Blog entries about Awards

Nicky Boom was a nice platformer game released for the Commodore Amiga and MS DOS back in 1992 (Wiki page HERE).

Our judges are getting ready to vote in the 8th annual Best Software Awards. For almost three weeks a draft of the nominations has been public. The public until is invited to suggest nominations or that product should be un-nominated until Wed, July 16.

Now that I’ve become a proud owner of a super-mobile HP TC1100 Tablet PC, using mobile devices (smart phones) as external modems have became essential for me. Up until now, I’ve done most of my Web browsing, YouTube watching outdoors with some of my mobile devices.

Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s 8^th annual Best Software Awards is in full swing. The awards help users select the best Windows Mobile applications, utilities, and games, while honoring companies that produce outstanding software.

 The preliminary list of Windows Mobile Windows Mobile  nominations is ready for public viewing and comment.

The schedule and rules for the eighth annual Smartphone and Pocket PC magazine Best Software Awards 2008 have been posted.

Everything you might want to know about the 2008 awards, plus link to 2007 winners can be found at the awards home page.

Given this week’s discussion of coolest apps, I feel comfortable briefly discussing Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s Best of Everything Software Package and Best of Everything Demo CD. For three years we have offered what IMHO is the best software package ever (content and value) in the history of any computer operating system!

Basically, we approached Best Software Award winner and finalists. We offered them year long publicity on-line, in print, and on a Demo CD, plus banner advertising. In exchange our partners provided us with a limited number of software licenses which we sold as a package.

We will stop taking orders for the 2007 Best of Everything Software Package, on Thursday, January 24. That gives customers just one week to register the software they want to use in the package, since we close down our registration site January 31. Due to contractual obligations, no exceptions can be made about registering software after January 31. (The registration process makes sense by visiting a clone of the actual registration site.)

We actually planned to have a 2008 Best of Everything Software Package and Demo CD. In fact we had well over 70 vendors and 100 products already signed up as late as November.

So why cancel in 2008?

I asked our bloggers to answer this week: "what are the coolest apps and services for your Windows Mobile device?" You've already seen Mike, Nate and Ben's post. Hopefully, we'll see more responses.

Actually, I have the same question to you -- what is (are) your favorite/coolest app(s) or service(s) for your phone or Pocket PC? You can interpret "cool" any way you want. We may well publish your thoughts in the magazine, which is a great way to thank the developers.

What about me? I am going to tell you the coolest apps for me this past month.

If you are looking for software, check out this year’s winners, finalists, and nominees of the 2007 Best Software Awards.

If you want to make your Windows Mobile device even more valuable, study the expanded Pocket PC (touch screen) and Smartphone (no touch screen) category structure for the awards.

If you read these blogs, visited other Windows Mobile web sites, or are familiar with our Best Software Awards process, you might be a little curious about Werner Ruotsalainen . (FYI -- Werner is Finish and lives and works in Hungary.)

A few minutes ago David Seagull, our marketing manager and I made three different videos about different aspects of the Best Software Awards 2007. As you may know, Werner has done an incredible job as Nominations Manager, expanding our number of categories and helping finalize our nominations list.

David Seagull our marketing director has been encouraging me for months to add video's to our site -- for reviews, for how-to's, and to sell our stuff.

Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s 7th annual Best Software Awards helps users select the best Pocket PC and Smartphone applications, utilities, and games, while honoring companies that produce outstanding software.

Throughout June, Nominations Manager, Werner (“Menneisyys”) Ruotsalainen, and the 2007 Board of Experts developed the nominations list.

On the first of each month, our expert bloggers team together to answer one question. This month we were asked what was our most important application. I was amazed that four of us zeroed in on Ilium Software's eWallet!

As it happens, this week Ilium Software is celebrating it's 10th anniversary. Each day they offer a special on one of their products. Today $10 buys you the professional version (desktop and Windows Mobile device versions) of eWallet!

Randy Siegel of Microsoft talks with a radio interviewer about the use of Windows Mobile in the military. A Blackberry user, the interviewer states that Windows Mobile seems "light years ahead and the Blackberry." Randy, magnanimously pointed out that Blackberry was the "category creator." It is a fun and interesting brief interview.

Every year Microsoft sponsors a conference for Windows Mobile and Embedded Developers. It's my favorite show of the year. This year MEDC will be held again at a fun and classy venue, the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas May 1-3.. (If you haven’t been there, the Venetian is a trip.

For the seventh year in a row, Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine is hosting a contest to determine the best Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone software. Readers of our blog will likely agree with me that Werner (Menneisyys) Ruotsalainen is the world's leading expert on third party Windows Mobile software. Werner has agreed to be the nominations' manager. That means that he will work with our expert judges, vendors, and the public to determine the nominations.

To learn more, please go to www.pocketpcmag.com/awards for more information.

There is an interesting USA Today story. Occupational organizations are reporting that improper use and overuse of personal digital assistants (PDAs) can lead to hand throbbing, tendonitis and swelling, and a condition known as "BlackBerry Thumb"

Personally, thanks to hand cramping, I had to go cold-turkey playing stylus intensive games for about 6 weeks, while I received regular hand massages from a physical therapist.

At heart, I am an optimistic about the potential of humankind and possibilities for a much better world. I know that flies in the face of conventional wisdom, and of all the terrible news we hear every day.

Thanks to literally 1000’s of hours of evaluation time from Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s Board of Experts, the final list of nominees, finalists and winners of the Best Software Awards have been selected.

For a simple listing of nominees, finalists and winners go to the Nominees tab.

We've promised that we would announce winners of our awards no later than today. Unfortunately, we had a catastrophic hard disk crash last week (actually 2 of them). So, despite what is supposed to be latest and greatest hard disk redundancy system, all work copied to our server after Wed has been lost. Also, we lost about half the emails sent to us on Thursday and Friday -- so please resend if you sent any of us something.

We had our Awards pages ready on the server. We had to recreate it today while having limited access to the Internet and the server.

I just posted about the challenge many of us face about having too much stuff to do and manage, and using David Allen's approach to solve the problem. I mentioned mind mapping from Mindjet as one solution.