Yesterday morning, mixed in amongst my usual slew of automated system emails and the slurry of spams that make it through my filters, was a message from Sprint. My wife and I use Nextel cell service (now owned by Sprint), and I had recently registered on the Sprint web site for their online account management, so getting email from them wasn’t a surprise. However, the subject of the message caught my eye in a curious way: “Attn: Dougal Gunter - Sprint Ambassador Invite”.

Hmmm… First of all, they’ve made the common mistake of thinking that my name is “Dougal Gunter”. And second of all, what’s this about a “Sprint Ambassador Invite”? And lastly, the email was sent to my regular email address, not the one I used to register for the account management stuff. Let’s take a look and see what this is about.

Hi Dougal,

The Sprint Ambassador Team recently visited Dougal.gunters.org and wants to invite you to participate in our Ambassador Program.

As a qualified participant blah, blah, blah, Sprint Power Vision phone with 6 months of free voice and data service, blah, blah, blah, apply here, blah.

Hmm. Based on the name mixup and such, maybe they really did look at my website. Okay, I was interested, so I visited the web site indicated. Some of the verbiage was of the “if you qualify” type, but I went ahead and applied anyways.

Within a short time, I received an automatic response indicating that I should receive a Samsung MM-A920 phone within a few weeks. Reading up on the specs, it’s got Bluetooth, 1.3Mp camera, handles video and music, and EVDO(!). Very cool. One thing it doesn’t have that would be nice is push-to-talk radio service. And what do they want in return for providing me with this? Feedback. That’s all.

Once I actually get the phone and have a chance to use it, I’ll be posting about it here. Which, I’m guessing, is what this Sprint Ambassador Program is aiming for. Giving geeks free toys is always a good way to get some grassroots exposure. You have to take the bad with the good, because if your product is lousy, you’ll get called to the mat. But if your product is decent, this is a great way to sway the crowd. I’ll let you know my verdict on the A920, either way.

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Tivo Series2 40GB DVR — $50 after rebate!

A couple of days ago, I read about a $150 rebate from Tivo. This brings the price of a unit down to the “impulse buy” level. I’m thinking about getting us a 40GB unit. I figure that if we decide that we need more space later, we can just hack a larger hard drive into it.

And actually, that may not even be necessary, as I’ve just read that you can now stream video from a PC to the Tivo over a network. Which effectively means that any PC in your home can be used for auxilliary Tivo storage.

I expect that we’ll get pretty good usage out of Tivo. We often miss shows that we like because we’re busy trying to get our kids to bed. And of course, digging out a blank VHS tape and programming the VCR is a pain in the neck (plus you only get 2-6 hours of recording, depending on what kind of video quality you’re willing to put up with). It would be nice to let Tivo keep track of which shows we want to see, automagically record them for us, and timeshift them to when we can actually sit down for an hour.

Current Tivo users: tell me about your favorite Series2 Hacks sites!

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The EVDO StompBox Project is just such a beast. So, if you’ve got about $700 and some time to blow, you’re all set!

[via: BoingBoing]

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Lexar 512MB JumpDrive

Peter Gabriel, Hit/Miss

Yesterday was my birthday. The whole family went out to dinner at The Bitter End for some seafood. I had the “Sesame Crusted Salmon”, which was good, but not as flavorful as I had expected. But they did give me some of their banana bread pudding, which was quite tasty. This was our second time there, it’s definitely one of our favorite local restaurants.

After dinner, we went home and I opened my gifts, which were all quite cool:

• A Lexar 512MB JumpDrive
• Army of Darkness comics, “Ashes to Ashes“, issues 1 - 4
• Peter Gabriel, Hit/Miss (2-CD best-of)
• P.O.D., Brown
• A long-sleeve T-shirt with an embroidered yellowjacket (and Jamie got a matching shirt )

Birthday gift : say “Happy Birthday” with birthday gifts that leave a lasting impression. Flowers, plants & gift baskets from ProFlowers make great gifts.

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