It is a great pleasure to introduce you to the third Carnival of the Mobilists. The more I get into the concept the more I believe it’s really great for everybody involved. Not only for the bloggers writing about mobile but especially for the readers who, not only get a compact weekly overview of the most important mobile blogging news, but above all, it’s an overview of qualitative, original and diverse opinions about what’s hot in mobile. And that’s what it’s all about!

(*) design by zatoichi151

Kick off this week goes to Martin Varsavsky with his Bloggers of the World Unite idea. I don’t know how serious he is about this intention but I just love the way he is buzzing his FON project into the blogosphere. Looking at his history in telecommunications, he might definately be the first entrepreneur with some strategic bloggers on board.

“Now here´s my offer to all top bloggers of the world. Do join our board and become our partners. In Spain we are making a board that is made of top Spanish bloggers, like Alvy at Microsiervos. I would like to extend a similar offer to the top bloggers of any country. We are going to create a subsidiary for each country that FON goes into and we would like to offer the top bloggers of that country a seat on the board of the FON and a 1% ownership stake.”

Now you might wander what this has to do with mobile but my guess for next year is that 2006 is going to be the year of wi-fi and hybrid phones. Convergence will bring new threats and opportunities to wireless carriers and traditional phone service providers.

Walter Adamson predicted the US will lead the world in business applications for 3G. You can read on i-mode strategy how they linked, what Stephen Falk, Vice President of Sprint said in an interview when he was recently in China. “It’s enough to jolt you off your seat when you read from an expert that the US is one of the three most advanced 3G markets, along with Korea and Japan.” I think it’s a good guess since the US can learn from the other countries, the devices are getting better and they can combine this experience with the development power they naturally own. But other major network players are moving fast in the convergence space. I just wonder how this will affect the deployment of 3G in the US?

Writing this, Oliver Starr from The Mobile Technology Weblog, came up with his analysis on the news that Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications Inc. could be close to offering cell phone service using Sprint Nextel’s network as part of its bundled services, which currently include cable TV, high speed Internet and digital home telephone services. “This is not simply about a wireless company being able to add cable to it’s line-up or a cable company serving up a side dish of wireless. No, no, no. This is about a shift to fixed/mobile convergence that could ultimately create a new giant utility provider if the initial programs are well executed and consumer adoption is even moderately strong.”

Now let’s have a closer look what these market changes mean for developers. Some mobilists are preparing the paveway allready…

Charlie Shick at Cognections is asking his readers: “What is your strategy to integrate your Web product with the Mobile Lifestyle?” He names some Web companies that could use an infusion of mobility and they’re not small ones…

New mobilist this week Denis introduces us to his idea how to review your wap portal and check if your portal is ready for global acces: He does that for both WAP1 (wml) and WAP2 (xhtml). “The idea of the Wap Review Blog is to present reviews of mobile web sites with the dual purposes of helping users find useful sites to visit with their mobiles and to encourage site authors to produce WAP sites that don’t suck.” Read some of his reviews on Google and AOL Mobile Search, San Fransisco City Guide, International Herald Tribune, etc.

The Pondering Primate this week published an interesting article on a little study he organised himself. In his Mobile Search Is Really Mobile Info he explains: “For 6 months I carried a notepad and I wrote down every info request I would like answered using my mobile. I asked people on the street “what info would you want from your mobile phone?”. The answers are invaluable to the right people.”

C. Enrique Ortiz writes about the just released Flashlite 2.0 from a developers point of view. “I am so impressed with the capabilities above, that I think that any person serious about mobility and user experience should check this out.” With RandomOne we have developed some FlashLite applications before; the technology is promising but needs finetuning towards the divergence of devices. I’m looking forward to see some the first demo’s with FlashLite 2.0.

Now this is what I like so much about the Mobile Bloggers Network initiative: marketers, entrepreneurs, designers and developers sharing opinions and ideas from any angle of the sector.

Ajit Jaokar is looking at the challenges and opportunities of mobile mutliplayer games. “The first serious attempt to create a mobile device whose goal was primarily to play games (rather than as a phone) was the N-Gage from Nokia. Gizmondo is another such device. Other devices such as Sony PSP and Nintendo GameBoy are handheld gaming devices but provide connectivity through WiFi and not the cellular network.” … and “I find it very interesting especially because mobile multiplayer games can span both the web and mobile.” Definately worth reading if you’re into mobile games.

Smartmobs contributed this week with a post from Jim Downing who comments on the Korean cellular carrier SK Telecom introducing a service called “find friends” that lets others follow your every move, using a signal beamed from your handset. I can think of some people appreciating this kind of services but sometimes I wonder if companies think “sustainability” enough before they launch certain services? I mean, would you like to live in a world like this?

Troy Norcross comments on Russell’s article from last week on Location Based Taxis and LBS Advertising “Whether it’s mobile phone text messaging – or in-taxi advertising – mobile marketing has got to be more than clever – it’s got to be TRVR (Timely – Relevant – Valuable – Requested ) or it is nothing more than SPAM to go!”

Another new mobilist this week is Paris-based Stuart Mudie at blethers.com. He’s one of the writers behind the Netsize Guide, one of the most comprehensive guides about mobile business. He writes about how he got into mobile and how Howard Rheingold and his book Smart Mobs is related to this.

And finally, my post of the week goes to Carlo Longino’s How To Make A Bad Idea Even Worse on the .mobi top-level domain: “It’s great to act as if you’re concerned about usability, but .mobi won’t do anything for end users. It’s just a trojan horse for operators to, yet again, try to exert unwanted control over what their users do. Having to give their users open, unfettered access to the Internet is most operators’ worst nightmares, but it’s the consequence of trying to be both the bit pipe and the content provider. It’s so typical of operator thinking — instead of doing anything to make their services better so people will choose to use them, they just try to eliminate the choice altogether. .mobi is a trojan horse designed to do just that.” Now that’s what I call opinion!

That brings us to the end of this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists. I am very happy that every week new mobilists are joining this initiative and I hope the readers enjoy it as well. I would like to thank all the contributing bloggers to continuously question the evolutions in our sector and especially Russell who made this all happen. And don’t forget: everyone involved would love some feedback, so leave your comments and let us know what you think.

Next weeks’ Carnival of the Mobilists host is Ajit Jaokar’s at Open Gardens.

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