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Welcome all to the Carnival of the Mobilists #158. It’s the second time I am hosting this event and I am happy to do so – especially in a week with so many interesting posts from around the mobile globe.

This time, I’ll make a point of adding a few posts that weren’t submitted to the carnival, but made an impression on me – just for the fun of it.

So without further ado, here’s the catch for the past week.

Mobile Context

There’s a lot that’s been said about context. In the past few months/years I got the feeling that most of it is focused around LBS (location based services) with GPS getting into mobile devices, but this week, we’ve got a different set of such contextual posts.

I’d like to start this one out with an item that you just MUST bookmark. It’s an extensive list of mobile 2.0 resources, provided to you by no other than James Cooper over at mjelly. My definition of mobile 2.0? User interactivity built into services.

Starting with James Holland from Omio, dealing with the need for better mobility features in today’s social networks. I second the request and would like to ask the social network vendors to improve context on desktop experience as well – make it less time consuming, please. I’m swamped as it is already.

Over at Open Gardens, Ajit Jaokar provides an analysis about a complaint made to the FTC against mobile marketing. It was pretty interesting to read – especially in light of the next item in our carnival, which is the opposing argument.

Andrew Grill from London Calling deals with the need for mobile advertising to provide more value to advertisers in 2009 – a need that can be satisfied with better context. Andrew does that very well even without saying the looming word “recession” even once.

As for my “carnival guest” here: as we’re talking about mobile context, it will be only fair to read Jonathan Greene’s atmospheric | endeavors about the new Palm Pre and sync context.

Future of Mobility

The beginning of a new year brings with it a lot of interesting posts about the future and this week of January is no different.

From Always On Real-Time Access we have the duo Vern Fotheringham and Chetan Sharma, outlining the need for a broadband stimulus package, now that the new administration is in office. I’d say this make sense to every country and not just the US. Hopefully, here in Israel things will be improved as well.

Mark Hooft from Ubiquitous Thoughts gives his views of the Horizon Project annual report with regards to teaching, learning and research. It appears to me like everything in this report can be centered around mobility.

My guest over here would be Melanie McBride from Smart Mobs who also points to the Horizon Project.

Development and User Interfaces

I have a very warm place in my heart for developers – I’ve been one in the past, and I still consider myself to be one. In 2008, the user interface has become the most important part of mobile handsets and it’s the ruler of this part of our carnival as well.

Vision Mobile, a must read for anyone in the industry of mobile handsets, has a piece from Andreas Constantinou. This time Andreas outlines the importance of UI Frameworks (UIF) for the innovation in mobile phone UI. There are also short introductions to the various UIFs that exist today in this piece.

Morten Hjerde from Sender 11 talks about the fragmentation today in mobile development platforms. Fragmentation is never easy on developers, but it’s a thing we have to deal with. I guess the UIFs from the previous post won’t assist either.

Antoine RJ Wright looks at the different contexts in which we use our mobile devices and argues that they need to be handled better by our industry.

Steven Hoober from Little Springs Design reminds us all that we need to deal with error conditions better in our interfaces. Steven focuses in his post around user logins. I’d say that this is important for every software project, and not only the mobile ones.

Ever thought what’s next after multi touch? Peter Odum from Idlemode provides an excellent and thorough review of the various tactile feedback solutions out there that improve on current multi touch displays. I can’t wait to have them on a future phone of mine.

Ed Howson takes a step backwards when he talks about UI. On Temono, he tries to minimize a phone’s UI to a single button. For the VCR industry this was a winner. On mobile? Won’t work I’m afraid… it’s still a great read. I really liked it.

The Mobile Web

What happens when you marry the web with mobile handsets? Apparently, a lot. Look at this week’s pick of the mobile web. My post of the week is hidden here as well.

The Mobi Blog provides Holly Kolman’s views on the new initiative of starting registration for .mobi single and double character domain names. It appears like these are targeted at businesses and known brands for now. This is her first contribution to our carnival, so all – say hello to Holly! Good to have you on board with us

A quite disturbing post comes from Masabi. Tom Godber explains how mobile transcoders work, in light of HTTPs.  It can’t get any worse than that (not the post – the reality – the post is important for all mobile web users).

After reading Tom’s piece, don’t hold back, read Dennis Bournique’s one on Wap Review. Here Tom explains the technicalities, Dennis gives the insights about the balance of power in the “transcoder industry” if you can call it that. Dennis also offers the possible solutions to it.

This week’s best post goes to Martin Sauter from WirelessMoves. Martin uses his phone’s Wi-Fi in the extreme. He is definitely ahead of most of us (at least of me) in how he utilizes his mobile phone. Innovation is here – at the tip of his handJ. So go ahead and read how a fellow mobile “heavy user” is making use of his phone.

Nokia vs. Apple

Mostly Nokia though. Seems like it’s time to bash Nokia and Apple for their phones.

And what better way to start than at Digital Evangelist with Ian Wood who takes a look at how handset vendor makers are about to change their ways due to the economy. It is a “Nokia-piece”, but is also relevant to other vendors out there.

All About iPhone.net has Steve Litchfield griping about his iPhone this time. It’s an interesting read from an Apple fan. It also reminds me of the fact that every product can be improved and also shows that the mobile handset race is not over yet and that the iPhone has a way to go to rule the market.

Renegade Fanboy has a roundup of Nokia’s mistakes in 2008 – 10 of them to be precise. It is well written, insightful and with links to other posts supporting his claims. Go read it. His words make sense.

My guest on this section would definitely be Will Park’s piece on IntoMobile about the fact that Microsoft shipped more Windows Mobile handsets than Apple did iPhones in Q4 2008. It goes to show that hype doesn’t always win.

Final Words

My meager contribution to the carnival this time questions the need for VoIP clients in application stores. I hope you will like it.

I had a lot of fun reading the collection this week – I am sure you will as well.

Next week the carnival will be held at Mobile Broadband Blog. See you there!

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