Guest piece by contributing editor Gary Moskoff...

This year, CTIA was an afterthought, a last minute decision for my buddy Conor Swanson and I, but the right one. If you haven't attended CTIA, it's a different kind of conference... Where else can one find a Satellite Transceiver Station on a convention floor sitting next to LG's booth?

CTIA, in case you're not familiar with the group, is the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry. You can find out more about the association and the conference at the Web site: ctia.org.

We enjoyed checking out a number of products during the convention, including Sprint and Google's partnership to release Google Voice on the Sprint network, but my favorite product was...

Imagine a device that's about the size of three credit cards and can let you and four of your friends (or multiple of your devices) connect to the Internet at decent 3G speeds, all while sitting in your briefcase / computer bag / coat pocket. The up-and-coming "mifi" (mobile wifi) devices are a fascinating hybrid gizmo that offers the smallest wifi base station you can imagine, tapping into either the Verizon or Sprint data networks.

Verizon loaned me one of their mifi-2200 units and I have to say this is a fabulous gizmo, one that I'll find out about buying when my loaner period is over. It's that good.

As I said, the device is tiny: even in its little cloth pouch, it's less than half the size of my Apple iPhone, and considerably lighter. It uses a micro-USB connector for both charging and direct connectivity (if you prefer to use it as a tethered cellular data network modem), so it's also extremely portable. I know I've gotten into having it in my computer bag 24x7.