I am trying to get my hands around the new Android-powered Sprint Galaxy Tab -- literally. It is a slippery thing. You would think that a smaller tablet with a 7-inch screen actually would be easier to handle than its 11-inch rival from Apple. But one-handed use actually stretches my admittedly dainty hands. Thumb typing in portrait mode is nominally better here than on the iPad, but landscape mode is too small for full-hand typing and too large for thumb typing.

Just another friendly reminder to retailers: Your customers are way, way ahead of you when it comes to using mobile as a resource. Even my mobile-averse fiancée is ahead of most of you. And that is saying something. Whenever I hand her a phone in the car to look for directions or a local resource she still looks as if I 'd just handed her a rabid ferret. But she knows very well that I can get just about any product information we need on a smartphone. "Google it," she commands from the steam-cleaner aisle at Best Buy.

"The Sexy Porn Star Name Generator? What the hell is this doing on the phone?" Oops. Perhaps I should have erased all of those adult-content apps I downloaded to the Droid the other day before passing it off to my fiancée. I was hoping to have her test some new person-to-person apps with me, but her first text message from the field got us side-tracked. SMS is a tough medium for rationalizing. Consider this post evidence in my defense. See, honey, I really was researching porn apps for a column.

The other day I was talking with a longtime contact from the b2b publishing industry about how little attention and respect trade publishing gets from the consumer side of the business. And I suspect it is true that most media industry types see the b2b "side" as a backwater of painfully narrow trade journals about pipe fittings and such. In truth, there are many areas in which b2b media is far ahead of the consumer side. The marketing services businesses that many media companies now are embracing, where they take more integrated and consultative roles with clients, has been advancing …

It is the preciousness of personal relationships that also makes me reticent to engage in the "checking-in" behavior that local mobile models like Foursquare and now Facebook Places want me to adopt. I admit that likely I am behind the curve on this one, but I don't think I am alone. "Checking In" with a phone app is asking people to adopt a new behavior -- and to do so mainly for the benefit of a merchant, not for oneself. More to the point, it is asking us to transfer onto impersonal commercial entities what for many of us is …

"Why are we watching this?" I ask my daughter as I join her in the living room for an afternoon of... QVC? I admit, she is a creature of consumer America. Even at this ripe age she has burned through seven or eight retail stages. But she couldn't possibly have vaulted to QVC already. "It's fun," she says, although I haven't a clue what she means by that. Ironic fun? Virtual shopping fun? I try to play along by firing up QVC's recent iPad app.

On a plane heading east after yesterday's OMMA Mobile in Los Angeles, I was trying to do a quick download of all the things I had learned throughout the day as the rest of the US Airways flight slept. I used to be able to sleep on red-eye flights, but now it is just work time. I am sure as the days progress and I catch up on some sleep the takeaways will be more numerous and detailed. But there were some themes reiterated throughout the day that really stuck with me, even at 3 a.m. somewhere over the Rockies.

still can't tell whether many of the branded apps I see even now were built with some real marketing objective in mind -- or simply to look good at the next company board meeting. The line between utility and brand vanity seems like it should be an easy one to discern. But the latest run of branded apps for the iPad are tough ones to call. In just the last few weeks we have seen ambitious releases from Victoria's Secret, Gucci and Coca-Cola. They all have their charms. Humility is not among them. In each, the brand paints itself large …

I still am not convinced that the iAds are that compelling a model for mobile advertising. I understand from anecdotes and press reports that some of the brand advertisers are very pleased with the performance they are seeing from the iAds. But what else are you going to say after ponying up a few million and handing creative control over your message to a third party? As a consumer, I know I am tapping on iAds now just to see what is there, not because the call to action is especially strong. Novelty is not a foundation for sustained performance. …

At next Tuesday's OMMA Mobile show in L.A., "Strike Up the Brands," we will be bringing you executives from Adidas, ING Direct, Buick, Paramount, Sony, ESPN, VISA, and Honda to discuss how their brands are engaging the mobile opportunity. That we were able to bring together so many brand marketers from across such a range of categories underscores just how serious brands are getting and have gotten about the platform.