This morning at 5:30, I was awakened by a call from Steve telling me that Sarah had shaved several seconds off her events at her just completed varsity swimming time trials! I hate that I missed them, but talking to Steve and then Sarah made it almost as good as being there. Yay Sarah, I am so proud of you - you rock! :0D

I waited until a little bit later, then called Joel to see if he wanted to walk with me to breakfast. Once there, Eric joined us and we enjoyed another fabulous meal before walking down the hall to our morning sessions.

Derek Snyder was the first presenter, giving a quick overview on Windows Mobile. He quickly moved into a demo of Mobile Windows Live. He also showed the new WM5 integration with XBox Live, for those of you that are gamers. Derek then demonstrated some Smartphone power toys and soon to be released applications, including: Photo Browsing App, which allows you to look at thumbnails of stored photos from the Smartphone Today screen, and Speed Dial Today, which shows a photo for each speed dial contact on the Today Screen, and even allows on the fly "ranking" of the photos. Hurricane Tracker is an amazing new program (out today) that shows live tracking of...wait for it...hurricanes! MobiTV is a no-fuss solution for people that want up to 50 channels of live TV streaming on their device. Lobster broadcasts streaming content from the user's PC. Mobile Medical Visualization, a new application for doctors. Holy cow! this app allows doctors to look at patient information, stream CT scan information, 3D heart scans, we actually watched a movie of some woman's colonoscopy...wow, just wow.

Derek gave a demonstration of Tony Hawk (THPS2) on an Axim...then on a Motorola Q. Point being that this was an app that had been made and optimized for an advanced PocketPC device, but was also running quite well on a "lesser" device - his words, Q users, don't hate!

Derek ended his talk with a massive information barrage including details on the latest WM5 AKU3 release. One of the coolest features was Language Pack which allows the user to choose the operating language their device will run. This is huge! So for instance, Dopod could ship a device in China, but if an American user wants to use it in their own language, they can simply set the language to English during the initial setup. There is also a new Auxillery Display which allows the user to choose what they see, a new Quick Start Wizard, Email Account Setup walk-through, various ActiveSync updates, easier WiFi connectivity, changes and updates in Messaging, updates to Windows Media Player - video scaling, and so many other updates that it was near impossible to keep up with everything!

Next, Nick White gave a presentation on Windows Vista which really made me want to try out the beta...possible bugs and all. Any time I see the latest and greatest operating system, it just makes me drool. Maybe is is a "grass is always greener" thing, but wow, Vista looks slick. Nick's demo nearly made my mouth water...okay, not nearly! It did!

At one of the breaks between sessions, we were given a Dopod/HTC Hermes, a custom Vaja case, and a CD containing a release candidate for Windows Vista...hey now! There was no need to jump in that pool after all!

Dion Wiggins, Vice President and Research Director of Gartner, and a man with more credits in his curriculum vitae than...well, I can't even think of a good example, but anyway, he stood up and gave an amazing presentation on what the future holds for mobile devices. Some of the topics he touched upon included: managing how you control your time and productivity with the disruption of being connected 24/7; the many technologies demanded by wireless solutons; multimodal user interaction - like the term "nouse"(...have you heard of this before? Believe it or not, it is an image recognition that uses your nose as a mouse!); Technology that uses such facial recognition as gaze sensing, gestures, 'doubleblinks', lip sync; the many challenges of being a mobile operator; the "internetization" of mobilty; the dimension of design, which covered convergent devices and the idea of a device changing its primary use with the switch of a button that has been programmed to activate a desired profile. Also covered were key trade-offs from various form factorsand future display technology.

Sebastian Schmidt, with SPB Software House gave a mostly confidential speech about their futre Windows Mobile 5 software product roadmap. If you are unfamiliar with their products, take a look at the Pocket PC Software list on the sidebar of my gear diary. What I can tell you is that they have some very nice upcoming applications along with some really excellent already available programs, so keep an eye on the SPB site and definitely give their software a try. I have personally purchased their Diary, Weather & Backup solutions, and I recommend them highly.

Hey, have you noticed the WM5 trend in today's discussions? I've been loving it!

The next presentation was given by Olaf Lohman from ComVu. This is an amazing program and service that allows you to broadcast live content on the net. You can even set up pay-per-view events, so yes...jokes about how the porn industry would love this service abounded. But really, it was one of the most innovative ideas I have seen for imidiate content uploading - almost like having your own television broadcast.

After Olaf's presentation, we had 30 minutes before we needed to meet in the lobby for dinner and an evening of Muay Thai - kickboxing!

For dinner, we went to the most amazing local open-air restaurant, Tangke, where we saw about 30 huge water-filled vats all in a row. Inside these vats were every variety of seafood imaginable - horse-shoe crab, soft-shell crab, different types of fish, mussels, prawns, lobster...we knew we were in for something special! No sooner had we been seated than the meal began. Plate after plate of family style entrees came to the table, along with a soup toureen. About an hour later, we had eaten our fill and were ready to see the fights!

We pulled up at the Muay Thai arena, and the place was teeming with locals. We had ringside seats (1000 Baht each) from where we watched several fights between young boys weighing just 60 (or less) pounds, and there were girls fighting, too! We winced as they punched each other in the face and kicked the crap out of each other...these girls were amazing - they had no fear! Then the 130 pound men came out and the fights got much more serious. I saw (and video recorded) my first knockout fight...holy cow! When the guy was decked in the mouth, the spit flew! Those sitting on the front row, and even those of us on the second, got covered in it! I was thankful for that Hep B shot I'd received before leaving, ha! We were back to the hotel around midnight, and I was so exhausted that it wasn't long before I was in my room and fast sleep.