A new article on the website of the Hollywood Reporter indicates that Comcast- the largest broadband Internet service provider in North America- is seeking a toe-hold in the wireless world.

Maybe not just a toe hold. Maybe more than that.

Comcast's goal, contributing editor Diane Mermigas described Comcast senior executives as saying, would be "to offer itscable TV subscribers the ability to check their Comcast email, voice mail,on-demand video selections and conduct personalized product and service searches on a branded Comcast phone."

Mermigas- who I worked with directly for years and for whom I have the highest professional and professional respect- says that in terms of infrastructure, a major Comcast wireless effort could play out in one of several ways.

These might include Comcast re-selling Sprint or T-Mobile wireless service. I could see this working this way: you buy a Comcast-branded cell phone, as well as minutes from Comcast- but actually you are buying Comcast minutes out of a giant pool of minutes they've purchased from say, Sprint PCS. Not so far-fetched: Qwest Wireless is a Sprint PCS reseller. And DirecTV also has a similar re-seller relationship with Verizon.

The other major scenario Mermigas proposes is that a wireless phone provider and Comcast would strike up a deal allowing for "personalized services across multiple media platforms."

Either scenario sounds plausible -even not to the exclusion of the other.

The other night, I watched Charlie Rose, an intellectual rarity of a television personality, interview palmOne CEO Ed Colligan.

U.S.-based Rose and Colligan talked about the feature set of palmOne's new LifeDrive, as well as the somewhat older but still spiffy Treo 650.

Although Colligan was obviously on the "Charlie Rose Show" to score points with the daily production's well-educated viewership, he did make a point that the mainstream media, technical press and even bloggers don't make often enough.

His point: handsets are becoming robust and feature-rich to the point that they are not only augmenting laptops. They are replacing laptops.

Think about it. Today's full-bore PDAs have functional (if smaller) QWERTY keyboards, can do email, have the ability to run spreadsheet applications, and, of course, are phones as well. In just a few years, they've come a long way from simple hand-held organizers that you had to synch up to your PC. Heck, now devices such as the Treo, the Nokia 9110 and the BlackBerry are PCs.

What we're waiting on now is for 3G networks to arrive in force. Colligan told Rose this may take place next year. I say that given the massive investment, it will be more like two. But when this happens - in simultaneous time with steadily improving processors - we as a mobile society will get to the point where more and more of us will realize that we have all the computer power we need right on our handset.

And if that happens, we'll go for the $350 handset before the $1700 notebook.

I'm at CES right now and am going through the phone-book-sized exhibitor directory. If there is one immediate beneficiary of convergence, it's the Consumer Electronics Association. Thanks to the convergence of TV, radio, wireless, Internet, satellite, etc., this conference has 2,400+ exhibitors and 120,000+ attendees. Not too shabby.

I'm still not convinced that this show will be all that remarkable, but hope springs eternal. Here is what I would like to see over the next few days:

1. Ultra-Wideband breaks into the home (finally). This press release is a very good sign that UWB is going to make it into homes in 2005. Yes, this is about two years later than many people (including me) once predicted, but better late than never. The press release announces a partnership between Intellon and Freescale to run HDTV throughout the home using both HomePlug Powerline and UWB. This is a smart move and both of these guys need to do what they can right now to fend off higher-speed Wi-Fi. I also expect to see wireless USB in 2005, powered by UWB. This may be less glamorous, but it could ultimately make UWB ubiquitous.

2. Wi-Fi in every device. Okay, this won't happen in 2005, but I'm seeing good signs that it will happen. The Wi-Fi "grid" that is developing in offices, homes, airports, hotels, coffee shops, convention centers, hospitals, parks, libraries (you get the idea) will drive more and more device manufacturers to embed the technology, power consumption be damned. The key development is Wi-Fi within cellular phones. It's already happening and I expect more in 2005 - including that Wi-Fi-powered Blackberry.

3. Craig Barrett of Intel be a little more clear about what WiMAX is and, more important, what WiMAX is not. All these reporters (and a few carrier executives) need to be better educated about this technology. I firmly believe WiMAX will succeed, but we need to be realistic about its potential and its timeline.

4. Ed Whitacre at SBC says something signifiicant about his company's commitment to Wi-Fi. I expect him to talk more about TV and convergence, but am still hoping for a Wi-Fi announcement. I'm glad to see Ed here and am impressed at how aggressive SBC has been in 2004 regarding Wi-Fi and converged devices and service plans. I don't think everything they're doing will succeed, but they are rightly trying to graduate from raw Internet access to applications.

5. Finally, I hope to see VoIP move from "cheap long distance" to "next-gen telecoms." Vonage just passed the 400,000 subscriber mark (gaining 300,000 in 2004) but I suspect the bulk of these folks came onboard primarily to save money. Hey, so did I. But what's really exciting about VoIP are video and location-based applications. I hope to see more devices and service providers taking VoIP to the next level. SBC already is on its way...

Anyway, enough from me. On to the show...

Take water, add wireless technology and what do you get? Some pretty nifty applications. Applications that conserve water and alert you to water leaks at home.

The Motorola home monitoring system includes a device that will send you an email if it detects a water leak. Anyone who worries about freezing pipes in the winter may find this device handy.

And Wellspring Wireless announced that is will be using ZigBee to develop wireless monitoring devices for multi-tenant buildings.

These devices allow landlords to monitor usage by unit. Landlords will love these devices because they can install them under the guise of "water conservation" while giving them the opportunity to bill tenants as water usage increases over a set limit. The ends do justify the means, particularly out here in Southern California.

I've been using the Apple iSync application for about a year now. I use it to sync my calendar and address book between my laptop and PC, which requires a subscription to the .Mac service. I'm no fan of the .Mac service. The backup software is slow and clunky, the per-MB pricing is too high and there is no customer support to speak of. Yet, despite all this, I'll likely end up renewing the service simply because of iSync. Once you get hooked on syncing, it is very hard to give up.

Which leads me to a discussion I had today with Rip Gerber, CMO of Intellisync. Intellisync has transformed itself from a company that provides basic PDA to PC syncing software for consumers to a company that provides enterprise and carrier software that can sync a myriad PDAs, smart phones and laptops.

I need to do more research on Intellisync and its competitors (Seven, RIM, Visto, etc) but my initial thoughts about the company are quite positive. The company seems to understand carriers and I expect we'll hear a number of new carrier deals in the next few months. The biggest carrier deal so far was wtih Verizon Wireless. Intellisync provides the software that powers Verizon's awkwardly named VZEMail service.

Carriers don't want the headache of making sure every new handset they sell can sync with a customer's PC. Corporate IT managers will also pay a premium to avoid those headaches, which is why companies like GE, IBM and Pfizer are now using Intellisync software.

Wireless device proliferation is a fact of life these days. Some people believe we need fewer devices that do more. But I'm not so sure converged devices make our lives simpler. Besides, with the right sync software, it doesn't really matter how many devices you have, just so long as they can all speak to one another.