But it is a hot new trend, says Bill Siwicki at Internet Retailer, and the merchants are jumping onto it. As usual there is a big generational divide; a quarter of mobile phone users under age 45 used their phone while shopping in a store; fewer than one in 10 older users did so.

Middle-aged fogie though I am, phone-a-friend (or product review site) while shopping makes a lot of sense. The only reason we weren’t doing it before is that we didn’t have the right gadgets. And now we do.

On another front, we all know that newspapers are hurting, and they do not suffer in silence. A whole genre had emerged decrying the death of newspapers and worrying about the future of news.

The worries won’t be eased by a new Nielsen survey reported at SFGate.com (the San Francisco Chronicle website). Internet users, especially in North America, are a tough sell when it comes to paying for news content.

But the same study shows that people are a good deal more willing to pay for movies, music, and games (and professional quality video, but not the user generated kind). The Kindle shows that they will also pay for books.

It seems that people are willing to shell out for content they regard as individually distinctive. If you want a particular song, or a particular book, you’ll pay for it.

The problem for newspapers is that people usually don’t care about a news story for its own sake – its sparkling style or dramatic mood – the way they care about a book or movie. They just want the news, and understandably regard widely available information as a commodity.

No, this does not lead me to a magic solution, but understanding the source of the challenge is a decent place to start.