One of my pet themes here is that we’re moving steadily to a world where it’s increasingly easy to access digital data via the mobile phone. As broadband download speeds become the norm, using your mobile to see web pages, will be as commonplace as calling someone.

Of course, many people are already doing this already via WAP, despite relatively slow speeds and that many websites aren’t optimised for mobile access. For instance, in the UK, the ugly duckling (remember WAP is crap?) has grown into a 1.8 billion page impressions a month swan.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg and the use of WAP is limited to a few sites and tasks (like looking up train times) and can’t really be argued to have reached the mainstream yet. This is going to change.

It’s difficult to imagine all the consequences of this. But one struck me this morning, reading an article in The Guardian Online, Reviews on a Plate, about London Eating. London Eating is a pretty simple idea. It’s a site where ordinary diners can post reviews of restaurants - citizen restaurant critics, if you like.

This has proved to be pretty popular, enjoying 100,000 new posts every month and getting 650,000 unique visits, which surely must be a serious percentage of regular restaurant diners in the London area.

The great thing about this is that because they’re written by ordinary people, they reflect the kind of service that you or I would probably experience.Because if restaurant staff see AA Gill or Michael Winner (two famous restaurant critics) walk in their door that evening, they’re obviously going to pull out all the stops for them, even if it penalises other diners. And these guys are just too well known to go incognito.

Now, this is bad news for a not-so-good restaurant. Many people are obviously influenced by such a site when planning a meal out.

But if this guide were easily usable with your mobile phone, imagine what it might do to passing trade? If there’s three or four restaurants in the immediate vicinity, the review on your mobile is certainly going to have an influence on where you decide to spend your money.

Clearly, there are problems with such a system. Competitors can fake reviews or customers with a unjustified grudge can unfairly critique you. But as more and more people start to post to these types of guides, the faux review will start to stand out and we’ll learn to spot the genuine.

This will clearly be an unpleasant and un-nerving experience for many restaurateurs. But if they consistently deliver good value, good service and good food, they have nothing to worry about.

Another example of the shift of the balance of power to the community.