This Thursday, January 8 marks the start of the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), running in Las Vegas through Sunday, January 11. And while there will certainly be no shortage of blogs and news outlets covering the plethora of tech news that will emerge, there's only one destination for the kind of mobile specific, in-depth analysis you've come to expect from my CIO.com blog: The Mobile WorkHorse. Here's why.

Ye olde rumor mill never does stop churnin', does she? Today, all the fuss is over information that suggests Palm's latest smartphone, which will reportedly run the company's much-anticipated—and long overdue—"Nova" operating system, sports a full-QWERTY slider-keyboard and a large touch screen, not unlike the popular Android-powered G1.

Despite a notable lack of Wi-Fi, Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry Storm packs internal GPS. But until today, pickings were slim when it came to full-fledged GPS navigation apps for the Storm; Verizon Wireless's own VZ Navigator was the only option. Thanks to GPS software vendor TeleNav and its TeleNav GPS Navigator for Storm, that's no longer the case—and the company's giving away free 30-day trials.

Since its release last month, users of Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry Storm have had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the device. Early Storm adopters either saw promise in the smartphone immediately, despite the poor quality OS code Verizon Wireless sold it with. Or they blasted the BlackBerry maker and cursed the carrier for shipping a smartphone that simply wasn't ready for the masses. This week, conflicting news reports raise the question: Has the BlackBerry Storm been a success for RIM and Verizon or a slow failure?

No smartphone is perfect. There are always features that could be added to even the highest-end devices to further their functionality. For the iPhone, cut and paste likely tops the list of most desired features. The brand new BlackBerry Storm? Wi-Fi. T-Mobile's G1, the first handset powered by Google's Android mobile OS, lacks one of the most basic features for a touch-screen device: an on-screen virtual keyboard. But according to reports, that's going to change in January 2009—and the upcoming Android virtual keyboard has already been caught on video.

Macintosh users with BlackBerry smartphones just got one step closer to being able to use theirs Mac to fully manage Research In Motion (RIM) devices. That’s because RIM has quietly released a “preview” version of its BlackBerry Media Sync software for Mac, which lets BlackBerry owners sync their non-DRM protected iTunes music files to their smartphones.

As CIO.com's New England office slowly empties out for the holidays—and we batten down the hatches in preparation for an impending nor'easter—I wanted to take a moment to wish each and every one of you a safe and merry holiday season.