Carnival of the Mobilists #46

I discovered Carnival of the Mobilists several months ago after following the link from my friend Rafe's All About Symbian site. The Carnival of the Mobilists is a weekly collection of contributions from mobile enthusiast sites and is an excellent way to discover some new blogs and websites devoted to the mobile community. Much the way a carnival travels from town to town, this newsletter travels from host site to host site every week. I am blessed to have the opportunity to host this week's Carnival #46 covering posts for the week ending September 22nd and highly encourage you to follow the links to each of this week's entries for some excellent content.

Weekly Carnival hosts generally post photos and thoughts related to Carnivals and I wanted to continue that trend with some personal thoughts on what the word "carnival" means to me. Here where I live in Puyallup, Washington (USA) there is a yearly event called the Puyallup Fair (aka Western Washington Fair) that offers tons of rides for young and old, delicious food (onion burgers, elephant ears, Krusty Pups, and scones), local and national entertainers, exhibits from local farmers, craftsmen, and hobbyists, and one of the largest collection of farm animals you could assemble in one location. The theme for this year's Puyallup Fair that just ended yesterday was It's a Doozy and after reading the submissions from this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists entries I would say that this week's collection is also a doozy. Enjoy the Puyallup Fair photos (taken with a Nokia N91 and N90 to maintain the spirit of the mobilist) and this week's entries.

Rudy De Waele's Carnival entry this week features a very well done Women in Mobile interview with Yasmine Abbas. Yasmine is an extremely well-educated woman that has an established background in mobility. I think everyone will enjoy this interview and find her answers lead you into some deeper thought and personal reflection.

I wish I had the opportunity to travel to all the mobile trade shows, but since I can't then I like to read all the details I can find on the internet and Chetan Sharma did an excellent job of providing a CTIA 2006 roundup.

I worked a bit with Michael Mace back when he was with PalmSource on the Palm Expert Guide program and I thoroughly enjoy reading his Mobile Opportunity blog. In this week's entry Michael talks about a device that I have had my eye on with his post titled RIM's Pearl: Splendid hardware, unfinished software. I am glad I read his thoughts about the device before changing my wireless data access on T-Mobile from unlimited to the BlackBerry plan and encourage you to read his entry to understand why.

Justin Oberman was also at CTIA 2006 had the chance to take an interesting tour after the event. He posted information of how he was able to swing a tour of the Amp'd Mobile facility for this week's entry. Justin also goes into some great detail on Amp'd and Mobile Media.

Finding hidden treasures at the fair is one of my favorite things to do while strolling the fairgrounds and after reading Jason Delport's post that provides several screenshots comparing five mobile search tools. Jason looked at the features of Yahoo Go!, Nokia Search, Windows Live, Google, and Yahoo!.

Dennis takes an even deeper look at mobile search with his blog entry on Yahoo Mobile Web Search. I tend to stick with Google Mobile myself, but after reading Dennis' detailed thoughts on Yahoo Mobile I may have to give this a try on my mobile devices. Windows Live Mobile was also just announced so the competition for real mobile web searching is heating up, which will make each client that much better as they try to get people to use their search engine.

Sometimes if you go on too many spinning rides you feel sick and a bit depressed, which is how I felt after reading Emily Turrenttini's entry this week on how evil Iraqi insurgents are abusing the use of mobile phones and text messaging to harass and threaten fellow Iraqi citizens. The people of Iraq were please to finally have the opportunity to use mobile phones, but now with the abuse by kidnappers and blackmailers their popularity is falling and many are passing by the opportunity to use them.

Anders Borg wonders if the Oma has lost its mojo? in this week's Carnival entry. He offers several examples of how the OMA may have been important in the beginning of mobile data expansion, but is no longer that relevant.

There are lots of animals at the fair and this week Scott Shaffer, of the Pondering Primate, considered whether 1d barcodes are on the way out now that Symbol Technologies is up for sale. RFID looks to be the next bar code for retailers and this action by Symbol may have sped things up.

My absolute favorite fair food is the jelly filled pastry called the scone and this week I also have my own favorite submission for the week from my blog titled The QWERTY keyboard wasn't designed for mobile devices that includes some thoughts on different text entry methods that may work better on mobiles.

Daniel Taylor posted a blog entry this week on mobile phone user interface consistency and makes some valid points about why mobile users want a consistent user interface. He says that people don't want multiple applications, but that they want familiar applications and I tend to agree with this opinion.

Ajit Jaokar sent in an entry composed by Dr. Paddy Byers on The implications of 'Data is the intelligence' on mobile software development. Since I am not a developer, I have to admit that this blog entry is one that I will have to attend a remedial session on to fully understand.

What fair would be complete without taking your shot at winning prizes at the game stands? Arjan Olsderz brings us a wonderful interview with Mobile Amusements CEO Adrian Cummings. I was pleased to read that Adrian's company is going to start focusing on the higher resolution displays we are seeing on devices like the Nokia N80. Mobile phone games are actually priced quite low compared to other dedicated handheld gaming devices like the PSP and Nintendo DS and I think as these mobile phones continued to get more and more powerful the games will continue to improve.

The day of riding and eating at the fair must come to an end sometime and Martin Sauter also is ending his series on future 4G networks with his final blog entry on the competitive situation of the standards for 4G dominance. There are three standards (WiMAX, UMTS Long Term Evolution, and CDMA EVDO Rev. C) competing to roll out and be the preferred choice of wireless providers. Martin does a nice job of reflecting on these choices and I personally look forward to extremely high speed wireless networks.

The host of each week's Carnival has the privelege of selecting their favorite post of the week and this week I chose Michael Mace's post about the BlackBerry Pearl since it goes into detail regarding the trackball that I have not seen on any other site and also saved me from spending money on a device that has limitations I am not willing to overcome.

Thanks to Khosla Ventures for sponsoring the Carnival of the Mobilists and awarding a prize of US$250 to the monthly winning entry. I encourage you to go vote for your favorite entry of the month on the Carnival site. Stay tuned for next week's Carnival that I'll be sure to link to as well.