Mark Bridge writes:

Mention 'anonymity' to anyone these days and it's pretty likely they'll start talking about Facebook. Maybe Google Street View, maybe RF chips in passports... but probably Facebook.

This 'over sharing' of personal information is a far cry from the situation a few years ago. Once, no-one on the internet really admitted who they were. That New Yorker cartoon - "Nobody knows you're a dog" - wasn't far off the truth. You couldn't tell a dungeonmaster from a librarian when they were online.

This year’s Mobile Web Usage Forecast from mobile internet firm Volantis says consumer interest in social networks and mobile games will drive mobile internet in the UK and the USA.

The company's forecast shows that entertainment is becoming a priority...

The concept of 'Facebook Zero' – a low data text-focussed version of Facebook for mobile phones – was mentioned at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. Three months on, Facebook has now launched the service at 0.facebook.com. The new mobile site is currently available with zero data charges via over 50 mobile operators. The UK isn't yet one of the 45 countries where it works, although 3 UK plans to introduce it soon.

In the latest edition of The Fonecast we spoke to Richard Kinder, Vice President of Technology and New Business at Red Bend Software. The company specialises in Mobile Software Management, which is probably best known as a service that enables over-the-air (OTA) updates for mobile phones. Here’s an edited transcript of the interview, which started when we asked Richard for a simple explanation of what MSM and OTA meant.

"Red Bend software has been around for a number of years, and our solutions in the Mobile Software Management space allow the software in a mobile phone to be updated in the consumer’s hands."

Mobile research company Ground Truth has published a survey that shows more than half of the time spent on the mobile internet is spent on social networking sites. The US-based research said that 59.8% of online time was spent on social networking sites. Portals took 13.7% of consumers' time, operator sites took 9%, messaging 7.4% and downloads 1.3%.

Mobile-focussed sites airG, MocoSpace and mbuzzy were all visited for an average of over one hour per week.