By Robin Caldwell, BlackWeb20.com

It is the mother of all luxury smart phones. Encased in mother-of-pearl layered behind sapphire crystal and framed in black nickel; and the buttons are stainless steel and sapphire crystal. The Mobiado Grand 350PRL is the business for professionals. The Vancouver, Canada manufacturer, Mobiado, calls their state-of-the-art cellular phones - Luxury in Mobility.

And the technology is every bit as smart as the design. The Grand 350PRL features the following:

Though Mobiado has only been producing phones since 2004, they have created collections (The Professional, The Professional EM, The Professional 105ZAF) made from unique and sustainable materials such as aircraft aluminum, wood and sapphire crystal. The Grand 350PRL also comes in gold, white and pink mother-of-pearl and is unlocked (check with your carrier for compatible service) and it retails for around $2600.

BlackWeb20.com covers website and application launches; culturally relevant Internet industry news; and mainstream Internet industry news from an African-American perspective.  They also analyze emerging web trends and how they apply to web properties that target African-Americans or African-American culture.

By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

As the world’s love affair with high-tech gadgets spreads like wildfire, it’s not enough to own the most advanced tech, they have to look good too. Shiny, glossy, matte finishes, eye-catching technical wonders of the world, it’s a constant arms race to have the best and prettiest tech. And with all arms races, he with the deepest pockets has the biggest guns. Which is why some of the best tech is in the hands of the rich and famous. What sets celebrity tech apart from the tech of mere mortals? Bling and plenty of it – from gold-plating to Swarovski crystals and even diamonds, celebrity devices are in a class all by themselves.

Case in point, a gold plated Macbook owned by Chris Brown, or Pharrell Williams, the once proud owner of a gold-plated Blackberry that switched it up to a gold-plated iPhone. Alicia Keys is also crazy about blinged out tech, rocking a 24k  gold-plated Nokia E71. Even Sasha Fierce alter-ego Beyonce is rocking a Nokia 8800 Sirocco Gold.

So where does all that floss-worthy tech come from? Some of it comes from the cell phone companies. Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericcson are some of the better known phone manufacturers pushing luxury tech. Ericcson recently teamed up fashion designer Dolce&Gabbana to create the Jalou by D&G, a luxe cell phone set to hit stores by the end of this year. Motorola actually literally covered one of their phones in ice. But if you’re looking for something truly exclusive, check out Mobiado, Vertu, Gresso, and Goldvish that are the proud makers of a cell worth a cool million dollars.

For iced out laptops, you have to do a little more legwork. Since it isn’t in computer manufacturers’ best interest to make gold plated units, so those desiring a Midas makeover need to find someone that specializes in doing custom platings. Pharrell has been getting his tech upgraded by the Hip-Hop jeweler, Jacob the Jeweler. And if you want to pimp your laptop, check out Computer Choppers, the company responsible for Chris Brown’s ridiculously ostentatious Macbook. Goldstriker International is also a good place to bling out your phone since they are the mastermind behind Keys’ Nokia.

It seems a little crazy to spend thousands of dollars to give gadgets that were already hott in both looks and tech, but like Lil Wayne says, “It ain’t trickin’ if you got it.”

BlackWeb20.com covers website and application launches; culturally relevant Internet industry news; and mainstream Internet industry news from an African-American perspective.  They also analyze emerging web trends and how they apply to web properties that target African-Americans or African-American culture.

When do you know you’re talking too long on the cell phone? If you haven’t been noticing your suddenly astronomical cell phone bills, you might want to pay attention to that recent pain that’s been shooting through your arm. Orthopedic experts say that a newly discovered chronic illness is cropping up everywhere: “cell phone elbow.” Read more.

 Some nosy Verizon employees improperly accessed and pawed through Barack Obama’s personal cell-phone account. Imagine the information contained in those records – possibly the numbers of family members and/or potential Cabinet secretaries.  The company announced on Friday that the account viewed was an inactive account, but an unspecified number of employees were immediately suspended and “appropriate disciplinary action” was taken. “We apologize to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day,” Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said in a press release.  An Obama aide told Reuters that “no voice or e-mails were listened to or read, on the old cell phone which Obama no longer uses.” The president-elect already had his passport files snooped into by federal contractors, while an Ohio agency director was suspended Thursday for allowing state employees to search databases for information on Joe the Plumber, the Ohioan who became famous after confronting Obama about his tax policies.

A cell phone helps police rescue a Delaware shooting victim. Wilmington, Del., Police used the cell phone of a shooting victim to locate the victim of a gunshot. The 37 year-old Wilmington man had been shot in the neck with a shotgun, but did not know where he was when he contacted police about 6:30 Saturday night. Authorities say they were able to get a general location by tracking which cell phone towers had handled his call. Once police were in the vicinity, they heard the man pounding on a shed door. He was then taken to Christiana Hospital where he is in critical, but stable, condition. There’s no word on what prompted the shooting.

A showdown is expected over an automaker bailout plan.  Proponents, mostly Democrats, say $25 billion of the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package should be used to bail out the failing U.S. auto industry.  “The repercussions would be dire” if the nation allowed the auto industry to collapse, President-elect Obama said on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday. But hard-line opponents, mostly Republicans, brand the industry a “dinosaur” that should be allowed to fail. That’s how the debate is expected to go when Senate Democrats introduce legislation today to attach an auto bailout to a House-passed bill that extends unemployment benefits. But if the talk on Sunday news shows is any indication, the measure faces an up-hill battle in the Senate lame-duck session. Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona said it would be a mistake to use any of the Wall Street rescue money to prop up the automakers because a bailout would only postpone the industry’s demise. “Companies fail everyday and others take their place. I think this is a road we should not go down,” Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said Sunday. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) also said that automakers are trying to adapt to a changing consumer market, but need immediate help to survive the economic crisis. “This is a national problem,” Levin said Sunday. “The auto industry touches millions and millions of lives.” A White House alternative to the Democrats’ plan would allow the car companies to divert the $25 billion in loans Congress previously approved to develop fuel-efficient vehicles and use the money for more immediate needs. Congressional Democrats oppose the White House plan as shortsighted. A vote on the measure is expected as early as Wednesday. Majority Democrats will need at least a dozen GOP votes in the Senate to prevent opponents from blocking their measure – assuming all Senate Democrats support it, reports The Washington Post.

Scientists raise new cell phone concerns. Scientists on Thursday warned U.S. legislators of the risks of brain cancer from cell phone use, highlighting the potential risk for children who use mobile phones. “We urgently need more research,” said David Carpenter, director of the Institute of Health and Environment at the University of Albany, in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Domestic Policy. “We must not repeat the situation we had with the relationship between smoking and lung cancer,” Carpenter said. Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute – who sounded a warning about cell phone use and cancer earlier this year – said that most studies “claiming that there is no link between cell phones and brain tumors are outdated and had methodological concerns and did not include sufficient numbers of long-term cell phone users.”  Many studies that deny a link between cell phones and cancer “defined regular cell phones as ‘once a week,’” added Herberman. “I cannot tell this committee that cell phones are definitely dangerous. But, I certainly cannot tell you that they are safe,” he said. Carpenter and Herberman both told the committee the brain cancer risk from cell phone use is far greater for children than for adults. Herberman held up a model for lawmakers showing how radiation from a cell phone penetrates far deeper into the brain of a 5-year-old than that of an adult.” Every child is using cell phones all of the time, and there are 3 billion cell phone users in the world,” said Herberman. He added that, like the messages that warn of health risks on cigarette packs, cell phones “need a precautionary message.”

The government stops heart study. Federal officials put on hold the largest alternative medicine study the government has ever done, and has stopped enrolling people while they investigate whether participants were fully informed of the risks and are being adequately protected, The Associated Press has learned. More than 1,500 heart attack survivors are involved in the research, which tests a controversial treatment called chelation. It is mainly used to treat lead poisoning. More than two people have died, although the Miami doctor leading the study said the deaths were not a direct result of the treatments. He said he doesn’t know exactly how many deaths have occurred. He also acknowledged that some doctors who had been involved in the study have been disciplined by state boards or have criminal records and have been asked to drop out. “We think we have a safe and ethical trial and we’re protecting our patients,” said Dr. Gervasio Lamas of the University of Miami, the study leader. The research was designed to test very high doses of vitamin and mineral supplements and chelation, which has not been proved effective for heart disease. Chelation (pronounced kee-LAY-shun) involves intravenous doses of a drug, in this case disodium EDTA, that proponents claim will bind to calcium built up in artery walls and help flush it from the body. Conventional treatments for heart disease include medicines, surgery and artery-clearing angioplasty. Federal officials confirmed Thursday they were investigating the o the $30 million study. Those directing the research, conducted at 100 sites around the United States and Canada, voluntarily stopped enrolling patients earlier this month, after the investigation was launched. The American College of Cardiology is listed in study documents as one of the groups associated with the research. The group’s president, Dr. W. Douglas Weaver, noted the treatment is “experimental, unproven.” But he supports finding out if it might work, and the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit where he works is participating.

Obese men have harder time being daddies. Being obese may dim a man’s chances of becoming a father, even if he is otherwise healthy, a new study suggests. Researchers found that among 87 healthy men ages 19 to 48, those who were obese were less likely to have fathered a child. More importantly, they showed hormonal differences that point to a reduced sperm’s ability to be productive, the researchers report in the journal Fertility and Sterility on Friday. Compared with their thinner counterparts, obese men had lower levels of testosterone in their blood, as well as lower levels of luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone- both essential to reproduction. According to the researchers, these relatively low levels of the hormones are suggestive of a condition in which the testes do not function properly due to signaling problems in the hypothalamus or pituitary gland, two brain structures involved in hormone secretion. The findings suggest that obesity alone is an “infertility factor” in otherwise healthy men, writes Dr. Eric M. Pauli and his colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey. Of the 87 men in the study, 68 percent had had a child. Pauli’s team found that the average body mass index, or BMI, was lower among these men compared with those who’d never fathered a child.