"Why doesn't Outlook send an SMS every morning summarizing the schedule for the day and pending tasks, and a reminder SMS as scheduled meetings approach? Why doesn't Muvico send an SMS every Friday morning with a list of new releases and possibly their schedules? There are countless ways that businesses could "reach out" to consumers via SMS, providing desired information in an acceptable manner....

Of course, such services are readily subject to abuse. Mobile Spam is the last thing that consumers want, on any continent. A safer approach might be for the phones themselves to provide functionality for "subscribing" to information on the Internet and downloading it on a scheduled basis. Think of it as offline WAP. Avantgo essentially does that on most PDA platforms, I imagine that they can easily support SmartPhone (Palm-based phones are already supported)." [Bryce's Radio Experiments, circuitously via ...useless miscellany]

I agree with Eric that Bryce eyes the nail squarely before he hits it on the head. However, I don't think we'll reach that end via this route. I think faster wireless speeds will be a reality before Americans ever truly embrace SMS or IM on their cell phones in large numbers. (Poor cell phone usability will probably keep hindering us for some time.)

That means information will be the big pull, not just messaging. As you already know, I think information is already shifted and promiscuous, and anyone under the age of 25 (plus a heck of a lot of the rest of us) will start expecting our hand-picked news to come to us this way.

Not everything, mind you. If I subscribe to 100 channels in my news aggregator, I should be able to prioritize six to eight of them to come to my phone, too. And when I say phone, I mean the eventual phone/PDA combo. Bryce is right that synching with Outlook will overcome the largest barrier to widespread adoption of these combination devices. When I have my always-on connection, this is what I want to have in my mobile news aggregator at any given time (in addition to my calendar, my contacts, each family member's schedule, and access to email):

• The schedule at my local movie theater
• The weather forecast (especially storm alerts)
• Library Stuff and LIS News (so I can browse them while standing in line somewhere)
• The Illinois library news channel (after we create this, of course)
• My local library's programs
• Current announcements from my kid's school (especially school closings)
• Headlines from my local newspaper
• The NY Times News Tracker
• Frame-by-frame Dilbert and Overdue (okay, I'm reaching here, but it'd be cool)

Basically a mix of news, schedules, and announcements that I choose. I do think that filtering information through news aggregators could be the next major step in harnessing information (a natural evolution after the PC and the internet). That's what Radio is doing for me already. Making it mobile and accessible from anywhere completes the information shift circle.

Maybe I'm the only one that wants this and it won't happen, but I'll snap it up as soon as the tools are available and useful (probably before they're even useful). I already try to screw my round PDA and round cellphone into this square mobile information hole. I think AvantGo became impatient (or is lacking the funding to wait) and are shooting themselves in the foot by weeding out the smaller channels. Those are the ones I want to be able to pull in wirelessly from anywhere, especially the ones I can localize (like the schools). Add voice synthesizing into the equation so that I can hear my mobile news aggregator and location-based services of my choosing and you're reeling me in even faster.

That's the kind of value-added, wireless service for which I would pay extra. However, there isn't even an infrastructure for this yet, let alone a well-constructed interface. Instead, the telcos are too busy focusing on keeping me on their approved sites, showing me what they want me to see, all of which stifles my desire to use their services. The lure has always been choice (AOL vs. the internet), and news aggregation fulfills that promise in the mobile environment. SMS won't be able to fill those shoes because it leaves you scrolling through multiple messages and your inbox becomes cluttered like your emailbox.

I'm becoming more and more convinced of the power of RSS aggregation as a tool in the war against promiscuous information overload.