My timing stinks. I lost my cellphone last week, which is like 2 weeks too early for me to convince Gretchen that I should replace it the lifestyle-in-a-can iPhone that comes out June 29th.

So, instead, I bought a Treo 700wx used from a guy off craigslist. Tip for used phone buyers: Sprint (and every other major carrier) keeps a list of cell phones that are legit, and those that got lifted off the back of a truck. It took me 30 seconds to call Sprint, check the ESN (Electronic Serial Number), and find out that the phone was not stolen, and could be used on my plan with no problems. If you’re going to hand some guy you’ve never met a wad of sweaty cash, it’s a good idea to make that call.

I got it home, and of course the first thing you have to do when you buy a phone is find the right ringtone to suit your style. None of the default ringers quite worked for me, so I fired up the studio, and programmed my own. Feel free to download it for your own personal use, if you like it.

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click to download: MyRingtone.mp3

I replaced the browser on the phone with Opera Mobile, which does a great job of viewing rich media sites on a tiny 3 inch screen. I cruised by the ole’ Road House, and was horrified at how poorly the site performs on a mobile phone. Fortunately, Alex King has programmed a plugin called Wordpress Mobile Edition that detects incoming views from mobile phones, and gives them a simple single-column, no graphic version of the blog. Very cool. In the next build of the blog, I’ll probably experiment with doing my own version of an alternate site (http://m.addisonrd.com coming soon!), complete with recent comments, and the ability to do simple posting from the mobile without having to load the entire admin panel.

So far, my biggest complaint is that the phone syncs up with all my email accounts. Anywhere I go, all of my emails get to me. All of my emails. Including the 50 offers I get every day to buy pills to enhance my man junk. I need to buy a pill for that? I thought that’s why I just bought a fancy phone! Anyway, getting an alert every 20 minutes with 6 new spam emails sucks.

Any other Treo owners out there? Anyone familiar with Windows Mobile? What hacks / add-ons should I look at getting? Help me pimp out my new big kid toy! I’d really like to get a mobile version of Instant Messenger that works.