The Quest For The Ultimate Mobile Blogging Appliance Resumes

For those of you just joining us, early last year my good buddy Nate Livingston of Cincinnati Black Blog fame started making blog entries via a Blackberry device he purchased from Cincinnati Bell Wireless.

Of course, having to keep up, I searched far and wide for the "Ultimate Mobile Blogging Appliance".

The Blackberry devices are of course distinct possibilities. Early last year they didn't have cameras, but now, for instance, you can get a Blackberry 8300 Curve from ME for FREE if you sign up for a new calling plan, and then apparently you get BACK $10.06 after rebates.

Of course I have a really great plan I've been grandfathering on AT&T pretty much forever, so the Blackberry never looked like the best bet in my own case.

What I did eventually find was a really neat phone called the Nokia 6682, which Nate Livingston eventually picked up when Cincinnati Bell Wireless started carrying it.

The Nokia 6682 is a pretty fascinating phone, and will let you get all sorts of intriguing pictures - for instance when Imperial troops invade Riverbend.

Now one of the greatest things on the Nokia 6682 is that there was this really nifty application called "Yahoo Go!" that would let you sync up your cell phone's address book with your address book on Yahoo, plus check your email through the equivalent of a IMAP4 client.

Well, a couple of days ago I get this message from Yahoo that says that the Yahoo Go 1.X application will no longer be supported as of August 27. It is being replaced with Yahoo Go 2.0, which, so far as I can tell, is not going to be ported to the Nokia 6682.

Those rotten S.O.B.'s!

That leaves me quite possibly in the market for a cell phone AGAIN.

The closest thing that AT&T has currently is the Nokia N75, which, yes, you can buy from me FREE with a new calling plan and even get $9.06 BACK after all the rebates.

I went up to the local AT&T outlet this afternoon to take a look at this phone. It's a flipper and has quite a bit bigger keyboard than the 6682, but it does, fortunately, run Opera Mini and Yahoo! Go 2.0.

It does have one reasonably irritating problem though ... the arrow keys are way to close to several other keys.

But, on the positive side, it IS 3G, so it does LIGHTING fast downloads for a cell phone. It also uses the UMTS voice system, which is just a hair clearer than GSM, IMHO.

However, it does look like it has potential. Unfortunately it's flipping APRIL until I'm eligible for an equipment discount from AT&T.

Maybe by that time AT&T will have picked up something REALLY cool - like the 3.2 megapixel Nokia N73 ...