Last week, as the media blogosphere analyzed the announcement of a paywall at the New York Times, I was more fascinated with another recent obsession of mine: Foursquare.

According to mobile analytics provider Flurry, the average mobile news application session clocks in at ten minutes – even game apps don’t do that.

Audiences want to interact with media brands on mobile devices—via “untethered digital content”  said John Loughlin, Hearst Magazines EVP and general manager, at the recent Digital Innovators' Summit in Berlin.

Aggregate mobile data in the U.S. is expected to reach 20 exabytes (that’s 20 billion gigabytes) by 2013. Another study predicts that mobile data traffic will double every year through 2014.

I filled the pop-culture void that came with growing up in a remote area pre-Internet with subscriptions to magazines like Interview and Seventeen. I remember the excitement of receiving these publications in the mail—the feel of the glossy paper and hidden treasures in the form of perfume and makeup samples. With that, I can imagine the fondness that magazine publishers have developed for the books they labor to produce, and how hard it must be to offer these products on emerging digital platforms such as e-readers.

Apple hasn’t cornered the market on cool color e-readers, despite what you might think from the overhyped iPad. By this fall, expect to see a new generation of devices that support full color and full-motion video, featuring new Mirasol display technology from Qualcomm.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) recently released a white paper detailing best practices for running a U.S. cross-carrier mobile content program, including mobile couponing. Sending coupon offers to your list of readers and prospects has its own set of opportunities—Ping Mobile's holiday couponing campaign for clothing brand Ed Hardy achieved a double opt-in rate of more than 73 percent—but the limitations are worth noting, as well.