Today M. and I were eating out and during our conversation (and having both newer types of camera phones: Samsung and Sharp) we both used the mobile version of our weblogs to illustrate a purpose. Naturally some people in the restaurant looked at us quite strangely, but I believe this will become quite common in a few months;).

After some experience with my mobile weblog, the scenarios in which I use my mobile weblog most often are:
a) showing a picture or a quoting a post in a face-to-face discussion
b) reading one of my posts published via internet in detail and more thoroughfully (that's why I quote so extensively) later when on a tram or bus ride.
c) checking the latest posts in the mobile KAYWA universe.

So when I found Howard Rheingold's article Cameraphones as Personal Storytelling Media, I was quite amazed to see that Daisuke Okabe has come to similar conclusions in his paper (PDF) (L.C.).

And although camera phones transmit images through the Internet, they are also turning out, rather unexpectedly, to be face-to-face media. It looks like this newly ubiquitous device could be more about flows of moments than stocks of images, more about sharing presence than transporting messages, and ultimately, more about personal narrative than factual communication.

[...] The cameraphone study extends this framework by revealing how people's choices of images to share enables intimate social networks to share ambient information; but, "on the other hand, we are finding that users tend not to e-mail messages to one another, and prefer to share images by showing pictures on a handset screen." Hence, the communication device that used to transmit messages across distances is now also used to capture a flow of experience in order to add a visual element to face-to-face storytelling. (Hmmm... What do McLuhan's "Laws of Media" tell us here?)

[...] Okabe noted a number of different uses included "personal archiving" (saving images for one's own use, as a memory of a day or special moment, a "self-authoring practice"), "intimate sharing" (showing a mini-slideshow of one's day or one's hour in person to a friend), peer-to-peer news and online picture sharing.

[...] Okabe also noticed an additional use to the capture of mundane images: material for conversation. In Japanese, the material people collect to share conversationally with friends is called "neta": "a new store seen on the way to work; a cousin who just dropped out of high school...an odd statue sited in town." Cameraphones "provide a new tool for making these everyday neta not just verbally but also visually shareable."

See also:
Breaking Out of Default Thinking

"Another strong and under-appreciated aspect of mobile phone use is the personalization people do to their phones. This is usually in the form of snap on covers, ring-tones or wallpaper. [...] People are turning their phones into a stand-in for themselves. Some provocative ideas come from examining this need and 'Web-izing' it, expanding it into cyberspace.