"but navigating a cascade of text menus by shaking the phone is too strange even for us"

Isn't that the little iPhones app called 'Onan'?

"In what much surely be the last push to get more functionality into a SIM card"

This is obviously a gimmick and not real progress. The problem is getting the manufacturers and telco's to agree on any changes to the UICC design (not to mention bodies involved which run to: ISO, IETF, OMA, ETSI, GSM and 3GPP).

I've seen a gigabyte USB IPv6 USIM running Apache . . . . weather anything like that will ever come to market is obviously a different matter. An IPv6 SIM twinned with a handset running ad hoc WiFi and GPS; that'd be a Web 2.0 companies dream, but we'll probably have to wait a loooong time for that one.

More likely is a converged card that operates all your digital auth requirements (phone, banking & payments, access etc.) but that requires a lot of openness from a lot more businesses.

Excellent! I'll be able to do kinematics experiments using my mobile!