MobileTracker has seen a nice spike over the last two days. Not because of my hard work and dedication, but because Paris Hilton gave her Sidekick password away. Over 36K pages were served yesterday, about a 2x spike. Today looks to be just a bit higher. All in all it will help average out being a 28 day month.

She may be a dumb blonde, but she’s got pull.

Well not really–but Reuters flubbed the facts about the E1060. It doesn’t have iTunes! I first got wind of the story at 3AM ET right as I was heading to bed. Instead of sleep I sent off requests to various press contacts in Europe, hoping for a quick reply (it was business hours there at the time). By about 6 I had what I needed and the story hit just before 7AM. Chasing a scoop is ridiculously fun… Even if it means giving up a night’s sleep.

The iPhone?

In the near future I’m looking to hire someone to help me out on MobileTracker. Personally, I want to work on a lot more in depth pieces (reviews, reports, etc), so I’m looking for someone that can post news. I generally work late, so the ideal person would post in the morning (8AM ET some PRs start hitting, until 11AM or so).

Please email jon AT mobiletracker.net if you are interested. This is a contract position.

I am working on an article for MobileTracker that compares some of the different data options available for nationwide service. Right now I am using Verizon Wireless’ BroadbandAccess service. It costs $79.99 a month but it provides super fast speeds (90K/s downloads anywhere in town). I am very impressed. Don’t listen to them when they say it doesn’t work with Mac OS X… There is a driver built in!

Search Google via SMS. This is a huge deal. I am in love.

It has been a while since I have tried to transfer contacts to a cell phone without Bluetooth or a SIM card (I typically use GSM phones). What a waste of time. I tried to send a contact over via SMS but the two phones don’t speak the same language evidently.

I know I have had my head in GSM for too long, but is there a service (maybe directly from Verizon Wireless) where I can enter contact information in and have it sent to the phone? I can’t imagine they expect people to sit down and type in a few hundred contacts.

I am testing the Audiovox CDM-9900, a nice consumer level camera phone with a killer QVGA resolution display.

Update 10/6/04: Here’s the psychic in me again, Verizon Wireless today announced some software that can do just what I want.

I spent about 20 minutes today and whipped up a mobile version of the DrudgeReport. I have been reading a lot of news via Opera Mobile lately, but Matt’s site is really bad for mobile viewing–the three columns get made into one huge one with big chunks of links that don’t change (the news sources/columnists). Great to have for regular browser viewing, but not so cool on a mobile device.

It’s still a work in progress, but I’d love to get some feedback. Basically it combines the header and three columns to make one column of pure rapidly changing content. The images can be quite large in file size though, so it still takes a few seconds to load.

You’ll need an HTML equipped browser on your phone/PDA. The default browsers should work, but I’ve only tested it on Opera. If I get motivated I could make a WAP version (anyone want one?). Most browsers have an option to load images or not, so an image-free feature wouldn’t be too hot.

Since this version clips out his ads, make sure and click doubletime when you’re visiting from a desktop browser.

The long awaited Sidekick II is now shipping. I have yet to play with this device, review units are hard to come by (in hot demand). I think I’d like it though, I have been getting in a lot of AIM time on my phone in the past few weeks. I also bought Opera Mobile the other day, so web browsing is now a joy.

I wonder what these things will go for outside of contract…