A few days ago, I joined in a conversation that's been bouncing around among some of my respected colleagues, including Jeff Pulver, Luca Filigheddu, Andy Abramson, and Peter Csathy about the future of mobile video calling,

Today Peter posted Mobile Video Calling Part III -- Uniquely Capturing the Ordinary & Extraordinary. I'm not sure I have any more to add other than to agree with Peter -

Would any of us involved in this debate have believed a couple years
ago that photography via mobile phones would become such a vast market
and marketing opportunity for the carriers? I highly doubt it. If we
had this same debate when digital cameras were first being integrated
into mobile phones, my guess is that several of us would have predicted
that the use cases for mobile phone photography would be limited and
consumers would not embrace it.

But, then, life took over ...
meaning that consumers and business users alike began to play with this
new easy-to-use utility ... and found more and more uses for it. Sure,
initially, the quality of these pictures was not very good and still is
not great. But, it has steadily improved and, voila, more and more
people are leaving their digital cameras behind and capturing moments
(both extraordinary and ordinary) via their mobile "phones" which are
with them at all times. THAT is the power of ease of use, improving
quality, and broad awareness via marketing.

I look at the camera in my Treo, and find that it's mediocre as far as cameras go. My 6 megapixel Nokon D50 is far superior. But in talknig with Peter, I pointed out that the glut of shirt pocket digital cameras are really what gave rise to the cell phone integration. Our cameras are too often at home on the shelf when a "Kodak moment" passes by. The popularity of cell phone cameras is driven, in large part, by that fact that our cell phone is always in our purse or pocket.  It's available.

Having stood on the Mt. Whitney summit Peter decribes a time or two, I know I'd share if I had mobile video calling capability. And seeing how our expectations of quality have changed, I'm convinced we'll use mobile video in many ways that, at the moment, seem too far downstream to be practical. Video is another disruptive technology, and one of the keys to disruption is a technology that arrives down-market with lower quality that the established norms indicate will be adopted.

I'm with Peter. Mobile video is coming and it will be bigger than even we who welcome it are imagining.