No” out loud, the company says.

A couple of games for Vodaphone’s Sharp V603SH handset rely on motion sensing. The first, House of the Dead Mobile, is a zombie shoot-’em-up game from Sega. The screen shows the game scenario from the character’s point of view, and as the player turns around with the phone, so does the character in the game. In Full Swing Golf from Taito, the player holds the phone as if it were a golf club and swings it to hit the ball on the screen. A warning tone before each shot reminds the user to avoid hitting people when swinging the phone.

The Pantech handset comes with a fishing game that requires the player to swing the handset like a fishing rod, plus a racing game in which the handset becomes the steering wheel.

LG Electronics’ phone, which resembles a portable gaming device, includes a skiing game that uses motion sensing.

But this technology isn’t limited to games: For example, users can make calls on the Samsung phone by drawing the numbers in the air with the handset, or they can end a call by shaking the phone twice. Other functions include a sharp move to the right or left to tell the built-in MP3 player to skip forward or back a track. Vodafone’s Sharp V603SH can be programmed to perform similar functions when it is moved.