"Borders is selling the fixtures," a friend alerted me this morning. He knows I have been coveting the black reading chairs and was hoping to nab one in the end-of-business clearance. In northern Delaware, where two large Borders stores survived the multiple closings in the last year, this dual-barreled shutdown hits us bibliophiles hard. For non-drinking, non-clubbing bookaholics like me and my wife, hanging out at Borders was a regular ritual.

My daughter was on to the universal SMS cancellation code long before the MMA and carriers made it standard. My attempts at verbally short-messaging what I took to be helpful and necessary parental tips (under 140 characters, I am sure) were canceled regularly pretty much from the time she was three. At some point in the early teen years it was so hard to get a response from her that it felt as if the Dad App had been wiped from her home screen altogether. I know how you app makers feel when users get frustrated with your push messaging.

"Wait a minute, what are you watching on that thing?" my wife asks as I pop in the iPhone headphones and appear to be leaning back -- while she watches an on-demand episode of "Dr. Who" on the big screen in our living room. Actually, I don't even know if I have been busted or not. What's the new etiquette in a world of ubiquitous and multiple screens in every room? Now that the smartphone and tablet have added to the pile of available displays, if my wife is watching one thing on the family TV, is it rude or …

I seem to have been writing this same story for the last decade. I wonder if it turns out differently this time. It always begins with advertisers hoping to trade ad views by consumers for fun, discounts or prizes. Whether it is the early Web scheme of crediting Web surfers with redeemable points for the ad banners they viewed or more recent attempts at offering rewards for viewing video spots at companies like beezag, the basic premise always seems appealing. Users are supposed to trade a small chunk of their attention and consciousness to a marketer in exchange for …

I finally got my hands on Nintendo's 3DS last week, and it leaves me in pretty much the same place I have been regarding this fascinating company. It is forever dancing around the edges of the mainstream media and marketing ecosystem as it evolves in mobile and even in gaming. It innovates bravely in ways that would make other companies blanche (think touchscreen gaming on the DS, and motion controllers on low-res consoles in the Wii). It has been counted out and outmoded too many times to count in the past few decades. And yet even when it hits home …

I don't think I can be accused of being in the tank for iAds. I continue to be puzzled by the basic model of anchoring a rich multimedia experience to the lure of a simple banner ad. The load times for some of this creative are frustrating, even when I am sitting on top of my router. As I have complained before, the creative executions on many of the first and second generation iAds were underwhelming and played just a bit too safe. In fact, in my last round of Apple-gnashing over this format, I asked for something more story-like …

I admit it. I was looking for trouble. After a casual perusal of my mobile Web bookmarks and apps, I was coming on just a few too many bad links, crappy banner come-ons and poor landing pages to resist. And I was sitting in airports, waiting on delayed flights to LAX and then SFO to host the West Coast versions of OMMA AdNets and OMMA Behavioral. So, okay, I may not be in the most kindly state of mind, but I am definitely in the midst of a common enough mobile use case: away from home, stranded in airport.. .pissed …

When Steve Jobs introduced the concept behind the iCloud last month, he contended that having access to your data on any device, anytime, anywhere, was more than just a matter of putting your hard drive in the sky. He pitched it as the next great stage of computing (because understatement is his specialty, of course), since it moved the hub away from the PC and "demoted" the desktop to being just another device.

Sitting in our living room on any given evening, I have an embarrassment of mobile riches before me: laptop, tablet, smartphone. "Do we have time to make a movie?" my wife asks. Given a choice of three mobile devices with which to answer the questions of what is playing when nearby, the smartphone is the obvious default choice for a number of reasons now. With geo-location built in, one tap to an app rather than consulting a browser bookmark, and a straightforward need, the phone represents the shortest distance between question and answer, hands down.

"You're grumpy," my wife complains. "I am a critic. I get paid to be grumpy," I say. "Well, you're married now, so you can't snarl at everything -- and everyone." OK, so consider this column a bit of therapy -- focusing on the little things in mobile media now that make me happy.