Mobile TV—that is, live TV on your cellphone—is still sorta “meh,” it’s fair to say. That’s why the news that the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is seen by some, including Nokia, as the event that will bring the technology to the forefront, is certainly welcome. After all, nothing attracts eyeballs quite like the World Cup—sort of in the same way that the 2006 World Cup in Germany was HDTV’s mass audience debut.

Fact: the average post card contains less than 150 characters. That little nugget of information is partially why today’s text messages have a 160 character limit. For this, we have a nice German fellow to thank.

A fascinating bit of Apple gossip for your Tuesday morning, gossip that piggybacks on the never-going-to-die “iPhone on Verizon Wireless?” rumor. Does an “iPhone lite” interest you? Or perhaps a “media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos” that makes calls using Wi-Fi?

A recent poll by the Australian Communications and Media Authority found that 90% of Australian children aged 15 and older own a mobile phone. This number could be higher or lower in other countries, but I suspect it’s on par with what you’d expect in the U.S. as well.

Just like Krusty the Clown, David Beckham will endorse damn near anything, provided the price is right. That helps explain this latest promotional video, wherein the benched AC Milan (via LA Galaxy) midfielder holds, quite masculinely, the Motorola Aura, the $2,000 cellphone that nobody wants.

Good news, everyone. That Mexican law that requires cellphone users to be fingerprinted and registered into a national database went into effect the other day. It’s an effort to crack down on violent crime, since, as well all know, cellphones are notorious criminals and won’t think twice about dropping an Acme anvil onto your head.

Of the 4.3 million iPhone subscribers that AT&T added to its books in 2008, about 40 percent of them were new customers. It’s that type of growth that has AT&T scrambling to retain its exclusivity arrangement with Apple, which is expected to expire next year. If that agreement were to expire, Apple would be free to take the iPhone to other wireless carriers, like T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless (though Apple would have to develop a CDMA version of the phone first to bring it to VZW).

Looks like President Obama wants to see some change in our Cuba policy, and not merely change affecting only Cuban-Americans and their relationship with the country. American telecommunication companies will now be allowed to, among other things, establish satellite links between the two countries and—Opie and Anthony may soon be heard in Havana!

The Taxi and Limousine Commission in New York wants passengers to have a safe, swift ride every time they flags down one of its taxis. To that end the commission is studying several ideas that would make your journey all the more pleasant. One idea in particular deserves our attention: installing signal blockers that would prevent cellphones from being using by the cabbie. (Your cellphone would still work fine in the back seat.) That way you can go from Dumb Club to Stupid After-party without hearing the gentleman driving the cab wax poetic to his friends via his awful Bluetooth headset.

Tea party! Yes, in the spirit of all those completely artificial tea parties that have been annoying Tweeple from Maine to Hawaii, the New York Post wants to let its readership know that New York State has the fourth highest cellphone taxes in the country. Fourth! That’s almost high enough to give a damn.

Looks like AT&T is working hard to upgrade its network in anticipation of the new iPhone. (Apparently it’s conventional wisdom that Apple will release a new iPhone this summer.) The primary benefit to you, the paying customer, is faster network speed—provided, of course, that you upgrade to the new iPhone. That’s how they get you.

Samsung will finally release Android-based cellphones later this year. Too bad us Americans will have to wait till the second half of the year to get ‘em, while a phone will be released outside of the U.S. in June.

Help me out here. The iPhone version of Skype was released the other day; it’s Wi-Fi-only, but it’s a VoIP product, so I don’t understand from where the outrage is coming. Do people, e.g. the Consumers Union, expect AT&T to subsidize the phone to the tune of hundreds of dollars, and then allow you to use some other provider exclusively? A “dance with the one who brung you” sort of scenario.

So Nokia has finally launched that Point & Find service into beta. Point & Find,you’ll recall, was first introduced at Mobile World Conference a few weeks ago, and it lets users—wait for it—point at things to get information. Right now, the service works with movies.

A “shock jock” by the name of Howard Stern is getting a Palm Pre before you will. Before us, even. Palm is going to give Sirius’ $500 million man an in-person hands-on, before whisking the phone away, back to Palm’s lair.

Presumably your Korean is as rusty as mine, so apologies in advance for not taking too much away from Samsung’s official reveal of the Instinct Mini, more accurately known as the S30. There’s a good chance that Samsung will show off the phone sometime this week at CTIA, where Greg is currently running about.

This is tremendous. It’s an application for Android called BarTor that you use to automatically download movies using BitTorrent. You simply hold the G1’s camera to a movie’s barcode, presumably while at Best Buy or something, then the software sends the movie title to your computer, which you’ve already set up to run uTorrent or Vuze. And off it goes!

Are you a Digital Collaborator? A Media Mover? Or maybe you’re a fearsome Ambivalent Networker? No idea what these phrases mean? (Good!) They refer to the level of technological integration in a person’s life. Someone’s who’s a Roving Node is really adept at using one piece of technology in their life—this is the type of person who e-mails all day long, and knows how to do nothing else. At the highest rung of this ladder, the Ambivalent Networkers, there is plenty of doubt about the wisdom of relying upon technology so fiercely. They’re sad clowns.

Anyone who went to SXSW last week and who uses/used an iPhone will know just how terrible AT&T’s service was. (I had a T-Mo BlackBerry, so I didn’t notice anything.) The New York Times even wrote about it! (Well, the Bits Blog.) If you’re so inclined, however, it looks like AT&T may be willing to give you a free month of service as recompense, but you’ll have to haggle.

There’s a rather sad story out of Cincinnati where a high school girl hanged herself because a nude photo she sent to her boyfriend via cellphone ended up spreading around the school, if not the town itself. It’s called “sexting,” and it’s apparently a big deal on high school campuses. And because of this legitimate tragedy‐why on Earth would kids tease this girl to the point where she decided to hang herself?—people are no wondering what, if anything, should be done to stop the phenomenon.