Broadband Advisor

Microblogging on Twitter is great. But sometimes you're just too busy to sit down and type that 140-character tweet. Maybe you're climbing a volcano, sprinting through the airport or running a marathon and just can't stop to type. Here's how to post on Twitter using only a voice phone call.

Leetspeak, Internet shorthand, computer jargon for instant messaging -- whatever you call them, initialisms like BRB, LOL and BTW have now entered the public lexicon. (I know a few teenagers who actually say LOL to each other in person!)

Business cards are as obsolete as fax machines. And like fax machines, business cards have us still using paper to move electronic data from one digital system to another.

Two weeks ago, I shared my belief in this space that mobile social networking will become the most important business technology since e-mail.

Clever social networking-related startups with obscure taglines -- including Causecast ("Change your world, and the world will change"), Qik ("See what happens"), and Joongel ("Internet the easy way -- we have chocolate") -- line the showroom of TechCrunch50 in San Francisco. If you want to find out what these companies do, you'll have to ask the one of the beautiful people manning the tables.

Within two years, I believe mobile social networking will become the most valuable business application since e-mail.

Yesterday, FBI agents raided the Los Angeles home of 27-year-old blogger Kevin Cogill and arrested him. Cogill's crime? He uploaded nine unreleased tracks from the upcoming Guns N' Roses album to his blog.

When you were growing up, how did you discover and listen to new music? Very likely, it was from 45s, LPs, and CDs recommended by friends, or songs played by radio and club DJs. Nowadays, as the music industry watches its old business models fade, young people are increasingly turning to new tools and technologies to satisfy their craving for new music. In certain respects, kids haven't changed much -- they continue to find new music through peer and media influences. What has changed, however, is the channels through which they are influenced, and they ways that they purchase their music.

It seems Anonymous has resurfaced and hired a publicist. Two days ago I received an email alerting me to two new YouTube videos from the anti-Scientology crusader(s). I'd been wondering what had happened to it/them, since things had been so quiet lately on that front. The videos themselves are weird, even by Anonymous's standards -- urging members who've left the fold to return and keep protesting, and making vague references to something happening on August 8. I guess we'll find out.

A while back, I wrote about the concept of social networking. The upshot: Although the wisdom of crowds may be overhyped, the phenomenon of social networking isn't.

Josh Quittner, writing in Time recently, explored what vendor -- Google, Apple or Facebook -- will be the next great Internet platform. It is quite a good article, but Quittner only addresses part of the conflict that is determining what tomorrow's Internet will look like.