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It's been traditional in recent Carnivals to have some
err... carnivalistic pictures and intro text, but I want to really highlight
the Mobilists bit, mainly because we're about to enter one of the most exciting
times of the year. Yes folks, the summer breaks are over, the kids are (almost)
back at school and companies across the world are about to unleash the products
and announcements that will help fill people's stockings at Christmas. And yes,
I know your partner would have to love you an awful lot to buy you a new
smartphone, but I, personally, live in hope... Meanwhile, I look forward
especially to the Smartphone Show
(nothing to do with my video podcast with the
very similar name) in London - do come along if you're in the UK in mid-October
and do drop by the free pre-show bash hosted by my friends at
AllAboutSymbian. The world of
mobile and smartphones continues to move at staggering pace and I've a hunch
that the next few months could see a lot of significant news.
Anyway, on with the Carnival...
Kiran Bellubbi has been musing about
more
intelligent interfaces to our mobile devices that can save significant
number of keypresses. I'd argue that many smartphones already have a fairly
intelligent interface (especially S60 and UIQ 3), but would agree that there's
still a lot of room for improvement.
MobHappy's Carlo continues the blog's (justified)
criticisms
of the way the established music world is approaching music downloads and
failing to be 'better than the P2P networks'.
Nicolas Fogelholm gives us the
full, insider's
low-down on how the Nokia 'tune' came to be. Fascinating stuff.
Thomas Landspurg
introduces
us to the Chumby and a world of single-use (presumably reprogrammable) Internet
mobile widgets. You know, if these were cheap enough, I can see half a
dozen of them scattered around my house accessing various web services...
Dennis from WAP Review has put together some
statistically dubious but interesting
analysis of the highest trafficked
mobile web sites by US users - which ones do you think made the top 10?
Daniel Taylor contributes a
truly
heavyweight article on fixed-mobile convergence. Know what an oligopoly is?
No, neither did I before I read this....
Justin Oberman comments on Alltel's plans for a
pay-for mobile data-based radio service and
points
out that it might become irrelevant once Wi-Fi and Wimax become more
prevalent.
Carnival newcomer Shaun McGill turns out to be a
long-time blogger and Palm OS/Windows Mobile expert. He submitted one of his
longer blog entries but I've widened it to the (ahem) entire blog. Essentially,
he's started using a Symbian OS-based Nokia E61 (you know, the
'Blackberry-killer' one) and his writings on his experiences with a
totally new mobile platform are fascinating, not least because of the
quantity: 12 posts in the last 3 days, as I write this!
Mobi-celeb Michael Mace very nearly made this
week's top post with his
often
humorous thoughts on Palm's uphill battle to convince the stock market and
European consumers of its plans for new Treos. Always great to read your
thoughts, Michael.
My favourite contribution of the week comes from Carnival
regular Martin Sauter, who summarises and comments on
the
way true wireless broadband and telephony are taking over from separate mobile
and landline/DSL lines.
Finally, I guess I'm free to contribute my own
articles in my own hosting week, so proudly present
a
look at using a cutting edge smartphone as a laptop, a games console and a
videoconferencing system. Also a rant about there being
no
point in having the aforesaid DVD-recording smartphone (the Nokia N93) if you
can't successfully do anything with the movies it produces.... Grr....
Happy reading! Thanks to
Khosla Ventures for sponsoring the
Carnival of the Mobilists and to all the
people who also contributed entries that were too short, too wacky or too
plagaristic and didn't quite make the final 'cut'. Your efforts are
appreciated, please try again for next week’s Carnival of the Mobilists,
which is taking place next Monday over at Software Everywhere.
Steve Litchfield, 4th September 2006. |
