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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.

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

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.

Dear mobilists,

I’m hosting next Monday’s CotM.
Since I will be travelling from Sunday to Monday, I would appreciate if you could send your entries before Saturday 2pm PST / 11pm CET so I can store them on my laptop and do the editing on the plane.

There’s going to be a lot of entries focused on Mobile 2.0 Conference and Symbian Smartphone Show but I’ll consider any other interesting topic of course.

If you have doubts how to participate, please read the Mobilist FAQ.

Looking forward to your entries!

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is edited by That Canadian Girl Véro. Check edition #94 hosted for the occasion at Taptology. As usual great posts from some really great bloggers writing on anything mobile.

This edition also includes a sneak preview for Carnival readers to have an early look at the Taptu mobile search beta, before their public launch anytime soon now. But you’ll have to head over to find out about the details

This week the Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted by Abhishek Tiwari in sunny Santa Cruz California. Check edition #92, as usual great posts from some really great bloggers writing on mobile related stuff.

Next week, the carnival is hosted by Tomi T. Ahonen at Communities Dominate Brands. Note that we always need volunteers to host, so don’t be shy about stepping up. Hosts get great exposure and extra traffic that week - and many new readers will stick around if they like what they find. To qualify, you will need to have submitted 3 posts to the Carnival. Check the host schedule and send your request and date you would like to host to Judy Breck at jbreck AT nyc DOT rr DOT com.

“Coming to us from Egypt and hosted this week by Tarek Ghazali, Carnival of the Mobilists 81 is a Pharaoh-style midway of the best mobilists blogging of the week. An echo of the collection spirit of the Library at Alexandria, this Carnival 81 surely has the Ptolemies smiling in their sarcophagi.” (from mobili.st website)

Knowing that summertime is here for many amongst us to take some well deserved rest, this Carnival period is also ideal for newcomers to jump in and host one of the Carnival’s during summer. Carnival reading is known to be ideal just before a relaxing summer nap or siesta, so grab this moment to show your talents in writing on the evolution of the mobile phone. You can participate in moving the tradition forward and making your own mark with the best writing on mobile. Read How to Host a Carnival of the Mobilists and check our host schedule with available dates to host; for more information and details you can contact Judy directly here.

Carnival of the Mobilists Nº 65 is on at goldenswamp.com, this week hosted by Judy Breck who also writes for Smart Mobs.

Greetings from New York City — where our biggest and best Carnival is Coney Island, called “the playground of the world” since the early 1800s. The Wonder Wheel image used in this Carnival of the Mobilists is from Wired New York.

Judy is also taking care of planning the Hosts calendar. To qualify as a host you need to have entered a Carnival of the Mobilists post at least 3 times. 2007 is shaping up as a pivotal year for mobile. The Carnival of the Mobilists is a unique opportunity for you to be heard and have impact, so what are you waiting for to enter the Mobilists Hall of Fame To sign up, email Judy directly with your available dates at jbreck AT nyc DOT rr DOT com.

So if you’re in for some straightforward analysis and thought-provoking pieces, head over and read all those wonderful posts from this week, the quality is really very high lately and it covers many aspects of mobile technology of today. If you’re interested in M-learning, check out Judy’s blog, she covers a lot of interesting things around this topic.

Welcome to the Carnival of the Mobilists No. 64, this is the third edition I’m hosting (read my previous host contributions nr. 3 and 33), and once again I am delighted to host another edition of this so called mobilists group - a loose network of bloggers all writing passionately but mostly lucid about mobility, contributing all in their own personal style, bringing insights, tips and discovery, but also expressing their doubts about mobile technology development and deployment. The mobilists include developers, journalists, executives, marketeers, designers, entrepreneurs, consultants working in the mobile and wireless sector and also, why not, just users reporting on something essential from a user point of view.

This weeks ‘celebration’ of the best writing on the evolution in mobility from the previous week include some of the best blog writers with contributions from Ajit Jaokar, Bill Day, C. Enrique Ortiz, Chetan Sharma, Daniel Taylor, David Beers, Dennis Bournique, Eduardo Cruz, Farooq Anjum, Graham Brown, Jason Delport, Judy Breck, Justin Oberman, Kelly Goto, Michael Mace, Mike Rowehl, Tomi Ahonen and Xen Mendelsohn. Some of them you might know, others not, it doesn’t really matter, they all have great knowledge about a certain aspect in mobility and they contribute through this initiative, to bridge, reveal and support the latest in mobile innovations, it’s a real resource centre to catch up with what’s currently happening in mobile if you ask me!

One of the things that struck me the most this week was the death of Jean Baudrillard. Justin Oberman wrote a R.I.P. Jean Baudrillard piece on him:

Baudrillard always brought some great thought provocative issues to the forefront, especially on media culture, society and technology. Isn’t this what we’re dealing with every day? So, I mourn his death by honoring this Carnival issue to the spirit of Jean Baudrillard.

Graham Brown kicks off quite unusual and audacious with some critical reflection on the evolution of social media in his A new age of Digital Maoism 2.0?

Very interesting thoughts brought forward here by Graham, an interesting discussion follows the post. If you want to go for the full blow weekend reading (and thinking!), read Jaron Lanier’s “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism” he published last year on the Edge, The Third Culture. Don’t miss out on the responses to Lanier’s influential essay from Douglas Rushkoff, Quentin Hardy, Yochai Benkler, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Kelly, Esther Dyson, Larry Sanger, Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg, Jimmy Wales, George Dyson, Dan Gillmor, Howard Rheingold, etc. Just essential reading if you’re working in the media and technology field.

Eduardo Cruz - also known as Ed Cross, is wondering about the fragilities of the internet we currently experience in our lives, related to the unprecedented movement Turkey has released this week on a court order to block all accesses to the internet video website Youtube.com.

But what about the gatekeeping of all this ubiquitous access? True Baudrillard spirit, Ed!

Judy Breck is convinced time has come now for mobile learning in her No more pencils, no print books, no more analog backward looks:

And concludes…

I was used to read a book before sleeping but my 14-year old daughters are doing a lot of different things with their mobile phone before going to sleep, hardly books to notice… if you like it or not, this is what screenagers do these days!

Justin Oberman writes about his thoughts on NGO donations like Amnesty International using PayPal Mobile or rival LUUP to donate directly to them. BTW: did you know that secure donations of up to £800 can be made now via mobile handsets?

This week in design interaction and imaging: Kelly Goto published an excellent interview with Ignacio Mondine from Daem Interactive on linking bits and atoms – basically two-dimensional images to information using your mobile device in real time. Jason Delport learns us about Image Optimisation Techniques for Java ME Development and the use of the PNG format. Bill Day is wondering if Apple’s patent team licensed any of Perceptive Pixel’s work, after seeing their impressive multi-touch screen interaction demo here at m-trends.

The most interesting discussion topic of some mobilists this week was definately the Nokia Ad Service anouncement. Ajit Jaokar named it A potentially revolutionary milestone for Mobile advertising.. causing Mike Rowehl trying to get grip on concrete details of this anouncement passing by Eduardo Cruz (again!) drawing some more insights to finally arrive at Farooq Anjum’s take on the subject. Anyone interested in this topic should follow all ongoing discussions leaving this paragraph a summary of what’s it all about

If you ask me, I’m not against advertising on the mobile, it will be more and more used as mobile becomes more web (or was it the other way around?) and devices more usable to acces web-content. One thing though for this part of the industry: keep the ads contextual, please. If they don’t make sense for the user, there’s no point. Personally, I don’t want any PUSH ad content on my mobile screen that doesn’t make sense or has any reference to my interests, what I do at a given moment in time or is related to where I am… Great move by Nokia though who understood time is crucial in positioning NOW, knowing mobile advertising has a lot of potential in the near future wether it’s on- or off portal and this creates new opportunities for new companies entering the mobile ecosystem.

Another example related to advertising comes from Xen Mendelsohn who looks at the Ringback Tones TV Commercials and the way operators are advertising these products, have a look how she integrates the operator commercials from YouTube and how media blogging tools can be used to document and report. And do check out Chetan Sharma update on the US Wireless Data Market Update - 4Q06 and 2006; I wonder where he gets all that data from, I need more time to dig deeper in the figures, but at first sight, this looks very impressive and relevant. Check it out!

Tomi Ahonen, always been a true inspiration for me, explains pretty brilliantly why he sees the Mobile as 7th Mass Media; if you’re weren’t convinced yet, head over and read this exciting post and its following discussion.

Daniel Taylor recently made the point that the retail channel for mobile services will continueto be an important component of the mobile enterprise. Read how he’s going in a slightly different direction this time explaining about liability for mobile telephone services. Interesting!

David Beers, host of Carnival 63.01 last week, has a really great post about the return of the command line interface, a replacement for the whole idea of menus, applications and forms used now to access every feature of your device:

I can’t believe the mobile user interface will be heading back in the direction of the DOS command line but looking at Mobile Search now, David comes up actually with some real good suggestions.

C. Enrique Ortiz keeps the ‘necessary’ dialogue going on in his Transitioning to Mobile 2.0 and adds some new insights to the ongoing discussion what Mobile 2.0 is all about. There has been some great thinking and insights from mobilists the last weeks/months on this topic and the discussion how to define what is currently happening is not an easy one. Let’s keep the discussion going and the dialogue open in a true philosophical spirit, if only for the benefit of progress

Probably one of the most faithful mobilists is Dennis Bournique, at Wap Review this week he’s examining Full-Web Mobile Browsers: “With more and more hits coming to PC sites from mobile full-web browsers, web designers need to start paying attention to how their sites will look in this new class of browsers.” Don’t miss his analysis and resources to help web developers optimize their sites for the small screen.

Michael Mace, one of my favorite blogroll reads, gives us some great insights titled What we’re learning from Web apps, part two: Community = shared obsession (FYI part one here). Michael opens with this paragraph below:

I thought that was a real nice one to close this Carnival. Every1’s a Winner to me this week! I hope you’ll enjoy the reading as much as I did.

Next week Judy Breck has agreed to host the next Carnival. Send your entries before Friday midnight PST to mobilists AT googlemail DOT com. For detailed instructions and archives about the Carnival of the Mobilists, please visit the mobili.st website.

We are also launching a new round of hosts for future Carnivals. Being a host normally gets you a nice boost in traffic and is a great way to showcase your blog or website to a wider audience. Drop a line to Judy - jbreck AT nyc DOT rr DOT com - and tell her when you CAN’T do one between now and summer. You must have entered the Carnival 3 times to host, but everyone is welcome - new and seasoned veterans alike. What are you waiting for?

Thanks to Andrew Berglund for the contextual mash-up images!

Just recovering from 3GSM this weekend and slowly starting to sort my emails, impressions and ideas (I voluntarily did not connect to the internet this week), will write a wrap-up soon here. Many people asked if I’d won the Carnival of the Mobilists “Host of the Year” award… Yes, I did! (Russell announced it here). Thanks to all the ones who voted for me, this really means a lot to me!

There is still another Khosla contest running for best “Post of the Year” (best on blogging on mobility related stuff). You can still vote here (password mobilists) for my best post selected for 2006.