Ellington

The HipTop 3, exclusively marketed by T-Mobile as the SideKick 3, was recently released at a premiere attended by none other than—wait for it—Paris Hilton. The SideKick 3 offers, somewhat surprisingly, a larger case than the SideKick II, but with a new professional skin and a more comfy keyboard. It also sports a removable battery, a miniSD card slot for additional photo and music storage, Bluetooth 1.2 support, a better LCD display and a 1.2 megapixel camera. What it doesn't support is WiFi, which would have been nice for faster surfing in coffee houses or—say—my house. The built-in applications are very similar to earlier offerings but with a better MP3 player and a few other tweaks. The killer SideKick app is the always-on instant messaging—eventually I figured out I could check my SideKick to deduce who is sitting at their desks back in the office based on their IM client being active, and chat them up accordingly while I'm sitting at home having a mid-afternoon Heineken Light. It's good to be the geek.

The SideKick is awkward as a phone—you've got to flip it open to dial a number that isn't already stored, then flip it closed again to retain any remaining dignity—but, at least the updates make it a bit easier to take seriously. With easy e-mail setup and EDGE support, it's a powerhouse of a mobile Internet commun-o-tron.

Just keep it away from your credit cards—early reports are that it tosses out some serious magnetism: pictures on the Internet show a butter knife suspended from the back of the display—and can wipe a credit card clean of its purchasing power faster than phone sex. (So I've heard.)

Oh—one other thing I love about the SideKick is that T-Mobile offers it both to contract and pay-as-you go subscribers. The phone is more expensive under the ToGo plan ($399), but the plan is kinda fun—$1 per day for unlimited Internet and $.15 a minute nationwide. Go to T-Mobile to order or to SideKick's site to check out some crappy Flash about the Sidekick 3. Ugh.

Cool Tool
CinemaNow makes it possible to download movies to your computer and then burn them to DVD for arching and viewing—exactly once. Only certain titles are enabled for the beta "Burn to DVD" service, as CinemaNow hasn't gotten all of Hollywood signed up for the program yet—but no worries, because the 2001 Jake Gyllenhaal vehicle "Bubble Boy" is totally part of the program. Yes! CinemaNow apparently hasn't heard the news that Mac users like to watch movies—the whole damn site requires Windows Media Player 10.

But don't think Steve Jobs will let the iTunes Store be one-upped for long—rumor has it that Jobs may soon announce that the iTunes Store will offer movie "rentals" online—and perhaps sweet burn-ability.