"Good afternoon, Target shoppers. We need a sales associate in Aisle 12 to break up a skirmish among mobile retail apps. Referee needed in aisle 12, please. Thank you." My guess is that there is a quiet war going on in the aisles of many retailers these days over who will get the mobilized shopper's attention over smartphones at that critical point of final decision. Never in retailing history have we seen such a potential disruptive force enter into what had been a hermetically sealed domain, the in-store experience.

It's fitting that next week's OMMA Mobile event in San Francisco (Oct. 25) comes just a week after the record-breaking release of the iPhone 4S. Our first OMMA Mobile was held on the day the first iPhone launched, in late June 2007. Our kick-off panel that day assembled some of the leading agency executives already specializing in mobile. I asked them for an impromptu survey on what effect they thought Apple's new entry would have on the market. Remember, there was considerable skepticism about Apple's plan to move us to touch interfaces and pricey data plans, all on the most …

I am not only all-in for devices but also all-in for mobile commerce. The majority of my Amazon purchases now are occurring on the iPad in the evening and via that damned effective app that pushes devilishly accurate recommendations. The new iPhone 4S order was set up on the Apple Store app sitting on both my iPhone 4 and iPad. I recently used the new Five Guys hamburger shop app to place a party order of six large fries. And I pay my AT&T bill every month via its app. Maybe my daughter should swipe a device from me before …

Unbeknownst to me, I already wrote my tribute to Steve Jobs earlier this week in a MoBlog post about the fetishization of the iPhone 5: "All of the dogged speculation about Apple's next move often seems to be a paparazzi-like feeding frenzy of nit-pickers and nerdocrats who love gadgets for gadgets' sake. The truth may be that in an age of techno-clutter we crave the simple, if sometimes dictatorial, leadership of the Apple brand. They are one of the few companies that seem to have been successful in giving us things we didn't even know we wanted. In a consumer …

"Whenever you say something is 'brilliant,' and I have to see it -- Dad, then I know I am in for it." Oh, the shame of being raised the daughter of a recovering academic -- and a pop culture historian to boot. My daughter, now joined by my wife, have been dragged through some of the weirdest encounters with media imaginable, from grade Z horror of the early '70s to anti-Communist comic books of the '50s, underground zines of the '60s to radio serials of the '40s. When it comes to American pop culture, I am an unrepentant intellectual slut.

What exactly possesses us to take phone-cam images of our meals is beyond me, but Bravo has wisely found a way to leverage this habit and align it with one of their hit properties in a new app attached to the upcoming season of "Top Chef." Judge's Table lets users "Rate Their Plate."

At this week's OMMA Global show in New York, mobile was pretty much a part of every conversation. And the discussions do not involve simply "getting into" mobile or seeing mobile as the logical extension of the digital strategy. Instead, I heard more people at more levels of companies understanding that the device offers them a unique opportunity to engage a customer at a different level. As we have been arguing in these pages for a couple of years now, mobile should reorient the relationship a brand has with its own base. If done well, it allows a brand to …

It doesn't take long for the "free" download of CBS Interactive's "48 Hours Mystery" app for iPad to rush you toward the subscription wall. Without the $4.99 annual fee, the user is met with a preview video clip of the next week's episode and a bonus clip. Beyond that, be prepared to get out your wallet.

"What is this ad for?" my wife asks as a woman in the commercial hangs on a spinning dancer's neck atop a wet mirror surface for what seems like an unusually long span without any sponsor messaging. "Well, they have us waiting and watching for the answer, don't they?" I explain, suggesting that the ad has already succeeded.

If you think I'm tough on mobile marketing and media, you should talk to my wife. "What good is that?" is her default response to every app I think is relatively cool. Free of the gadget addiction that bedevils her husband, she is unimpressed by dazzling apps and comes at the matter from a convenience and utility perspective. Why should she ferret around in her handbag for her smartphone when out shopping unless it really is answering a specific need?