Let’s face it we all have a cell phone or Blackberry and increasingly we’re relying on them for e-mail, text messaging, and WWW access. When I heard a recent speaker wrongly cite Napoleon’s disastrous march on Moscow and his massive army losses (approximately 500,000) without fighting any battles I was quick to use my Treo to look-up the casualty figures (up to 100,000) for the Battle of Borodino (forever etched into my mind thanks to Tolstoy’s War and Peace). I spared the speaker the wrath of my Treo and instead casually noted the historical inaccuracy after his speech. “God-damned cocky Canadians,” is probably what he was thinking when he feigned interest in my dysfunctional need to be historically accurate. But really I was just interested in talking about one of those historical figures I hate most, and doubly impressed at how quickly I could find that data using my mobile device.

How should you use mobile devices? For starters, if you haven’t already done so, look into extending e-mail access to employees via their mobile device. For customers, try adding subscription alerts that can be sent to those that subscribe (e.g. breaking news, new product features, etc.). Yahoo! Mobile has an entire site dedicated to mobile alerts.

Video is killer too. More and more organizations are beginning to learn what has made in little more than 2 years YouTube the 4th most visited website on the planet (right behind Google) – people love video (especially on-demand video). Notwithstanding free videos, people love video so much that Forrester estimates that consumers will spend approximately US$300 million downloading video from the Internet this year.

How should you use video? Well, if you’re not already webcasting key announcements then that might be opportunity number one. Product demos are also highly sought after. Microsoft.com has some great videos (e.g. check out Keep column names in sight when you scroll). Or perhaps a generic video that provides an overview of your business to those that might not understand on first glance? Check out our corporate video for Prescient Digital Media.

However, let your target audience determine what you should deliver. Forrester analyst Kerry Bodine succinctly sums-up the need: “Web execs and interactive marketers who want to experiment with emerging technologies should first seek to understand customers' online and offline behavior and then determine what technologies can both fulfill customers' unmet needs and help achieve business objectives.”