Unnatural Attraction

For some reason, alien to me, I am obsessed with wanting, but not acquiring, a HELIO, the bizarre, awkwardly marketed, slick, do-it-all, cell phone with the inane tagline- "don't call it a phone."

Let me make it clear that I don't foresee getting a Helio because I just renewed my Verizon plan for two years and I don't expect Helio's to exist within a quarter of that timeframe(especially after Apple's iPhone goes all Paul Revere on you coalminers).

But I can't help but be fascinated with the Helio. It's so...ridiculous and inane. First of all, it IS a phone. You're buying it to replace your phone, even if you do a lot of text messaging, you're still using it as your primary source of communication.

Secondly, it was launched with a direct corellation to MySpace, including special software to view and update MySpace easily from your Helio, so now you're NARROWING the usage to those that use MySpace. While many of you are saying, "But most people use MySpace!" Think of all those people and then think of all the people that use text messaging and cellphones and imagine the Venn Diagram where those all intersect. It's a small intersection.

I think there is a camera on it to, and I'm sure some sort of terrible proprietary music player that destroys songs after five plays or some cockamamie DRM sabotage.

Also, they are now throwing all their effort into promoting the "buddy beacon." Basically a digital map that has a smiley face where you and your friends are via GPS, which sounds like all sorts of trouble. Honesty and cell phones have never gone hand in hand so know we want you to track your friends.

Another huge contributing factor to my fascination is that there is a special Helio store on the Santa Monica Promenade. Where they have computers there that CAN ONLY GET ON MYSPACE*.

I want one. I don't need one. No one I know has one or will ever get one and it's going to obsolete when you're done reading this blog, but perhaps I'm a product of their slick marketing- it still seems kind of cool. In the smoking sort of cool, not the I design roller coasters way**.




*Hanawalt knows more about this than I do...ask him...

**The difference being that roller coaster designers make you say, "COOOOOL!" when they tell you what they do and smokers are cool in movies.