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

Well it has arrived, Blog Action Day. Over 15,000 bloggers all writing about the same, very important topic, all on one day. Yes, my friends, we are talking about the environment, ol’ mama nature, the humid lady herself, and what we have to say is not good. Between the 70 degree October here in NYC, the drought in California, the brand new raging rivers of Greenland, the all new Canadian wine industry, the Chinese smog, the burning plain states, the mass death of the bumble bees, and all the f-ing garbage, something has to be done.

Now we all know the top ten energy saving tips that are out there (get your florescent bulbs, don’t browse through your fridge, turn down your thermostat, unplug your chargers, etc.). That stuff is all well and good, and will most definitely help the cause, but frankly we need to do more. We need to change the way we think, reprogram the psyche, act more responsible. Will gov’t incentive programs work? Maybe. Will amazing global concerts spark a revolution? Possibly. Will 15,000 blogs do the trick? I sure hope so. But if you really want to know what will make the difference look no further than your mother.

We all know what gets us to act in the end. It’s not personal conviction, or thoughts of responsibility. It’s guilt. Good old fashioned thoughts of disappointing your parents. Hey, it’s worked for Jews and Catholics for a very long time now, so let’s make it work for the planet. So I, Captain Cellfish do hereby launch the, “Guilt the ever lovin’ crap out of them campaign for global change.”

We will start by listing the top five ways to guilt people into conservation.

1. If you ever see someone drop a piece of garbage, hand it back to them and say, “excuse me you dropped something.”

2. When you catch one of your friends being environmentally unconscious, rolls your eyes, sigh and simply say the line, “you disappoint me. I thought you were a better person than that.”

3. If your place of employment doesn’t recycle, go into your CEO’s office, point to the picture of his/her smiling children on the desk and say, “Too bad you’re destroying their future, anyway, how about those TPS reports.”

4. If you catch one of your neighbors, letting his car idle just to cool it down before he/she gets in, say, “I’ll tell the baby polar bear who’s mother you just murdered, that you just wanted to cool off the leather seats in your car before your pristine butt touched the upholstery.”

5. The next time someone tells you how beautiful this 65 degree weather is, even though it’s January, reply with, “Your idle, small talk is akin to global genocide.” Then spit on their shoes.

So that’s it. Through our guilt we will promote change. It’s a relatively simple idea, start the revolution through nagging.

And now here’s where the Captain goes mobile. You, my savvy sexy little readers… I want you all to hit the streets, and take Cell Phone pictures of people who need a good dose of enviro-guilt. Shoot cell phone shots of garbage dumped hither and thither, polluters in action, water being wasted, people having gasoline fights, etc. Then upload them to Cellfish where I will compile a massive list of all things environmentally guilty. I will then print them all out, and turn them into an evening gown that I will wear in front of the White House for no less than 20 days straight, or until the secret service removes. You wanted blog action? You got it.

No but seriously, shoot pictures on your cell phones of the bad guys and send them into Cellfish. We’ll get quite a catalogue going. It will be great. I will post them all on the blog, and we’ll see if we can’t make at least one person feel genuinely crappy about what they’ve done.

Viva la Revulsion!

- Captain Cellfish
Former VP, Oil Exploration, Chevron

Wow, say that one five times fast!

Well friends, another mobile social network has been eaten by Google. Yummy!

You know how Google puts out those cool holiday themed Google home pages? (The ones with the fireworks for the 4th, or the pregnant woman for labor day) They should make a new one where the “G” is a giant mouth eating the littles “o’s”. They could put it up every time they buy another mobile company…  Oh wait, that would be every day.

Yesterday Google bought Finnish, mobile, micro-blogging site Jaiku.com.  This is now their 16th (I think) mobile acquisition this year, and their 2nd within two weeks. (See the amazing post, Google buys Zingku: Mobile Social Networking arrives! ) Don’t quote me on this, but I think Google might just be up to something mobile. I’m not sure, but my spider sense is telling me I may be working in the right field.

Yes, Google obviously knows what we here at Cellfish have known for a while. Just like Thursday is the new Friday, and Bisexual is the new Native American, Cellphones are most definitely the new Internet. Google will not allow itself to do what the record companies did. Google is not about to let technology pass it by. They’ll see your industry predictions and raise you a trend creation. Yes, they not only know what is next, they are going to create what is next, and we here at Cellfish.com thank them from the bottom of our mobile hearts… I’ll tell you, if I could make love to any company out there (without angering my wife) it would most definitely be Google. They’re just so dang sexy.

I would also like to thank Google for making another ridiculously named company disappear. Zingku is gone… Now Jaiku, all they have left to do is buy Flibbertu, Moogumbu, Nippleter, Crinklebonk, and Blibbit, then the world will be spared having to type these inane, meaningless words into their browsers.

Wait a second… Now here’s an idea (my second one this week). As soon as I’m done writing this post I have to call my wife. You see, we’ve been trying to figure out a way for our seven-month-old daughter to start earning some cash (my Cellfish salary of loose change, and left over Cobb salad isn’t quite cutting it). Here’s the idea. My daughter is going to be VP of Strategic Planning for my new Internet Development firm. She’ll name your web site for no less than $75,000.00. She’s just getting warmed up these days with company names like, Gabu.com, Mahwaa.com, and Glurburt.org. All you’ll need to do is buy the domain, then wait two years and Google will purchase you. It’s guaranteed.

No but seriously. Mobile social networking is the next thing, and while the giant internet corporations get their armies ready for battle we here at Cellfish.com urge you all to come and check out what all the fuss is about. Because we do everything those giants are going to do, but we do it NOW!

Anyway, if you’re fed up with my satirical take on this situation, or you just want to find out what Microblogging, or Jaiku is, just read some of these posts, I found them highly informative.

Read/Write/Web

Venture Beat

Network World

Search Engine Land

Josh Kim.org

- Captain Cellfish

VP Marketing, Wumpluv.com

Oh Boy!

Mobile social networking has finally hit the big time, and we here at Cellfish couldn’t be happier. Validation! Vindication! Vacation!

Yes, this weekend Google purchased a mobile social networking site called Zingku. This just happened. It’s hot off the presses, and it’s getting a lot of attention. As it should. Mobile social networking is gonna be huge. Check out some of what’s being written about the purchase:

Local Mobile Search
TechCrunch
Google Operating System
Cellular News
Profy
Reve News
Sinlung News

Hmmm. Zingku… Sounds like the name of the bad guy in a 70’s kung-fu flick. You know the one. The evil warlord who murders the hard working, soy farmer who was only trying feed his family. Imagine if you will, a badly dubbed, twenty-something Chinese actor saying the following lines with tear-streaked cheeks. “[sniffle] Zingku has gone too far. He murdered my father, purloined our Yak, and pillaged my dear sweet sister. [sob] I’ll get you Zingku, or I will die trying!”

Seriously though, what is this Zingku? And why did Google buy it? Well, from what everyone can tell they are a mobile social networking web site that does some pretty neat things. They allow you to share your phone’s pictures with friends, save your phone’s pictures online, and subscribe to RSS feeds right on your cellphone. Wow! That’s cool. Does anyone else do that? Wait, hold on, I’m remembering something here… Hold please… Your call is important to us… Please continue to hold…. Your call may be monitored to insure quality- CELLFISH!

That’s right, we do the exact same thing as Zingku, with one major difference… Our site is up and running. It’s totally free, and ready for use. Here’s what you get when you try and sign up at Zingku…

So if you wanna get a sneek peak at how Mobile social networking works, you can do it all very easily right here at Cellfish.com. Not only do we provide all the the same services as Zingku, but you can also get any YouTube video right on your phone. We have built a very powerful set of mobile tools, and are getting ready to launch a sexy, newly re-designed site. So come one, come all, and try mobile social networking for yourselves. It’s Grrreat! Check us out, set up a free account, and get busy.

We are also constantly on the mission to improve our site, so feel free to comment about us on this blog, or send us notes telling us what we can do better. And of course we always treat your privacy as a life or death matter. In fact, I had to sign a contract when I started working here that said, “if you [employee] share any member’s phone number with anyone, you will have to spend no less than three (3) moons locked in the dungeon of the evil warlord, Zingku being tortured by his wily henchman, Phonezoo.”

- Captain Cellfish
VP Smell Testing Operations, Frito Lay

Breaking Mobile News

Dateline Cuppertino, California

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs has just announced that Micky D’s ( Le Chateau du Ronald ) will be giving away the beloved iPhone with any purchase of a happy meal.

The promotion was announced by Jobs as he was online to see the Nanny Diaries at the mall. He was quoted as saying, “Let’s see Nokia and Motorola keep up with our sales now, bitc%!@!” Customers who paid the whopping (not whopper) original $600.00 price for the phone were outraged and not at all appeased by Apple’s offer to throw in a small fries for their troubles. Those that went for the promotional offer and got the iPhone with their happy meals seemed surprisingly nonplussed. Selma Roberts of Orem, Utah said, “Yeah whatever, I got the Happy Meal iPhone, but it had BBQ sauce on it, so I just chucked it.”Go ask the Fake Steve Jobs about it. He’ll tell you the whole deal.

Okay, okay enough tomfoolery here. Seriously, what is going on in the mobile world these days. Working in a mobile entertainment company it feels a bit like that scene from Ghostbusters where the D-bag throws the switch on the containment system and all hell breaks loose. Yes, that is exactly what it is like. “Cats and dogs sleeping together, Mass hysteria!” We need some pajama clad, comic geniuses to come in here and save the day. What a business we are in. It’s no wonder Mr. Jobs is sick of the cellphone business.

Today I was just told that my co-worker is in the doghouse because he bought his girlfriend an iPhone. “Why?” I asked. Well it seems the iPhone may have lowered it’s price, but you have to pay out of the rear to text message. I think it was $30.00 a month for 1,500 messages (there is no plan between 200 messages and 1,500). And then there are those stories of innocent Americans traveling in Europe racking up $3,000.00 roaming charges.

Madness, madness I tell you. Then the best part of the whole thing was the iHack.

George Hotz, a kid from New Joisey made Apple’s stock jump 3% by ripping open his iPhone and making it work on a new carrier. Wow. These are crazy times. The kid is now a college freshman, and a very famous one at that. I mean how’s this for a pick up line at your 1st kegger, “hey I made Apple 2 billion dollars 2 weeks ago with a soldering iron and some silly putty. Imagine what I could do to you.”

Here’s what I say. Let’s all stop panicking. Let’s make cellphones cheaper and easier to use, not harder and more expensive. Knocking off a couple hundred, and keeping exorbitant data rates is just insane. Let’s look to those search guys, we all love so much… What’s their name? Google I think it is. Those cats know what they’re doing.

Free video, free maps, free analytics, free home page, free muffins, free love. They have it down. That’s how you go from being a noun to being a verb. You give it away. Then everyone will need you. So this goes out to big brother Stevie Jobs, and Uncle Nokia, Auntie Motorola, you too. Oh and grandma AT&T, cousin Verizon, weird neighbor Sprint, and good-old, blind, toothless T-Mobile how could we forget you? If you’re listening, and I hope you are. Make it just all so very darned easy. Let the people use their camera phones and send their pictures out without having to cash in their 401k’s. Let your users enjoy the products you made for them. It will only make them want to use them more. It’s all cake to you anyway, what’s the difference?

- Captian Cellfish
Open House School, Teacher 3’s & 4’s

So, as I was working diligently here in my cave, I received an electronic correspondence, (I think the kids today call them E-mails) In this email was a quote from the newly published, Ronald Regan Diaries.

The entry is dated May 17, 1986.

‘A moment I’ve been dreading. George brought his ne’re-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I’ll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they’ll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.’

My 1st reaction was to scream, “priceless!” and then launch into a series of controlled guffaws. I quickly Apple-C’d the text, then opened up 20 IM windows and Apple-V’d like a replicating amoeba. Soon digital guffawing emoticons were “LOL-ing” all over my screen. I had done it! I had achieved that all too rare feeling of being the Typhoid Mary of a viral tid-bit of hilarity. No one had seen it, read it, heard of it, or was able to verify it.

After spreading that quote to the four corners of my small, (and decidedly whack) social circle I started looking into it (like any responsible web poster would, spread the rumor 1st then check for facts) Not surprisingly, I found all sorts of people who had done the same as me.

Metadish

Suzi on Gather.com

Democratic Underground

Yet Another Blog

Boy, it can be fun to be first. Be that revolutionary Paul Revere of the web. “The Funny is coming! The funny is coming” My horse’s trusty thundering digital hoofs pounding away with each keystroke, “One if by YouTube, two if by Blogger!”

But alas, my friends it was all for naught. It’s a fake. A little trick played on us all. Not real. Just real genius. The quotation is pulled from an article titled “My Lunch with Reagan” by Michael Kinsley in the New Republic. Read all about it at Global Research.

But here’s the thing. It was sort of real. It was real to all those people I sent it to (who i never told that it was fake btw). It was real to the person who sent it to me and to everyone else who fell for it.

What’s the quote? A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on.

So this incident begs the question, is there any difference between real and real genius? I give this query to you my readers. Please do feel free to send me any other “real” tricks that were played on the web public. I’d like to compile a list.

Now as this is the Cellfish blog I will now relate this back to my mission. My wheelhouse, if you will. Mobile entertainment. I can hear you all now (all six of you) saying, “okay here’s where the Cap’n goes down with the ship.”

I shant go down! And here’s why. In a time where there are 1 billion camera phones in operation everyday, there are a whole lot of images floating around out there, and if you think separating truth from lies is hard now, oh Nelly, just you wait. But as long as we have people who have the desire to be first, there will be the person who wants to be first to discredit something.

So good people, arm yourselves with your camera phones and find the best fake stories out there. Make us prove you wrong. Shoot them, blast them out to our site and let the games begin.

I leave you with a genuine clip of last year’s state of the union.

-Captain Cellfish
Fashion Editor, London Times

It is that time once again my fair mobile obsessed readers.

The cheese is pasturizing, the glogi is mulled, and the lingonberries are getting plump. The sheep are returning from their pastures, the first whisps of cool mountain air signal the change of the seasons. Ah Finland glory be to thee.

Last saturday the 8th annual mobile phone throwing competitions were held in Savonlinna, Finland. And let me tell you something, you thought you knew excitement… This thing is like game seven, bases loaded two outs bottom of the ninth, full count. This event is like the X-Games on Crack. This thing is… Words just won’t do. See it for yourself.

And yes, that is the man, the myth, the legend right there. Tommi. I have his rookie trading card… Signed. It’s worth like 3 euros. The guys is like sooooo totally hot. But all joking aside the man has a gun. He hurled that phone 89.62 meters, which is like 2,498 feet. If you’re interested, which I’m sure you are the complete breakdown of the competition can be found here.

By the way the top finishing American came in a disappointing 20th (I owe my bookie like 2 G’s for that one, probably gonna get my legs broken). You also may note that the American’s name is Puikkonen Panu. Now I’m no anthropologist, but that name sounds awfully Finnish to me. Something’s rotten in Denmark (Finland).The whole event was masterfully covered on Hitting the Wire & The (Other) End of the Internet

So you may ask, why write an entire blog post about a mobile phone throwing competition. Well, I’ll tell you. We here at Cellfish have a love hate relationship with these little communication devices we all have in our pockets. We know the potential for them is so great. They could work so well. They could revolutionize media. But they haven’t yet. American cellphones are so very similar to me in 6th grade. A lot of potential, with very little actual effort. Cellphones in this country are being held back by the carriers. Their cameras could be so much powerful, their bandwith could be bigger, and their data plans could be so much cheaper. So that is our frustration. But we will perservere. Like Tommi Huotari.

(cue dramatic music)

Cellphones WILL be better, we will demand it, we will shout it from the hills and the valleys, the rooftops and the subway tunnels… “Free our phones!” will be our battle cry and the cellphone carriers will rue the day, (I say rue) that they tried to keep us down. As the effete, dirty, union, broadway dancers sang as they stormed the Bastille…

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!

- Captain Cellfish
Musical Director, Carnival Cruise Lines

Okay feathered friends I am back, rebirthed, wide eyed, and bushy faced. I have sat in 17 meetings, read 38 memos, replied all to 1,348 emails, listened in on mute to 8 conference calls, drank 12 after work drinks, and wolfed down 1 lunch meeting. And guess what?

I now know exactly what this blog will be. Gone are the days of mindless rants, and overwritten diatribes. (well, obviously they’re not completely gone)

Arrived are the days of poignant, informative, overwritten diatribes.

So as Tony Montoya once said, “say hello to my little mission statement”…

The Cellfish blog will be a place where the layman can get news, tips, advice and opinions about the mobile entertainment world. It will serve as a bridge between the high tech world and the regular joes/joesephines.

Ok. You got that buck-o?

I hope you were paying attention, cause I am only saying it once. Now on to my next order of business.

Shout Outs! Over the past few weeks we have been getting a ton of blog posts written about us. (they’re sponsored posts, but they all seem to really dig our service)

So I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone out there who wrote reviews of our modest, little website.

Here are just some of the peeps who wrote about us:
Justin Lewis
Oh, Hey
Bryan’s Rants
A Tale of Two Mamas
Top 10 Tech Web Tips
Jenny’s Wandering Thoughts
And To Think
I’m Blogging That

And that’s just a few. A good couple of weeks to say the least. So check out their blogs cause they all had pretty cool experiences with us, and also had some great stuff to say.

So have a really Cellfish day!
(they put a gun to my head and made me say that)

- Captain Cellfish
Recovering Corn Chip Addict

Single sexy website looking for abused TextAmerica users who need a hug.

When we heard that TextAmerica not only started charging its users a monthly fee, but have stated that starting November 1st they are kicking off all their users, we felt we had to say something.

Read their disclaimer here.

And that something is, “come to Cellfish.com where the sun is always shining, and our users sing joyous songs of praise about us every day.”

Seriously, if you are a TextAmerica user we would be happy to have you. We value our users and we are always interested in hearing your thoughts on how we can improve our site. And get this; we’ll actually treat you like human beings. Even more importantly, we’ll treat your cellphone pictures & videos like human beings. Well, not really… We’ll treat them like pics & vids, but we’ll save them, store them, and let you share them with any of your friends and family members.

(Cue: obnoxious infomercial music here and read the next bit in a cheesy announcer voice)

But wait! There’s more! We also allow you to take pics & vids from the web and download it right on your cellphone. Holy Shenanigans Bat Boy!

Yes it’s true. And if you sign up anytime within the next 100 years we’ll give you all of this… For the low, low, low, low price of… Absolutely free! That’s right. You get a better service, in a cooler community, with many more tools, and a sleek design, absolutely free!

*by free we mean really, totally, and completely free
**offer not valid on the moon or at the bottom of the ocean

- Cap’n Cellfish
Last living Civil War veteran

I am going to take you back to a simpler time. A time before all the madness, and chicanery that took place on StumbleUpon. The date was roughly three weeks ago, let’s call it, Friday, July 13th (just to keep everything dramatic). An intrepid web surfer named izface had seen a high school teacher named Taylor Mali on television. She dug what she saw of him then found a video clip of him chilling unseen on our video page.

This clip was something I had never encountered, known about, or even dreamt of, but it was one of those rare clips that moves you. A man with something to say, saying it passionately and eloquently, and jabbing at the jugular of greed.

Check it out… I like it (there’s my obvious statement of the week)

So okay, young izface finds this video on our site and she adds it to her StumbleUpon page and low and behold the buzz begins. You see, that’s just how it happens in these web parts. You start with a piece of content. It can be stupid, it can be genius, it can be stupid genius. It can be inane and sticky, or plush and gooey, it can be medium rare. (I prefer my content with milk and two Splendas, but that’s just me.)

So you start with that piece of content, then you talk about it and very soon you get this. A downright hive of buzzing. A veritable juggernaut of chat.Everyone’s checking out the content and adding their two cents.

And that’s what we want you all to do. Search us. Search us like you were a DEA agent vacationing in Columbia. Then, when you find the nuggets of gold, push them out to the world. Through your blogs, your phones, your address books, you can even do interpretive mime performances of the content.

(btw we are developing a Send-To-Mime feature, beta will launch in Oct. It’s gonna be ground breaking. Very quiet ground breaking of course.)

So kudos to Taylor, izface, and all y’all who care.
Heace in the Piddle Beast

-Captain Cellfish
Duchess of Newark