A mobile meeting program allows groups of people to participate in Microsoft NetMeeting sessions over their cellphones. They can share files, invite other participants to join in on-the-fly, and engage in simultaneous voice and video conferences.

The author is a Toronto-based freelance writer

An experimental phone project connects a Whirlpool Duet Sport washer-dryer to a cellphone to allow the consumer to keep up with the status of their laundry remotely. (Ric Feld/AP)

It was only a few short years ago that sending text messages on cellphones was all the rage, giving users a sort of James Bond-like air of cutting-edge sophistication. Now it's as old hat as a rotary dial phone.

The pace of change in the types and variety of cellphone services popping up around the world is dizzying.

In any given day of the very near future, an average person may whip out their trusty cellphone to turn their house security system on or off, check whether their laundry is ready, scan barcodes to do on-the-fly price comparisons, listen to music samples, pay for a cup of coffee, hold a video conference, or kill some spare time watching their favourite TV show.

From the practical to the whimsical, there's no shortage of what can be done over the wireless cloud that's blanketing the world. It's a matter of what makes practical sense — or at least has the marketing appeal to reel in early adopters and gadget lovers.

Any market with a large audience is a magnet for developers and marketers, and cellphones are one of the most popular electronic gadgets on the planet today.

The creativity being poured into software and services for handsets as businesses scramble to profit from this growing audience is generating some interesting results. There are the ultra-targeted specialty applications, such as Anti-Groping Appli.

This application, popular with women in Japan (it now ranks in the Top 10), allows them to flash bold-print warning messages on their cellphones to suspected gropers on commuter trains.

Then there's ScanBuy, an application that turns camera-equipped phones into bardoce scanners.

The idea is that users will be able to use their phones to scan specially designed barcodes printed in magazine pages, on signs or on web pages to get the latest entertainment listings, check out bus schedules or download and play games from a television show.

Tracking your buddy

Nokia Siemens Networks is a newly formed alliance dedicated to creating a high-speed iinfrastructure for wireless and fixed communications that will make it easier to use interactive multimedia and watch content such as movies on cellphones and other devices.

As a physical extension of social networking, people can subscribe to "buddy tracking" services from the likes of Helio and Boost to automatically track the location of their friends through their handsets. Those with a more playful bent can join scavenger hunts with Groundspeak's Geocaching service.

And parents wanting to keep tabs on their offspring can now locate their children's cellphones if they want to check up on their offspring.

A die-hard rugby fan in France is never more than an icon away from catching live feeds, video highlights, team rankings and pearls of wisdom from commentators — all thanks to the development efforts of Montreal-based Bluestreak Technology Inc. One click on the icon on their phones, and the information is delivered instantly to their cellphone screen.

At the recent Symbian Smartphone Show in London, England, visitors were captivated by a futuristic Motorola Concept Phone that offered high-power photo and video editing capabilities. Demonstrators wowed the crowd as they cut and pasted video clips, added soundtracks and captions, edited audio and uploaded content from popular online media services like YouTube, Facebook and Flickr — all on a cellphone.

All indications are that there is going to be an explosion of integrated multimedia-based service offerings on mobile handsets that will put just about everything we've seen to date to shame. That's because the wireless industry has finally reached the point where there is enough power in the handheld hardware and file-transfer capacity in the cellular infrastructure to make audio and video streaming work — without those annoying delays and hiccups that happen with older, less robust networks.

That's certainly what Nokia Siemens Networks — a newly formed alliance dedicated to creating a "broadband everywhere" infrastructure for wireless and fixed communications — is banking on. At a recent demonstration in Toronto, it offered an impressive display of just what the right technological foundation can do in terms of bringing usable, appealing interactive media on mobile handsets to life.

A mobile meeting application, for example, allows groups of people to participate in Microsoft NetMeeting sessions over their cellphones. They can share files, invite other participants to join in on-the-fly, and engage in simultaneous voice and video services — with no transmission delays and hiccups. Phones can also be used to share mobile TV, video on demand or play back digital video recordings (DVR) from a home-based recorder without even a hint of a network delay.

"Everyone is now past the hump of wondering if data services will work on phones," says John McCalla, chief technology officer for Bluestreak Technology.

"What's driving this next wave of applications is that we're finally moving to networks that can enable a whole new breed of video centric applications," he adds. "With the popularity of video applications like YouTube, the timing couldn't be more perfect."

Location, location, location

Many are speculating that an application that is destined to create significant waves in the months to come is location-based services.

These combine cellular and satellite capabilities within devices to enable GPS (global positioning system) applications. Users will be able to turn on their cellphones to get turn-by-turn directions to destinations, locate friends or find the best restaurants or hotels within a certain radius of their location.

"We're definitely keeping an eye on that," reports Dave Neale, senior vice-president of Telus Consumer Solutions in Toronto. "Now that people are used to seeing GPS services in their cars, there is a contextual relevance for having that kind of ability on your cellphone."

IDC studies indicate that more than half the cellphone users in the U.S. will be using location-based services by 2010. To illustrate the expected rate of growth, today only an estimated two per cent have even tried these services. As usage increases, revenue for location-based services is expected to leap from $150 million in 2006 to $3.1 billion in 2010.

"Cross referencing imaging capabilities with location-based stuff can present a powerful business case," says McCalla.

He reports he has already seen some compelling applications being piloted, including one in the U.S. that sends signals to a cellphone when someone who has indicated that they are interested in buying real estate drives by a house for sale. The application then offers up a virtual tour and provides relevant data on the street and other properties.

A lot of the technological pieces are already in place to bring all this about, according to Mark VanderHeyden, head of Canada Region for Nokia Siemens Networks in Toronto. Making the services available to everyday users is mainly a question of economics.

"There's a huge demand out there for some very cool applications," he says. "Carriers have to find a way to deliver them that makes economic sense. They need to figure out revenue models and how much consumers are willing to pay for them."