I'm a Sprint Ambassador!

Hey, joe — are your eyes closed?

Why?

'Cause you must be dreaming.

But I'm not — I have proof.

A few weeks ago I was just moseying along on my treadmill at 0.7 mph doing something close to nothing when an email came in inviting me to become a Sprint Ambassador.

What's that, I wondered.

I read the email.

It said that I'd been selected to use the brand–new Sprint Power Vision™ Network as well as the Sprint Music Store™ and receive live TV broadcasts with Sprint TV™, gaming and more.

To try all this wizardry out they'd send me a brand–new Sprint Power Vision™ Model A920 Samsung phone (above and below) — free.

And provide unlimited access to all their content for the next six months — free.

Along with letting me have unlimited phone calls to/from anywhere during that time along with the usual tricked–out phone features, i.e., 1.3 megapixel flash camera, IM, web and email, etc.

What's the catch?

None that I could see: all they asked was that I give them feedback if and when I felt like it via their supersecret Ambassador website.

No, I can't tell you any more than that — Dick Cheney made me promise and Michael Hayden make me pinky–swear.

Anyway, I signed up online, figuring that'd be the last I'd ever hear from Sprint.

They said within the next week or two I'd receive my phone.

A month passed and nothing happened but then yesterday there was a FedEx box on my front doorstep containing the phone and all the accessories.

There was the usual thick manual and all sorts of stuff about how to activate the phone, you know, the usual nonsense you go through at the cellphone store that takes a couple hours.

I don't have time for that kind of stuff so I figured I'd just bag the whole thing and send it back to them but then, just for the heck of it, I decided to see what would happen if I tried to use the phone.

No chance of it working right out the box, right?

I mean, you've gotta enter all that stuff, passwords, networks, put in SIM cards and whatnot — right?

I looked all over the phone for the On/Off button but couldn't find it.

No surprise that.

I looked in the 248–page manual and right there, on the very first page of the 5–page–long table of contents it said, "Turning Your Phone On and Off — Page 24."

w00t!

On page 24 it said, "To turn your phone on, press and release END."

No wonder I couldn't figure it out on my own: I'd been pressing the green "TALK" button.

Obviously to power up you'd push the red END button — right?

They don't give the name TechnoDolt™ out lightly.

Anyway, I pushed the red END button and all kinds of stuff started to happen: a picture of a satellite dish came on and started rotating around, icons flashed and disappeared, and then stuff stopped happening on the screen.

So I figured what the heck, let's go for it, and I dialed the number of my best friend, down Texas way.

The numbers appeared on the unbelievably crisp, sharp screen in beautiful colored digits.

I pushed TALK and the phone started ringing and I'll be darned if my bud didn't pick it up and sound as crisp and clear as if he were on a wired phone next door.

I give Sprint a 9.5 (the 0.5 deduction is for forcing me to use the manual to find out how to turn the phone on) for execution in the first maneuver of what will be a most interesting program of tricks, to be executed in the coming weeks and months.

I may even try to post to bookofjoe from this phone if I can figure out how — wouldn't that be a riot?

I'm stoked!

The message here is that technology doesn't have to be torture: cellphones can work right out of the box and so can computers.

But only if the people selling them to us care enough about hoi polloi to make that possible.

Real soon now — not.