mTrends - mobile media lifestyle trends - m-trends.org

I have been writing and reporting for quite some time now on the convergence of networks, the introduction of hybrid devices and media becoming accessible on mobile devices, lately all connecting easily to the web. With game devices such as the PSP accessing the Internet over wifi and the introduction of the iPhone, we now embrace the era of ubiquitous mobility and nomadic computing. This will have a far-reaching impact on the way we access products/services, and the way we communicate with humans and machines. It will change our mobile lifestyle and the way we consume media and advertising.

m-trends.org started as a personal opinion blog on mobile media lifestyle trends and continues doing this with a framed focus, critical opinions and analytical thinking going beyond the hype. To create a broader view and opinion, I invited Yasmine Abbas and Martin Sauter, two personalities I highly respect for their opinion and work, to join me and write regularly at m-trends.org on subjects that are in the air, things we have in common or like to discuss and write about, to start conversations on topics, each from his own perspective and experience.

Yasmine Abbas, is a French DPLG architect, holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS 2001) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Doctor of Design (DDes 2006) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. At Harvard she focused on how neo-nomads, digitally geared people on the move, reclaim a sense of belonging to places in the age of multiple mobilities and digital technologies. She does that too: research and problem solving to design environments, products and services that work for people and drive business results! Yasmine will bring her design/cultural/social context and sensibility to m-trends.org. I interviewed her earlier this year in the Women in Mobile series. Do checkout Yasmine’s personal blog neo-nomad.

Martin Sauter has a special twist on Web 2.0. His professional focus is on mobile network technology and services and he consults mobile network operators for Nortel, one of the major network infrastructure vendors for 2G and 3G networks. His quality time activities include his mobile network blog and book writing. His latest book, “Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society“, discusses the how’s and why’s of GSM, GPRS, UMTS, Wifi, WiMAX and Bluetooth. On the academic side, Martin holds a Dipl. Ing. (FH) degree from the University of Applied Sciences in Ravensburg, Germany and when not busy travelling enjoys lecturing and discussing today’s and tomorrows mobile networks. This is also the area that Martin is going to cover at m-trends.org. Check Martin’s Mobile Technology Page, his personal blog about his thoughts on the evolution of GSM, UMTS, WLAN, Bluetooth, and WiMAX.

A French girl living in the Boston, US, a German living in Paris, France and a Belgian living in Barcelona, Spain, this looks like other kinds of hybrids: different opinions on various topics in a ubiquitous mobility era with views from different angles, written from different locations, by people who are always on the move… This will definately create more value to m-trends.org; if there are any subjects you would like to have covered here, please suggest or contact me by email.

Expect some diverse and interesting subjects covered soon here, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do, initiating this kind of projects together.

At Macworld San Francisco 2007, a couple of hours ago, Steve Jobs unveiled (finally!) the iPhone. You can watch the full keynote here and how the phone works here.

After more than 2 years of speculations everywhere, the iPhone became probably the most ever hyped device before it’s launch. Note that exactly one year ago was the last time I wrote about the iPhone in my mobile & wireless predictions for 2006: “My guess is that if Apple makes a move into mobile, they will come up with something more then just a mobile phone.”

Damn was I right! Apple - btw dropped offically ‘Computer’ from their company name today, comes up with an awesome hybrid device that stays true to Apple’s core: to design high-class technology products… And it’s no less with the iPhone, bypassing all it’s competitors with a full surface touchscreen device for better UI, and reconfigurable/adaptable UI’s:

iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

I will leave you the pleasure to discover the new device, some first thoughts on the features I read about as of now:

• Visual Voicemail = great!
• 3G Radio = ??? Cost? Can you imagine this while roaming
• Exlusive carrier deal = all Apple fans will need to switch to Cingular in US
• 1 more year for iPhone launch in Europe = Apple has time to deal with EU operators
• iPhone runs Mac OS X = developers: start developing those widgets!
• Touchscreen display = seems fragile to carry in your pocket
• Multi-touch support = that’s really complex in tech dev -> chapeau!
• Proximity sensor = turns off the touch sensitivity when close to your face, can you dig?
• WiFi automatically engages when in range = Apple has AirPort experience here

All the rest, no real surprises, except that everything looks SO much better on an Apple device!

FYI: next hype to come: the merging of the iPhone and the iPod = the ideal device

Note to Steve: do something about the iTunes way too closed DRM, buying CD’s might become another next trend to be able to digitalize and listen to the music I bought on ALL the devices in my family…

I had the pleasure to test some of the Nokia Nseries phones: the N80i (Internet Edition), the N73, the N91 and the N93. This post as a resume of my experiences the last weeks using the phones on various occasions, trying out different functionalities on all of them.

Nokia announced in 2005 a new sub-brand called Nokia Nseries. It is a product family consisting mobile, multimedia computers. These devices support digital media services from the area of music, video, photography, games and Internet. They all connect to internet using high-speed wireless technologies being ideal for people who spend lot of time on the Internet.

What makes Nokia Nseries different from many other devices is the fact they all are multi-functional. Every device brings quite advanced features like high-resolution camera sensors, powerful music codec’s, FM radio and 3D graphic support for games. To differentiate products within the product family, devices can carry unique experiences like digital TV reception to device, optical zoom for camera, or hard disk drive to store large number of songs on device.

I am not going to focus on the technical specifications and capabilities of the phones, there have been a lot of other sites and blogs doing that before, instead I’m going to focus how I use the phones and which functionalities I particularly like about the Nseries phones. In general, believe me, the overal capabilities and quality of the phones is just remarkable and impressive; Nokia is without a doubt the undisputed leader of the next generation of phones to come; in any case I haven’t seen anyone coming closer lately.

The basic Nokia functionalities I use daily on all 4 devices are:

• Contacts/Calendar
• Messaging/Email
• Web Browsing
• RSS Feed Reader
• Podcasting tool
• Camera for Pictures and/or Video
• Music Player
• FM Radio

The Symbian OS on all S60 phones is now regularly updated and can be easily downloaded and installed OTA directly to your phone or using a USB connection to your PC. A lot of additional and functional software is available too. I have been playing around with various 3rd party mobile apps, tools and software without problems.

I haven’t been going into details on the office tools available like Quick Office but I have been playing beaming PDF documents to the phones and use them as on-the-spot mini presentations to show something quickly while on the road, always handy I must say… There’s definitely a lot more to check and tryout in this area but I’ll focus on this later.

Richard just published an article I wrote on the N80 (Internet Edition) and Nokia’s Gizmo Project: Phone-to-Phone VoIP. You can read about my latest experiences making international internet calls with the Nokia N80i at Read/WriteWeb.

Since my holidays in August, I use the N91 as my all-in-one multimedia machine carrying my favourite music everywhere and plug it into whatever sound system available; I was sceptical at first (I was one of those iPod die-hards!) but the N91 has become much more than just an iPod replacement for me. Some might found the phone heavy and big (it is!) but for me as of now, it is my favourite phone - I like when them toys are solid I can do anything I want to do with it and I can easily do it. You can read more about my N91 holiday experiences here.

For the Nokia music and podcasting fans, check out the Nokia Podcasting blog with lots of useful tips and fresh info on the podcasting application for your mobile phone.

Mobile Magazine elected the Nokia N73 Phone of the Year in France. The phone has a lot of the same capabilities as the other phones in this post but it is lighter, thinner and has a big TFT screen (256K colours, 240 x 320 pixels, 36 x 48 mm) and a 3.2-mega-pixel camera. The quality of the pictures is quite impressive for a camera phone, even if you’re used taking pictures with a 5-mega-pixel Canon digital camera. I like this phone a lot, it’s has a very easy and simple way to flip the phone to take one-click pictures.

If you want to see the quality of the pictures I shot the last weeks, check here at my Flickr account - Flickr recently added a new feature to select pictures by device but unfortunately I could not select or organise my pictures yet taken by device, would have been great to have that possibility for this post

So this brings us last but not the least to the N93, the all-in-one video camera and viewer. I like the interface of this phone a lot too - the 4-ways to flip and use the phone - it’s heavy and big but the keypad and its keys are very easy to use, after all it’s a video camera. Only the side navigation joystick is a bit too small for my fingers to use easily the extra functions. The quality of the video is exceptional and unique for a camera phone - try to plug and watch your video footage on your TV monitor. Check for yourself the quality of this daylight short here below taken yesterday in Barcelona.

More video footage I took with the N93 can be viewed in my Under The Radar - Mobility Rules! post and at vpod.tv portal (use tag mtrends).

Some minor points I want to mention:

• low battery life of the N80 (couldn’t figure out why yet?)
• flash or quality of the evening and night pictures is not really acceptable enough
• the ticker noise the N93 camera makes when zooming in or out

But hey, these are still phones, aren’t they?

Nokia released some interesting statistics recently on how people really use new services on their S60 phones. On the predictable success of new tech objects, I’d like to close here and quote Steve Jobs in a Newsweek article from last year ‘Good for the Soul‘:

The way you can tell that you’re onto something interesting is if everybody who knows about the project wants one themselves, if they can’t wait to go out and open up their own wallets to buy one. That was clearly the case with the iPod. Everybody on the team wanted one.

During the weeks I tested and carried the phones, anyone who saw one of the Nokia Nseries phones I used, wanted one, that’s a very good sign…

I wonder how many of them were sold during the christmas holidays… and what Nokia is going to show next at 3GSM World Congress… at least the N95 looks very promising yet!

Kudos to Richard MacManus who offered me his space today in an idea to write some articles around the Mobile 2.0 subject to intend bridge the web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 communities. I’m kicking-off a mini-series of posts on the topic of Mobile 2.0, which will be explored more in detail on Read/WriteWeb this week.

“On the eve of Le Web 3 in Paris - and one month after the Web 2.0 Summit concluded - it seems like an appropriate time to explore the world of the mobile Web, a.k.a. mobile 2.0. There has been a lot of discussion lately on this topic, a good deal of it inspired by the mobile 2.0 event - a one-day event held on 6 November 2006, organized by Daniel Appelquist and Mike Rowehl….”

Continue reading “Understanding Mobile 2.0“, in which I tried to give an overview of what I currently understand as Mobile 2.0 and I included some links to essential writing done on the topic by fellow mobilist bloggers.

Last weeks’ MobileMonday Barcelona on Proximity Marketing was the occasion to get briefed on the present real-world cases of mobile technologies used in a physical context. FuturLink presented their (rather impressive) content delivery system based on Bluetooth access points; Media Contacts talked about tailoring content; and Nike related on their (mostly) good experience on using proximity marketing; finally Daem Interactive revealed their MMS image recognition solution.

(from left to right: Joan Grau, Media Contacts - David Masó, FuturLink - Miguel Sola, Daem Interactive - Paulino Moraleda, Brand Communications Manage, Nike)

Carles Fereiro from Barcelona Media did a great job while I was checking out Villes 2.0, an excellent initiative launched by FING, also founders of Mobile Monday Paris. I liked a lot the speakers’ box concept they introduced at BETC Euro RSCG, you can view some of this Paris trip picture here. Thanks to Marie, Daniel, Stephane and especially Véronique of the MoMoParis team for just being so wonderful

Fabien Girardin took some pictures of the MobileMonday Barcelona evening. Check out his blog used for his Ph.D. thesis on collaborative work in the context of mobile and ubiquitous environments.

From Fabien’s Flickr images (l-to-r): FuturLink’s Bluetooth Access Point, Nike’s proximity experiment on a big Christmas ad in Barcelona, Media Contacts’ new generations of content.

Subscribed MobileMonday Barcelona users can download the presentations of that evening in the subscribers profile page. There is a very interesting video demo available from Media Contacts bluetooth campaign with VolksWagen-EOS.

Next MoMoBCN event on December 4 has topic Mobile Social Networks. Head over for more details at MobileMonday Barcelona website.

Despite the excellent program at Mobile Monday Barcelona, I will attend the Villes 2.0 conference on November 6 in Paris, together with Ignacio Mondine, R&D director from Daem Interactive.

One can easily imagine how big cities will become more difficult to manage in the near future. The evolution of technology in general, including those of the internet and the mobile phone might bring some solutions in new urban practices and might find some innovative answers to the challenges that cities currently encounter.

The internet goes with and accelerates urban transformations. City is the main laboratory of different kind of uses : Wireless and Fixed Broadband, trade and logistic issues, home services, mobility issues (working, security, privacy,…), CCTV (security…), smart transport, on-line communities ,local democracy, public internet access ..

I’m looking forward to this conference, organised by Fing and Tactis.

The same evening I’m going to attend Mobile Monday Paris and meet team and organisers Marie and Véronique. They have been doing a wonderful job setting up MoMoParis nearly a year ago and bring the French mobile industry together, I heard the monthly event is really popular and highly attended, it’s going to be interesting to exchange experiences and opinions.

Ignacio from Daem Interactive will present Daem’s latest innovations in mobile image recognition, the same day, they’ll be anouncing a major campaign in Spain using image recognition and MMS. After all these years of struggling with MMS, will image recognition finally lift MMS? More about this and the campaign next week at m-trends.org.

If anyone would like to meet with me and Ignacio, please do get in touch by clicking my name in the sidebar.

Continuing with its monthly events, MobileMonday Barcelona announces its next event on “Proximity Marketing” that will take place on November 6. Kudoos to Carles from MoMoBCN partner Barcelona Media to get this interesting list of speakers together:

David Masó, CEO of Futurlink, one of our most popular and successful local start-ups will explain us about Futurlink’s experiences and future plans on proximity solutions.

Miguel Sola, Director of Daem Interactive, another Barcelona Start-up will present their latest products and services for marketing campaigns using mobile image recognition.

Joan Grau, Director of operations at Media Contacts, will explain us about implementing proximity marketing solutions, the challenges and opportunities from the demand side.

Paulino Moraleda, Brand Communications Manager for Nike, will share with us what a major brand sees in the value and potential of proximity solutions and what they can provide.

As usual, a networking party will follow the conference where participants will enjoy a glass of cava, the event takes place at the Auditorium of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Attendance is free; all you need to do is register at www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com/subscribe to reserve one of the 150 seats available. Book early to avoid being left out!

19h30 Registration and Pre-Networking
20h00 Proximity Marketing
21h05 Cocktail and Networking Party
22h00 End

This event is sponsored by Media Contacts, CIDEM (Centre d’Innovació i Desenvolupament Empresarial of the Generalitat de Catalunya) and Barcelona Media.

I wanted to write this article before summer but workload took me until now to take some time to write some of my insights on this interesting subject, so here we go…

Up to now, most people in the industry used the bluetooth marketing term to name advertising and marketing campaigns made using Bluetooth on mobile phones. Before entering the real ubiquitous marketing era, I think the time is right to start using proximity marketing to define the new era we’re entering to start using more then just bluetooth for mobile marketing campaigns.

Wi-Fi, RFID, Ultra-Wideband (UWB), and Near Field Communication (NFC) will soon be used to send multimedia content to your mobile phone, together with other ubiquitous devices, supposing you want it of course. As of now, the mobile phone is the best positioned device for mobile marketing campaigns for it’s multifunctional use and it’s market penetration.

Let’s start what it’s all about with the definition at Wikipedia:

“Proximity marketing is the localised wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. Transmissions can be received by individuals in that location who wish to receive them and have the necessary equipment to do so. Distribution may be via a traditional localised broadcast, or more commonly is specifically targeted to devices known to be in a particular area.”

I would like to introduce you to qr-codes first since I’m sure they will become an inevitable part in the coming months/years of proximity marketing campaigns. Mobile barcode scanning, which is ubiquitous in Japan and Korea using technology, has never been introduced on a big scale outside of these countries. Japanese consumers are used to “clicking” on physical objects by reading special consumer barcodes. In US and Europe those campaigns are ready now to emerge…

For nitwits, using qr-codes with a mobile phone works like this: it works by reading a two-dimensional barcode called a “tag” that contains a URL Internet address. The user “scans” or clicks on the tag using their mobile camera phone running a qr-code reader software. The software decodes the URL automatically and delivers the user to the appropriate content. Metadata can be send additionally to know more about the user’s phone model, location, etc. This is essential to send back the right multimedia content to be displayed correctly to the user’s phone, whatever model he might use.

Most known qr-code companies are Shotcode and Semacode, check also Smartpox, Scanbuy and TagIt but I’m not going to focus on these companies and their products now. What interests me is the fact that big brands start using the available tools around, see also Shotcode’s latest Coca Cola Mexico launches 40 million Sprite bottles campaign.

Some other blogger collegues like Charlie have been writing on the subject, Yasmine who launched her inspiring neo-nomad - my body is a hypertext summer last year, and Kelly who wrote on qr-codes in America. I have been writing or reporting on proximity (bluetooth) marketing campaigns in advertising, politics, music/entertainment and sport.

In theory, it’s all about connecting the web (the platform) with the physical world through devices with the mobile as an obvious choice for users to compare and browse product catalogues, use recommender systems to discover and share opinions with other users. For the ones having browsed the mobile web, qr-codes are a great solution B2C solution to make this happen within the reach of one click + it combines triggering contextually relevant information, correctly displayed for the user with a business model that makes sense for the operators, brand advertisers, technology and service companies in-between…

The twist however to use qr-codes is that they need to be scanned and decoded, thus need a client software to be installed on the mobile. A Swiss company named Kaywa is simplifying the process with a public qr-code generator but also needs a reader to be downloaded to the phone. My guess is that as long as the qr-code client readers don’t get bundled on popular phone series with the big mobile device manufacturers, qr-codes have little chance to go mass-market just yet, retailers will need professional encoders and readers, adapted and compatible with their current systems before they will use it in their stores. Following the discussion on Bluetooth Marketing Revisited from Carlo last week, I agree with him and Tom that most campaigns have really poor usability and user experiences to now but there is some new stuff coming up…

Meanwhile here in Spain, brand advertisers and agencies are looking for new ways to create more compelling proximity marketing campaigns.

One of the tech companies, called Daem Interactive provides image recognition technology to identify the advertisements photographed by users and sends back related multimedia contents. The photographed pictures can be send to an MMS short code to trigger a URL, no decoder needed here - it could actually to send back a qr-code, but I think this is a different and much more fun way for the user to participate and attractive to create innovative marketing campaigns. I have been sceptical about the MMS-use but this seems to be finally solved by the operators now, so this opens a lot of new possibilities and perspectives. Check the picture below:

1. A user takes a picture of an advert and sends it via MMS or e-mail (works for all camera phones!)
2. Datacenter receives the image and the advert is recognized
3. Related multimedia contents are sent back to the user, the user receives the multimedia contents including: applications, ring-tones, video, games, screensavers..etc (example from Daem Interactive)

Another Spanish startup, called Futurlink is taking the challenge to take proximity marketing to it’s next level. FuturLink is a high-tech company oriented to develop and innovate wireless products and applications to interact with mobile phones in the proximity, using short range radio technologies like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC, RFID or UWB. They developed access points that allow companies and public organizations to interact with the mobile phones of their customers within the company premises, and now also in shopping malls… All that tech in one box, get the picture?

Both companies will be presenting their latest stuff at next Mobile Monday Barcelona. Stay tuned!

(qr-code image above left by Semacode)

I included some scenario’s of collective mobile lifestyle trends in my vodafone receiver #16 contribution: Connecting cultures through music.

Here’s another (older) one that still seems to continue to grow beyond borders: Mobile Clubbing, check the website for details for next gatherings in your city.

The rules are simple:

Though I’m not a frequent clubber anymore, I like the idea of Mobile Clubbing; however I always wondered how people keep the vibe dancing all those different beats… I think I prefer Silent Disco better since clubbers can tune in to one of two DJ sets offered by the on-stage turntablists - all with headphones connected through BlueTooth.

Mobile clubbing story via Helen via Trendcatching. Mobile Clubbing photo by Willis Monroe

It’s another honour for me to welcome you to number 33 of the Carnival of The Mobilists. At 33, “L’âge du Christ”, as we say in Belgium, it doesn’t hurt to spend a bit of time on reflexion, so I hope you don’t mind taking the next two paragraphs for this cause.

The thing I like about the Carnival when looking back at the previous issues is the learning curve we all seem to go through with our personal opinion on mobile related stuff but more important is that thanks to this open-source community and collaborative writing, we all learn from each other from wherever we are and in whatever mobile connected environment we might be, since technology and the networks don’t evolve at the same speed in different places.

Different business models are applied in different countries but whether we communicate over voice, by sms, mms, moblog our camera pictures, read our feeds on the mobile, or listen to podcasts on our cell, it’s all about communication and at the Carnival of the Mobilists we find all sorts of people writing their thoughts, experiences and ideas on mobile and wireless: techies, designers, developers, philosophers, journalists, marketers, there’s always something interesting to read (or now also to listen to), that’s the great thing about the Carnival of the Mobilists: it’s all about collective and intuitive intelligence, experiences, sharing ideas, discussion, the joy of writing and reading, the passion for anything mobile and last but not least the fun to enjoy it when bringing all this elements together.

This weeks’ Carnival of the Mobilists has all of this again with a solid dose of quality! Thanks to our sponsor Khosla Ventures for supporting us. And now enough reflexion, let’s get back to action!

This week there’s more then just tech and testosterone, we have no less then 5 female contributions - regulars Darla, Emily, Keren, Judy and Xen were not even in this week - a missed opportunity to take over, girls but I’m really happy to see that this group seems to be setting the tone for more balance of the sexes in our sector. Bringing in more female experience, intuition, diversity and fun can never harm, so ‘noblesse oblige’ for a gentlemen like me, let’s start with the women

Newcomer and psychologist Dr. Deborah Serani has an entry on Ringxiety: The Next New Disorder. “Do you have the sensation that your cell phone is ringing or vibrating when it’s not?” Check out yourself I would say…

Kelly Goto writes about the introduction of LBS into personal and family life and put some interesting thoughts forward whether this is an interesting move forward: “… are families ready for the shift? Is this considered a luxury to be able to track, or is it an invasion of privacy? Is the tracking accurate enough in urban areas and are their kids going to be OK with the lack of privacy in return for the liberty of having a mobile device of their own?” Kelly talked to actual parents and reveals some interesting insights in this post.

Other newcomer BiBi Cambridge comes in with a surprising sociological input on how the London’s’ underground gay scene is using Bluetooth to get together: “Yes, these days if you make sure you’re on the last carriage of any tube train in London and you whack on your Bluetooth (it works underground you see) you may be surprised to find that the paired devices to be found all around you have names like …” I won’t tell you where she got off the next stop but it’s definitely not a usual spot here at the CotM. Satisfaction guaranteed?

Stefanie Rieger gives us her insights on mobile games in Casual Mobile Snacks For Everyone: “Do current mobile games allow for quiet time, playful time, competitive time, learning time, contemplative time, silly time? We have a unique opportunity with mobile devices in that they can be insanely personal and private while being incredibly social and contextual (presence, location etc.) They can offer small moments of quiet play or learning—no peers, no pressure—or small moments of highly networked interaction and competition. Not to mention hybrids of the two.” Refreshing blog, and my favourite post of this week! Do check also her selection of June’s Best Industry Podcasts. Excellent choice if you ask me.

Which brings me to another podcast this week: Debi Jones did a really interesting interview with other mobilist Martin Sauter available as podcast on Media Slaves. They discuss mobile network capacity as it relates to mobile social media. Must hear!

Back to the boys brings us as usual some very excellent tech related reflexion from regulars such as Daniel Taylor on “Multiple Architectures for Mobility“, Tom Soft on “Another Flash from J2ME Developer Perspective“, Anders Borg on “Java ME, still not Write One, Run Anywhere“, Tam Hanna on “Investition security in the 3G content business“, David Beers on “How wireless becomes free“. Dennis Bournique - finally got his family name, from Wap Review does a review of the mobile edition of Yes.com, a site that tells you what song’s playing on the radio. Hello?

Jim Downing over at Smart Mobs reports on the mobile Linux-based platform independent foundation of some big mobile handset manufacturers (Motorola, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Samsung Electronics), along with mobile operators NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone.

Justin Oberman at MOpocket stumbled upon - not the web 2.0 social bookmarks site - a giant interactive digital billboard on the corner of 50th and Broadway. Kind of a surprise for a New Yorker it seems, especially when the campaign is to celebrate BBC World’s entry to the USA.

Italian newcomer Fabrizio Errante asks “What do we do with our old phones?” and urges organizations to start thinking about the number of soaring devices, month by month.

C. Enrique Ortiz gives his opinions and analysis on the Future of Messaging: “The next level of messaging is about enhanced messaging that is always on, messaging that can be active or passive based on user preferences, messaging that leverages many media channels, where presence, personal data, and social aspects are all integrated. The next level of messaging is about understanding and maximizing the mobile context and thus the messaging experience.” How about that?

And last but not least I recommend you read the latest ponderings of Scott Shaffer on the relation between mobile search and the physical hyper linking of things: “There will come a point when there is more Internet traffic from mobile devices than PCs. What happens to search engines then?” And “What happens when every can of Coke can be hyper-linked to the net? Or every Elton John CD, or every menu, concert ticket, street sign, business card, bag of Pringles.” This is definitely one of THE hot topics for the coming months. Be sure you’re going to read about it somewhere at the Carnival of the Mobilists!

So, that’s it for this week! Thanks for reading, if you got until here, and thanks to all the participants this week for their great contributions. Again, another goldmine of valuable information on anything mobile; please head over and read their posts!

Next week the Carnival is hosted by the Wireless World Forum. If you’re not a member yet, why not become a Carnival of the Mobilists host and get your free subscription (worth GBP 200 to join). For details check the mobili.st website.

* image by Andrew Berglund