{"id":580192,"date":"2010-05-26T18:16:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T22:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crunchgear.com\/?p=159879"},"modified":"2010-05-26T18:16:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T22:16:07","slug":"exclusive-the-helio-ocean-3-that-could-have-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/580192","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: The Helio Ocean 3 that could have been"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mobilecrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Oz3-3.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was a sad day for me, albeit one that was a long time coming. Yesterday, Helio, a wireless MVNO co-operated by EarthLink and South Korea&#8217;s SK Telecom, let out its final death cry. As I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobilecrunch.com\/2010\/03\/01\/virgin-mobile-usa-to-kill-their-postpaid-service-on-may-25th\/\">predicted in March<\/a>, Virgin Mobile, who had acquired the failing company just two years prior, was pulling the plug on the post-paid side of their service that Helio had become. The lights were dimmed, the blinds were closed, and accounts were terminated. Just like that, Helio was dead.<\/p>\n<p>As a small (yet lovely) chunk of our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobilecrunch.com\/\">MobileCrunch<\/a> readers may know, Helio was of some importance to me. On a whim one weekend, long before I became a writer here, I founded a community called Heliocity &#8212; which, as you could probably guess by now, was focused on Helio. It was a pretty tightly knit group of 10 thousand-or-so of the geekiest geeks you&#8217;ll ever meet, hacking at &#8212; and nerding out over &#8212; every Helio phone we could get our hands on. That community got me into blogging, which took me to all sorts of industry events, where I in turn met all the people who eventually lead me to my job here at TechCrunch.<\/p>\n<p>To celebrate this nostalgia and recognize the rather cool company that once was, I present: the Helio Ocean 3. This is the phone that was to be Helio&#8217;s savior; this is their unfinished magnum opus. Prior to today, it was a myth; no one outside of the company had seen it, and the number of people <em>within<\/em> the company who had seen it could be counted on two hands.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobilecrunch.com\/2010\/05\/26\/exclusive-the-helio-ocean-3-that-could-have-been\/\">Read the rest at MobileCrunch >><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/oHrSoQQqXi7eWgtaXx7nfM_gEI0\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/oHrSoQQqXi7eWgtaXx7nfM_gEI0\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/oHrSoQQqXi7eWgtaXx7nfM_gEI0\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/oHrSoQQqXi7eWgtaXx7nfM_gEI0\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=hyp9DJHkcl8:tpRes5kOzeQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=hyp9DJHkcl8:tpRes5kOzeQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=hyp9DJHkcl8:tpRes5kOzeQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=hyp9DJHkcl8:tpRes5kOzeQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=hyp9DJHkcl8:tpRes5kOzeQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was a sad day for me, albeit one that was a long time coming. Yesterday, Helio, a wireless MVNO co-operated by EarthLink and South Korea&#8217;s SK Telecom, let out its final death cry. As I predicted in March, Virgin Mobile, who had acquired the failing company just two years prior, was pulling the plug [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":682,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/682"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}