Aside from Stefan and his hilarious parodies of the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone, the rest of the IntoMobile squad is peeing in our pants fairly excited for the launch of the Apple iPhone this week. That’s why we’re incredibly proud to announce Into iPhone – our mini-site dedicated to the Apple iPhone! There’s been soo much Apple iPhone-related news recently (and tons more to come, we’re sure) that we thought our community (that’s you guys) would appreciate a dedicated iPhone mini-site.

At Into iPhone, our goal is to bring you the same quality and breadth of content that we strive for here at IntoMobile – but focused on the Apple iPhone. We’ve been working hard to bring you the latest and greatest in the iPhone world, and we think we’ve done pretty darn well! Into iPhone is your one-stop resource for everything you could want to know about the Apple iPhone. You’ll find all iPhone posts aggregated into one convenient blog, but it doesn’t stop there. Want iPhone videos? We got ‘em. Got iPhone-related questions? We got you covered. Need the down-low on iPhone accessories? We got that too!

We know you want to hear all the up-to-the-minute news on the iPhone, so the Into iPhone team will be covering the world of the Apple iPhone like the obsessive iPhone-fanboys we are!

Head on over and check out Into iPhone!

The IntoMobile Team is always working to bring you latest and greatest on the mobile industry – from the newest product releases to the lowdown on the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone. So, to make it easier for all you eager iPhone hopefuls out there to find out all the latest iPhone information, we’re very pleased to announce the official launch of our Apple iPhone mini-site – Into iPhone!

Into iPhone serves up all the latest iPhone-specific posts from IntoMobile. But, it doesn’t stop there! Get the answers to all your iPhone questions, check out the iPhone accessories, browse the best pics, view all the greatest iPhone videos. We’ve done all the work so you don’t have to!

Check out Into iPhone here!

For all my old (7 months, wow that went by quick) Ring Nokia (NYSE: NOK) readers currently subscribed to my RSS feed you will now see all my new posts over at intomobile.com

You guys wanted it, I asked my boss for it and now it lives over at http://feeds.feedburner.com/intomobile/stefan

You shouldn’t have to do anything on your end thanks to feedburner. It was a simple copy and paste job.

I’m told that my previous content should finish being imported by tomorrow, worst case Monday. At that point in time I will forward ringnokia.com over to intomobile.com

Thanks for riding the Ring Nokia wave while it lasted, now join me while I add my own secret sauce* to the rest of the wireless industry aka the 64% of the market Nokia doesn’t dominate, yet.

* = prophylactic not included

I’m not good at hellos or goodbyes. I usually start conversations and relationships in media res. Let me get the basics out and the rest I can answer as time goes on:

My name is Stefan Constantinescu and I’m a 20 year old living in Texas. I grew up in NYC and was born in Romania. A little over 6 months ago I started a blog called Ring Nokia (NYSE: NOK). It gained a huge following and one day Into Mobile contacted me, they wanted me to write for them.

How could I turn this down? My previous job was at Helio, the American MVNO. It was interesting while it lasted, but I wish I had more time to spend reading my RSS feeds and blogging.

I’m a huge Nokia enthusiast and I’m working towards an MBA over the next few years to try and secure a position in the country that is home to 5 million Finn’s.

I love traveling, partying, reading and … this isn’t match.com and I’m not looking for a date so I’ll stop here.

I look forward to bringing you guys the latest in mobile news, Nokia centric of course, and contributing unique commentary that is uncensored and honest.

Strap yourself in, this is going to be a bumpy ride.

If you ever need to contact me shoot me an email: stefan@intomobile.com or txt me: +1 817 808 9258

Make that nifty smartphone pull it’s own weight! Get prizes for joining a new mobile research panel! We are proud to introduce MobileXpression, in association with our affiliate partner, ComScore! The MobileXpression research panel is open to Windows Mobile Smartphone, Windows Mobile PocketPC, Symbian smartphone, and even Palm (NSDQ: PALM) users in the US.

What is MobileXpression?
MobileXpression is a research program from ComScore to measure Windows Mobile Smartphone, Windows Mobile PocketPC, Symbian smartphone, and Palm usage. Participation in the research panel is easy! The MobileXpression research software is completely transparent to your normal phone use and automatically measures and reports mobile phone data activity – no need to fill out a survey every month!

Will I be charged for transmitting this data to MobileXpression?
It depends on your current data plan. The data is transmitted over your smartphone’s data connection so, you will be charged if you do not have an unlimited data plan (or if you only have a limited data plan). However, the average user can expect about 50KB of data upload per month, with heavy users transmitting only about 100KB per month – even if you pay per megabyte, it’s totally worth it!

What is the MobileXpression software actually measuring?
The MobileXpression application will monitor smartphone features like email, web browsing, games, etc. and submits this data securely to ComScore – all without getting in the way of your normal phone use. There is no program to startup or maintain. The application works in the background with minimal processing required – once you install it you can forget about it (until those checks come on the mail!)

Where can I find more information?
Get more information, including TOS and Privacy Policy on the MobileXpression website www.mobilexpression.com.

Enough already, how do I start winning PRIZES!
Eager to get started? Well, it’s as easy as visiting the US Sign-Up page www.mobilepanel.com or the UK Sign-Up page uk.mobilepanel.com and signing up for the research panel. An SMS text message will be sent to you with a download link to the MobileXpression software. Click the link to install over your smartphone’s data connection, or download to your computer and install through your data cable.

Huge thanks to Lucy Nichols, Director of Brand Protection in the Intellectual Property Rights Department at Nokia (NYSE: NOK)!

Lucy took the time to give me a call from her hotel room in Beijing and apologize for the letter that Darby & Darby sent me. The person handling the complaint was new and apparently unaware of the proper procedures. It was all a huge misunderstanding.

I’m delighted to tell you that Darby & Darby will stop pursuing their case!

My day has officially been made.

I’m infatuated even more with Nokia as a company now since they went out of their way to make things right. An email would not have had the same effect as an actual human being giving me a call and letting me know that everything was going to be OK and what happened was a mistake.

Respect, Honor, I can’t think of the right word to express my feelings right now.

Thank you.

Update: Robert Weisbein from Darby & Darby just called me; our conversation was similar in nature to the one I previously had today with Lucy. Thank you for apologizing Robert, I know you were just doing your job.

I want to thank everyone who left a comment and those of you who chose to contact me in private. I’ve read every single one of your thoughts and I would like to touch on them in this blog post instead of making one insanely long comment.

First thing is first: If I sign with IntoMobile my writing style will not change at all. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. IntoMobile wants me because of the work I’ve done, not for the work they think I’m capable of producing to their exact specifications.

Second, I will have full control over my words. No one (except Greg and Carol the Grammar Nazis) will edit any blog post I publish. Hypothetical speaking, if Motorola (NYSE: MOT) sponsors intomobile and I review the RAZR2 and think it is a piece of crap, I will tell the world it is a piece of crap.

Warning for IntoMobile: The moment I find out one of my blog posts was edited without my permission or one of my articles is pulled because it didn’t sit right with a sponsor, I will terminate my employment immediately. This is a promise.

Third, a seperate RSS feed will be created if you only care about what I post. The rest of IntoMobile will never hit your RSS reader.

Forth, if I had the know how and skills to redesign my website to be ad friendly, I would. The problem is I don’t. Finding a web designer and then finding sponsors, these are things I frankly don’t want to do since I barely have enough time to manage Ring Nokia (NYSE: NOK) the way I want to in the first place. I’m not a business man, I’m just a guy who likes to share awesome news I find on the web and lay out my ideas for all to judge. I’m not going to start selling t shirts Roland

Fifth, because of the 50+ comments you left me one of my close friends decided to shoot me an email and talk business with me. I renegotiated my salary with intomobile and while I don’t share this sort of information with the public, I will say that the extra income will let me buy a few more phones a year. By phone I mean Nokia E90.

Sixth, I built Ring Nokia to where it is right now over the course of 6 months, in my spare time! Think what I can do at IntoMobile as a full time writer? Do you realize how much more I can read and post per day? I already know I’m going to blow my first paycheck on a 30 inch LCD.

Seventh, I’ve been dropping hints left and right, but if you haven’t noticed by now I do like other phone makers. Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) makes some of the most beautiful devices I’ve seen yet, but they still can’t touch my E61i.

Eighth, this would be the perfect job for me to have as a college student. I don’t even have a bachelors degree yet and I know this is why I’ve been turned down for every single position I applied for within Nokia. Experience is worth more than the sheets of paper Universities print after nearly half a decade of attendance, but documentation that I received a full blown education is something that will be required of me no matter where I may work in the next 5+ years.

Ninth, RingNokia.com is my personal domain and I’m not giving it up. If things
don’t work out and I have start from scratch, you’ll know where to go.

Tenth, Cybette posted one of my favorite comments:

If I remember correctly, Stefan mentioned he is returning to school next semester. Imagine trying to hold down a full-time job, blog for RingNokia, AND take college classes? Most people would be hard-pressed to handle two of the three well.

Let’s say he gives up his job at Helio and tries to make money from ads and sponsorship on RingNokia. We readers have no problems with it, and that’s great. But it is extra work for Stefan (sponsorship don’t just magically happen), possibly on a continual basis, with no guarantee on how much he can make month-to-month. Anyone willing to buy one RingNokia T-shirt every month? If yes, who’s going to design new T-shirts and swags every month? Besides maintaining a blog, Stefan now has to maintain an ecommerce site?

The fact is Stefan and Intomobile both have something to offer each other. We as fans and supporters don’t want to see him get the short end of the stick. But if the details of the offer are reasonable, I don’t see why it has to be a bad thing. As a subscriber of this site I would hate to see RingNokia go. And my initial reaction echoes all of yours. However, as a friend, I can only encourage him to make this decision based on *his* needs and desires rather than my opinions and wants.

There you have it. These are some of the reasons for my justification as to why I think a move to IntoMobile would be beneficial. I love Nokia, but I know they aren’t going to take me seriously until I have a degree or two under my belt. My bach in "General Studies" is going to be a blow to me ego, but that is my fault for being fickle and changing my major every few semesters. An MBA should fix things right up and hopefully I’ll be where I want to be in a few years.

Ring Nokia may go away, but it is just a URL. Tomorrow at 10:00 I will meet with a lawyer to review my contract and I’ll sticky this blog post on top to let any final comments or objections sink in. I will not sign it until I feel 100% sure of myself and right now I am 99.98% sure. It hurts me to know that I’m upsetting some of you guys with this decision, but I think in the long run it will be beneficial.

I’ve never been one to sit idle, I love change. I want to give intomobile a shot.

Ken Camp was one of the first members in the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Blogger Relations program that I found online. Ever since our first contact we’ve spoken about numerous topics, but in the end it all came back to Nokia.

Today he talks about the legal troubles I’m having:

Nokia, you simply screwed the pooch on this one. No other way to put it. Stefan is one of the most out spoken Nokia proponents on the planet. You could have handled it any number of ways. You could have turned it into a PR plus, and instead, you came out looking like a bully going after the little guy.

I’m quite impressed with the Nokia products I’ve had the privilege of evaluating. From a product standpoint, Nokia is clearly in a leadership role pointing the way to a very mobile future.

From a positioning standpoint, the Nokia Blogger Relations program has done wonders to position Nokia well, and for good reason.

Had I been in Stefan’s position, I expect this would have escalated into a very public, very large black eye for Nokia. But instead, you sent the lawyers after an ally who is, for all intents and purposes, a college student who wants to come work for you. He’s that big a fan.

Shame on you Nokia for one of the worst cases of mismanagement for 2007. You’re in the running for blunder of the year at this point. Get off your butts and salvage this and turn it into a win you fools.

Nokia doesn’t owe me anything Ken. The lawyers who filed this complaint against me are just doing their job and probably don’t even care about the telecommunications industry in the first place. They are just intellectual property security guards.

Could the Nokia Communications Team turn this into a PR plus? Doubtful. I just want them to tell Nokia Legal to drop their complaint and get off my back.

The company is so big that people have no idea what is happening next door. This is the sad truth of many multinational corporations, but it is also one of the reasons I started Ring Nokia in the first place. I know I’ve said this many times already, but I think the Channel 9 community is the best example of a company trying to humanize themselves. I still want to bring that same spirit of enthusiasm and desire to share passion within the walls of Nokia, but reality offered me quite a bitch slap in the face.

The situation I’m in is just something I want to go away. I have enough trouble with the law thanks to my speeding habit

Matt seems to echo Ken’s thoughts and goes one step further citing that Nokia has gone overboard:

This is absolute fucking bullshit Nokia.   These photos were posted on HowardForums, which is perhaps the most well known mobile phone forum on the web.  Stefan from Ring Nokia pulled those photos up, and like any blogger in his position would, posted about them on his site.

The fact is this Nokia: you fucked up.  Somehow or another, you had these prototypes jacked from one of your facilities.  It was your security blunder that allowed this to happen.

Now, if you want to protect your trade secrets, and you don’t want
these prototype pictures posted, why not do what you’ve done in every
other case: email Stefan and ask him to take them down.  Trust me, he
would do it.  He has a great respect for you as a company, and a lot of
passion about your products.

But no, instead Nokia has decided to take the extreme and unnecessary step of trying to get Stefan’s entire site removed!  So here’s something for Nokia’s crack legal team to consider:

1) Just because someone has pictures of your prototype (which they
obtained from a public internet forum) does not make them a party to
the theft of those prototypes.

2) Having Stefan’s entire site removed is not an answer here.  Are you going to have HowardForums shut down?  Engadget?  Gizmodo?
Instead, you could ask that Stefan remove the pictures from his site
(which he’s preemptively done by the way, since he’s not looking for trouble here).

It’s moves like this that sour people in the blogger community
towards your company.  Whether you’d like to admit it or not, blogger’s
have a strong impact on driving sales of your products, not to mention
your financial portfolio (Apple/Engadget anyone?).  Rather than biting the hand that feeds, why not try some simple 3rd grade diplomacy?

I think what I said to Ken applies to you as well Matt. When you talk about "Nokia," who exactly are you referring to? The company has over 50,000 employees and I bet the handful who read this blog are just about as pissed off as you are. If they had the power to hit the off switch for this whole fiasco they would do it in a heart beat, but they don’t work in that department.

OK so Nokia Legal is acting a little bit rude, but it doesn’t mean that the engineers working on the next mobile operating system, the developers brainstorming the next killer app, the marketers demoing advanced features to consumers and the designers creating devices that are absolutely stunning should be insulted and blamed.

Nokia is still the apple (NSDQ: AAPL) of my eye in this vast and complicated world of mobile telecommunications and just because a team of lawyers in NYC want to get rid of me it does not mean that Nokia as a company wants to silence my voice.

The lawyers can shut down RingNokia.com, but they will never get rid of Stefan Constantinescu.

Ever.

After contacting Darby & Darby numerous times to try and find out what I did wrong I simply gave up and contacted "Domains By Proxy."

They were kind enough to forward me the complaint that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has filed against me. Yes you read that right, Nokia has filed a complaint against me.

You can read the PDF here: Download ltr. Unauthorized use of Nokia’s Proprietary Trade Secrets (01104452).PDF

In summary: I made a blog post on April 02, 2007 that contained pictures of the supposed Nokia 8600. That device was stolen from a Nokia building in Arizona! They [Nokia] think I had something to do with the theft!

I’m just about as shocked as you are. Seriously, that is some heavy shit.

Right now I have no idea what to feel. I still admire Nokia and all the products they produce. I enjoy the time I’ve spent with the many employees I met in Vegas, NYC, Madrid and I can’t wait to see Phil and Ganesh again in Chicago (is Mikko coming?) next month. I’m a little … heart broken that they want my site shut down, but right now there is nothing I can do but wait for Darby & Darby to return my phone call.

817 808 9258, just say the word and I’ll delete that blog post faster than you can say "Holy Lawsuit Batman!" The post has been removed!

Edit: What really bugs me is the fact that I clearly labeled my source, HowardForums, on the bottom of that post. Why do I get the short end of the stick?

Edit: I deleted the blog post that started this mess. Thanks for the advice Greg!

Ring Nokia (NYSE: NOK) began on November 19, 2006

Here are my stats as of yesterday:

• 377,520 visitors
• 524,761 page views
• The average visit lasted 2 minutes
• The most popular blog post is the Nokia N800 unboxing photo gallery
• 6 countries are responsible for over 50% of my traffic:
  • United States: 21.30 %
  • United Kingdom: 10.55 %
  • Finland: 7.21 %
  • India: 4.18 %
  • Netherlands: 3.79 %
  • Germany: 3.53%
• I have an average of 796 subscribers starting from the first day I switched to Feedburner (2007.01.24) to today.
• That average goes up to 908 if I only take into account the past 7 days.

Why am I telling you this? I got an offer to blog, full time position.

The site: intomobile.com, they’ve been around since March and want me to help them grow

The pay: same as what I’m currently making with Helio (don’t ask me for a specific number)

I have spent the last few days relaxing, trying to clear my head, because this is a descision that will change quite a number of things:

• RingNokia.com will be forwarded to IntoMobile.com, all my blog posts will be transfered to their servers and this website will officially be gone.
• I will be blogging about everything mobile, not just Nokia. This is something I’m looking forward to since I can’t express what the perfect cell phone would be like if I don’t see what the other big players are up to.
• I’m no longer a lone wolf, but a part of a team of bloggers. I’m still going to be publishing rants and editorials however.

I started asking my friends what they thought about this, everyone supports me, but then I remembered that I would not be where I am right now if it wasn’t for you guys. You have been with me from the start, you’ve seen my blogging style transform with time and you even got a glimpse into my personal life.

Not including you guys in this decision would make me feel like a sell out, so I’m asking everyone and anyone who reads this blog to comment on this post.

Should I do this? I certainly want to, but hearing it from you guys would make signing this contract a hell of a lot easier.

Edit: I maintain full creative control of my blog posts. Sorry if there was some confusion regarding that. I specifically brought up the recent PC World debacle and was told that no one will ever ask me to edit my content, regardless of our sponsors. If I’m going to be writing at IntoMobile, I’m going to keep my usual writing style.