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At this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a task force consisting of a group of international mobile operators announced it will submit its plans for an embedded SIM solution to telecommunication standards body ETSI for consideration by month-end. The standard would allow for an embedded (as opposed to removable) SIM technology that could be remotely activated by operators at point of sale and afterwards.

The embedded SIM technology is not meant to replace the removable SIM cards such as those used in today's mobile phones, but it could be used in various consumer electronics devices to connect them to the Internet. It's the first step to building an "Internet of Things."

Researchers at RMIT's School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences developed a method for integrating spatial coordinates into an SMS text message and released the technology for doing so as an open standard called GeoSMS. The standard has now been put to use in the first mainstream mobile application, an Android reference app called "I Am Here," available now in the Google Android Market for free.

In order to usher the patent system "into the 21st Century", Deputy General Counsel for Microsoft Horacio Gutierrez believes that "global patent harmonization" must happen. In a recent CNET article Andrew Donoghue lists a number of opponents to Microsoft's ever-growing patent power. The Redmond giant has been widely criticized for anti-competitive tactics and has been investigated in a number of antitrust cases. Unsurprisingly, Gutierrez's statements for standardized patent applications and processing have struck a chord with free culture supporters.