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

I know when to admit there are men far greater than I. That when, is right now.

Walt Mossberg, you sexy beast, you are my new hero (say goodbye Tony the Tiger, say hello WSJ’s tech reporter). Walt has gone and said what I done been thinking for a while now, and he has said it on the eve of CTIA, the mobile technology show in San Fran.

In Walt’s recent post Free My Phone he explains that the choke hold the major cellphone carriers in the United Sates have on the industry, is not only counter productive, but making us “The Laughing Stock” of the mobile world. I don’t like being the laughing stock of anything (the fourth through seventh grades were hard enough), more over the mobile tech world. You’d think with the barrage of nightly cellphone ads we see, that America, the free market capital of the world, would be on the cutting edge of mobile tech development, but that is far from the truth. Due to bullying lobbyists, government restrictions, and lingering ma bell mentalities, outside developers and start ups are not allowed any elbow room into the mobile marketplace. You should see where we work here at Cellfish. To call it a hovel would be downright flattery. (You ever seen reenactments of Viking slave ships, where the black masked, overlord whips the rowers simply because sails hadn’t been invented yet? Let me just say, that’s Monday through Friday here.) And I blame the carriers for my treatment. If they would free the cellways everyone would make more money (and the consumers would have better products!).

My main homie, Walt goers as far as to call the carriers “Soviet Ministries.” And that piqued my interest because in my last post, What Smells? It’s the the network I discovered that wild, out of control, capitalism and communism share a few things in common (other than their zodiac signs, their love of para-sailing and long walks on the beach of course). You see what happens is, (and this is gonna get slightly political, so you might want to put the kids to bed) when corporate greed is left unchecked, these companies tend to take on the attributes of insane dictators. Corporations have only one set of morals, and that is… The bottom line. Corporations hate the free market. Sure it’s what allowed them get started, but lemme tell you, Mao, Idi Amin, and the Ayatollah didn’t continue to embrace revolutions simply cause that’s where they got their first big break. No, it is just the opposite. Once you are allowed to get on top, staying there becomes your primary goal. And to stay there, you must CRUSH (slam fist on desk here!) the opposition.

And that is just what the major us carriers have done. They have made it almost impossible to create new products, new technology, or new software. They are stifling creativity, and making you bend to their wills if you want to do anything new or different. Sound familiar? “Paging Dr. Stalin, you’re needed in silicon valley, stat!”

So Walt, do not stop this battle cry, it is not only important to us here at Cellfish.com, but it is important to the American public. Because if our cellphones ain’t free, then we’ ain’t free. (Okay, that’s a stretch, but sometimes a little bumper sticker slogan is a good thing)

There’s been a lot of very interesting coverage on the this story in the recent days, here are a few articles I found on the subject.

Engadegt Mobile - Love the picture guys.

(BTW that’s me, the handsome lad with his hand on Mr. Mossberg’s tushy)

Piece of Mind - (A great post as well)
Atmaspheric Endeavors - (A very nicely written account as well)
CTIA - (The other side of the coin. A lot of valid points to be found here)
SolSie.com (I good break down of both sides)

- Captain Cellfish
Poster Boy for hire

Hello world,

I write to you today as a new man. Why? Because our little Cellfish.com is growing up. It’s been redesigned and relaunched. We have a brand, spanking new look, a cleaner feel, and a whole lot of amazing new features that we made just for you, our beloved users.

You were all very vocal about what you’d like us to do to improve the site, and we listened to each and everyone of of you. Who says you can’t please all the people all the time? Abe Lincoln? Who the heck is he?

Anyway, let’s get down to brass tax. You want to know what changed, and I want to tell you.

Here’s what we did.

1. Focus on Action

Cellfish.com is now all about letting you easily use our tools to get the most out of your mobile life. The new tabs across the top of our home page are clear, and I might add, very fun to push.

Ahhh, ain’t she purdy!

2. No more premium content
It was so confusing before… What you had to pay for vs. what was free. The whole credit thing was totally wacky. Now it’s simple. If it’s on our site you can have it for the whopping charge of $0.00. It’s all free. (this might take us a day or two to get all ironed out, so don’t freak if you see something about credits)

3. Your locker has been reorganized

Now your locker is all about your stuff. It’s easy to access, easy to sort, and most importantly easy to get on your phone. Take a look, then go and give it a whirl.

So, those are the main changes, but don’t take my word for it, check it out yourself. Take a gander at the new Cellfish.com. It looks different, it feels different, but really it’s just a sexier version of what it used to be (sort of like what I would be if I would go to the gym more often).  So what are you waiting for.  Go and start downloading the free ringtones and don’t forget to tell all of your friends about us.  Because every time you tell a friend an angel gets his wings.

Now don’t worry, all of the content that you have uploaded is still there. Nothing is lost. I repeat, NOTHING IS LOST! Your username is still in tact, and all of your media and content is just chillin’ in your locker waiting for you to come back.

One difference you might notice is that members are no longer displayed on the homepage. Don’t panic. The members are all still there, we just decided not to confuse people and let them access each other through their content.

Basically, the new Cellfish.com is like moving into a new home. It might take a day or two to figure out where all the light switches are, but once you do, you’ll see this place is pretty sweet. So if something is confusing to you, just click around a bit, get the feel for it, and if you still have problems please, please, please (with sugar on top) send us an email. We really do love hearing from you, and helping you. Send it to support@cellfish.com

Enjoy,

- Captain Cellfish
Amateur Spelunker

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

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

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

This post you are reading right now is mainly to heap praise and gratitude on one of the internet’s finest blog personalities. The man of whom I am referring is named Alan Henry. A nice name. A kind name. Sort of a down home, straight talk, cook you a good burger kind of name. (sorry Alan if you are a vegetarian, and you don’t live in a home). I’ve never met the guy, but if I did I’d buy him a drink or seven.

Why am I heaping all this praise on this one man?

Well, Alan dearest wrote one heck of a review of Cellfish on appscout.com. The man gets it. And when you get it, you get it, and boy did he get it. He got it so well that I’d go as far as to say, “homey done gots it.”

Check out what he said here

Anyway, keep those good reviews coming. We do love our fans.

- Captain Cellfish
Dishonorably Discharged from the Salvation Army 12/25/05

My dear public,

I apologize for my recent disappearance. Last week I was kidnapped by a crew of furious, out of work, land-line, telephone technicians. These guys, grabed me while I was shopping in Star Magic, about to purchase some nice geodes, threw me in the back of their van and grilled me for answers to their idiotic questions.

Let me say this. Cellfish is not popular with ma bell. We have taken the great leap into the unknown future. We have made your cellphone the window to a brave new world. Your land line is a dinosaur, and we are the massive asteroid coming to make it extinct. Better call Bruce Willis and Steve Buscemi and have them try and stop us.

You think I’m being too dramatic? You try spending four days duct taped in the back of a Verizon van with three sweaty, hairy guys, who all seem to be named Carl, grilling you about the power of your platform.

Let’s just say it makes a believer out of anyone. So yes, I am proud of our platform. It does so very much, so very well. If you have any questions about what Cellfish does (I’m talking to you, Carl#2) please check out our “How-To” videos.

And what’s new with us?

Well I’ll tell you. In the coming months you are going to start to see our widgets popping up like acne on the horny, adolescent face of the web.

Also, stay glued to your Cellfish Videos page for our “Ask the Pros” series which will be premiering within the next few weeks. So get your video questions ready to share with our esteemed crew of top-notch pros.

And if you want to see one of the oddest vintage commercials ever, go watch this.

Captain Cellfish
Amateur Mindsticker & knitting enthusiast

Just a quick note to brag about our mention in today’s Wall Street Journal.

If you could see me, I have been walking around all day making the universal , “nah-nah-ne-boo-boo” symbol. My thumb is on my nose, my four fingers are waving, and my tongue is sticking out.

Most of my co-workers think I am an idiot, but I am merely brimming with company pride.

We sure have come a long way, baby.

Three months ago we were just 6 employees being flogged hourly in the salt mines of Uruguay.
(Very slow internet connection down there and only like one bar of cellphone service) It goes without saying that we didn’t have dental benefits. But now… The WSJ. Yessiree!

Folks, our past was a tragic tale, but our future is bright… Like my new teeth. (lost the old ones to malnutrition)

- Captain Cellfish
Poet Laureate, 1968-1972