I think Howard Rheingold's point about how powerful street blogging could become is a very valid point. To be able to upload a short text message from your mobile phone to the web in near-real time is incredibly powerful. Photos and video are even more powerful. This type of personal blogging can be useful in many different aspects of life. When my family and I packed up the rental van and drove to college to drop me off as a freshman, I used my mobile phone's camera to take lots of pictures and upload them to my blog with short captions describing where I was, what I was doing and who I was with. During those first few weeks at school, I didn't have time to sit down at my computer and blog about my daily happenings (still don't!) but I was able to use my phone to keep in touch with lots of friends without having to spend much time at it. This was before video phones were easily accessible but I don't think a video would've served much more useful a purpose. I feel that short video clips throughout my day would require me to spend more time on text explanations or longer clips with an audio commentary--not very feasible.
Another way that mobile street blogging is incredibly powerful are in instances of crisis and catastrophe. When the London Underground was bombed in July 2005, many of the first images of the bombing were published on blogs via mobile phones taking photos and videos of the destruction. Other recent events, including the aftermath of the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, have seen mobile blogging with pictures and videos getting "out" into the world's view before traditional media could do so.
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I agree, these tools are powerful, but they also can be used "wrongly." Remember that pictures of Sadam Hussain's hanging, something that only a select few were suppose to witness, were taken with a camera phone and shown all over the world.
As the old saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. But with blogs people would lose interest after 100.
Do you remember when Saddam Hussain's two sons were killed by U.S. forces a couple years ago? The U.S. military released photos of their dead bodies to prove that they were dead. Since the neither the U.S. nor the Iraqis were going to release official images of Saddam's hanging death, do you think it is still wrong for a citizen, who wasn't supposed to, to take a video of the hanging and release the images to the public? Now, the public has a record of the event, not just the government. Although the release of the video is reported to have possibly sparked more violence, it has freed the dark details of Saddam Hussain's execution from government's closed hands and put it in the very public eye.
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