When Ben Rudolf walked the CES floor and offered to smoke any phone you had, we could only imagine the potential it had as a marketing tool to show, not tell, the advantages of Windows Phone 7 to a general audience rather than the largely tech-oriented crowd at CES 2012. Microsoft has posted occasional updates to Facebook, but now a much more comprehensive set of numbers is in.

Nokia has clearly been dominating Windows Phone sales with the release of the Lumia 900, especially in light of AT&T's promotion of the platform (finally). So what's a manufacturer need to do to garner some attention and fresh sales with the giant Nokia throwing all their weight into the Windows Phone arena? There have been rumors of phones from various hardware vendors, from LG to Sony Ericsson (while they were still Sony Ericsson, anyway), and a picture of a new Samsung phone has been making the rounds as of late. It seemed like each rumor turned up empty and everything was pointing to new phones waiting for the release of Windows Phone 8, but somewhat unexpectedly Samsung has officially confirmed the Samsung Focus 2.

You may have noticed a week or so ago that the Zune software asked to be restarted in order to access 'new features.' The only change was the removal of the Windows Phone Marketplace from the Zune software. The reason given by Microsoft was basically 'not enough people used it,' and they wanted to focus their efforts on the phone and web versions of the Marketplace. They also announced that support for pre-Mango devices would be cut from the Marketplace, though that changes should affect very, very few people. But what if you still want to use the Zune software to find apps for your Windows Phone?

Pinning to the start screen is a very versatile and powerful organizational tool, allowing one to keep easy access to commonly used apps, especially with live tile functionality, as well as pinning shortcuts to various features within an app with the touch of a button. If you happen to need a lot of tiles pinned to your start screen though, it can slow down what is supposed to be a very fast process of finding what you need when you need it. As of yet there's no easy way to combat such bloat for everyone, but if you have an unlocked phone, the Folders app aims to help solve this problem and is now on version 1.0.

Hotmail and other Live services are popular targets for hackers, being very large as a result of their direct backing by Microsoft, who require an account for full use of things like Windows Phone and the Xbox 360. Many people have Hotmail accounts from years ago when Hotmail was the must-have service, such as myself, and rather than maintaining two Live accounts, one registered with a newer email, persist in keeping a single Live account. I actually did check to see if you could change your Live ID in the options and found that under the Account section the listed Windows Live ID has a Change button, but this leads to an error page saying it's not currently available. Whether this is temporary or just not currently supported, I don't know, but check for yourself if you wish to switch your Live ID off the Hotmail address. Why, you ask? Well Hotmail was recently subject to a particularly nasty exploit which allowed anyone to commandeer a Hotmail account without access to your listed recovery address, phone number, or security question.

Back in February we had news of some future changes to the SkyDrive service, and now these changes have come to fruition. The service has been steadily gaining ground and becoming quite useful in the past few months, and it's especially invaluable for Windows Phone users (the app has over 2 million users there now). What started as a somewhat limited web service has gradually earned support on numerous platforms, as well as an API to allow integration with other apps. Now we have support for a desktop app coming with a beta available. There's of course the unparalleled 25 GB of free storage, though if you don't act fast it may be downgraded!

Ever since the first news of Microsoft wanting to buy up Skype last year, we've been waiting patiently for an app to be released. It was promised to come in the fall at MIX '11, later said to be released before the end of the year, and only in February did we finally see a beta for Skype released. Good news; the app is now live at 1.0!

With ChevronWP7 closing down, the homebrew community for code on modern devices faced a significant challenge. Either you had an older device, like the original Samsung Focus, that had custom ROM's available for interop or full unlock, or you paid the $99 fee for a full AppHub account (unless you were lucky enough to own a ChevronWP7 unlock token already, and got free AppHub access). Thanks to the ingenuity of the programmers at XDA, the barriers for some newer phones have been knocked down.

For the average consumer making choices about smartphones to buy, the single most important source for information is directly from the people selling them the phone: the carrier. The average consumer doesn't read reviews and commentaries and blogs and such, they trust the salesperson to know the phones and make recommendations accordingly. Ordinarily there's nothing wrong with this, after all it is a part of their job to know the facts about these phones. Sadly that isn't always the case, and it has been especially apparent with Windows Phone; problems range from 'well why don't you look at this wonderful iPhone we have here?' to simply placing the Android sticker under a Windows Phone on display.

If you were a power user on WP7, chances are you enjoyed ChevronWP7. It gave you the ability to sideload apps like the screenshot or orientation locking tools using the same method as official AppHub accounts (the $99 service which allows people to publish apps to the Marketplace) minus the Marketplace access. Though run by a third party, it was an officially sanctioned service supported by Microsoft, which guaranteed that things like updates wouldn't break it, such as how less sanctioned but more powerful workarounds for root access only work on certain older devices. Unfortunately, the experiment is at an end.