We've heard plenty about the negative effects of Blackberry dependence -- eye damage, thumb damage, the complete loss of interpersonal communication skills -- but Chicago hotel general manager Rick Ueno is helping his guests kick their high-tech habit. Upon check-in to the Sheraton Chicago, you can surrender your precious handheld -- we're assuming any type of life-stealing smartphone is eligible -- where a non-robotic clerk will keep it under lock and key until you break down and ask for it back. It was Ueno's own addiction that sparked the idea for the free program, so he understands how hard it is to go cold turkey, even if you're only out of touch from the time you check in until you fire up the in-room WiFi connection.

[Thanks Alex N]

RIM's effort to position certain BlackBerries as more consumer-oriented products received a big shot in the arm today, as Sona Mobile Holdings -- which may or may not be the same company that's supposedly developing a Star Trek-themed cellphone -- announced the first-ever dedicated multimedia player for the company's "latest generation of devices." Although very little will be known about the software until it's unveiled at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando next month, we do know that the so-called Sona BlackBerry Media Player will be able to handle streaming video, and that the first content provider will be CanWest Media Works. CanWest's offering will come in the form of a daily Sona Mobile BerryCast (their term for a wirelessly-updated podcast), which will deliver downloadable news clips to a user's device. Not even a screenshot is available yet to show you, unfortunately, but rest assured that we'll be all over this come May 16th.

[Via BBHUB]

It was bound to happen sooner or later, and now the Blackberry 8700 smartphone is finally available to push email-loving members of the T-Mob, as the 8700g. As far as the features go, well, you should all know them quite well by now, as Cingular has had this model since late last year: quad-band GSM with EDGE data, a 312MHz Intel processor, QVGA color display, Java, and Bluetooth 2.0, plus the standard suite of RIM-supplied applications. Getting your Crackberry fix from the big "T" will cost you $300 with a contract (after $100 in rebates).

[Thanks, Phil G]