It was ages ago that we were one of the first sources to identify Happy Slapping - back in January 2005, in fact. Since then, it’s grown from a tasteless prank - filming on a camera phone an unsuspecting victim’s reaction to being slapped on the cheek - to filming incredibly violent, illegal and unprovoked attacks.

Far from being a fad that died out quickly, it’s now gone mainstream, with these attacks being filmed and uploaded on sites like Google’s YouTube.

The BBC’s veteran investigative reporting programme, Panorama, tackled the subject last night with their Children’s Fight Club episode, including showing very disturbing footage of some attacks, interviews with kids who film the fights and the victims themselves. Probably most upsetting for the victims is that it’s humiliating enough to be beaten up, but really horrid to know that your peers and perfect strangers alike can see the evidence for themselves again and again.

Most horrid of all though (Google generally takes down films when they get complaints) are sites like Live Leak (no link as I don’t want them to get the Google Juice), which specialise in these types of video, along with other cool stuff like violence in the news and soldiers getting blown up. All accompanied by semi-literate and mainly racist comments from site visitors - it’s amazing that most of them have the intelligence to get out of bed in the morning, let alone navigate a browser. Maybe the nurses help them.

The founder of Live Leak is a tubby gent by the name of Hayden Hewitt, whose defence is a kind of free speech riff along the lines of “”Look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we’re going to show it”. I bet his Mum’s proud of how he makes his living, or maybe he lies and pretends he’s a pedophile, to save her the embarrassment.

Of course, sites like Live Link and low life like Hayden wouldn’t survive without advertising revenues and hopefully one result of the programme will mean that this dries up for them.

So, happy slapping - or really the bastard second cousin of the original idea - is alive and well and unlikely to go away soon. Of course, sites like Live Link aren’t the cause of this phenomenon, merely unpleasant parasites living on others, much like a tape worm living in the belly of society.

The real problem - and one that the programme really didn’t get to grips with at all - is why kids are behaving like this in the first place. Take away the sites and they’ll go underground or swap videos via Bluetooth, which is how it all started. But the motivation for making these videos is much more scary than the simple fact that they’re available online.

I’ve been writing for a long time now about how more and more people are cutting the cord, by ditching landlines and going exclusively mobile. And it seems the trend is accelerating reports El Reg. This also casts a big dollop of shiny doubt over the wisdom of any kind of quad play strategy.

Consulting firm, Analysys, have written a new report on this called “The Acceleration of Fixed-Mobile Substitution in Western Europe: facts and figures”, which forecasts that among other nuggets, 50% of all European calls will be mobile by as soon as next year.

In advanced mobile markets, like Finland, already 74.6% of calls are made from mobile phones. More traditionalist Germany has 24.3% of calls made from mobiles, but the common theme is the growth of mobile at the expense of landlines.

If you work for a fixed telephony business only, I’m afraid you were already screwed a few years ago when the trend started to become obvious to some of us. It doesn’t mean that you haven’t got a healthy cash cow you’ll be able to milk for a good few years yet, but it’s probably time you gave up your marketing overhead for a start, I’m afraid. And it’s too late to do much about it now.

But looking on the positive side of things, “one number for life” now seems to be a realistic prospect, rather than some sci-fi fantasy. A new baby will get a slap on the bum, her mobile number for life (fully globally portable, of course) and wireless ear buds for their music soundtrack of their first 5 years of living.

The year? 2015. What’s your guess?

The silly reason of news has arrived a little early with this story of thirsty plants phoning their owners to ask for more water.

A group of post-grads at New York University, have been working on a project they call “Botanicals”, which consists on a water sensor in the soil, connecting over a wireless LAN to place a phone call when the plant needs attention.

And if it’s not weird enough to get calls from your plants, each one is given a voice with a distinct characteristic - Scots Moss, as an example, phones with a Scottish accent.

“We wanted to make sure that you weren’t just getting phone calls that were really needy. So we have them calling you back when you’ve watered them to say thank you for watering me.”

So maybe Prince Charles was right all along.

Motorola have announced that they’re going to build a prototype projector for mobile phones, according to to Sci Fi Tech. The resulting image will be about 15 inches (the same as a laptop) and will be better than DVD quality.

Obviously, it is only a prototype we’re talking about here, so it might be 12 - 24 months before we see a production model. But it’s only a matter of time before the mobile destroys (or at least radically shakes up) the projector market, just as it’s done with digital cameras, pagers, alarm clocks and calculators.

More importantly, I think that this is half of the essential component that’s needed for the mobile to really replace the laptop altogether. One of the big objections always cited by the people who try to deny that this is inevitable is the level of viewing detail the PC gives over and above the small screen on a mobile. This projector solution is one example of how the problem can easily be overcome within a few years.

The other objection is that the mobile keypad just isn’t good enough for heavy lifting applications like spreadsheets, graphics, PowerPoint and writing long text documents - as opposed to a cursory and curiously acceptably abrupt email from a Blackberry. In fairness, I’m not sure that voice or virtual keyboards are the answer either - the latter certainly are difficult to use for touch typing.

One solution might be public terminals in the street and office that you plug your phone in for full functionality. Or a travelling keyboard that you Velcro to your thigh, as envisaged by Cory Doctorow in Standard Eastern Tribe. But we’ll have to see which solution prevails in the end.

But I’m absolutely sure that the laptop’s going the way of the mainframe.

Informa’s Mobile Media (no link, it’s hard copy) reports from the recent Off-Deck Conference about a speech given by a Mr Oswin Eleonora of Acision (formerly known as LogicaCMG), in which he attacked the way that the mobile market has “become obsessed with the notion of ‘free’” and ad-funded content and services.

His point is that service providers shouldn’t offer for free what people are used to paying for. He had a special go at Blyk, the MVNO launching in Europe in the second half of 2007, which plans to offer free calls and sms to its 16 - 24 target audience. I bet they’re quaking in their boots.

It strikes me that Mr Eleonora is missing the point completely. Indeed, if the point in this case was represented by speeding bullet, it’s not only missed the target, but has been fired in the wrong direction.

Because the actual point here is that it’s the market that’s setting the pace, capitalism will do that you know, and whingeing about it is as constructive as complaining about the existence of wasps - the best that you’ll achieve is to make yourself feel a little better, but the wasps will still be there. And a call for whatever Mr Eleonora is suggesting will be just as fruitful.

I mean, is he seriously expecting the likes of Blyk to think “Yikes…so we should like….charge for our service and completely change our business model, thereby abolishing our USP and strategy…. because we don’t want to upset any apple carts around here, do we?”.

One of the main challenges for businesses today is to react quickly and positively to changing market conditions and that’s what we’re witnessing happening here. A significant shift is in progress and business must adapt quickly, or die. And appealing to the new, disruptive entrants to play by the old rules is not a remotely effective way of adapting.

Obviously, there is going to be a place for paid content and services for quite a while yet, but when the dam bursts, it always starts with a little trickle.

The WSJ is reporting that Nokia will announce on Tuesday that it’s bought a media-sharing site called Twango. I’ve not heard of it before, and when I tried to visit the site I was greeted with a message saying it was down for maintenance (or perhaps a Nokia rebranding), though the Journal says it’s like other media-sharing sites, but it accepts photos, video and audio. Such a move by Nokia isn’t particularly surprising, given its newfound affinity for web software and services. It does call into question the company’s deals with Flickr and Six Apart, but the WSJ says they’ll remain in place “in order to provide choice for customers.”

I think that Nokia’s bigger push into the web space is, generally, A Good Thing, since for far too long mobile phones have and the web world haven’t played well together. But this acquisition strikes me as a bit odd. We’ve seen plenty of photo- and media-sharing sites from the likes of operators and handset vendors before, but for the most part, they’ve failed next to unaffiliated, web-based services. The biggest question in my mind is what’s more important: that Nokia have and control its own media-sharing site, and develop new revenue opportunities with it, or that its customers have the best tools possible to share media from their mobiles to the sites and services of their choosing?

This isn’t an either/or situation or a zero-sum game; I’m just not convinced that Nokia needs to get into the business of running web services in areas where plenty of established competition exists — and consumers have overwhelmingly chosen that competition. I’m interested to see what Nokia can bring to the table by snapping up Twango, but I hope it doesn’t come at the expense of the continued development of tools to let consumers share their mobile media to a wide range of sites. Perhaps I’m being overly cynical here, but too often in mobile closed thinking has been the default — and if Nokia is truly embracing the Web ethic, it’s got to make openness a priority, and not seek to lock its customers in to its own solutions, either actively, or by making the use of other services much more difficult.

Back in March, I greeted the launch of Emporio’s phone for old folks with little scepticism. After all, would people over 50 (some still surprisingly youthful) really want a phone that labeled themselves old farts, unable to cope with technology? Surely, if such a phone were needed, a more subtle approach is called for.

Well, it seems that the retail trade agrees (or perhaps they just read MobHappy hah hah), as they’re just not stocking the phone, forcing Emporio to try selling direct. Good luck with that, fellas.

The spin Emporio are trying to put on the lack of retail distribution is that shops want to maintain their yoof cred and are worried about polluting it by being seen to encourage oldies into their stores. Frankly, I don’t think this is fair - I’m afraid it’s just not a well thought out product and my advice is to rethink the design and positioning. In my experience, older people definitely do appreciate a phone with a simpler UI and larger, more legible screen, but not at the expense of being patronised.

Business 2.0 is one of my favourite business reads for ideas and coverage of what’s going on at the bleeding edge of today’s commercial trends. It also has a ridiculously influential readership, from what I can see.

But plummeting adsales is causing parent, Time Inc, to think about shutting it down.

Josh Quittner, the editor, is fighting to save it. On the basis that he’s one of the few people who have refused to join my LinkedIn network and twice declined proposals for articles that I pitched him, I don’t see why I should help. Except that it is an exceptionally good product and I’d hate to see it die.

So, if you like the mag too, show your support by signing up to the Facebook group “I read Business 2.0 - and I want to keep reading!”. If you’re not a member of Facebook (where have you been???) leave a comment here and I’ll pass it on for you.

Demonstrate the power of the Blogosphere and save this publication for the good of us all.

Last week, I wrote about Sprint Nextel’s decision to fire 1,000 of its customers, who were using its call centre too much. It’s certainly one approach to customer care.

I’m currently reading Allan Leighton’s book “On Leadership” and he tells a story about Dyson, the plucky little British company that took on and consistently wins against mega-corporations, with its great products and innovative design.

Someone in the Dyson call centre was worried that customers might not be able to get in touch with them. So they came up with the idea of printing the call centre number prominently on the product itself. Naturally there was some resistance within the company - after all the number was in the product manual and perhaps people would assume that it was there because the product broke down all the time.

But they decided to go ahead. Oh how their competitors snickered….before copying the idea themselves about six months later.

Interestingly, no one came up with the idea that they shouldn’t go ahead because someone might call them too much - I mean that’s what the call centre is for, right? So, if you have a great product and great service, you really don’t have to worry about customers calling you up. Could be a lesson there.

Allan also tells a great anecdote about his first day on the leadership programme at Mars, where his job was to sweep up any stray Maltesers that fell off the production line. After 3 exhausting hours chasing bouncing balls of chocolate around the factory, a colleague took pity on him and explained that it was easier to tread on them first and then sweep them up.

Could be a lesson there too. I wonder if anyone working on the front line at the Sprint call centre has any similar words of wisdom about how to improve the service and avoid all these calls in the first place?

I haven’t said a whole lot about Motorola’s (mis)fortunes lately, apart from a post in May that echoed what I’d been saying for almost two years — that the company needed to move on from the RAZR and come up with something to replace it. But this week, the company said that it would miss its sales targets for the quarter, lose money for the second quarter in a row, and that its handset business wouldn’t be profitable this year. The dip in sales also means that Samsung has passed it as the number two handset vendor.

CEO Ed Zander (or ZNDR) is now on the chopping block, and it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to keep his job. He fended off activist investor Carl Icahn, but this latest dismal announcement may simply be too much to bear. It’s never a good sign when your company’s stock price gets held up by optimism that you’ll soon lose your job. I’ve never been a huge Zander fan, since I first heard him speak at Motorola’s press event at 3GSM in 2004. I found his vision for the company trite and tired as he trotted out the “seamless mobility” concept the company’s been talking about for ages. Perhaps Zander and the rest of the company have been too enamored with this vision of the future (which never seems to get any closer to reality) and they overlooked the short term by putting too much faith in the RAZR and its derivatives for far too long.

Things aren’t going to improve very quickly for the company, either, with most financial analysts seeing no change in its fortunes for the next 18 to 24 months, at the least. Zander has also put a new exec in charge of the handset business, and the fact that he was the company’s head of supply-chain operations makes it appear that the unit’s focus will now be on driving costs down rather than developing a portfolio of outstanding products. The problems run deep: as Techype notes, it’s no coincidence that Moto’s hurting while Sony Ericsson, which is the anti-Moto in so many ways, is thriving.

What makes the Motorola story even more compelling is that it’s got a history for this sort of thing. The story of its underestimation of the industry’s shift from analog to digital technology — which led to its ruin and the rise of Nokia — is one of the industry’s legendary tales, while the company’s history over the past decade or so has been a real roller-coaster. I wondered after 3GSM in 2006 if the RAZR was Motorola’s modern equivalent of the StarTAC, meaning a huge, hit handset that the company just couldn’t follow up. I’m sad to say that it looks like I was right.

Can Motorola turn things around? Absolutely — the Z8 is proof that somewhere within the company, somebody’s got an idea of how to make a hot handset. But I don’t think that turnaround can happen with the current leadership, nor do I think that the current leadership will be given the opportunity to do so.