About Mobility

I haven’t submitted to the Carnival in a long time… will get to that hopefully soon. But this week’s Carnival of the Mobilist is at the WAP Review. Check it out.

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If you haven’t yet, go check out the latest Carnival of the Mobilists at Debi Jones (MobileJones) blog, a great edition that summarizes 15+ top blog entries from mobility bloggers from around the world…

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The first Carnival of the Mobilists of 2008 has been published at Paul Ruppert’s Mobile Point View blog. A great edition it is with lots of great of entries from mobility bloggers from around the world… Check it out!

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The above photo is of the ferris wheel in Helsinki, source: ashlyfanderson

Welcome to the Carnival of the Mobilists #104!

It is great to be back hosting the Carnival…

This week’s Carnival is dedicated to the land of the Finns, where I spent the whole last week.

Some facts about Finland. According to the CIA World Factbook, Finland’s key economic sector is manufacturing – wood, metals, engineering, and electronics industries. And of course mobile handsets, and Vodka and Saunas. For the latter, you have to be there to know what I mean . With a population of 5,238,460 (July 2007), it has 1.92 million (2006) telephones lines in use, and 5.67 million (2006) mobile cellular phones in use (now, that is penetration). Other facts include 2.323 million (2007) Internet hosts, and 2.925 million (2006) Internet users.

The Carnival of the Mobilists #104

This week we have entries from Martin Sauter, Dennis, Jim Hughes, Tarek Abu-Esber, Ajit Jaokar, Dan Lewis, Steve Litchfield, Jaclyn Epstein, Keving Flemming, Howard Rheingold, and truly yours, me.

Let’s begin… My friend Martin Sauter of WirelessMoves writes a very interesting piece titled Bit Pipe or Profiting from the Long Tail? where he covers the long-time mobile operators dilemma of being a bit pipe or more, specifically service providers, and its relationship to the Long Tail. He writes “So now look at mobile operators: Selling bandwidth is nothing but making money with the Long Tail of the web. Sounds a lot better than ‘bitpipe’, no?”

Dennis of the WAP Review writes about mPoria – Mobile Mall, where he covers mPoria, where “real merchandise can be purchased using your phone and delivered by UPS or FedEx to your home or office”. As usual, Dennis writes a very good product review.

The above photo is of Helsinki and its Cathedral, source: http://blog.arendsen.net

Jim Hughes at Feet up! writes Google Maps, give us the data! where he covers his experiences running Google Maps for Mobile on the E61, but most importantly Jim points out that Google is building a huge database of mast locations with everyone’s help, and that such data should be made accessible to others.

Tarek Abu-Esber writes Mobile Device Testing Products And Services, where he covers new services for developers for testing their mobile applications. Tarek covers Device Anywhere, PACA Mobile Center, Nokia Services, and other; a good resource for developers.

Ajit Jaokar of the Open Gardens blog writes Mobile browser plug-ins: The browser as a platform la Facebook platforms, where he covers the idea of mobile browser plug-ins. Ajit writes “If browser plug-ins take off, then the browser becomes a platform much like the Facebook platform.”

Dan Lewis of Skydeck writes Is one cell phone enough?, an interesting piece that covers stats on why people carry multiple handsets, and very importantly, the implications for estimates of cell phone penetration. A good read.

Steve Litchfield of All About Symbian writes Taking storage for granted and ‘The Importance Of Backups’ part 362, where he writes about backups… You have been warned; when was the last time that you backed up your data?

John Puterbaugh of Nellymoser writes 2008 Predictions, his expectations for 2008.

C. Enrique Ortiz, of the About Mobility weblog writes The killer Mobile-Desktop combination, where I cover the use-case of leveraging the desktop to enhance the mobile experience.

Our last entry by Howard Rheingold of SmartMobs is Tim O’Reilly on open mobile where Howard covers some interesting remarks by Tim O’Reilly on his letter to the New Your Times. Check it out.

My favorite piece for this week is Martin’s Bit Pipe or Profiting from the Long Tail?

Thanks for reading the Carnival this week. Note that this week’s edition is the last for 2007, and that first CoM of ’08 will be at Paul R. Ruppert’s Mobile Point View blog.

The Carnival of the Mobilists founders, organizers, hosts, bloggers and all participants wishes you a happy and save Holidays and a great New Years!

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Wow, the Carnival of the Mobilists is 100 editions old! From the original concept by the MobHappy guys Carlo and Russell, to this week’s latest edition, it is wonderful to see the Carnival continue to make an impact on Mobility with its regular and new contributors from around the world. I wasn’t able to submit anything to the 100th edition as I was out of town, but if you haven’t yet, see this week’s edition at Abhishek Tiwari’s weblog.

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This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is at Ubiquitous Thoughts blog. Topics include Google’s Open Handset Alliance and Android, marketing, product reviews, and education. Good read.

Previous/recent carnivals that I meant to mention in my blog and all are must reads:

• Carnival of the Mobilists #96 @ m-trends.org
• Carnival of the Mobilists #97 @ Vision Mobile Forum
• Carnival of the Mobilists #98 @ Mobile Opportunity

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If you haven’t yet, go check out this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists at taptology. This week’s topics include Web 3.0, free speech, mobiles in civil society, U.S. carriers, the “Phonetop”, the Mobile 2.0 Conference, and other.

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Another great edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists, this week at the Communities Dominate Brands blog.

Thanks to Tomi for picking up my blog entry On iterations, mobile, texting, web, and local applications.

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This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is at Abhishek Tiwari’s weblog, who is hosting the Carnival for the first time, and who has done a great job with it.

A great set of entries this week from the blogosphere, including Rudy of M-Trends, Xen from Xellular Identity, Paul from Mobile Point, Tomi and Alan of the Communities Dominate blog, and many others, including truly yours, me!

It has been a while since the last time that I submitted an entry to the Carnival of the Mobilists, and it is good to be back.

Thanks to Abhishek for including my entry on the topic of Mobile Context, which is a topic that I am spending quite a bit of time working on lately.

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The Carnival of the Mobilists #88 is at Xen’s Xellular Identity weblog, with 13 must read entries on mobility. Go check it out…

Thanks to Xen for picking up my entries on digital divide and mobility.

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This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is at Paul Ruppert’s Mobile Point View blog.

This thing keeps getting better and better, go check it out. Thanks to Paul for picking up my piece, and choosing it as this week’s Utopic Post! Awesome!

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This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists #84 is at Mobile Messaging 2.0, and written by Debi Jones (of MobileJones.com) …

Topics this week include SMS, MoSoSo, the iPhone, Mobile Web, Nokia handsets, Carriers/Operators, Mobile Industry, and International Travel; a great read.

Thanks to Debi for including my piece The Elements of the Mobile Context, which is a topic that I will continue to expand over time…

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This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists (#83) is at Golden Swamp – great submissions from the blogosphere. Check it out! Thanks to Judy for including my entry The next big thing is Touch.

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Now that I am (almost) done with my move to WordPress, I’m ready to host the Carnival of the Mobilists #82… Woohoo! My apologies for the delay (and for not including an entry this week)…

It has been a while since the last time that I hosted a Carnival of the Mobilists, and it is my pleasure to host again… This week we have 12 submissions from Mobilists from around the world, covering topics that include the iPhone, Mobile Web, a wiki for 3G travelers, mobile security, enriched ringback tones, and tips. So let’s get started:

1. Paul Walsh of Segala, writes O2 taking a bite out of the forbidden fruit?. Here Paul writes that “this doesn’t make sense to me because it’ll mean users will have open access to the Web and quickly realise that iMode (premium content which makes up for most of O2’s data revenue) isn’t what they want.” Interesting read.
2. Troy Norcross of the Consumer Preference (or Mobile Marketing & SPAM) blog writes Mobile TV: Look who’s watching now, where he shares with us highlights and interesting tidbits from the Mobile TV event that he attended.
3. Martin Sauter of the Mobile Society Technology Page writes about A Wiki For the 3G Traveler where he provides advice on how to access the Internet in countries to which they intend to travel.
4. Jason Devitt of Skydeck writes Congressional Hearing on Wireless Innovation and Consumer Protection a good read about wireless and the issue of openness and regulation by the government… Jason says “I’m one of those who believes that the mobile phone market ought to work more like the Internet market. I don’t have to ask Verizon DSL for permission to attach a computer to their network; why do I have to ask Verizon Wireless for permission to attach a phone to theirs?”. A very important topic and one with which I totally agree with Jason…
5. Stuart Dredge of Pocket Picks covers Top 5 mobile internet sites that you’ll actually use, a good summary of of tops mobile web-based application.
6. Dennis at the WapReview covers MizPee – Your Mobile Toilet Advisor, a mobile web application that helps you find, given address, the nearest public restroom. Interesting…
7. The folks at Masabi wrote a good article on the Problems with Mobile Security #1… a more technical article that is a good read if you want to understand the issues related to security and mobility.
8. Tomi T Ahonen of Communites Dominate Brands writes an Open Letter to Sprint Nextel where Tomi covers yet another customer relationship debacle at Sprint, in this case the “Sprint Nextel letter to 1,000 customers informing them that because they had called the customer service number too much, their contracts were being terminated.” Definitely not a nice move by Sprint Nextel… not to mention that currently network carriers are over subscribed, meaning that good customer support is one of the few differentiators that remain, and Sprint Nextel is not doing great in that department.
9. Debi Jones (Mobile Jones) writes Mobile Web – Just Say No! where she covers some metrics related to mobile web destinations in the US versus in the UK, and covers examples of excellent and well adopted applications. Debi also makes the important point about of the role of web services on mobile applications (as consumed by thick clients) vs. purely thin web/browsing applications.
10. Xen of Xellular Identity writes Enriched Ringback Tones Offering With Non-Music Content where she covers an interesting concept that Xen calls enriched ringback tones which basically are ringbacks that go beyond simple tones/music by providing ‘enriched information’.
11. Tarek Ghazali of the Sumbiano-Tek blog writes a great tip on Deleting Stuck installer files on Symbian (S60) phones.
12. Last but not least Ajit Jaokar of the Open Gardens blog writes Grand Central: I am not a number – I am a tag, where Ajit goes back to a concept that he covers in his Mobile Web 2.0 book “I am not a number, I am a tag”, in light of Google’s recent acquisition of GrandCentral Communications.