Following Mobile World Congress, everyone’s got a lot to say about what they think is the Next Big Thing in mobile, so the VisionMobile-hosted Carnival of the Mobilists is a busy one this week.

Go ahead and have a read here, but make sure you also polish up your best entries for next week’s Carnival, which will be hosted right here on the Taptu blog!

This week’s carnival is hosted by Dennis at WapReview, and includes our entry on the mobile phone sommeliers suggested by Japan. Andreas Bossard’s post looking 18 months into the future at gaming in the schoolyard piqued my imagination with its originality. Again, the Carnival is a worthwhile read!

Since the Music Cube quiz went live, we’ve had a ton of people saying they’ve got nearly all the answers. Everyone’s been a really good sport and I have to hang my head in shame at how much better your music knowledge is than mine.

On this Friday afternoon, I asked two of our best office girls, Katie & Suzanne, to put together a few hints for the game. Will they help you get a Perfect Score?

Apparently some people have been having a little difficulty with the Music Cube. So, being complete geniuses and Music Cube marvels, we thought we’d lend a hand (or two).

First hint, the one on the left. Wow, doesn’t that beach look nice? Bliss in fact. You could say it’s comparable to Utopia. (Thesaurus.com, anyone?)

Come on, you seriously don’t have to be from ‘da hood’ to get this one.

Now the one on the right. Most of you aren’t completely lost and have realised that this is indeed India and a Woman.

The woman is standing alone. She is unattached. She’s too Bootylicious for a man.

Hint hint.

Another tricky one keeping you awake at night is “The Knob” in the 00s album category. You’re only putting in minimum effort here, how obvious do we need to make it?

In the same category, our good friend Nohead Girl has been losing weight, isn’t she looking trim? Let’s say one day she’s out for a jog and chooses to catch her breath under the tree’s leafy branches; she would be well and truly sheltered from the sun’s harsh, cancer-causing rays. And if we’re going to be picky the disc looks a bit like a 7″… it’s not meant to. You’re on the right track, just think longer.

Contrary to popular speculation this is not:

• Roast Scotch
• Chicken Whiskey
• Duck Brandy (what kind of duck is that!?)
• Turkey Bourbon
• Pheasant Amaretto
• Partridge Cognac

Or any other combination of Food and Liquor…

We realise Music Cube has probably taken over your life, but if you’ve kept half an eye on the news you’ll know that the lead singer of top 80s artist “sheep/bee/coins” has sadly left the band to pursue his solo career. We are understandably devastated but we’ll plough on…

Fill in the blanks:
Back to our good friend Nohead Girl. (What? We like her!) She is in such a hurry to get home from work to play more Music Cube but unfortunately for her, so is everyone else. Traffic is a nightmare as it’s the [_____] hour. She’s getting angry… her [______] is starting to boil. Take a deep breath, No [______] Girl!

We know you’re not having trouble with this one but we wanted to include it anyway. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Juice.
Tin.
Timber.
Lake.

Genius.

Hopefully, thanks to our super-useful hints, you can get back to reality now. Hurrah!

On Wednesday, I mentioned that we launched our music game, which tests your music knowledge of the past three decades.

To further spread the fun, we’ve created a Facebook version of The Music Cube, which you can install and play directly within your profile.

Go on, it’s Friday afternoon, have a play you skivvies!

To liven up your grey January days, we’ve created a fun music game to stretch your memory of the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s called Music Cube. Forget the leg warmers and bad hair of the 80’s and think of the classic tunes of that era!

Think you can find the answer to ALL the questions?

Get some colour in your life on this grey Monday with this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, hosted by Xen Mendelsohn of Xellular Identity.

You’ll be greeted by a wide range of topics this week, including a number of interesting posts on the social aspects of mobile such as Paul Ruppert’s Super Mobile Communicators and James Whatley’s Think of the Children. In contrast, Tarek Esber hands out awards for the best phones of 2007 (Can’t agree on best phone of the year, but then I have a personal grudge against it!) and Andrew Grill wonders about 3G-equipped computers while away from home.

See you all next week at MobHappy for the next Carnival!

Yesterday, the team thought the bottles of bubbly were to celebrate 100,000 users for our Music Wall Facebook application…

But little did they know, we were only just beginning our own Ballmer Peak experiment…

Original xkcd cartoon: http://xkcd.com/323/

Yesterday, our Music Wall application on Facebook hit a new milestone - There are now over 100,000 people currently using the app.

When the idea cropped up that we should use our search engine to create a music app on Facebook, we didn’t know whether it would really fly since there are so many apps out there. It’s exciting to see how users quickly adopted us and started sharing music with their friends, allowing us to hit that milestone. So this is a big thank you to all our users for making this such a fun project!

Go on, what are you listening to these days? Why not share it?

One hundred Carnivals. One hundred weeks of insightful posts and sharp reviews.

Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino of MobHappy who started it all back in Oct 2005. Along with Rudy De Waele they were original the visionaries. Finally Judy Breck and Troy Norcross for keeping the carnival going, week after week.

This milestone Carnival is hosted by Abhishek Tiwari in Santa Cruz, and covers topics from Google Android’s implications for the mobile world to the evolution of 3.5G HSDPA, amongst others.

Here’s a cheer to 100 more Carnivals!

James Q. Pearce at MocoNews points us to a report by The Age which claims that Australian youngsters are having to declare themselves bankrupt due to overspending their meagre revenue on mobile bills.

“Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney said a survey conducted by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) had highlighted concerns about “premium” mobile phone content and the massive bills being racked up - often unknowingly - by users.

“Suddenly they have got bills of $3,000 to $4,000 AUD because they thought services they were getting in term of downloads and ringtones, and voting on Big Brother, were free,” Ms Burney told reporters.”

Normally, my attitude would be that someone should give them a dollar to go buy a clue and that these teens should get themselves out of the trouble they got in. Learning responsibility, character building and what not.

But when it comes to mobile, there are some very grey zones. In theory, providers of mobile services are obliged to clearly explain cost of use in plain English. In practice, they’ll often use convoluted terminology and small print to pass a quick one while the user isn’t paying attention. With no experience in escalating issues with customer service in a telco, the teens find themselves backed against a wall and declaring bankruptcy crops up as a potential way out.

In my ideal world of rainbows and unicorns, every service would be morally correct and would not attempt to fool consumers. There would be no headline shouting “Only £1 for the ringtone” shadowing over small print whispering that a minimum of half a dozen ringtones a month must be purchased.

As James suggests, “surely a little flag saying ‘hey, this person has spent $200 on mobile content, we should let them know’ isn’t that hard to implement?” This should be a requirement where any service provider is required to update customers regularly on their spending.

For example, T-Mobile UK sent me a free SMS every Friday at lunchtime to let me know how many of my monthly minutes I had left and how long I had to use them up. After a few weeks, I stopped the automated SMS since I had a pretty good idea of my phone use, but it was extremely useful in the early days. Networks are also taking a step in the right direction by notifying you of roaming charges via SMS when entering a new European country.

To the suggestion of widening the net to all paid-for mobile services, the default reaction for operators would most likely be that it’ll cause users to hold back on using their services - having realised how much money they’re blowing on Crazy Frog ringtones - promptly eating into their high profit margins.

That being said, I’m convinced that for nine out of 10 users, it would have quite the opposite effect. The most common reservation we continually hear during user testing sessions for Taptu is that most consumers have no concept of how much a song download or a quick browse of the mobile web is costing them. As a result, they choose to avoid using it altogether for fear of racking up immense bills. For these users, I’m willing to bet my place in the iPhone queue this Friday that they’d be pleasantly surprised at the low cost of their mobile web use.

Do other services offer this kind of triggered courtesy notices to let you track your spending? Would you welcome such a service?

If these automated messages were sent to the teens The Age reported on, they couldn’t claim innocence when the bills start rolling in, forcing them to decide to either pay up, shape up their habits in the future or disconnect and find a different hobby. Maybe knitting or paperclip collecting.