Back to Work! (thanks Andy)

Man, just when you thought you could take a break again here come the nice words of praise from Mr. VoIP himself, Andy Abramson. Sure, go ahead and point people to the new site when there’s nothing happening there! Nothing like a friendly kick in the pants to get ya blogging again.

If you’ve poked around here a bit you are probably getting the idea that Sidecut Reports will eventually be something more than blog posts about scoring sweet parking at the Palazzo to avoid the CES crowds (FYI, the parking worked Tuesday and Wednesday as well). You can stay tuned by subscribing to the RSS feed here, or you can shoot me an email to sidecutreports at gmail dot com and I will personally alert you to any major annoucements/news/sports predictions. (Still working on getting an email subscription list together; like the Palazzo, there are still guys wandering around Sidecut HQ with cordless drills but the doors are open so c’mon in.)

On the casual blogging front, I am interested to see what really happens this week at MacWorld; I find this report of a WiMAX-enabled MacBook hard to swallow, especially since Intel isn’t even promising WiMAX PC cards or chips until mid-summer at best. A better guess might be 3G inside, as others have suggested. Can’t wait to hear.

As Andy noted, I will also be continuing to pinch-hit in the GigaOM lineup for the near future, concentrating on matters telecom and policy so feel free to keep me updated about any news, announcements or rumors in that arena to that email address, sidecutreports (all one word) at gmail dot com.

Mr. Vegas at CES: The Palazzo Rules

Mr. Vegas is in the house at CES, and when it comes to beating the crowds and getting things done our chip count is up, not down. After a seamless flight in on the 6:20 a.m. nerd bird from SFO, Mr. Vegas scored by pulling into the just-paved underground parking lot at the Palazzo, the new (opened yesterday) Siamese-twin add-on to the Venetian.

Though we’d called ahead to ascertain that the lot was open, the payoff was uncertain until we came up the escalators into the Palazzo casino area — which turns out to be a much shorter walk to the Venetian/Sands CES area than the Venetian’s own convoluted parking lot. Then after a quick badge check-in we even found a near-empty cafe in the Palazzo for a heart-healthy breakfast with no wait at all (try THAT at the LV Hilton, where coffee shop waits can average two or more hours during CES).

The only glitch so far was our reliance on CES to broadcast the Jerry Yang talk from the LVCC (since the shuttle bus lines were way too long to get over there in time for the 11 a.m. speech). Though they broadcast the morning Panasonic keynote here at the Sands press lounge, we were informed that since Yang’s speech was part of the “Industry Insider” series (and not a “keynote”) there was no live feed. Kind of curious that a show with multiple HD TVs in every nook and cranny can’t put together a live broadcast of every speaker so that you don’t have to waste time shuttling back and forth between the travel-incompatible sites the show is staged at. Oh well.

(From the looks of the hugely long line that just formed in front of me for the free press lunch, guess not many others in the biz care about what Yahoo has to say. What’s the matter with these people, don’t they have expense accounts at publications like Batteries Digest?) Mr. Vegas will not partake of the free lunch, as it violates a Mr. Vegas rule: No Steam Table Food.

Stay tuned for more from Mr. Vegas as CES unfolds. Also check GigaOM where we will be posting news of a more “real” flavor.

Friends of Mr. Vegas sighting: Oliver Rist, now at PC Magazine. Will be seen later this evening staring down chilled martinis. Bet the over.