I was browsing a few mobile social networks last night and came across this funny/cute flash animation on Plazes. The main character is Mario and it shows a good use case for mobile social networking, cheering Mario up.
A few days ago some of the R&D folks from The New York Times launched Shifd. It acts like a virtual repository of random bits of information that you need to access from any device that has web access. It even has a community aspect that’s unique, you can share links to different communities like Facebook, Digg, and Delicious :-). Notes and Places don’t have a simple sharing mechanism, so I’m going to have to give it a unhappy face for this 
I would definitely improve sharing of Notes and Places and also add a browser plug-in so you can highlight text or a ULR and add it to Shifd with a quick right click of the mouse.
Give a try, you can put your todo list, shopping list, as well as addresses for quick reference from your phone.
www.shifd.com
If it doesn’t work the first time, try it in Japan. I think this time Disney did some business case work for Japan. mDisney, the mobile content arm of Disney Internet Group does an enormous amount of business in Japan in content, try ~90% of total global revenue. I have to say that it is cultural, Disney does well in the land of Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and Purikura (another phenomenon in Japan). Disney content is “ã‚ュート” (cute), it is still questionable how compelling the content is to motivate a change of operator. The play here is to provide high end ex(c)lusive devices. Will it survive, probably not, Disney should stick to making consumer devices and selling them retail to Disneyphiles and stay away from providing services. And so it goes….
Two years ago I gave my nephew a Nokia 3300 and after a couple months I asked him if he wanted any ringtones for it. He told me he didn’t need any, he had started to cable load music on the phone and use it as an MP3 player. The phone was able to use the loaded MP3s as ringtones, once I saw this I knew the lifecycle of the ringtone was on the decline.
The recent announcement of Infospace’s loss of Cingular as a client for its ringtone service and the dramatic dip in its stock, plus the recent selloff of Jamster from Verisign to News Corp are all signs that the ringtone segment is in store for a shake up. New services such as Mixxer will allow the creation of personal ringtones as well as ringtone creation from your MP3 music catalog.
BTW, When was the last time you downloaded a monophonic or polyphonic ringtone to your phone? or How many of you know what a polyphonic is? …. I am definately dating myself here.
Engadget Mobile