Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

CES: it's the geek Mecca. This year, for me, it was a train-wrecka (har har!). Join me on my journey of unpacking the frustrations and tribulations of a CES I'd rather forget. I need some catharsis from the five days I spent in Vegas, so this is more for me than you, but perhaps you'll find it entertaining in a "driving past a car wreck" sort of way.

When I went to CES 2009, I posted quite a few videos of what I saw there. Producing those videos in 1080p h.264 on my Dell XPS M1330 took a long time, so on December 9th I placed an order for a pimped-out Core i7-based Dell Studio 17. Plenty of time before CES, right? Wrong. Despite calling in a favour with a contact I have in Dell's CTO office, as of December 30th I still didn't have the laptop - the estimated ship date was January 8th, three days after I left for CES. Switching to plan "B", I went out and purchased an HP dv7, a $2000 Core i7-based laptop with a 17.3" screen and a weight of seven pounds. I was planning on bringing this beast of a laptop with me to CES to leave in my hotel room for video production, and I'd carry a netbook me me for day to day CES reporting. Then I started to hear about the security restrictions after the December 25th "underwear bomber" was foiled, and my already rocky start to CES prep got worse. Read more...

"Here are the Top 20 mobile apps as selected by our experts. You have 25 votes. Cast them as you wish. Put all 25 on one app. Spread them out. To find out more about an app, click on the app's name or image. To vote, click on the ‘VOTE' button below each app - one click equals one vote."

I'm involved as a judge in the Mobile Apps Showdown for CES 2010, and today the voting has kicked off, so click on through and cast your vote for your favourite application. Sadly, there are only a handful of applications unique to Windows Mobile, but the ones that are there are quite good. Voting is fast and simple - and requires no registration - so please go vote!