Welcome to Episode #113 of the Carnival of the Mobilists. I’m honored to host the Carnival for a second time, and judging from the entries, it looks like we just finished up another busy week in the land of mobile. So here we go…
Mobile Price Wars?
Most submissions this week are dealing with the impending price wars between Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint, at least in the United States (see, for example, Debi Jones’ post at the GoMo blog). Skydeck’s Jason Devitt argues in Mother Of All Price Wars? that journalists and Wall Street all cried wolf, and he explains why.
In a related post, James Durbin describes how The Future Of Mobile Marketing Lies In Unlimited Access. In a nutshell, he explains why the unlimited plans that are being introduced by the major carriers in the United States may actually help increase mobile marketing, as these plans will help reshape user attitudes (as in less worries about overage charges)
Mobile Development
Russ Buckley from MobHappy shares his Thoughts on Native Mobile Apps v Mobile Web Apps, proposing that there is a middle road between the two types of apps.
Rudy de Waele announces the 2008 Mobile Jam Session Las Vegas (March 31, 2008). According to the post, it follows the first and very successful jam session at the Barcelona MWC, and promises to be “a day to inspire new ideas and innovate solutions to existing challenges. The purpose is focused, but the agenda is improvised along the way.” For more details, please read the post on the Mobile Jam Session blog.
Mobile Transactions
Paul Ruppert provides a MWC Podcast: Mobile Transactions & Bharti Telesoft. He discusses the mobile payments market and in particular one of its players, Bharti Telesoft. Interesting post; make sure to look at some of Paul’s earlier writings on the topic. Links are provided at the beginning of his post.
Mobile Entertainment
John Puterbaugh’s In Search Of … The Quest for Games in the Mobile Universe, discusses search and discovery of mobile content. This is quite a lengthy treatise, including a brief lesson on the history of cable and the Internet, challenges for mobile search and discovery, fragmentation, market data, the importance of user experience, and how this is going to be improved in the future. Worth a read, just make sure you’re in a comfy chair with extra pillows and your favorite beverage.
Next is a “post” by Monty’s Gaming and Wireless Outlook. I say “post” because while issue #281 of the Outlook was posted fully in the email to the Carnival, I could not find it on the web, as the Newsletter Archive only goes up to issue #266. Anyway, Issue #281 discusses DoCoMo’s fish delivery:
let’s hear it about the fish. Yes, the fish that are delivered to your door if you are in Japan and on the DoCoMo network. That operator has reeled in (sorry) thousands of mobile gamers who cast their bait, catch their fish, match up three fish and then the local fishmonger delivers real, raw fish.
Brilliant! And while there seems something fishy (sorry) about this story, it just shows that if operators cast their creative nets far enough (sorry), they come up with the odd great catch (sorry). Yo – sushi!
Finally, Steve Litchfield, in “Watchout - Possible Gridlock Ahead” ponders “the scalability of modern media streaming software and services – will it all end in tears?”
Text Messaging
This category definitely has the most off-the-wall posts this week.
First, a bit more on the lighter side is Carlo Longino’s post on MobHappy on “Where do the T9 people get their words?” in which he wonders about some of the words he finds in the dictionary on his mobile. Make sure to watch the video at the end if you haven’t seen it; you’ll laugh your “arp” off (you’ll get this one AFTER you watch the video 
).
Second, DIY Techology Lets Your Plants Twitter You When They Are Thirsty. Don’t believe it can’t be done? Read the post and you be the judge!
Mobile Learning
Finally, we can’t end this week’s Carnival without a post about mobile learning. Judy Breck describes how Abilene Christian University “will be the first university in the country to give iPhones or iPods to all incoming freshmen.” I’m not sure if this is 100% true (think for example of the experiment with iPods at Duke a few years ago), but it’s definitely a story worth reading. Make sure to follow the link to ACU’s rationale for mobile learning. Whether this initiative will be successful remains to be seen, as most large scale mobile implementations like this one in the past petered out when it came time to upgrade/update hardware. Instead, most institutes for higher education are considering implementations that take advantage of mobile phones that students already own, and focus on just providing the content instead.
Favorite Post of the Week
This has to be the Twittering plants post. As Paul Ruppert comments at the end of the post, it definitely gives a new meaning to the term P2P!!
That’s all for now! Tune in again next week for another episode of the Carnival of the Mobilists, hosted by Chetan Sharma on the Always-On Real-Time Access blog. Send your entry to: mobilists@gmail.com. All participants writing about mobile are welcome – you don’t need a special invitation.
Image Credit: Carnival of the Mobilists, Logo: http://www.mobili.st/images/cotm-button.jpg
“dsc00039″; “dsc00041″, Malud’s photostream: http://flickr.com/photos/mulad/2222558674/ (St Paul Winter Carnival)
“PICT0041″, Minoht’s photostream: http://flickr.com/photos/17729552@N06/2222306307/in/pool-icesculptures (Plymouth Ice Spectacular 2008).
March 3, 2008 at 1:18 pm |
[...] of the Mobilists no. 113 is now live over at Ubiquitous Thoughts, plenty of post MWC analysis [...]
March 3, 2008 at 4:27 pm |
[...] This week’s best writing about mobile from around the blogosphere comes from Ubiquitous Thoughts. [...]
March 3, 2008 at 6:49 pm |
[...] As usual, some great posts about anything mobile from around the blogosphere, head over to Ubiquitous Thoughts. Carnival Of The Mobilists, carnivalofthemobilists, cotm, ubiquitous thoughts social bookmarks: [...]
March 4, 2008 at 1:14 am |
[...] hosts the Carnival at Ubiquitous Thoughts this week. As usual a great collection of the best posts from last week. I will be hosting [...]
March 6, 2008 at 5:43 pm |
[...] This is coming a little late in the week from me. Mark van ‘t Hooft is hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists #113 on his site Ubiquitous Thoughts. He is done a great job in selecting some of the best writing in this area. Thank you Mark. You can access the link here. [...]
March 27, 2008 at 9:37 am |
[...] Here is a more recent article from eSchoolNews that discusses how institutions of higher education are responding to the iPhone’s popularity. While it is great that different institutions are beginning to cater more to mobile users, I think there is a real danger in what some institutions like Abilene Christian University are doing by focusing on one particular device. It’s the connectivity that counts, not the device that’s used for it, and who knows, we may laugh at the site of an iPhone in 3 to 5 years… As I’ve said before, the focus should be on providing content. [...]
April 23, 2008 at 6:59 pm |
[...] #113 is now up at Ubiquitous Thoughts. A great collection of writing as usual. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking [...]