Welcome to this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, I’m thrilled to be hosting it here on the Taptu blog.

The turnout in posts has been great, and we’re covering a wide range of topics today; from web3.0 to free speech, and from Burmese dissent to UFO sightings. There’s also a sneak preview surprise for all Carnival readers at the bottom of this post… So what are you waiting for? Read on!

Innovation in Developing Markets

From Mobile Active, guest writer Abi Jagun from the University of Manchester deconstructs the hype on mobiles in civil society, in particular in developing countries. Kevin Smith from Vodafone Betavine touches on the inventiveness of some African services when faced with a problem, from “beeping” each other to transferring funds via a mobile payment service. In a similar thread, Paul Ruppert at Mobile Point View posts the first of a two-part series on mobile transactions, interviewing Michele Scanlon, an expert on mobile payments in global emerging markets.

Controversy in America

Abhishek Tiwari discusses the seemingly game-changing decisions Sprint has made over their wireless offering in the US, moving away from the binding contracting model and transitioning to a subscription model without users being tied to a specific device. Echoing some of the Sprint news mentioned by Abhishek, Jason Devitt from Skydeck tells us about Verizon Wireless (almost) declining to allow Pro-Choice America send messages, explicitly requested by users, about abortion, on the grounds that the subject matter was too controversial.

Ian Welsh of The Agonist questions net neutrality in the current oligo/monopoly of the telecoms landscape, putting out red flags around AT&T and Verizon’s questionable termination clauses.

Learning From the Past

Reflecting on the launch of the Sputnik 50 years ago, Judy Breck reminds us that today’s educators should use mobiles to support lessons in a positive way rather than resort to banning them from classrooms.

A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words

Mark van ‘t Hooft at Ubiquitous Thoughts posts his observations on the dilemma military generals are facing in the current Burma/Myanmar protests with regards to the use of mobile phones and information virality. Also musing on the impact of new technologies, Krisse from All About Symbian wonders about UFOs and the effect of cameraphones on the sightings. Quick, get your camera out, there’s something weird up there!

The Web Is Abuzz…

Meanwhile, C. Enrique Ortiz from …about mobility comments on Jason Calacanis’ “official” definition of Web 3.0, and Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens writes on the “Phonetop”, mobile equivalent to the desktop, ODP and widgets as the possible future of mobile apps.

Dennis from Wapreview looks at the mobile version of Gawker Media sites I’m a big fan of; Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Valleywag, Wonkette and Defamer. Verdict? “It’s nice to see that a big publisher like Gawker is thinking of mobile, but these really aren’t very good mobile sites.” Read on to find out why. Tarek Esber from tarek speaks mobile… takes us through how the mobile web saved the day twice by allowing him to connect to important information in a quickie, taking him to destination.

Mobile Conference

This week, Rudy De Waele points us to the Mobile 2.0 Conference, which is taking place in San Francisco next Monday, 15th October. Presented by Mobile Monday and The Open Group, the event brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of mobile; investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, application developers and web technologists.

Coincidentally, Taptu will be presenting in one of the Mobile Launch Pads and showing some pretty exciting stuff! Have a look at the agenda and the speakers list and come tell me you don’t want to be there? I’ve been informed there are a few places left for those who’d like to attend.

And Finally… The Sneak Preview!

This brings me to the sneak preview you’ve been waiting for; we’ve decided to invite Carnival readers to have an early look at the Taptu mobile search beta, before we launch publicly. Want to have a look? Just leave a comment using a legitimate email address or email me on hello@taptu.com and you’ll get access to our private beta tomorrow.

Next week, the spotlight for the Carnival will be on the Symbian Smartphone Show, so see you there!

It’s been a few weeks since we last linked to the Carnival of the Mobilists, but we’re quickly approaching the 100th!

This week, it’s hosted by Tomi Ahonen of Communities Dominate Brands, with topics ranging from the Blyk launch to Smart Mobs’ satirical Scroogled piece.

Next week, the Carnival is hosted by yours truly, right here on the Taptu blog! Looking forward to reading everyone’s best entries. (Want to contribute? Details are here)

This weekend, a hundred mobile addicts gathered in the Fjord offices in London for the first mobileCampLondon, an event organised by volunteers, headed by Victor Szilagyi and Christian Lindholm. The idea behind BarCamp events is to get people together to share and learn in an open environment. Rather than listening to thinly-veiled sales pitches and being talked at, the emphasis is on collaboration, discussion and demos.

Seeing the developers, designers and creatives get together for the weekend was refreshing. We usually tend to keep the geeks locked in the server room usually, you see, but here they were let out to play, and play they did! While the balance was somewhat in the favour of geekier topics, the talks ranged from techy to social to artistic; Exploiting social network APIs, using RFID on the underground, location-based games and integrating mobile into art - the latter being easier to grasp for my simple mind!

Beyond all the talks, presentations and topics scribbled on the grids, there were random conversations, cozied up in the colourful bean bags area, and the fascinating meeting of ideas.

At the end of the day on Saturday, Terence Eden from Vodafone bravely tackled the seemingly unavoidable topic of the Novarra transcoder and user-agent masking, which has been widely criticised in recent weeks. He gave a very welcome demo and geek perspective, speaking in honest - if not blunt - terms, agreeing that Vodafone has learnt a lot from the firey discussions and experimenting. While I still feel that the user-agent masking is a big mistake, seeing the transcoded results on a much older Nokia phone allowed me to understand how the service might be useful in some conditions.

Overall, mobileCamp led to some unexpected meetings and the conviction that, everyday, more people are taking interest in creating apps, websites and all sorts of wild and wonderful things for mobiles!

[tags]mobile, phone, mobilecamplondon, mobilecamp, london, barcamp, taptu, taptology, technology[/tags]

“Does anyone have a charger for a Sony Ericsson phone?” shouted across the office. Negative head shaking from everyone. Email to mates saying “Meet you at 6.30. Don’t ring me, phone out of battery.”

Common scenario, isn’t it? I’m hopeless when it comes to chargers and adapters. I always manage to misplace them, leaving me with a frantic scavenger hunt for a Nokia charger while my N95 expires with one last low battery beep.

The Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP), a forum of leading phone operators and manufacturers including heavyweights Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG, has agreed to make micro-USB the connector standard on all its future hardware.

“With UK consumers changing their handset on average twice a year there are hundreds millions of chargers and data cables in circulation,” says a statement from the group.

Of course, there’s no mention of timescales, but it’s a step in the right direction, towards a more practical way of connecting devices. I, for one, am thrilled at the idea of carrying less peripherals with me on a daily basis!

[Via PC Pro and InfoSync]

Not exactly what I’d describe as “light” Friday afternoon reading, but certainly entertaining is Stephen Fry’s first blog post on his fascination with mobile devices going back as far as the early “electronic organisers”.

For me it’s an addiction. Swapping SIMS, syncing, testing, probing, playing. I can’t pretend I’ve any higher purpose. What cars are to some, SmartPhones are to me – much, much more than just a functional tool. We live in the age of these devices. It should be the age of the greatest imaginative drive, flair and creativity in the digital arena. I am disappointed that not everyone in the industry sees it that way.

As the General Confession in the Book of Common Prayer has it, “I have followed too much the devices and desires of my own heart.” Amen.

Last night, we started emailing some of the beta testers, the early birds who signed up before everyone else. Ricky, at Symbian-Guru, is already sharing his first impressions of Taptu, and we’re thrilled to see he likes what he sees.

You will have it bookmarked in your mobile phone (I’ll put money on it). It’s a mobile optimized search tool, allowing you to easily find information about a topic from numerous sources. [...] TapTu is something new, but I’m already liking where it’s going. Rather than just giving me a bunch of web links to sites mentioning Jerry Jeff (or whatever topic) I get a good selection of relevant information from various mediums.

Launching a new product is like having a party. You can’t help but be anxious about who will turn up, what they’ll think of the party, or whether anyone will turn up at all. It’s still early, but it looks like this will be a cracking party!

The ever-eloquent Peter Ha from CrunchGear writes a post entitled “SMS 2.0? Wha? Huh? Noooooo!”.

Via TechTicker, Peter uncovered UK’s Affle (come again?) and India’s Airtel’s masterplan to spruce up the SMS advertising landscape with some 2.0 technology of their own. How does it work?

There is a cache of ads and content stored on the phone which is periodically update during the day (through a background action via GPRS). Each time the user opens his messaging window, an initial item—which could be a content or an ad—is pulled from the cache based on the user relevance. To enhance user experience this item is usually a relevant content (approx 75% of times)

I don’t think any relevancy could make up for the kind of interruption they’re suggesting. I’m usually in a rush when I want to send a text message, the last thing I need is an extra obstacle to getting my message through to a friend!

On Friday, the mobile phone celebrated 20 years of growth and development, which means that, thankfully, phones have gone from the size of a briefcase to a tiny, multi-featured smartphone.

On 7 September 1987, 15 phone firms signed an agreement to build mobile networks based on the Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications.

According to the GSM Association there are more than 2.5 billion accounts that use this mobile phone technology.

Adoption of the technology shows no signs of slowing down with many developing nations becoming keen users of mobile handsets. [BBC News]

For some of us, it’s difficult to even imagine life without mobiles. It’s become something of a lifeline; finding information and planning our social lives wouldn’t be the same without this ubiquitous means of communication.

It seems fit then that today, hundreds of mobile industry people are getting together in Helsinki for the Mobile Monday Global Summit. Some pics of the event are already being posted on Flickr. Well, what did you expect from a bunch of mobile geeks?

MocoNews’ James Quintana Pearce reports EBay’s rollout of an SMS-based service which allows bidders to be notified by SMS if they’re outbid on an existing auction, at which point they can react and increase their bid.

I’m not a regular eBay user, but it’s great to see a mobile service perform the single, and simple, task of tracking existing bids, freeing users from their desktop computer in those exciting last few moments before the end of an auction. No bells and whistle, no application download, just a clever use of SMS.

This week’s Carnival is hosted by Xellular Identity. As ever, some great posts and interesting thoughts on our ever-evolving industry.