Continental is part of the skyteam and what does that really mean?
I can use my continental award points to fly with af and klm?

I am assuming the way to book is by calling?

You need to call to book Skyteam rewards other than NW and Alaska Air flights.

You get benefits by flying ST. Check out the CO website and it shows the miles and EQM's that you can accumulate. As you point out, you can call and book reward flights too.

when Cont first joined skyteam I thought there were common miles given out - skymiles. But these are only for Delta. Too bad, I think a common program with interchangeble miles would be a big plus for the group (as long as it exists!)

Essentially it is a common program with interchangeable miles - as long as you just pick one program for all your SkyTeam earnings. If you already are in Delta Skymiles, just use that number for all your travel on DL as well as CO, NW, AF, etc.

Don't make the mistake of booking your Continental flights to Continental Onepass, , your Delta flights to Delta Skymiles, your Northwest flights to Northwest WorldPerks. You'll just spread them out and get to an award level that much later. Just pick one and use it for all of them in that alliance.

Unless of course you're one of the FT high-end road warriors who fly 200,000 miles a year

Remember though that CO has decided the partner airlines are "half airlines" - you only get 50% EQM on CO unless you pay upper tier fares on the Skyteam partners.

Oddly the other Skyteam members don't do this to each other and ever more oddly CO doesn't do this to non-Skyteam AS.

After managing to earn status (Silver, and just barely) on DL last year, I made the mistake of using my WorldPerks number on my weekly NW flights this year, until I realized that I could use my DL number and status to get better seating (nearly always an exit row) on NW. I've been using the DL number ever since and will make Silver again in the next week, but having earned about 10,000 miles first on NW before I made the switch, I may not make the next tier this year (going BNA-MSP every week and earning 695 EQM's each way is a tough road to status). I need to average just over 1400 miles/week, every week, until the end of the year to make Gold, and since I'm getting 1390 miles/week right now, I'm planning a few side trips to California and Florida to up the average.

So to make my point, pick one and stick with it--and not necessarily the actual airline you usually fly, if you have status on one of the partners.

I know I'm only a rookie, but it does hurt to see miles being called "award points"

Hey, I sure enjoyed the croissants in the AF lounge at CDG last spring...now THERE'S a benefit.