Okay, you could accuse me of being a broken record if I knew what a record was, but I don’t, so you can’t!

Well, the G-men have done it yet again. They have released Google Mobile Maps 2.0, and they have released it for free (yes, free like our ringtones). And from all reviews it sounds like it kicks serious back end. Check it out this is Jean Claude Le Goog’s demo video.

(they’re getting pretty good at these nifty little animations aren’t they?)
I also found good reviews of it at Sevenclick and Adam Howitt’s blog. (If you like reading the industry side of things check out Gizmodo or Moconews.)So here’s the thing, I think most people would agree that Colonel Goo is very powerful and wealthy. They make a “shit-ton” (a mobile industry technical term synonymous with the more common, “butt-load”) of money. So will someone please explain to me why they keep giving away all their software and great ideas for free? Anyone?… Anyone?… Matthew Broderick?

Okay fine, I’ll tell you. G-Diddy gives it all away because they are… Geniuses. They have a long range vision that is going to keep them on top for a very long time to come. You see, Baron Von Googy knows that in the incredibly tricky, shape shifting world of technology you’ll only win if you and your services are the basis from which technology is created. You have to BE the language that the developers speak, and the products and tools that they all use. And while you will not immediately receive financial reward for giving away your services, you will almost certainly create virtually limitless financial opportunities for yourself down the road.Yes, Professor G. Hendrick Oogle has done it right, and they have done it right publicly, in front of us all. A shining beacon of capitalism at it’s best. Literally giving away billions in potential sales for the opportunity for trillions down the road (I would pick up my jaw off the floor if I could just stop smooching their butt for one second, but I can’t).

So why oh why, won’t anyone else learn. Especially in (what should be) the wide open mobile industry. As I have stated many times before (see The Story of Thanksgiving) the carriers seem to be stuck in a December 24th Scrooge scenario when instead they should be in a x-mass morning, joyous, pajama clad, “Say boy!… Boy!… Come here boy!… Go and buy that fat-ass goose for me boy!” kind of mood. It would do us all a lot of good. Carriers, consumers, companies, etc.

When will they learn that the more they try and squeeze dollars out of the mobile industry, the more market share they will lose. I can tell you this, the home boys and girls over at Verizon’s $9.99/mo GPS service are none too pleased. And I’ll take it one step further. If Verizon had been giving away their great GPS service for the last three years, they’d have a whole “shit-ton” more subscribers who really wouldn’t give a damn what the Duchess of Goo had just launched.

Well, we here at Cellfish.com say, “Go Ogle!” whether you care about us or not. We love what you do, we love your business model, but bigger than that, we think how you handle the mobile world is not only financially wise, but that it will lead to a greater, more robust, and more exciting marketplace. This saucy critic says, bravo to you!

So, with all that in mind we have some pretty great news of our own!

ANNOUNCING… ADD TO PHONE!

Yes, our Add to Phone API is out and it let’s you do some pretty fresh things. You can place any of our buttons on your blog and with one simple, mousy click, your readers can get your content on their phones to take with them wherever they go.

Now your readers can be checking out your latest post while their wives deliver their children. Nuclear power plant monitors can be watching your videos while on the job. Pilots can see pictures of your family’s thanksgiving food fight while flying 747’s full of orphans. It’s awesome! And here’s the thing. It is free! Gratis, on the house, no cost, zilch, on the Underhill’s tab. Why are we doing this? Have we gone mad, are we nutty? No!

We want everyone on this blue planet of ours to get their blog news/videos/photos on their phones through us.

So here’s to hoping you all go out and grab one of our buttons and add it to your blog. Pease enjoy this little ditty about how it works.

- Captain Cellfish
2007 Best Supporting Actor Nominee

Gather ’round my little cherubic friends and I’ll tell you a tale. Come warm ye paws by my hearth, drink some of this here meade (Colt 45), and open thyne ears.

In honor of this, our yearly feast I will offer a retelling of the great American fable. The Story of Thanksgiving.

This version will be slightly different than the traditional version. In this version, the role of the Native Americans will be played by the Cellphone Carriers and the role of the Hungry Pilgrims will be played by us, Cellfish.

So here goes…

It was fall 1621 and the Pilgrims were hungry. Our fledgling crops looked pretty lame, and we needed help. We were a strong bunch of motivated, religious zealots, and we were ready to make a go of it in the new world.

We were going to make mobile entertainment here as big as it is in Europe. American mobile technology was the new world and our rickety ship had made the daunting trans Atlantic journey. And when we landed we marveled at the vast wide open spaces, the incredible marketplace that was this great land. Sure we had our stupid black hats on, our belt buckles were cumbersome, and our shoes were impractical, but we gave it all we had. Then we found that this great open territory was not quite as forgiving as it had looked from the poop deck of the Mayflower.

So we, the scrappy little pilgrims were hungry, weary, and looking for a little help from our native friends (the carriers). We were merely looking for a way to monetize mobile entertainment, so the public could get what they want, we would be able to put over-sized fowl on our tables, and the carriers could continue to rake in the dollars.

This is what we were looking for…

(btw that’s me there, the little puritanical looking number with the bonnet, giving some bread to the carriers)

But in our little version of the Thanksgiving story, we were not helped. In fact, in our version of the story, the carriers come and take our crops, let us starve in the bitter Massachusetts winter, pee on our fires, and leave us for dead.

Our version of the tale looks a bit more like this.

(that’s us with the pinky finger in our nose)

So here’s how our version of the Thanksgiving story ends. All the pilgrims die, the New World never flourishes, and Twinkies, Johnny Cash, iPhones, and the Ford Mustang never exist. The end.

If your children are crying due to the tragic nature of this tale let them know “the world is a cold place, get used to it.”

So what are the lessons that this Thanksgiving tale teaches us?

Instead of being giving, forward looking and open, the carriers have been the opposite. They have held onto every last penny making sure that the consumer has had no choice but to find alternative ways to get music and videos on their phones. If the mobile entertainment world is going to survive in the face of iPhones and Androids, something is going to have to give, and if it doesn’t, this beautiful unspoiled new world harvest which could have looked like this…

Will very soon look like this instead.

But never fear. We here at Cellfish.com have plenty to be thankful for. Our web site is kicking butt, our users are extremely happy, our offer of free ringtones is still going on (go get ‘em people, cause this giving spirit only lasts for so long) and life is all together peachy.

So happy Thanksgiving everyone.

- Captain Cellfish
Director of Revisionist History

Mobile Mumps & Cellphone Syphilis… Coming to an ear hole near you!

Yes my friends, that’s right. As these little devices in our hands get more and more powerful the little maggot hackers of the world can’t seem to help themselves. It’s official, we have Cellphone viruses now.

Here is picture of a little cell phone virus that I caught while talking to a friend of mine in Thailand.

Nasty litter bugger. Started text messaging all my friends setting up drinks that I never even knew I was going to. Next thing I know all my friends are all drunk at the bar without me, and I’m chilling at home watching Re-Runs of Project Runway. That was a bullshit Tuesday.

Seriously, these things are out there and they are growing in numbers as viruses tend to do. So be careful where you stick that phone, pal. Gone are the days of chatting with loose women and shady dudes in the park in alleys. No sir! Not no more.

So far most of the viruses are pretty harmless, like little mobile herpes. Annoying little bugs that slow down your service to a crawl or erase your contacts, but the bad ones are out there lurking. There are viruses now that will start calling foreign countries and running your bill up as high as malaria runs up your fever. Or spying on your and your family. Yikes! Paging Dr. Orwell!

So what should you do to protect yourself?
Here are 5 handy dandy tips to keep yourself from becoming The Typhoid Mary of Mobile

1. Don’t take candy from strangers!
Well the same goes for ring tones, games, wallpapers, and videos. Make sure your ring tone site is legit, cause there are a bunch of scumbags out there. (psssst! BTW I know a great place to get ring tones for free. I work there. We’re called Cellfish.com)

2. Watch for suspicious attachments to text messages
If you don’t know who it’s from, and it has an attachment, beware! You’ve been warned.

3. Get cell phone anti-virus software
You think I’m nuts? Well Symantic has the software, so do with that info as you wish. Sure Larium makes you hallucinate, but it keeps you from dying as well.

4. Watch your phone carefully
If it starts to slow down or act weird, don’t blame it on sun spots. Pull out the battery, back up your contacts immediately, and go get the damn anti-virus software I just told you get in point #3. (Check out how to back up your contacts at Dumb Little Man) If your coverage just blows, don’t go dousing your handset in rubbing alcohol. It probably means your carrier just fell asleep at the switch again.

5. Practice Safe Cellphoning
The good people at Skins Mobile have come up with a truly revolutionary concept. The phone condom. Check it out in actual, real life demonstrations.

And thank you very much Nancy for that wonderful demonstration! Really solid work there. I feel like I’m back in 6th grade getting the quick “special hug” discussion.

Here’s a pretty good post from Cell Phone Guider that tells you what to do if you do have a Cell phone virus.

Okay y’all. Class dismissed.

Oh, and a quick message to all those pud-stickers who are making these viruses out there… Why?… Can’t you do something useful with your amazing computing skills. For instance, why not put up “My Little Pony” videos on the Al Qaeda beheading video sites, or transfer Halliburton’s funds into the Mississippi public school system. Don’t attack my phone. That’s like the whackest thing you could do with your time. Smoke some pot and play halo 3, I don’t care. Fold your mother’s laundry (it’s the least you could do after living in her house for 42 years). Just do something else.

Viva La Revulsion!

- Captain Cellfish
School Nurse
St. Agatha’s School for Ailing Donkeys

Okay, so that title may fall under the umbrella of, “If you needed to warn me about that, I shouldn’t be a parent” statements. But don’t let my stupid title fool you, iPhones actually contain more toxic chemicals than any other major brand of cellphone out there. (Check out Good Clean Tech’s article on the subject) So much so, that Greenpeace has decided the whales can wait, it’s Mr. Jobs (a.k.a. Colonel Earth Poison) they’re going after now.

Here are the facts as Techcrunch reported them:

“The iPhone contains toxic brominated compounds, (brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVCs. Two of the “phthalate plasticisers” found at high levels in the iPhone headphone cable are classified in Europe as ‘toxic to reproduction, category 2′ and are banned from use in all toys or childcare articles sold in Europe.”

It also turns out that you can’t remove the battery to recycle it, and it looks like the Center for Environmental Health is getting ready to take legal action against Apple.

As a consumer, the phrase “toxic to reproduction” is not something I want associated with a product I put up against my face approximately 48 times a day. So tech hipsters beware. If you are quitting smoking and that oral fixation is nagging the crap out of you, do your best not to chew on your iPhone headphone cables. Your ovaries will applaud. (Applauding Ovaries is, by the way, the name of the Captain’s debut folk album, dropping this holiday season)

So here’s the thing. Apple does such a great job of being so sleek, and modern, and cool, and arty, and edgy, and friendly, and downright neat. They make their customers feel like they are in a non-exclusive club of blue jean wearing, clean-cut hippies, who are not ashamed to say that they still smoke a little pot when watching a good movie. It’s a club made up of the coolest college professors, the most talented graphic designers, and the all the fun people they hang out with. Yes, Apple is the new way, the calm, non-aggressive, liberal way. Feel the love. I myself, am a recent convert, and my new iMac was such a joy to unpack, that I could feel the hairs on my arms stand up as I opened the box. It was like a first date, that I knew would end with some heavy petting. Oooga! Electric!

I mean, come on, their product line is just so sweet.

Take my teenage brother as an example. He acts as if he’s been indoctrinated into some kind of cult when it comes to Mac. The kid’s got no less than 23 YouTube videos praising all things Mac and his Mac life. Check out his page here. My parents are considering an intervention. But this young lad’s story is not unique. For him and many others Mac is the new porn.

I have no problem with that. (The porn actors guild is pissed, but what can you do?) Leopard is just plain hot. So go ahead, enslave the youth, redefine technology. I’ll be cheering you on all the way. But here’s what I do have a problem with. A company that looks this good, acts this friendly, and has legions of young hipsters on their knees at the alter of Jobs, should not destroy the environment. They should save it.

I want so badly for apple to be the good guys. I want Justin Long to environmentally bitch slap the dorky PC guy into a conservationist 21st century. Out with the old, polluting ways, in with the new… Polluting ways?

Come on now Apple, be better than that. We know you mass produce your products in slave like sweat shop conditions. (We hate to overlook it, but we’re not given an alternative) We know you need flame retardants to keep these bad boys from blowing off people’s ears, but can’t you just use some slightly less toxic ones? Can’t we root for at least one company to lead the planet in a new direction? Crikey Apple, where the hell are the good guys? I thought for sure, you were them.

These iPhone batteries of yours are gonna be rotting away, un-recycled for centuries, spilling high powered lithium into the ground, creating a race of super newts that can play clarinet, write celebrity blogs, and work as telemarketers. Let me tell you, that will really suck.

Apple, I beg of you, please be better. Shave .0003 cents off your profit margin. Pay your factory workers a wage that will move them up a few tax brackets, from desperately impoverished, to totally destitute. Make your phones less toxic. Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson, have all changed their manufacturing policies to make greener phones, why can’t you?…

Oh wait, I know why. You’re American.

That’s cool, I forgot. Don’t worry about it then.

You see, since this nation was founded, America has had a, “the best defense is an ass kicking offense” policy in effect (hey, it’s working for the New England Patriots), so why change for the environment? Well, it looks like we won’t, so this is how it’s gonna go down.

One day, very soon the environment is gonna really get pissed off, and wreak some, no-joke havoc on the world. That’s when President Obamillery Guiliromney will turn to the 24/7, FOX, streaming, oval office news-feed and say, “Mother Earth has F-d with the wrong planet!” Finally we’ll be able to do what we do best. Play a little, with-us-or-against-us offense. We’ll kick old mama nature’s ass so hard she’ll wish she’d never created us.

So here’s looking forward to that day. I’ll be gnawing on my iPhone cables, annihilating my sperm and praying for my OS Leopard, Time Machine feature to take me back to the 90’s.

I pose this question to you, my readers. What does Apple’s “i” stand for? iGnorant, iMpoverished, iNsane…

Please send me your suggestions. In the meantime I will be using the cellphone my parents gave me for my birthday.

Viva la Revulsion!

- Captain Cellfish
Bronze Medalist, 2002 Seal Clubbing Championships