The blogosphere's quick reaction to the London strikes was driven in large part by the mass market in camera phones and video phones.

Within minutes of the bombs going off pictures and short videos began appearing online. In many the smoke from the blasts was clearly visible. Cameras worked even where phone functionality was absent, and images could be sent as soon as connections returned.

A second notable fact was the willingness, especially at the BBC, to get this footage up quickly. One amateur picture, of a double-decker bus with its top end ripped off, was the site's feature picture for most of the day. (That's the picture, above, from the BBC Web site.)

This is a huge contrast to the past, where professionals delivered most of the images, and those who were lucky enough to get early shots would auction them off.

This also means that it will become increasingly difficult for disasters to "hide." Countries like Saudi Arabia have found it impossible to ban camera phones, which will now be deployed wherever news happens.

The front-end of the news business model, the payment for collecting the data, disappeared yesterday. That's temporary.

The race will now be on among media to publicize their willingness to take such files, the addresses of such files, the wide distribution offered on the files and (what will make the difference) prompt payment for those files.