Everything online will become a “location-based service” with users not just wanting the best matching results to their searches, but “nearby results” too.

Read Chris Tomlinson’s latest musing on the subject in this weeks Birmingham Post

Blyk is a free mobile phone network for teenagers who, as you know, dispensed with the use of vowels in the late nineties when the introduction of the Short Message System simultaneously accelerated the evolution of the English language and that of human thumb dexterity.

Blyk is being heralded as the future of mobile advertising, and ‘free’ as the way to go for mobile operators competing for subscribers in a saturated market.

But does free really have a mobile future?

If you are over 16 and under 24, then your mobile future has potentially already arrived with Blyk offering 217 text messages and 43 voice minutes each month without charge.

Now those of us over 24 have come across ‘free’ before and know that there is no such thing as a ‘free’ especially if it prefixes the word ‘lunch’.

In this case, you’ll have to allow Blyk to send you six advertisements each day, which doesn’t seem too arduous especially as they promise to only send offers relevant to you.

Mobile advertising hasn’t really taken off so far. Sending unsolicited SMS messages is far too intrusive and more likely to damage brands given the very limited number of characters available to carry a compelling message. MMS is proving far too cumbersome given that many handsets lack screen size and resolution.

That leaves banner advertising on mobile operators’ web portals, which are often slow (thanks to the poor take up of 3G services) and lack the rich-media capability, such as video and sound, needed for real brand engagement.

So bribing teenagers to read adverts does seems like the way forward.

But why just teenagers?

To you and I, 217 texts a month might seem like a lot, especially given our under developed thumbs and Ye Olde English vocabulary, meaning each would take at least an hour to compose.

But that’s not the case with your average 16-24 year old. It works out at just over seven a day, which will barely last most teenagers till lunchtime.

Blyk will then charge them 10p for each additional text messages and 15p for each extra voice minute, which isn’t extortionate, but an almost guaranteed revenue stream for Blyk, given the audience, on top of the money they get from brands for the compulsory advertisements.

Although Blyk don’t want us to call it advertising, as they will only send subscribers ’stuff they really want’ such will be the accuracy of their targeting.

This free model will live and die on this accuracy. Enough subscribers will need to act on the ads and not just delete them for brands to want to keep funding their free calls and texts.

Some people are pointing out that the biggest flaw in the free model might be that you are ultimately trying to sell things to people who are too tight to pay for their own phone!

But how safe will it be and does the inevitable increase in air rage present the greater danger?

Our own British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) reported that between January 2000 and August 2005 up to 20 incidents of aircraft malfunction were linked to the use of mobile phones.

But it is not clear what type of malfunction was involved. Are we talking about the smoke alarm going off in the toilet, or navigational guidance failure?

In 2003, the CAA found that signals between phones and cell stations on the ground could skew navigation bearing displays by up to five degrees. Hence the current ban on their use in-flight.

Five degrees might not seem a lot, however most of us would hate getting on a plane bound for New York only to step of it in Boston, or indeed having to swim the last couple of miles home.

But business is business and not being contactable for several hours can be critical to some people. Like the global heads of billion dollar multinationals and tractor salesmen from Ohio for instance.

The proposed system utilises an on-board base station in the plane which communicates with passengers’ handsets. The base station – called a pico cell – is low power and creates a network area big enough to encompass the cabin of the plane. And crucially, it doesn’t affect navigational equipment.

But has the CAA overlooked the air rage problem?

Whenever I’m on the train to London, I can never work out why someone speaking on a phone is more annoying than two people talking to each other in the same carriage.

Is it the unsatisfied curiosity of only getting half a conversation, or the elevated volume that is clearly needed to speak to someone far away that is more annoying?

More likely, it’s the puerile nature of ninety percent of the conversations you are forced to overhear. Now I know some mobile phone calls can be vitally important. The office calling to say your meeting’s been cancelled or your wife calling to ask you what you want for tea for instance.

But most are not worth the risk of violence at 30,000 feet.

Judging by the blogosphere’s negative reaction to the news, many airlines may want to avoid installing pico cells on their aircraft, despite them being a potentially lucrative revenue stream. Accidentally leaving your phone on while flying might cost you a fortune.

I personally think allowing the use of mobile phones on aeroplanes is only a good idea if people are encouraged to step outside the aircraft when making and receiving calls!

I’d expected that sharing one mobile cell with 180,000 people would make getting a connection pretty hit and miss, but Orange at least never let me down once.

One cider-soaked Glasto veteran explained to me that in the good old days, if you wanted to spend any festival time with people you actually knew, you had to make detailed rendezvous plans with emergency meeting points clearly defined.

If plans changed, you could leave messages scribbled on bits of paper pinned to the meeting point posts. Now, no one makes plans or knows how to stick to them, as everything can be dynamically coordinated by SMS.

Of course, getting Glasto tickets this year was strictly an electronic affair too.

Only the 400,000 people who pre-registered online were allowed to buy the 177,500 tickets available to the public. Those lucky enough to get on the website snapped up all the tickets in just one hour and 45 minutes.

The registration process involved submitting a photograph of yourself which was printed on your ticket to prevent touting.

But while the lucky ones ended up with mud on their faces, the festival organisers got egg on theirs, as the database of unsuccessful registrants somehow got into the hands of spammers who sent unsolicited emails for other festivals.

The web has not only revolutionised the way punters get tickets for the festival but the way many of the artists end up there too. Headline act Arctic Monkeys, having allegedly been discovered on MySpace, found themselves walking out onto the hallowed Pyramid Stage without ever having to serve their time on lesser stages.

The Internet’s profound effect on the music industry was something Pete Townshend pointed out during The Who’s Sunday-night finale, being the oldest pre-Internet band on offer this year.

Although, you would have thought someone might have told him “”best not mention the Internet, Pete…”"

The theme this year at Glasto was on climate change. Festival-goers were asked to sign up to the “”I Count”" climate change campaign, which encourages people to think about reducing their carbon footprint.

But to be honest, it was hard to think about parched Third-World countries and anything other than your mud footprint when you were stood in an English monsoon. The vast piles of discarded rubbish and the carbon monoxide cloud over the world’s biggest traffic jam did little to convince me of the festival’s planet-friendly credentials.

Orange did their bit by launching a wind-powered mobile phone charger at the festival. Stick it on your tent pole in the morning and by the evening it would accumulate enough power to recharge the phone of the person who nicked it during the day.

It’s an innovative device, as nowadays mobile phones are just as important as wellies for festival survival. Although I can’t help but feel they have somehow diminished Glastonbury’s character-building effect for our children.