Thoughts that stuck with me back home after I drove past a billboard promoting Disney’s “free park pass on your birthday” as I tried to get over the disappointment because my birthday already passed this year. Hey Mickey, next year, can you please start promoting that in December? …

-CES is huge. Humongous. Enormous. Big. 2,700 exhibitors and 135,000 attendees from 140 countries. They say “International CES”, but it really is. Saw a lot of foreign colleagues all week in Vegas.

-I really hope these foreign colleagues have been other places in the US. As my boss pointed out, we’d hate to think Vegas is what they think of when they think “USA”.

-I kept trying to find a clever way to work in the fact that the porn convention was going on across town, but never did. Oh well. At least now you know.

-Hard drive capacity keeps increasing, but man, we’re generating a lot of content. Just at the show, there were cameras & camcorders- both professional & consumer level- everywhere. What’s happening to all these pictures & videos? I took 300+ pictures and only posted 100. I’m sure the same thing is happening with others.

-I love my BlackBerry 8830 (World Edition) and Verizon Wireless’ coverage. Running around non-stop for 4 days, it allowed me to stay in contact with the office back in LA, as well as friends & family around the world. I really don’t think I could live without it.

-Walking around the show, there were tons of iPod speaker docks & speaker systems. But very few of them with good sound.

-Cell phone advances were strikingly missing from the show. There were TVs, laptops, Blu-ray players, 3-D movies, TVs, and so on, but very little in the way of new cell phones. Palm had their big announcement, but overall, cell phones had very little presence.

-Do yourself a favor, if you’re heading to Vegas this year, make a point to have at least one meal at Company American Bistro inside the Luxor. Tapas style small portions so you get to sample a variety of things, all of which are amazing. Best meal I’ve had in a long time.

-The world is made up of companies that you’ve never heard of. 2,700 vendors at the show, and I swear I’ve heard of, maybe, a few hundred. Who are all these other companies? What do they do?

-We need more recycling. The vast amounts of paper alone that was generated, and discarded, for this show is a great microcosm of our recycling problem in general.

-You really get to see what humanity is like at shows like this. Just the act of transporting 135,000 people to and from the convention center every day means you inevitably have to stand in a line or two. But I heard very few complaints, most people held doors for you and said thank you if you did the same for them. We’re not so rude so bad after all.

-There are so many great tech toys at CES, I’m sure you want to buy some (all?) of them. Check out PriceGrabber.com- it’s a shopping portal that finds the best prices, and tends to be lower because of the contracts they have with their merchants. It’s worth a look.

-After being home a few hours and searching a bit to see how much some of my favorite items cost, I’m amazed at the deals available. With the economy down, people are fighting for your dollar more than anytime in recent memory.

-There was a bar next to my departing gate at the Vegas airport playing an old Phil Collins CD from start to finish. No satellite radio, no mix of music- just Phil Collins from beginning to end. Amazing.

-People who have Captivate in their buildings have an amazing affection for it. We were stopped no less than a half dozen times by people who recognized the name Captivate Network on our name badges. Each one had their own unique story they wanted to share about why they love us. Very cool.

-Seeing these products is great, but actually using them is better. You get only an initial taste at CES, a first opinion heavily driven by looks. I can’t wait to test them out in the coming months and really see which ones are the best!

--Peter Szabo