When going to industry events, even in beautiful resort locations, don't bring the fiancée.

Since mobile gaming got some wind in its sails from the arrival of the Apple App Store, many of us have wondered whether smartphone gaming was going to erode Nintendo and Sony's handheld business. The answer is obvious. Both Nintendo and Sony responded to the app explosion with more robust downloadable game stores themselves, but the results have been mixed at best.

One of the most promising extensions of existing media to mobile has to be out-of-home. In fact, I wonder if eventually mobile marketing and advertising will be seen under the digital OOH category. I have already heard some agency executives talk about conceptualizing the mobile display and app platforms as extensions of their OOH strategy. Increasingly, as it uses location-based solutions, mobile feels less like a remote extension of the Web and something closer to being another screen in an out-of-home network, albeit a screen that is never predictably fixed.

Because of its TV roots and obvious ties to broadcast and cable advertisers, Hulu seems to be everyone's favorite professional-grade digital video service to watch. But while Hulu captured much of the press attention, the Vevo portal of music video may actually be the online video success story of the year. sessions. In raw audience, comScore now measures Vevo well ahead of Hulu.

Within two years I am sure that consulting a cell phone's many shopping resources in-store will be a reflex for many people. This is where the mobile platform maps perfectly with America's official national sport, consumption. This is also where the competition among retailers and their apps, third parties and their apps, and online retailers and their catalogs is going to become heated. The war for the aisles is just beginning.This week the dam seemed to burst with new offerings aimed at the in-store experience.

Getting into the app game is not easy for a lot of brands that don't have an obvious, relevant role on a smartphone. Rather than ask, how do we get an app of our own, they might start with the user and ask, what valuable tool does the user want we might sponsor?

I am not entirely sure that after two years of experience under marketers' belts, branded applications are any smarter or alluring now than they ever were. While there are many examples of success like Zippo's Virtual Lighter and VW's driving games, the App Store is still littered with loads of brand-driven apps that just make me scratch my head and wonder what some of these marketers were trying to achieve.

We spent so many years in this industry discussing how to "strip down" the Web for handsets, how to "mobilize" content by chopping it into "snacks," how to make mobile a "complementary" extension of Web and analogue media, we missed how effective the platform can be as a better content consumption device. We sold the Web for its infinitude. The pit was bottomless here -- the content endless, the choices, infinite.And that is the problem. Mobile should not be seen as "Web lite." Instead, it should sell to its real strengths: context and convenience, but most of all, clarity amid …

The touch interface is turning out to be a more critical turning point for mobile platforms and for media in general than I think many of us supposed. The tablet platforms are really bringing home an insight that we gleaned from the iPhone/Android interface, but I think become more apparent and important when writ large (literally). Touch appears to be one reason behind the high engagement levels publishers are reporting from their mobile media.