Following yesterday’s announcement by Apple that they’re dropping the price of the iPhone by $200, Nokia took out ads on Google.com inviting disgruntled iPhone owners to check out its new Mosh social network for mobile.

Cheeky quick thinking, I have to admit! It probably wouldn’t convince me to join the Mosh network, but as with the latest Nokia campaigns (Jealous Computers and NSyndrome), it shows they’re alert and in tune. If anything, it’s worth a giggle and a bit of PR coverage!

[From TechCrunch, incl screenshot]

Dear Aunt Enna,

A paranoid mobile newbie

Dear Paranoid,

A website can only find out a few basic pieces of information, but at no point are they given access to your phone number.

They’ll find out your user agent, which is a long line of garble that helps them display the page correctly for your needs. They can also generally find out your country and operator. They are not interested in your phone number or the colour of your underpants.

Now, please take the tin foil hat off your head and go have some fun on your phone! Do yourself a favour and sort yourself out with some more interesting sites. How about Facebook, Wapedia for a mini’fied version of Wikipedia or Engadget, for a start?

Love & teacakes,
Aunt Enna

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been spending loads of time with early testers, picking their brains for feedback and ideas after giving them a peek into Taptu, to help us bring out the most useful and enjoyable app to use on mobile and on the other mini screens that fill our lives nowadays.

During those conversations, we’ve also heard plenty of questions about the mobile world. Some people worried about security, or costs, others just wondered what fun stuff could be found on the mobile web. We thought “That’s no good! We don’t want people to feel nervous, or worse, be bored because they can’t find anything great to do on their phone!”

To tackle your questions and demystify the mobile web a little, we’ve roped in our totally mad, hrmm, very lovely Aunt Enna. She’s a real wonder for her age, she knows how to send text messages, can program her own VCR (who still has a VCR nowadays!?) and makes fabulous teacakes.

So join me in welcoming Aunt Enna to the team! She’s just off sharpening her pencil in preparation for answering your questions, but don’t hesitate to leave a comment or email Enna if you’d like her to answer your questions.

To be sure you don’t miss out on our dear old Enna’s first foray as a writer, subscribe to our RSS feed or enter your email address in the box on the right and we’ll deliver the latest post every day straight to your inbox!

Over the next few months, we’ll be going to a few events across Europe and we’d love to meet some of our readers and fellow mobile phone fiends.

• On September 10th, Steve, Laura and I (Vero) will be in Helsinki, Finland for Mobile Monday Summit, and I’ll carry on for the St-Petersburg stretch of the trip as well.
• On September 29th & 30th, a few of us will be taking part in mobileCampLondon. Might be doing a panel on mobile search, usability or being volunteering around the event. It’s a very unique event style, and with topics ranging from mobile gaming and hardware hacking to mobile social networks, there’s really something for all types.
• On October 3rd & 4th, I will be at the Future of Web Apps conference in London. There are tickets left if you’re interested in the conference, otherwise the live filming of Diggnation in the evening is free, and should be a good laugh!

We’ll add more events soon when we’ve worked out where else you’ll be able to find it. If you’re going to any of the events above, see you there!

The Taptu office is like a buzzing hive of activity on this Monday morning!

We’ll be releasing the beta soon, but first, we all need to put our testing hats on and do our best to spot bugs, flukes and try to break the system. Much to the pleasure of the developers, it’s holding up very well.

Testing on mobile is a challenge on a grander scale than testing purely for desktop computers - Forget IE, Firefox, Safari testing, there are many different browsers on mobile, with screens in sizes varying from 128 pixels to 320 pixels wide and with many different rendering capabilities and standards.

This screenshot gives you some insight into some of the many phones on which we’ve been testing Taptu - it’s enough to give us all thumb-RSI!

[Updated: Slightly bigger screenshot when you click on it!]