Delectable LG Chocolate to be precise. This weekend the wife and I went out to explore the new shopping center that had opened around the corner from us and as often happens we got drawn into the local cellphone shop. Well it just so happens that the wife has an upgrade window coming up (I have been trying to convince her to sit it out and switch to a Vodacom contract) and as she is enquiring about when she can expect a handset upgrade, we are told that she can do it right away as they can put it through on something called a “premature” upgrade. Right. There goes the Vodacom idea flying out the window.

So now, which phone to buy? The wife is not interested in 3G or business functions or even a fancy camera. No, she needs to have a sexy phone, one that says “feminine”.

So, we had a look at the SLIVR the V3x (no longer sexy by the way), various permutations of the Sony Walkman phone and a couple others before laying eyes on the Chocolate, that was it. Case closed.

The Chocolate is an interesting phone no doubt and I reckon definitely a case of form over function, but there is no denying the drop dead gorgeous looks. Other pro’s are the thin form factor, very light weight and the high quality feel of the sliding mechanism. The odd ball feature are the buttons on the front face which are touch sensitive (i.e. no actual movement, like telefunken tv’s of old or new gen iPods ). Cons are the lack of expandable memory, relatively weak camera by modern standards (1.3 MP) and no 3G.

So basically a supermodel prety phone with not a lot in the brains department (refer to previous metaphore), I can live with that. Stay tuned for more once we take delivery.

Of further interest is the interesting blog marketing campaign that LG is conduction under the guidance of Niall Cook at UK based marketing firm Hill and Knowlton, they are basically sending off loaners for bloggers to review. It would be interesting to keep an eye on this one to see where it goes as this is still very much new terrain and certainly very daring. Do the bloggers have the guts to shoot down a product if they find it bad, I wonder?

Technorati Tags: LG, Chocolate, Cell

Remember Meedio? Meedio is that nice application you could install on most any windows PC to provide handy media centre type functionality to your TV out enabled PC in the livingroom, for a couple dollars.

Well, that company has now sold its IP on to Yahoo and a beta is already available for download, currently free!

I gave it a download and it looks like it still has all the good ol’ features that made Meedio so much loved, i.e. easy to use UI with clear fonts and layouts even on the TV, easy TV capture integration etc.

Unfortunately this version will only function on US based IP addresses, disable your net connection to bypass, hopefully this will be addressed soon to allow the rest of the world to play along as well..

Read more on Engadget.

Technorati Tags: Meedio, Yahoo

Thanks to Anthony Dalton for the heads up,

Shozu have recently announced that they are to ad the following features later this month:

• Post images to your personal blog hosted on services like blogger, wordpress or typepad
• Post to photo-journalism services like the BBC, CNN and scoopt
• Two way commenting on your photos (previously one-way)
• Upload bandwidth saving blog-quality images

Be sure to check it out. Read more here.

Also congrats to them for winning the “Consumer Application – Mobile Entertainment Application” category at CTIA.

Technorati Tags: Shozu, Mobile, Moblog