I just arrived from Cannes at South France where the weather was far better then here in Munich since we had there a lot of sun and now snow (warm enough to run around with a sweatshirt) while we have still snow in Munich.
I had two real mpressive weeks I've spent first in Redmond on the MVP summit and after in Cannes on the 3GSM Congress. While it was pretty good to met all my fellow MVP friends in Redmond and to have some great discussions and peer to peer conversations with the Microsoft folks it wasn't less good to be in Cannes again to get the latest information what's up in the 3GSM world and which services and devices we might see during the next months and year.

I will give both events a coverage tomorrow or so but first I have to read tons of E-Mails I got from you during the past two weeks. Sure I tried to have a look every evening but it was to much input overall... ;-) So please be patience a little bit more and I will try to come back to you as soon as possible with my replies.

I just want to inform you that you will not find much new news during the next 14 days.
Right now I'm packing my luggage for a trip to Redmond where I will go to on Saturday until Friday next week. Next week our annual MVP Summit happens there where I will come together with 800 other MVPs. I'm sure it will be a great event with keynotes from Jim Allchin, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and hope to get some additional information what's cooking on the Campus.

I wish all my Chinese readers a Happy New Year whether you are speaking Mandarin "Gong Xi Fa Cai" or Cantonese "Kung Hei Fat Choi"!
You may wonder why I remember Chinese New Year as a "Gwailo"!? Pretty simple - because I lived and worked some years ago in Hong Kong, when I was there for a trainee program (see my old, long time not updated personal homepage here).

I hope the Year of the Sheep brings you all the best!

Holy cow, how time goes bye... Today - 10 years ago - I got my first GSM phone. It was the Orbitel TPU 900 GSM portable which had a stand-by time of approximately 8 hours and a talk time of something around 30 minutes. :-) Wow, I remember when I left "Hoyer's Telefonzelle" (the store where I subscribed for a 12 months contract with DeTeMobil D1 - better known as T-Mobile today) with this brick and I was so proud to became "truly mobile". That time, no one was talking about GSM 900, 1800 or 1900 - we had GSM only (which was working on 900 MHz) and a coverage which was far away from "truly mobile" and International Roaming between a handful of countries (like today, 10 years later with GPRS).

Below you see my first GSM phone from Orbitel, a British manufacture who is out of the business for a long time now and on the right a coverage map from Germany which isn't one from that days but today. That days it was