After my last column on Amazon's new music download store, several readers asked me to provide the URL for the Amazon mobile storefront. I use m.amazon.com. But that reminds me how too much content is getting pushed to phones that none of us see, let alone critique. I thought it was high time I rifled through my own recent bookmarks to pass on some of the mobile sites that caught my eye in recent months. This time, let's see what the magazine industry is up to.

Apple is one company that is not used to being left behind. But the first serious threat to the Tunes hegemony emerged late last month with the beta launch of Amazon's own mp3 store.

Regular readers of these columns know that I manage to embarrass my family in a multitude of ways. My week is not complete without at least one massive eye roll from my daughter and an exasperated "DAD!! JEEZ!!" During our seashore vacation, I pushed the envelope of proper fudge sampling outside of the boardwalk candy shops. "DAD!! JEEZ!!" could be heard throughout Cape May, because my daughter seemed to think that security cams were counting the number of times I snatched handfuls of tiny fudge samples each night. It was time to teach her a lesson in sampling -- and …

I don't venture out into nature all that much, because I find it, well, overrated. I am that insufferable guy who wishes the real world were a bit more like the fabricated one we have constructed for ourselves in the last century of advanced technology....

The predictions of mobile marketing growth often lack a clear rationale from analysts. Even as soothsayers I have seen anticipate 10x spending increases over the next few years, many are grounded in the same vague promises of "shifting ad budgets" that fueled the silly Web ad projections of 1999.

In yet another sign that media, not carriers, are driving the bus now when it comes to mobile content and marketing, Fox Interactive Media yesterday launched its MySpace Mobile Web service. Also available about now or soon are mobilizations of IGN, FoxSports.com, AskMen and a run of local Fox TV station sites.

Digital news outlets were awash in headlines and warmed-over press releases regarding Google extending its AdWords and AdSense programs further into mobile properties. Sure, it is a big deal. We'll have to see what kind of volume the content partners see and how well the text links can remain relevant in a mobile context. But generally, this only helps legitimate mobile marketing both for marketers and for publishers contemplating a WAP site. This is what gets me, though. In all of the reporting on this story, I didn't come upon a single instance where the reporter or blogger bothered to …

As the clock ticked past 1:30 am the other night and I was still playing Nintendo's wonderful "Picross" puzzle game on my DS, a couple of things dawned on me. First, what the hell was I doing playing a handheld game at 1:30 when I had to be up in four hours? Second, why doesn't Nintendo just come in and take over mobile gaming?

I confess that there are many times when I do not feel of this earth. There is a new conceit in TV ads that involves people using their cell phones to scope out bargains and available inventory at multiple stores. Generally, the husband is at one big box store dickering with the salesman while talking by cell to the wife, who is harassing another salesman at a competing store. I can't tell if this scenario actually happens anywhere or if it's just another ad-fueled fantasy about how consumer capitalism should work. Is acquiring objects now a quasi-military operation requiring walkie-talkies, …

Video search is not an easy trick. Every time I dip into the topic the quality of results I get from the major search engines remains marginal at best. I don't know what spidering techniques are going on in the background of vTap.com, which launched Monday for the iPhone and Windows Mobile platforms (Java to follow), but it does an impressive job of delivering video clips that are closer to my desires than the big two Web engines.