The Academy Awards are approaching which means it’s time to dust off those search engines and all the permutations of gift/goodie/goody bag/basket for our annual list of items in the Official basket. This year I’ll be striving to keep things pure by not including items that are in those other poseur baskets, no matter how fun and amazing they may be. It’s a difficult task when you have news items like this one about Sprint and Samsung. Note the headline “Sprint And Samsung Give Oscar Nominees Phones.” That makes me want to overlook it since the nominees basket is not the one I’m after. But the content says “Celebrity presenters and performers at the 77th Annual Academy Awards will get the gift of global gab this year with the inclusion of the new Sprint PCS Phone by Samsung in their official Oscar gift baskets.” So maybe it’s the real deal? Motorola is continuing their “tradition of providing the 25 top acting and directing nominees with a not-yet-available mobile phone” and handing out a black RAZR V3, so no matter what you may read, that phone isn’t part of the Official basket (unless perhaps it’s in there too?!). The worst part is we may never know how close or far I get from the actual contents! But it’ll be a fun read anyway. Stay tuned.