TechScape

Okay, so this is up there with bears being catholic and popes defecating in the woods, as far as surprises go, but it's still good to have some figures backing up the widely-held assumption.

Mobile research firm M:Metrics says 70% of 13-17 year-olds are "engaging in social networking or otherwise creating content" using their mobile phones. Their definition includes photo messaging, video messaging, instant messaging, chat, dating and user-generated content

That said, the fact that this data doesn't include what many people consider to be true social networking – MySpace, Bebo etc – leaves room for speculation. MySpace has launched a limited mobile service in the US, and is negotiating with mobile operators over here in Europe, but it's yet to be seen whether teens (or indeed anyone else) will heavily use these services on mobile, and if so, what they'll want to do with them.

When online marketing goes wrong. I just saw a Google ad pop up at the top of the screen while using Gmail, saying "BILLIAM - www.billiamuk.com - Official website of the UK's top new boyband!"

The name sounds rubbish. And I'm not exactly champing at the bit to hear them. But I was curious, so clicked on the link. Only to reach an Error 400 page saying "FORBIDDEN. You tried to access a document for which you don't have privileges."

Am I officially too old to be allowed into boy-band websites now? Or is this an example of someone's online ad campaign jumping the gun just a tad earlier than the web designers were expecting?

There’s been a lot of talk about the coming together of Web 2.0 and mobile. But a lot of it’s just that: talk. It seems logical that people will want to do similar things on their mobiles that they will on Web 2.0 services, albeit with extra elements of location and/or search thrown in to take advantage of the mobile phone.

But in a less high-profile corner of Nokia, the Emerging Business Unit, they’ve already created one application that’s attacking this convergance head-on. It’s called WidSets, and its nearest parallel is the Dashboard widgets on Mac computers, in that it pulls down information from websites to your phone, via RSS feeds, into the WidSets Java application.

You can pull down news stories, blog posts, Flickr photo streams, emails and weather forecasts, to name a few examples. Okay, so it might just be a slick RSS reader with a graphical user interface, but it’s easy enough to use that it could appeal beyond the tech-head community. I talked to Nokia’s Kaj Haggman to find out more.

Web 2.0 isn't just about groovy startups, y'know. The firms who rode the internet boom the first time around are coming out with their own attempts to keep pace with the user-generated content phenomenon.Services like Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces and Yahoo 360 combine blogging, social networking, and tight integration with these companies' other web tools. Mecca Ibrahim is in charge of Yahoo 360 in Europe, overseeing its launch in Germany, France and the UK, with Spain and Italy planned for next year.

"It's very hard to say whether it's more of a social networking product, a blogging product, or just a place to collect things that are important to you," she says. "We do see it as a central place within Yahoo where people can publish what's important to them, and share it with their friends and the wider community if they want to do that."