There's lots of talk at the moment about MMS traffic being lower than expected, and blaming this on ease-of-use. But, whilst I'm in no way making excuses for the operators, I'm not sure that this is the case.

Sending a photo from my Nokia 6230 takes 10 clicks, including going to the camera, taking the photo, saying "send by multimedia", choosing a recipient, and actioning it. In contrast, sending a text message takes 5 clicks - but *just sending a photo* will take way fewer clicks in practice, because you're not typing in the text of a message. So I don't think the problem here is purely usability.

Sure, composing a complex MMS that has multiple slides is more effort, and the language phones use for building this ("Add an object"?) isn't ideal; and believing that your photo might actually arrive does involve a leap of faith, even presuming that your handset has been set up to do MMS out-of-the-box (which many still aren't - WHY???). But the mechanics of sending a photo? I don't think it's tricky.

Hmm, just finished giving a brief talk for a Sussex Enterprise event held at the lovely Koba (site design: Neujuice), on PDAs and smartphones for small businesses.

It felt weird. I've not done any public speaking for ages, and whilst I was nervous as hell before-hand I kind-of ended up enjoying it. I guess that's a good sign, but I spotted my usual tendency to talkfasterandfasterasthingswenton popping up, and ended up throwing a load of cack in there (bears? snakes? what was that all about??). I wish I'd prepared more, yet less formally, in retrospect: until 5pm this afternoon I had a *very* corporate PowerPoint indeed. So anyway, I need to do more of this - any offers?

Still, really nice to see a few of the local new meeja faces there (Jeremy, Richard, Jon, Matt, Alex, etc.) who I've not bumped into for a while. And interesting to hear about Moving Edge's experiences of really officelessness... it's one thing to sign up for that kind of existence in principle but carry on, as I have, doing things The Old Way - it's another to actually live it.

Update: "like being at a tupperware party organised by Gizmodo"

A album by 16 high-profile artists is released for free; supporting material from the making of Outfoxed is put out using BitTorrent; and Wired report on free content that people are paying for.

What's the mobile angle? Convenience is worth money. An example: the SMS service on the National Rail site, which will text you the details of a journey you've examined.

It's easily argued against: I look up these details when I'm sitting at my desk with pen and paper within easy reach, and the information isn't difficult to remember - "so who's going to pay for that?". But it's so damn convenient to have the details of my journey in my pocket all the time that I now regularly pay a 25p pittance...

Similarly, look at content services. I can use Yellow Pages to look up a restaurants details, or I can pay 25p to do it on Vodafone Live ... whenever and wherever I am. In many cases, mobility in itself adds value.