Vegas is fabulous. It’s one long street of dried, concentrated tourism. Pedestrian traffic is a nightmare, and anytime there’s a fountain nearby, you’re assured especially difficult passage as the way is usually clogged with people who think that fountains make for good home videos (they don’t).

Statues are popular, too. People stop in front of the Paris and Caesar’s to videotape the statues. The statues that are cheap knock-offs, or lame originals, meant to resemble what you might see in some other country from some other era.

People go home, then, with hours of video of things that don’t actually move. It kind of makes you wonder. In terms of using the right tool for the right job, it would be like George Lucas making Star Wars as a slideshow.

It is Vegas, though, which gives most people an excuse for the silly things they do: They’re all drunk.

The Conference

Good stuff here. I haven’t had a chance to attend much, but what I’ve seen is, no hyperbole, exciting.

I find Windows Mobile to be one of the most interesting things coming out of Microsoft right now. After having spent several years with PocketPCs and, as of a few months ago, SmartPhones, I find myself pitying people who have phones that don’t play movies, run RSS readers, get their email, or make videos. I know that there are a lot of people who do like the idea of having phones that are “just phones,” but I’m not one of them.

What I got to see yesterday was focused on the latest release of Windows Mobile and the .NET Compact Framework v2.0.

With this release, devs are getting:

– Managed bluetooth

– Managed GPS

– Managed Pocket Outlook access

– Managed camera access

– Managed this

– Managed that

– Managed and so on…

One of the main goals of this release seems to have been creating managed wrappers for things that you could only previously do by hitting the WinCE APIs, and also simplifying the code in the process. Using bluetooth from its managed wrapper, for example, supposedly cuts down the required number of lines of native code by about One Bajillion.

What gets me going is that I just don’t have much time to code anymore, and I’m going to avoid doing fun and interesting projects simply because I know how much work is going to have to go into them. With the new stuff (plus SQL Mobile on the SmartPhone), I might actually be able to get things done in my tight time-frame. It’s not like hitting the WinCE APIs was ever all that difficult (they’re largely free of the cruft that’s built-up inside the Win32 world), but it was just never the ideal way to go about doing things. This is better.

The CodeRoom Premier

We debuted episode two of The CodeRoom last night to a room of (mostly) enthusiastic viewers. This episode was built around Windows Mobile technologies, so it only seemed appropriate to show it first at the Mobile DevCon.

It went over much better than I expected. I’m a very critical and skeptical guy, so I tend to downgrade things in my head that might be altogether pleasant for other people. While I like this episode of The CodeRoom better than the pilot, we still aren’t There with the show. However, I’m going to have a lot more creative input on the next episode (not hard to do since I pretty much had zero on this one), and I think we’ll get it There.

Even with that in mind, though, this episode shows more of the potential than the pilot did, and there’s also the bonus of all the cool tech in it. You’re going to get to see the managed bluetooth and camera APIs, new IDE support for working with mobile databases, new designer support, new controls (the SmartPhone has a web browser control now), and also how to build a kiosk platform using Windows XP Embedded.

So the tech is very good :)

If I had to be critical about anything, I’d probably be most critical of my own performance, but I think that’s natural. It was the first time in my life that I had ever had “lines,” and it felt a little weird to deliver them – it shows, too. You’ll see what I’m talking about if you watch the show.

After the showing, someone asked me for my autograph, which, although very well intentioned, embarrassed the hell out of me. Since I was just sort of along for the ride on this episode, little more than an animated prop, I felt like I really hadn’t contributed anything, and so didn’t feel right about taking any credit. I signed the shirt anyway, but ran away afterward and hid behind James Pratt until the room cleared.

Anyway, if you do watch the show, and if you’re interested, check out the updates to the web site. We’ve added a blog, forums, and a photo gallery.

I imagine that the forums will be the most active part of the site, as I’m hoping to use it to get you to tell me why you think the show did/didn’t suck. There’s also going to be space to discuss each episode and the approach the coders took to solve their CodeRoom challenge. I noticed that some of you had some ideas about how things should have been done in the pilot, and thought you might like a place to voice your opinions.

With that, I’m going to head back into the conference and try to get in a few hands-on labs before the doors close tonight…