When I first launched Heliocity 365 days ago, I never imagined how much I’d come to enjoy it. I can’t even begin to count how many awesome people I’ve had the opportunity to meet, nor how many fond memories have come as a result.

We’ve already accomplished so much as a community. This community stood together, and helped to reshape a service its members use most. Then we went and did it again. We’ve grown to remarkable numbers, through nothing but word of mouth and natural discovery. We’ve banded together to tackle obstacles that kept our devices from their maximum potentionial. Perhaps most notably, this community has provided help to thousands upon thousands of other Helions. Without a doubt, this community has made being a Helio customer better.

Happy Birthday, folks. The best is yet to come.

There is also a special promo going on right now, the following Gameloft titles are 50% off, hurrah!

• 500,000 page views per month.
• Our reader base stretches across the US and is made up of gadget lovers, tech-minded individuals, vendors, software and product developers, corporate power figures, and those considering Helio.
• We are highly respected as a source for all things Helio, and as a member of the blogging community at large.
• We are the largest and most tightly knit community of Helio users by many leaps and bounds. Both our readership and our registered member base grow significantly each day by word of mouth alone. It is estimated that 1 of every 50 Helio subscribers is a registered member of our site.

Contact me at greg at heliocity dot net if you’re interested.

SK Telecom’s claiming the rumors a bunch of nonsense. According to a spokesperson for the company, there had not been “any sort of talks” between Helio and Virgin, saying all rumors as such were “groundless” and that they remained “committed to Helio.” In the vaguest statement of the century, she also added that SK Telecom was actively seeking opportunities to expand in the US.

I’m still on the fence with this one, as I’m wary about anything that could potentially cause radical changes to the way Helio does their thing. On one hand, more users and a larger retail footprint is an awesome thing. On the other, I heart Helio.

SK Telecom has big ol’ pockets, with over 50% of Korean mobile customers being SKT subscribers. Their pockets are fat enough to keep Helio afloat as long as they need to to work things out. I’d be incredibly surprised if any of the opportunities they were seeking involved tossing the brand they’ve been working to build.

[Via mocoNews.net]

We’ll just have to wait this one out until we get some word from either company.

(Greg says: We’ve asked the people that might be in the know about this. While no one is willing to spill any details, no one is making any effort to deny it. As Matt Hickey from Crunchgear points out, the two companies could each bring something to the table that the other lacks: Virgin already has floorspace in a ton of outlets, but lacks any sort of high end offerings. Helio has far less retail penetration, but can bring high end products and services to the table. If it does go down, I just hope Helio keeps its own name; VirginMobileocity sounds whack.)

And don’t worry, for those of you with a different Helio device, you can still experience the fun through the http://m.youtube.com website.

Image Gallery:

The Image Gallery allows forum members to share images in an incredibly easy and organized way, with a full rating and commenting system built in. Got a ton of Ocean wallpapers you’ve made? Upload’em! Want to show off your collection of work? Stick a link to your “My Images” page in your signature!

Right now, we’ve got three categories in the Image Gallery:

• Wallpapers: Finally, a place to put’em all! Users can easily upload their Wallpapers by device and category. To get the ball rolling, we’ve already uploaded around 250 awesome user made wallpapers. (If you see any of your work uploaded by the username “Wallpapers”, just send us a list of the image IDs [grab it from the url] and we’ll make sure it gets put under your name)
• Heliocity Mugshots:: It’ll be like a yearbook, without the generic messages of good will! We wanna see pictures of forum members rockin’ their Helios.
• Accessories:: It’s way, way too hard to find pictures of Helio accessories. Even on Helio.com, the product shots don’t tend to show enough. Well, we’ve got accessories - lets fix that.

You can find the gallery at http://forum.heliocity.net/index.php?action=gallery, or by clicking Forum > Gallery. Once things get rolling and we’ve made sure all the kinks are worked out, it’ll find its way up to the big bar up top.

We’ll be adding tons of categories to the gallery, depending on what people want. We’re open to ideas!

Mobile Downloads:

What good is a massive collection of wallpapers without an easy way to access it from your device?

That’s where the Mobile Downloads site comes in, and I’ve already got a little sneak preview version up and running. Check it out on your device at https://downloads.heliocity.net.

From the Mobile download site’s streamlined interface, you can easily access the entire Wallpapers collection on the go. It automatically pulls all of the images on the fly and sorts them by their proper categories.

The download site is built to look gorgeous in both portrait/landscape modes. As the whole thing is running with SSL certification, you won’t ever have to deal with hitting “View in HTML”. You don’t even have to remember to type HTTPS - it’ll handle that for you.

A few things started acting kinda whonky at the last second (for example, application uploads), so we pulled them before launch for the sake of gettin the goods to you guys sooner. Don’t worry - those sections will be up and running within a few days.

So, Whats next?

The guides and reviews sections are finally gettin’ the lovin’ they deserve. Exciting stuff. Stay tuned!

Click for a larger image

Bam! I’m now the proud owner of a white Helio Ocean. Okay, fine - I’m the proud owner of a white Helio Ocean body and a bunch of disassembled Helio Ocean pieces. But it’s getting closer!

I sprayed it in about 15 light coats over the period of a day and a half. The texture is gorgeous, looking far less spray-painty than I expected. It still needs a light wet sanding before it’s clear coated, but it was nice to not have to deal with nasty orange peeling.

(Ignore the big solid white areas in the middle of the frame pieces - it’s just masking tape.)

Pretty soon comes clear coating, where I’ve got a decision to make: Do I spend around six dollars on a really nice, hard clear coat.. or do I dump 53 dollars (after shipping) into getting a can of soft-touch clear coat? First will look shiny and sexy, but the latter’s texture will be much more like the original Ocean paint job. I’m definitely leaning toward the first option for the sake of not making myself poor.

Oh heeeells yeah.

Back in July, Helio flipped the switch that enabled Push e-mail support for Helio Mail, Yahoo, Windows Live, and AOL.

Gmail has now received the same treatment, making Helio the first carrier to support Push Gmail. It’s available now on any device with Ultimate Inbox. If you already have Gmail configured on your device, all you have to do now is hit “Send/Receive”, and it’ll ask you if you want automatic notifications enabled. Blam - Push Gmail support.

Update: Not just Gmail! All POP inboxes have gotten the option to receive automatic notifications!

Update #2: IMAP, Too!

And now I’m going to make your silver pants blue black Ocean white!

The hunt continues. Last post, I was trying to track down an Ocean body that hadn’t been sprayed with its soft-touch coat yet.

After about a week and a half of digging around, it didn’t seem like this was going to happen. So, I said screw it - If I couldn’t get an Ocean body that hadn’t been sprayed with soft touch yet, I’d remove the soft touch coat myself.

I did a bit of research, trying to find any chemical strong enough to remove the clear coat but weak enough that it wouldn’t eat the plastic. It seemed like for every one person saying something would work fine, another three were saying it would destroy the plastic and punch me in the face. I didn’t really want to take any chances, so I grabbed some sand paper and a bottle of elbow grease, and attacked.

(For good measure, I wore a respirator I had laying around. I had no idea what would be flying around in the area as I sanded this thing down. I was doing the sanding out in front of my house, which was probably not the best idea in hindsight. My gas-mask-esque contraption totally spooked at least 2 of my neighbors.)

About 3 hours of disassembly and sanding later, my Ocean is ready for painting:

Click for larger image

It was a bit of work to make sure I didn’t accidentally round any of the surface edges, break any tabs, or scratch up the camera mirror - but it all worked out, as far as I can tell. I lost the Helio logo that was pressed into the paint on the battery, but I’m pretty sure that was unavoidable.

Next Steps:

1. Masking off all the stuff that needs to be masked.
2. Give it a solid cleaning
3. Spray it with 5 or so uber light coats, possibly sanding between coats depending on how it’s holding.
4. Clear coat
5. Reassembly
6. White Ocean Whoooooo!

Off to the hardware store to research paints and clear coats. More coming as it’s finished.

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