AP story on what is being described as the first major commercial service for tracking user locations via their cellphones in the UK: Mobile-tracing service raises eyebrows in U.K.

In Asia this already started some time ago, see for example Joi's or Nob Seki's Moblog.

Via Xeni

The man who developed the Personal Handyphone System looks back over a decade of mobile developments:

"We are still in the early days of the keitai camera services. Judging by adoption rates, it appears that cameras will become a standard keitai function. We are on our way to becoming a country where half the population carries a camera at all times."

Saying that, when Japan already has 20 million camera phone users (with a population of 127 million), is somewhat unfair;).

From the Japan Media Review

Howard Rheingold, the author of Smart Mobs didn't attend the International Moblogging Conference in Tokyo, instead he wrote the following article:
Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism

Moblogging is at a convergence of technical capabilities with the insatiable human thirst for new ways to learn, create, and communicate, and the political necessity for a truly effective peer-to-peer journalism as a counter to "disinfotainment" cartels.

See also: Conference Panelists See Bright Future for Mobile Publishing

The worldwide camera phone market:
165 million camera phones in 2006



Image from a spring 2003 analyst briefing by Tony Thornley, president and chief operating officer at Qualcomm

As Alan Reiter points out, there are other forecasts which are a bit less optimistic. Anyway, even 37 million, instead of 60 million in 2003 are quite a lot. He ends this post with the japanese example which is mind... blowing: "But Japan blows away all the other countries with its 20 million camera phone users and the selection of handsets, including 1.3 megapixel devices."

Via John Hiler's "Blogosphere: the emerging Media Ecosystem"

See also, somewhat unrelated:
Nob's Moblog with location maps. Joi was the first to show me that new feature for moblogging.

Via Schee

It won't be long, said Holahan, before "some globally significant event will be reported by an amateur camera phone blogger who takes a picture, provides a comment and publishes it to their personal phoneblog before professional reporters can do so."

The Online Journalism Review wrote an article about the impact of mobile publishing. Well worth a read.

An article suggested by Rob:
Can Blogs Save MMS?

3G Phones Let Time-Strapped Families See Each Other Every Day
This is an interesting article by Tim Clark about the new video phones which are already available in Japan. After reading the article, I think that this "intimate" behaviour makes much sense for some businessman who want to keep in touch with their family.

But as blogging shows in the west, it is well possible that people would also like to archive their videos to get some kind of living memory - password protected or not. And this could be interesting for families as well, especially when they are dispersed all over the globe.

The article also speaks about the killer content for these new 3 G Phones and not surprisingly it is dating services and porn. We all know now about the attraction of sites like Mein Bild... If not, read this.

Nokia:

Nokia's work on the Semantic Web was started in 1996 and predates the term itself. We have collaborated with the academia and various standards organizations, and contributed to all major Semantic Web standards and specifications.

Interesting. Didn't know about Nokia's involvement in the Semantic Web.

Update:
Nokia Semantic Web Server. Via Danny

Related:
2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2003) via Sandro
What is the Semantic Web Challenge?

The key findings from the latest Mobinet study of 5,600 mobile phone users in 15 countries:

More than 80 percent of mobile phone users in the study were aware of the photo messaging capabilities of today's mobile phones, and two-thirds said they were willing to pay to utilize those services. Among those under 19 years of age # the heavi est users of text-based messaging # 42 percent said they would be willing to pay more than $1 US to s oend a photo message. Fourteen percent of all users were prepared to pay more than $2 US per photo message. More than 30 percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to use photo messaging at least once a week in the future.

See the Mobinet study (PDF)

Via MarketingFix and 3G and Elanceur.

Satoshi's Brief history of camera phones
Via Brainstorms and Raves

See also: Moblogging for the Masses