Five years ago, Bernadette Mulcahy was strategic product manager for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) technology at LogicaCMG. In particular, she was in charge of turning round the downturn in sales of multimedia messaging switches.

According to Mulcahy at the time, business applications were the future of MMS. “Whatever the uncertainties about MMS, one thing is clear ­ its potential is much greater than current consumer applications. It will rapidly be at the heart of many businesses, changing working practices and positively affecting the bottom line,” she explained.

As it happens, I have finally found a phone on which sending pictures and video to other phones and to web sites is not a complete pain in the proverbial. The other day I was playing with the “photographer’s phone” ­ the Nokia N82 ­ and it does indeed take the occasional excellent 5 megapixel shot. Also, it can easily be persuaded to send photos and video across the air.

The trouble is, you have to decide which. An MMS photograph is limited to the sort of low-res snap that ­ just about ­ can be used to prove you really are in the airport, and not in some seedy dive. An MMS video is short, blurry, and is only a “moving picture” if nothing in the shot actually moves, for a minute.

The essential uselessness of MMS for any serious purpose was defined by LogicaCMG as a “niggle”, as were its other failings, such as the fact that five years ago, if you were a Vodafone user, you could only send to other Vodafone subscribers.

Mulcahy’s arguments were, in truth, nothing more than an empty piece of puffery dressed up as a serious attempt to revive a standard that had “massive potential”. This kind of hype is a fact of life in the IT sector. The job of us technology journalists is to ascertain whether there is anything of real substance lurking behind it.

If we look at, say, WiMax puffery, which is rife just now, can we see whether this is another last-ditch attempt to create a bit of hoopla for a failed technology, or a serious “surge” of all the people involved to create a useful business tool?

I can tell you which option I’d pick.