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Choosing the 1st summer weekend to edit a Carnival of the Mobilists was probably not a great idea at start, but it turned out well for me reading all contributions after siesta in the shade on a Sunday afternoon, with a fine mix of the latest albums of Osunlade, Jaga Jazzist, Terry Callier, Ron Trent & Jerome Sydenham, Hercules and Love Affair, and The Herbaliser as a background… laid back and inspiring!

Luckily there were not too many entries this week due to the fact that many mobilists have changed the “blogging from home” to a more “hectic travelling the globe” lifestyle. Ubiquitous computing has progressed tremendously but hasn’t yet provided us with the perfect tools to keep the blogging up to speed from wherever we are.

Not too surprisingly more than half of this week’s contributions are on the “Location-Based Applications and Services” topic. Better get used to the coming hype words, since they’re going to be everywhere the coming months/years… Geotagging, location tracking, Assisted GPS (AGPS), location based advertising (of course!), location based aggregation, cost per location, zone detection, location based social media, location stamps, location reporting strategies, discovery, sensoring, geocaching, spatial data, geographically-oriented communities, location-based (life) streaming, social mapping or geo-social networking applications, etc.

Realising how advanced we may be with our ideas and technology these days, I still had to wonder where this week’s contributors actually lived? So, how come no-one is using an online tool to know about one’s location? How about then using this on the mobile?

This brought me to the idea of creating this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists map so you can read the entries browsing the map or just by reading this post. If you find out you’re near to one of the mobilists, who knows you might soon bump into him/her

But hey enough now as an introduction… let’s hear it from the mobilists themselves!

Read all this very interesting and insightful posts on LBS:

Mobile 2.0: Addicted to LBS by Tarek Abu-Esber (London, UK)

Top 10 Location Based Startups to Track by Zhou Wenhan (Singapore, Republic of Singapore)

Add context to your photos with Geotagging by Sachendra Yadav (Hyderabad, India)

Convergence or cooperation? by Igor Faletski (Vancouver, Canada)

Has Google won the location battle already? by Andrew Grill (London, UK)

Which GPS Reporting Strategy is Right for You? by Patrick Brannan (St. Louis, Missouri, USA)

Check also my contribution this week on this low-tech location-based urban travel guide from Louis Vuitton, called the Louis Vuitton Soundwalk.

My take is that location itself will become obsolete soon, it is something technical the user doesn’t really want to know about, unless he/she needs to read a map… But what about the many people who can’t read a map? Voice-activated GPS is one of the widely used GPS solutions, but what about all the services being build around locations? Who is around, interesting things to do, places to visit, find places? Top down information vs. bottom-up user-generated content?

I believe it’s more important to develop services based on discovery, but linked to your social network of friends, and contacts who can tip you on the best stuff and who can leave valuable comments about places and events - it’s about the value and quality of the recommendation. That was probably one of the missing pieces in Nokia’s LBS strategy and why Nokia bought Plazes.

Other topics this week:

Mobile Workforce

Hiring Opportunities and Redundancies in the Converged World of Telecoms and Mobility by Justin Oberman (New York, USA) and pointing to an Interview by Ajit Jaokar (Oxford, UK)

Mobile Advertising

Interesting presentation on Using mobile social networks to target advertising… one day by David Cushman (London, UK)

And more on context: NFC interaction by Barbara Ballard (Lawrence, Kansas, USA) and must read on Updates from mobile phone researcher Jan Chipchase by Bryan Alexander at Smart Mobs and Rob Knight entered this Video Interview with Ray Haddow and Tom Farell from Nokia.

And last but not least the ongoing discussion on Mobile Browser vs. Native Applications:

Browser as an application platform by Gábor Török (Miskolc, Hungary)

Apps on smartphones = Geek. Apps on Facebook = Fun. Why? by Dean Bubley (London, UK)

When Will Facebook Take Apps Mobile? by Carlo Longino (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA)

I also wanted to inform that Mobile 2.0 Europe is now fast approaching. Tickets are selling fast, so if you’re interested, don’t wait last minute to order your ticket, we’re heading for a full house. You can check the full program and complete list of speakers.

You can also follow latest Mobile 2.0 news on Twitter.

Also of your interest might be the Mobile 2.0 link exchange and discussion room we created on FriendFeed. When this goes mobile, it’s going to be next place to be Subscribe and join here - http://friendfeed.com/rooms/mobile-2-0

That’s it for this week, I learned something more this weekend and got to know some bloggers I haven’t heard about before, that’s what it’s all about, right?

Monday, June 23, 2008. Carnival of the Mobilists 129 edited by Rudy De Waele (Barcelona, Spain)

Next week, Andrew Grill is hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists at http://www.andrewgrill.com/blog

I’m hosting the next Carnival of the Mobilists. Please send your entries to mobilists@gmail.com before midnight PST on Friday. This will allow me to edit the posts over the weekend for Monday morning publication. All participants writing about mobile are welcome - you don’t need a special invitation.

For newcomers and starters, you can read my previous host edits here:

* #3

* #33

* #64

* #96

Check also this month’s latest editions of
June 2 - tarekesber.com
June 9 - Wap Review
June 16 - Ubiquitous Thoughts

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted at Ubiquitous Thoughts and edited by Mark van ‘t Hooft, from the Research Center for Educational Technology at Kent State University.

As usual, some great posts about anything mobile from around the blogosphere, head over to Ubiquitous Thoughts.

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted at Taptology, the blog of MobileMonday Community Peer Award Winner (Emerging Start-Ups), Taptu - a free mobile search service that enables you to find stuff in just a few clicks and share it easily with your friends.

Edited by That Canadian Girl Véro, as usual, great posts from some really great bloggers writing on anything mobile. Note Michael Mace’s entry on the death of the mobile app, some truly disruptive thoughts on the topic, raising again some discussion between mobilists… Arggh, need more time to blog!

Two weeks before the opening of the Mobile World Congress, the third annual Mobile Sunday Barcelona - an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums - has already over 100 people subscribed to the wiki!

Here’s your chance to meet some of the key mobilist bloggers, key industry people from carriers/operators, device manufacturers, mobile applications and service providers companies. This is also an occasion to hear about the exciting stuff happening during the congress and learn about start-ups and interesting projects and launches, the evening before the big show. If you’re not on the list yet and would like to attend, just add your name + info to the wiki.

There’s also a Mobile Sunday Facebook group for picture and video uploads of the evening. FYI: it’s recommended to add your name to the wiki to make sure you’ll get in in case it gets too crowded! Thanks to our friends at MyStrands, who will generously provide some ‘more’ free beer this time.

List of current attendants:

The Mobile World Congress is coming near, so I’m starting to announce some side events I’m involved in.

The third annual MobileSunday - an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums - will be taking place in Barcelona on the eve of this year’s Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM).

Last year’s event, which was also organized by myself with the much appreciated help from blog pal Stuart Mudie, and was attended by over seventy people (check who attended last year here). This time round, there’s going to be some more free Belgian beer, generously provided again by the good people at MyStrands.

I you would like to catch up with some mobile passionates, Mobilists and MobileMonday founders, mixed with some healthy dose of ususal suspect bar-hangers, this is your spot to be. What possible reason can you have not to join us? To confirm your attendance, simply add your name and URL to the Mobile Sunday Barcelona wiki.

This gathering will be held at the BelChica bar (10 minutes walk from the Congress).

More cool event announcements coming here any day soon now, so stay tuned!

The first Carnival of the Mobilists of 2008 (#105) is online at Mobile Point View. Head over and read Paul Ruppert’s exciting post!

Many readers have been contacting me regarding interesting side events during the Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM) from February 11-15 here in Barcelona. There’s too much happening in too few days - as usual - I’m working on a couple of networking parties involving many blogger friends and mobile value chain industry people, developers, VCs, and press. Anyone interesting in sponsoring such events, please contact me directly (email in sidebar).

Since my last contribution to the Carnival of the Mobilists last month, the carnival reached its #100 edition, hosted by Abhishek Tiwari in Santa Cruz, CA. Kudos to Russell and Carlo at Mobhappy and Judy and all mobilists around for keeping this weekly celebration of the best writing about mobile from around the world a pleasure and of great quality week after week.

Last week edition #101 was hosted by friend Martin Sauter in Paris, the next carnival is hosted tomorrow by Tarek Ghazali in Cairo, Egypt.

If you would like to host an upcoming Carnival of the Mobilists, drop Judy Breck a line (judy at nyc dot rr dot com), the host schedule for Q1 2008 is already filling up quickly!

After a long flight back from iPhoneland, a severe jetlag - I can’t sleep on planes - and catching up with the works, I finally got to edit the 96th Carnival of the Mobilists. Nearly 2 years after my first Carnival of the Mobilists participation, headphones plugged in and a moody playlist on, I’m ready to roll out my 4th CoTM edit of some of the best blog articles on anything mobile of last week (fyi you might also want to read previous edits #33 and #64).

With CTIA IT & Wireless still busy, a week after the Mobile 2.0 Conference and the Symbian Smartphone Show, this is one of the most dense and exciting periods in mobile of the year. I definately would like to add the Web 2.0 Summit to the list - though Daniel Appelquist wasn’t quite happy with the low attention mobile got at the summit, and he has a point here. Maybe invisible at this years’ summit but undoubtly more present than ever in surrounding announcements and events. Convergence (sorry couldn’t find any better word yet) between web and mobile is happening!

With Scobleizer picking up on Mobile (only) Social Software and Martin Varsavsky visiting Steve Jobs… this looks to me as the start of just another exciting period to come…. You ain’t seen nothing yet

In a week where Google Docs Mobile was released, Steve Jobs anounced an iPhone SDK, Facebook to open a developer platform for mobile, Nokia releasing the N810 Internet Tablet, and (again) Google launching free IMAP for Gmail, the web going mobile - or was it the other way around? - is definately looking more interesting and more realistic than ever before… Not to forget the news that Orange will sell the iPhone in France without SIM-Lock (the French consumer rights forces Orange to offer the iPhone also without contract and without SIM-Lock)… You may skip from here if you think all this isn’t exciting

So let’s have a look at the discussions following last week’s Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Mike Rowehl compiled already a lot of reactions on the event, I added my impressions and more links in my Mobile 2.0 Wrapup, some discussions continue on various channels and threads on Jaiku. BTW: interesting to see a lot of action is shifting from Twitter to Jaiku after the Finnish start-up joined Google.

A real mobilist discovery for me this week was John Puterbaugh’s post on RIA Platforms for Mobile Services. John is the Founder and Chief Strategist of Nellymoser. Read also his thoughts on Mobile 2.0 – when and how. Definately word a read and adds interesting thoughts to many previous discussions on this topic.

Very to the point as well was Kelly Goto’s comment on Russ McGuire’s post on Mobile 2.0: Mobile Internet vs. Mobility:

and C. Enrique Ortiz “No mention of Windows Mobile @ Mobile 2.0 Event” reply on a previous rant from Rob Tiffany. More of these lively discussions and divergent opinions, please!

Read also Rafe Blandford on Motorola 50% stake in UIQ and Carlo Longino’s notes on this event, both reporting from the Symbian’s Smartphone Show in London.

Tarek Abu-Esber looks this week at Mobile Device Technology & The Mobile Web. Mobilist ‘godmother’ Judy Breck reports on Smartmobs how students are “sorting out student mobile rights at school“, an issue that Oliver Starr mentioned also in one of his live blogging posts at Mobile 2.0 on Blognation:

Clearly not to be overlooked issues in our maxed out social media world of today.

Read Morten Hjerde’s take on why the iPhone will attack Sony Ericsson but loose out to Nokia in Europe. Another great blog discovery for me, realy great stuff on his blog!

On the Mobile Marketing side Bill Day picks in on a great idea for a personal mobile business card, an earlier post from Russell Beattie. Troy Norcross looks at How to block text message spam and Dennis Bournique has a closer look at the Mobile Metrics Report on AdMob.

That’s it for this week, hope I didn’t left anyone out. Next week, the carnival is hosted by Andreas Constantinou at Vision Mobile.