Hedgehogging

Hedge*hog*ing v. Interrupting conversations in an office environment by poking your head over the top of the cube.
What got the RCR Wireless News editorial staff talking this week? Simple: the 4 billion requests to meet at the CTIA Wireless 2007 show at the end of the month. Even if we only took 15-minute appointments-and arranged it so they all came to us instead of us having to traverse the show floor-and if we worked 24 hours straight for four days-we still could not fill all of the meeting requests. We realize our readers are also working frantically getting ready for the show and we feel your pain.
We’re letting Online Editor Mike Dano handle this week’s Hedgehogging effort. To read more of Mike’s rantings, visit the Worst of The Week column on Thursdays at RCRNews.com. And without further ado, as Mike likes to say.
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It’s called March Madness because of the CTIA show, and in the spirit of madness, I’m going to offer some thoughtful, insightful and informed predictions about what we can all expect at the show.
1. A bunch of companies will announce a bunch of “solutions” at the CTIA show. It will be very unclear what exactly these “solutions” are because they will be described using PR/marketing lingo. Only a handful of very smart analysts and press people will be able to translate this lingo into regular human speech. Hopefully one of these smart people will be able to explain things to me.
Tip: If you’re going to announce a “solution” at CTIA . just don’t. Instead, call it what it is: a new base station, handset, chipset or Java application, for example.
Remember, only Chuck Norris offers real solutions, and they are only available in the form of roundhouse kicks.
2. Everyone and their mother will announce new music phones. All of these phones will be touted as the “iPhone killer,” and every handset maker will try to explain how their music phone is so much better than everyone else’s.
Tip: If you announce a music phone that does not include a cable that can connect the phone to a computer, at least 1 GB of memory, a good pair of earphones, stereo Bluetooth and dedicated external music buttons, IT IS NOT A MUSIC PHONE. It’s a cellphone that happens to be able to play music, but it is not a music phone. Thank you for your attention.
3. WiMAX will be the bomb diggity. You see, WiMAX is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are a subscriber!
As for WiMAX news at the show, Sprint Nextel will probably announce delays in its planned WiMAX buildout.
4. Matt Groening will come to Orlando to meet with me. And he will announce that, yes, there will be a dedicated “Simpsons” mobile TV channel that will play every single episode ever made in a continuous loop, and that this channel will be available immediately on every cellphone in the world, including mine. Best. Announcement. Ever.
Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?