I've been meaning to upgrade my 2001-era Sprint Motorola Timeport for months now – just waiting for the right phone to come out. After spending the morning at HP Labs looking at very cool, next generation video applications (more to come on this) … and having read what seems like dozens of announcements from Verizon this week on available video content for their new Vcast service, I headed to the nearest Verizon Wireless shop to see if I could pick up a phone. I know the service is not available in San Francisco yet, but I wanted to be ready.

It was one of those conversations with the salesperson –

Salesperson: "V-what"
Me: "Vcast, (with an emphasis on the "T") the new video service. I would like to buy one of those phones."
Salesperson: "We aren't carrying them, but we will."
Me: "When?"
Salesperson: "Don't know."

I'm going to try online next. Stay tuned.

Verizon has promised to lend me a trial unit as soon as I get to a city covered by EVDO. Will take a lot of patience for me to wait until March … especially when I'm taunted each day with a new announcement of content that is not yet available to ME!