Shoshannah Stern is an actress who has appeared in Weeds, Threat Matrix and other television series. You can currently see her on the CBS series Jericho.

How did you first learn about Danger-powered devices?

I still had one of those old little things with those tiny gray and black screens. No IM and no text, only email. My dad came to visit with the brand new Sidekick, and he kept singing its praises. He's not one to back things easily, especially things that are brand new. He's usually a little bit cautious, but he was like, look at this, it's so user friendly and easy to use! I was like, okay, Daddy knows best. I'm getting one!

How does it impact your day-to-day life?

A better question would be how does it not affect my day-to-day life?! It's my lifeline, and I wish I was kidding when I say that. Jericho texts me with call times which can change three times a day, so I have to keep checking it to see when I have to go in. My agents and managers send me emails through my Sidekick. Besides that, my boyfriend and I don't live in the same town, so we send each other hundreds of texts, emails, and IMs when we're not together. It's also how I keep in touch with friends and family. People page or text me asking me to take classes at the gym with them or get coffee or lunch. If I didn't have my Sidekick, I would seriously have no social life. Sometimes I accidentally leave it behind when I go to work and then I feel like a part of me is missing!

What feature do you find yourself using the most?

It's a toss up between AIM, which I consider my phone, since I can talk to people in real time, or the e-mail and text. I use all of them for practically everything.

What are your thoughts on how the Sidekick has impacted celebrity culture and/or the Deaf community?

The funny thing is in the past people outside the deaf community never really had cell phones, only pagers. So if people on the street saw me using pagers to send emails, they would go, hey, what's that? I would explain and it would come up that I was deaf and that's why it was good for me. They'd go, wow, that's cool, I wish I could have one too. Every time I saw people using pagers out, I'd think they might be deaf, and most of the time, they were! Now, people on the street see me with the Sidekick and they're like, wow, that's a hot phone, I have one of those too! Almost everyone I know who is deaf has a Sidekick. So deaf people and celebrities have the same communication device of choice, which is fine by me.

What is your favorite game?

Tetris. I downloaded it on my Sidekick II, but when I upgraded to the Sidekick 3, they didn't have Tetris in the catalog! I miss it. Can you help with getting that game back for me? I'm serious!

What is your funniest/most surreal/favorite Sidekick moment?

When I first met my boyfriend, he had a regular old cell phone. He lives in San Francisco and I live in Los Angeles, so on our first date, we were walking in San Francisco. He kept looking at my Sidekick and he said, "You know what, I think it would be a lot easier if I got one too, since I only have a cell and they don't have the AIM feature." I thought he was speaking rhetorically, so I went yeah, I guess so. Then I realized we were standing outside of a T-Mobile store, and he went right in and got one! That was when I knew he was a keeper.