“I have pretty eclectic tastes”

Said the Democratic Presidential presumptive nominee Barak Obama, referring to his iPod music collection during an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine.
Barak indicated a wide range of artists on his iPod, from Miles Davis and John Coltrane to Jay-Z and Ludacris.

Growing up during 1970’s , Obama’s favorite Rolling stones track was  “Gimme Shelter” and favs include heavy weights like Elton John, Earth Wind and Fire, and Stevie Wonder.

Obama also had a wide selection of tracks from Bob Dylan, including the entire Blood on the Tracks album.

“Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is ‘Maggie’s Farm,’ “ Obama said. “It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric.” In the song, Dylan sings about trying be himself, “but everybody wants you to be just like them.” Many musicians appearing on Obama’s iPod have lent him their support during his campaign, including Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. “I’ve got to say, having both Dylan and Bruce Springsteen say kind words about you is pretty remarkable,” Obama said. “Those guys are icons.”
(..you dont say!)

During the Rolling Stones interview, Obama expressed his concern with new age rap music lyrics:

“I am troubled sometimes by the misogyny and materialism of a lot of rap lyrics,” he said, “but I think the genius of the art form has shifted the culture and helped to desegregate music.”
He went on to call hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and rappers Jay-Z and Ludacris “great talents and great businessmen,” adding that “it would be nice if I could have my daughters listen to their music without me worrying that they were getting bad images of themselves.

Support his politics or not , you gotta give it up to the guy’s taste in music.

It turns out a clinic in Lleida, Spain is treating teenagers as young as 12- and 13-years old for “cellphone addiction” .  I kid you not.

Teens ranging from 12 to early twenties have been going through a rehabilitation program to get them to ease up on the minutes and resist the evil evil phone.

Child and Youth Mental Health Centre’s Dr Maite Utgès suggests that teens after spending upwards of 6 hours a day using their cell phone, started to fall back on their schoolwork and even led them to lie to relatives for more phone-card-money. The good Dr. suggested it may take up to a year to fully break these children of their drug - the cellphone ! Say it ain’t so Dr !!

All kidding aside, the addiction is real.

I can so see big Pharma jumping all over this one:

Do you like to talk ? Do you feel the urgent need to call a friend ? Have you ever talked to a friend for more than 30 minutes on your cell phone ?
If your answer is yes to any of the above question you might be suffering from Cellphonitis , a rare but treatable condition.

For the first time ever Mute-x is clinically proven to silence your phone’s addiction ! Taken just twice a day Mute-x is proven to hush you up and drop your cell phone addicition.

Only your Dr. can prescribe Mute-x to you. While rare, reported side effects include death.

We’ve Previously written an article about how camera phones have progressed to a point where they have become usable everyday cameras capable of decent quality picture taking.
Sony Ericsson don’t want decent . Sony Ericsson want’s spectacular . After all, this is Sparta …

The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot codenamed Shiho (Candidate for this article) has a fully featured 8 megapixel camera packing auto focus, face detection, image stabilization and both a xenon and a photo flash. GPS Geo tagging, Auto rotation via accelerometer and TVOUT are also part of the specs .

Video Goodness:

BlackJack, Diamond and Sirocco are all examples of cell phone companies nick naming their products for branding purposes. The main idea being to create a catchy and memorable short name that is easy to pass around, kind of like your nick name in a social context.

Most of the time branding is well thought out and tends to be effective and serving it’s purpose.
HOWEVER … There are a few times when manufactures get it all wrong and when they do … boy is it worth a tribute…

So in true Celluar Mashup satire we pay tribute to branding gone wrong:

T-Mobile SideKick:

Why would you doom a perfectly good phone to “side-kick” status ?

If it’s not wearing green tights (Robin) or is a make shift microwave meal the thing deserves to be a Full-kick. Come on people…

LG KF750 Secret :

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.. don’t tell anybody , LG’s got a secret and its called, well…Secret. Nothing says spread the word like Secret or maybe this is a little bit of reverse psychology genius from LG ? We’ll never know, It’s all a big Secret.

HTC TyTN :

Seriously… I mean it’s enough your company is called “HTC” and now you name your phone TyTN ?  Does that stand for some kind of DNA test ? or is it some kind of acronym for the Ninja Turtles ? Either-or it’s bad.

HTC TyTN II :

Oh it get’s better… not only did HTC not learn anything from their previous horrendous branding attempt, they went for the sequel  !
Can you picture a really deep voice  “Coming Soon to a Theater near you … (sound effects).. TyTN II !”

HTC MTeoR

We might as well just dedicate this entire article to HTC . MTeoR ? 10 bucks says the next one will be called Haley and will be released after 75 years .

Got some more ? Let us know we’ll add them to the wall of shame.

Apparently Japan has a thing for Kevin Costner… I mean it’s not official but how else would we explain this story ?

Japanese mobile phone maker Fujitsu decided it’s latest creation, the Fujitsu F706i, should be a waterproof phone.
Now that’s great and all, especially for über sober moments you decide to take your phone for a swim.  BUT get this… the F706i has been especially designed to receive digital TV signals while submerged upto 3 meters below. (Dr Evil - Riiiiiighhttttt….)

So besides growing webbed feet and gills in a new sinking water world, i really can’t see my self entertaining the OC while underwater .
Unless Fujitsu know something about global warming we don’t ….

HTC announced the HTC Touch Pro , code named Raphael (Who picks these?) as the latest addition to it’s touchy line up.

A successor to the stunning Diamond, the HTC Touch pro seems to be the Diamond geared towards the business community with it’s signature slider keyboard.
Touch goodness with horizontal keyboard efficiency, Not a bad combo…

Interesting tech specs include:

• Qualcomm 528 MHz Processor
• Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional OS
• 512 MB ROM
• 288MB RAM
• Slightly larger than the diamond @102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 18.05 mm (T)
• Display    2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
• HSDPA/WCDMA
• Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard
• Built in GPS and AGPS ready
• 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus and flash light
• VGA CMOS color video call camera

More Specs and Details @  HTC’s Offcial product page