I just flew in from the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show where I declared my 2007 Consumer Electronics Best of Show Winner to be Vonage (NYSE: VG). Well actually, I just got my butt off the couch and stepped over to my computer after watching the HGTV presentation from the show. After close examination of all the gadgets presented -- and I know the show only revealed a fraction of them -- and based on what I saw, the Vonage V-Phone walked away with Best In Show honors for utility, creativity, ease of use and consumer value.

The Vonage V-Phone is an amazing little device which for a paltry $40.00 plus a monthly service fee (contact Vonage for details), allows you telephone access via any PC or laptop on the planet which sports a USB port. What makes the Vonage offering so exciting to me is that anywhere in the world you are, your callers can contact you by using your local home or business phone number, direct dialed.

The Vonage V-Phone has 250MB of on board flash drive memory which can be used to store files, MP3 songs, digital photos or any other manner of digital data. Vonage states that the unit loads quickly and automatically without the need for any software because the V-Phone comes with Vonage Talk software already preloaded. You simply slip the thumb sized unit into any available USB port connected to high-speed Internet, plug the included earpiece microphone into the side of the little V-Phone and you're making and receiving calls anywhere on the planet. The unit also comes with a standard size key ring already attached!

Gary E. Sattler has no financial interest in and is not compensated by Vonage.

Vonage is the winner in my 2007 Consumer Gadget Contest originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM) has announced that its trading contest shared something with CNBC's Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge -- they both featured cheating contestants.

In case you did not participate, On April 2, TSCM launched a stock market trading game, "Beat the Street," which ran until May 31. The game had a cash prize of $100,000. But TSCM does not plan to award that $100,000.

Why not? "The final results of the game indicate that players employed trading strategies to achieve returns that could not be duplicated in the real world, thereby depriving other contestants of an equal chance to win." And the $100,000 will be added to the $50,000 that TSCM originally planned to award the winner of the next contest iteration: "Beat the Street 2.0."

I'd love to know more about the strategies employed and why they couldn't be duplicated in "the real world." Ironically, I doubt this "news" site will be breaking any news on that front. If you can shed any light on what happened here, please share.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned in this post.

TheStreet.com's trading contest joins CNBC's in a cheating scandal originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In case you haven't heard, there is a full-blown controversy surrounding CNBC's recent "Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge," with the network posting a message on its website saying that the "CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge ended May 25th. CNBC has been contacted by several contestants alleging unusual trading in violation of contest rules among some of the 20 finalists. Once these questions were raised, CNBC immediately launched a thorough investigation to determine who may have violated the rules."

Apparently, some contestants may have found ways to go in and change their orders after the market had closed, kind of like placing late bets at the track. While cheating is certainly bad, I had a hard time taking the contest seriously from day one. As the Motley Fool's Bill Barker wrote back in February, "this contest has stunningly little to do with 'investment strategy' and everything to do with maximum risk taking."

With the many thousands of people competing for the best portfolio performance over such a short period of time, I would argue that the portfolio was about little other than luck. I certainly wouldn't call the winner a "trading genius" or anything.

This brings me back to the cheating issue. In a contest that was essentially little more than a glorified lottery, who really cares if the winner didn't play by the rules? In fact, finding some strategy for beating CNBC's security system is probably more of an accomplishment than winning this crap shoot of a stock-picking contest.

Of course, I don't really think the prize should be given to a cheater, just as someone who cheated at bingo shouldn't get the prize. But it's hard to muster up a lot of righteous indignation for someone who found a way to outsmart an investing and trading contest that had little to do with investing or trading.

Give the prize to the cheaters in CNBC's stock-picking contest! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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