Toshiba's much-hyped Ubiquitous Viewer may be the most over-rated story of the year.

The software basically allows a cellular phone client to take over a remote PC. Sounds great. But it requires a broadband cellular connection (which few phones have), or Bluetooth (in which case why not just sit down at the PC).

Assuming it does work, and it does get used, it's like the story of the dog that chased the car and finally caught it. What's the dog going to do now?

Yet there are some lessons here:

1. Cellular interfaces suck.
2. There is growing demand for mobile phones that really do act as computers.
3. Toshiba is becoming as good at manipulating the press as American companies.
4. Wait until this really works and some hacker gets a hold of it.

When cell phones become servers (and that's going to happen) this will make sense. Until then it's a stunt.