We're a little on the fence here. On one had, it's good to see a marketing push behind Windows phones (and by proxy, Windows Mobile 6.5). What good is the rebranding and operating system upgrade if you don't tell anybody about it?

On the other hand, we're not sure that having your "Windows stuff" following you around is the most effective way of getting the point across. Not necessarily as fun as we'd like to see, or sophisticated, for that matter. It's kinda straddling the two, and not in a good way. But, to each his own, and we doubt this will be the last advert we see regarding Windows phones. gcdtech via Engadget Mobile

With March Madness fully underway, many of us are looking for ways to stay up-to-date with what is happening in the world of college basketball. Here is a look at some of the ways you can use your Windows Mobile phone towards that end.

• Web browser - Many of the major names in sports news (ESPN, Fox Sports, CBS Sportsline, etc.) have made improvements to their mobile websites. My suggestion is try them all, see which one you like the most.
• Text messages/Email - Most of the sites mentioned above offer some sort of alert service. The advantage of this obviously is that if you don’t have a data plan, but you have a couple thousand unused text messages every month, you can get scores and news sent to your phone. Also, this eliminates the need for navigation in PIE. My personal favorite provider is CBS Sportsline. Their website allows you to pick your favorite teams, what updates you want, and even what time of day you want to turn the updates on or off.
• Mobile TV - Obviously the ultimate would be getting live video. There are several options out there…
  • Slingbox - A Slingbox along with their SlingPlayer Mobile client would allow you to stream your TV signal from your home to your mobile device.
  • HandiTV - Allows you to watch streaming content from various providers (without subscription fees).
  • MobiTV - Similar to HandiTV, but with a $9.99 per month subscription fee. Channels include ESPN Mobile TV and Fox Sports.

How do you stay in touch with the sports world from your phone?

Update: You can grab a special March Madness Channel on Zumobi, too!

zbop, bringer of Full YouTube on Windows Mobile software, posts up a link in our forums. And what great link it is: http://www.channelchooser.com/mobile.php, which is a ginormous link list of sites that stream video for free over the web. The list is broken down by category and features some relatively big heavy-hitters that I'd previously assumed I would need to buy mobiTV to get.

You'll want 3G or WiFi for most of this stuff - it's mainly streaming WMV and thus should work on pretty much any Windows Mobile smartphone.

My DirecTV package doesn't include Chess TV, so I'm glad zbop has shared this site with us all. Thanks!

Read: Watch television and videos on your mobile & PDA