Perhaps, what I am most proud of in producing the magazine is our annual Best Software Awards. If you haven't seen the results yet in this our eighth year, check out our awards site. You can also pick up a copy of our final issue, the Super Resource Guide, due out this month with awards results and details.

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. Lead blogger and nominations manager Werner Ruotsalainen makes all final decisions.

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.

If you are a vendor, make sure you submit product information (free) at our Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories.

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.