On this day...

I'll be honest, I was struggling a bit to think about what to write today. So for some inspiration, I thought I'd take a look at what I and fellow mobilists were writing about on this day in previous years. In doing that, I was reminded of the Carnival of the Mobilists. It started in 2005 and the idea was that a blogger would do a write up of the week's writing about mobile. If you were a blogger, you could submit your article to be considered for inclusion. In this way, readers could discover more blogs and writers could attract more readers and followers. And it worked I got to know many other bloggers as a result and it was a good discipline to read beyond your normal remit.

So let's take a look back at what we were thinking and writing about back in November of years past.

November 2006. Rafe Blandford, writing his All About Symbian blog back then, wrote CoTM #52. Links include thoughts on Ajax, java and flashlite. Youth trends are covered. There's an review of the Opera Mini browser (we had smaller screens and less capability back then, remember). There's also a review of the Nokia E70. And of course there's talk about advertising, this time embedding them in ringtones. Check it out.

November 2007 and it's Mark Hooft's Ubiquitous Thoughts turn to host CoTM #99. His specialism is mobile learning which he looks at but he also covers Google's Open Handset Alliance which was the previous week's big mobile announcement. He also talks about mobile marketing - needing simplicity and also a link to Jan Chipchase and thoughts about design based on what you know about your consumer. Check the links here.

Mark Hooft also hosts CoTM #149 in November 2008. There's been a US Election and Barack Obama is the President. There's been a conference about Handheld Learning in the UK and the Mobile 2.0 event in San Francisco. Round-ups of both are included. Money and the economy is a key theme this week also. We were right in the midst of the credit crunch at the time. Survival was key, and arguably, still is key. More here.

November 2009 and it's CoTM #200 at Jamie Wells' MobileStance.com The main theme in this week is Google buying Admob for $750m. Wow, 8 years ago. Time really does fly. Anyway, there's lots of chat as to why it's a good thing (or not) and why Google got a bargain. There's also some good thoughts about the uptake of mobile banking. And some other stuff too. Check out the edition here.

In November 2010, Andy Favell of MobiThinking takes the helm. He must have had a reorganisation of his website as it's dated December, but according to Volker Hirsch, this was from mid-November 2010. Here's that week's Carnival. There are some interesting posts covered with topics including mobile music, network operators struggling to own the social graph, thinking about branding and marketing on mobile, mobile commerce and fragmentation and the legal issues around films on iPhone.

In stepping back in time for this post, I'm astounded about how much good writing and thinking about mobile was going on back then. But also sad to remember that at least two of the prolific contributors to the carnival have now passed on - Judy Breck of Golden Swamp and just last month, Carlo Longino of Mobhappy and TheFeature. I'm also sad to see some of the blogs linked to are no more, including the site that used to be the home of Carnival of the Mobilists. I think the history of our industry is important. We need to know where we've come from to help us work out where we're going and where we don;t want to revisit. Hey ho. Such is life.

Until tomorrow.

Day 13/30 NaBloPoMo

Carnival of the Mobilists #277

 

Yes, it’s come around again and I’m this week’s curator of the Carnival of the Mobilists and what a week it has been. Plenty going on in the world of Nokia and RIM. Innovation is being supported with various awards and accelerator programs. And mobile is still most definitely big news. So here’s my round-up.

Awards and other Programs for Mobile Entrepreneurs

The Annual Effective Mobile Marketing Awards are open for entries until 10 August. There are 20 categories and they are free to enter and are global. Disclaimer, I’m a judge and I co-hosted the awards last year.

The 9th Annual Meffys are open for entries until 19 July. Just a few days to go so don’t delay. These are global awards with special categories and prices for start-ups. More details here. Disclaimer, I’m a judge.

Russell Buckley tells us about UK accelerator programme, Springboard, why he supports it (including investing in it) and what the opportunities are for mobile entrepreneurs this year with the very first mobile-focussed accelerator. Closing date to apply is 22 July so not long to go.

QPrize is now open for entries too. This is Qualcomm Ventures seed investment competition. I don’t know much about it yet (I’m doing a bit more research into it), but just highlighting it for reference.

Handset Wars

Goodness me, watching the demise of Nokia and now RIM is not a pleasant experience. The chatter about both is endless at the moment. How to you make head or tail of it? Are both dead in the water? Will we see them fight back? Will they be bought, die or rise from their ashes like a phoenix? …

Tomi Ahonen thinks Stephen Elop is the worst CEO of all time. With Nokia’s share price at an all time low of $1.92 at the time of writing, Elop and the Nokia board certainly have some serious questions to answer. This one isn’t so much as a blog post as an essay so don’t expect a quick read. Grab a cuppa and set aside some time to read this one and take in the comments too. I have friends at Nokia. I have friends who have been made redundant from Nokia. I have a drawer full of beloved Nokia phones. I like Windows Phone too. I don’t want to see Nokia die but there’s no denying they are in deep, deep trouble.

And then there’s RIM. Another one who has been in the wars lately. Delaying the BB10 launch is a bit of a nightmare. There were 5,000 enthusiastic developers who went home from BlackBerry World in Orlando and many hundreds, if not thousands returning home from various BB10Jam meet-ups globally with their prototype devices and told their friends and family they were excited about the upcoming launch of BB10 for Christmas. BlackBerry hasn’t just let down their developer community, they’ve let down their loyal customers who are desperate for an upgrade if they haven’t jumped ship already to Android or iOS. There are three articles of note I’d like to point you to on this one. First is untether.tv’s post which takes a look at the numbers and thinks RIM needs to focus on saving the company, Terence Eden ponders how to solve a problem like BlackBerry and Michael Selvidge thinks RIM can be saved in three easy steps. What do you think?

Then there’s the story of Maemo from Randall Arnold. Do any of you remember that OS? I do. I had a Nokia 770 and if I remember rightly, Rovio of Angry Birds fame was developing games on that platform. Is there hope for Maemo to come out smiling out of the Nokia warzone?

Mobile Marketing, Advertising and Commerce

For the first year at Cannes Lions, there was a section for mobile. Finally, advertising agencies are catching up with their clients and taking notice of mobile as an integral part of any marketing campaign. This is a major step forward. Hey, I may even be tempted to take a trip to Cannes next year to check it all out. In the meantime, Andy Favell from MobiThinking has done a very comprehensive round-up of the winning entries (including their videos and case studies) and also the stats behind the awards. Both make for a good read. Again, this is something worth setting aside some time for but if you’re in the mobile marketing game, this one is for you.

Global Mobile Commerce: Removing Payment Friction & Boosting Customer Engagement by Diarmuid Mallon is a guest post on Mobile Groove and is the first of a series of articles which will form part of the Mobile Commerce Guide 2012. Common sense tells us that by making it easier for customers to buy they will buy more. You wouldn’t have a front door to a shop that took five minutes to open so why would you make the payment options overly complicated? It’s very, very easy to click away from a purchase.

Mobile Apps and Games

Here are a couple of good articles that should get app developers thinking and help then on their way to making more money for them and their clients. First up is a piece from CodeNgo which looks at the opportunity of making sure your app is available in different languages. The stats make sense to me. Next is one from the mainstream Techcrunch, but it was a good one so I’ve included it: 8 Ways Mobile Developers can Make the Most Money on Apps. Sensible advice indeed.

Missed out on Google I/O? Never fear, Tom Hume was there and he’s got some thoughts about the new Google Nexus tablet and the role it will have. A game changer? Maybe… have a read.

Mobile Games has been a hot topic recently around Technokitten Towers, not least, because I was helping the Mobile Monday Shoreditch team get set up and their first event was the A to Z of Mobile Gaming. You can read a round-up of the evening here and it includes links to video vox pops from the night too. We also enjoyed some AR gaming on the night and playing games on BlackBerry Playbooks. Well, MobyAffiliate has gone the extra mile and taken a comprehensive look at the companies in the mobile and social gaming space and written it all up for you to create a guide to the sector ‘The World’s Top Mobile Social Games Developers, Publishers and Platforms’.

Further Food for Thought

A couple of podcasts you might be interested in having a listen to or watch are the Disruptive Social Care Podcast where I was a guest last week and talked about the role of mobile in healthcare and the importance of making websites and services accessible on mobile and accessible to those with disabilities or impairments amongst other things with Shirley Ayres and Stuart Arnott.  Then there’s this one from Hashbang TV where Elizabeth Varley tells the TechHub story. OK, the latter isn’t mobile specific, but it’s still relevant inasmuch as it’s the story of an entrepreneur focussed on supporting tech start-ups. And both podcasts are about disruption in some shape or form.

And finally, some food for thought from Antoine RJ Wright. Were Mobile Phones the Wrong Turn? Antoine ponders if we haven’t missed the point with mobile technology and that perhaps it needs a rethink as we’re asking devices (read battery life and bandwidth) to do more than it can really deal with.

Post of the Week

My post of the week has to go to Andy Favell for such a comprehensive round-up of the Cannes Mobile Lions. It’s in my sweet spot of mobile marketing and it’s great to see it entering the mainstream in this way and it’s great to get up close and personal to such a variety of case studies. What’s your post of the week?

Next week

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by Martin Wilson of Indigo 102. And you can also support the Carnival of the Mobilists by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter or sharing this post.

All photos sourced from Flickr and used under Creative Commons Licence.

Carnival of the Mobilists #259

Doesn’t time fly. It doesn’t feel like over 6 years since the Carnival of the Mobilists first started and here we are in 2012, and celebrating the Chinese New Year and the start of the year of the Dragon. A year of positive change so they so. And if there’s one thing I know about mobile, it’s that it is a constant state of change. So without further ado, let’s have a look at some of this week’s blogging on mobile.

First up, we have James Coops from Moby Affiliates giving us the lowdown on who he thinks will be the top mobile advertising companies of 2012. It’s an interesting list and there are plenty companies there I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Following the mRetail Summit, David Murphy, editor of Mobile Marketing Magazine, wonders who is advising Lloyds on their mobile advertising strategy. With a string of schoolboy errors in just one campaign, one wonders who signed this one off. Anyway, let others learn from their mistakes. You may also be interested in some of the comments on this article here.

So what’s the story with mCommerce and mRetail? VE Interactive tells us ‘Just 18 months from launch, the use of tablets for online shopping has almost equalled that of mobile phones and it is growing even faster than the mobile.’ And ‘According to the Logan Tod & Co’s 6th Annual Online Future Shipping Index, 14 per cent of respondents used an iPad or other tablet device to make a purchase in the run up to Christmas and 15 per cent of respondents used a mobile to purchase an item.’ Impressive figures certainly.

VE Interactive also thinks there are 6 distinct customer market segments for mobile apps. What do you think? Are they right? Are there more, less, different? Certainly one for discussion I’d say. I think I’m in the ‘never gonna buy an app anytime soon’ category. Wondering if that’s the biggest segment…

Newcomer to the Carnival, FJ from Tech Socio Tech, has been thinking about dating and how the kindle might be keeping us from finding our soulmate. The title of the post may seem flippant, but this is a very interesting read on changing habits due to adoption of new technologies. My favourite post of the week.

I was thinking about longevity and business this week with Kodak recently filing for bankruptcy protection. It occurred to me that we seem to expect businesses to last forever, when in fact, history tells us that the average corporate entity lives for about 40 years. I also found out that one of the oldest companies in the world, the UK’s Royal Mint, is in mortal danger due to mobile payments. Have a read and let me know what you think. There are some comments about the post over on G+ too which are worth a read.

Untether.TV’s latest mpulse video has Kevin C Tofel, purveyor of all things mobile at GigaOm, talk about his16 2012 mobile predictions, Peggy from MobileGroove jumps into some surprising consumer behaviour desires and Rob tries to make sense of the mess that has become RIM after the CEO shakeup. Available in audio and video here.

Long-serving mobilist, Tom Hume, sheds some light on network operators and identity with the recent hoo-ha about customers telephone numbers being passed on to third parties. Is this a missed opportunity or a storm in a teacup? http://www.tomhume.org/2012/01/network-operators-and-identity.html

Ajit Jaokar, another regular contributor to the Carnival of the Mobilists, is talking about Apps for Smart Cities this week. There’s a shout out for speakers and details of an upcoming event he’s involved with in Amsterdam, but more interestingly, for me at least, is some context behind the event with an explanation of what the vision is for apps for smart cities and it got me thinking as to what impact that could or should have on our daily lives. Will the internet plus internet of things = the wisdom of the earth as the Chinese premier recently suggested?

And for some light relief, my friends Kate Imbach and Tom Conrad made a little video which seems to be quite a hit. If you’ve ever worked with tech start-ups, read Techcrunch, hung out in Silicon Valley or watched The Big Bang Theory, then you’ll get it. My favourite quote in it is ‘this app is so elegant’. What’s yours? Are there any they missed?

Well, that was the week that was the last week in January 2012. We’re already one month in and just a month to go until Mobile World Congress and (shameless plug) the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival in Barcelona. But never fear, there will be more carnival goodness next week over at Antoine RJ Wright’s blog. Until the next time…

Carnival of the Mobilists #252 is up

And I’m in it! Amazing to think that there have been 252 Carnival of the Mobilists postings so far.

This week’s carnival is hosted at Dennis Bournique’s long-running Wap Review and is well worth a read to get the lowdown on everything from usability to mobile advertising, from apps to mobile cities, and much more besides.

Enjoy!

Carnival of The Mobilists #168 is up

The Carnival of the Mobilists is still going strong and we're at number 168. Mjelly is this week's host for a round up of the best mobile writing this week in the blogosphere and it's well worth a look.

Want to know more about the Carnival? Then head over to the Mobilists website. You don't need to be Einstein to enter a post for the weekly Carnival either so please do try your hand if you have a mobile blog and fancy taking part. And once you've been included two or three times, then you qualify to be a host too.

Next week the Carnival is over at http://www.chetansharma.com/blog/

Carnival of the Mobilists #155

Photo credit: Creative Commons from Carf via Flickr.

Happy New Year to everyone from technokitten in London Town. I hope all the hangovers are put to rest and you're all raring to go for a wonderful 2009. Yes, the holiday break is over and it's time to get the mobile ball rolling again with the first Carnival of the Mobilists roundup for 2009.

A look to the past and future

Inevitably with New Year there is always an element of looking back on the year just gone as well as a look to the future, and our mobile bloggers are no exception.

Looking back, we have Renegade Fanboy covering Nokia's most important news in 2008, James Pearce gives us a retrospective of the last two years at dotmobi and Digital Evangelist discusses his own mobile usage over the last year (he is arguably a Promobs) whereas Renaissance Chambara tells us what normobs really use (well, the normobs in his life anyway).

Looking forward we have some very interesting posts indeed: Chetan Sharma has completed his 2009 predictions with aplomb by compiling the thoughts of a wide variety of mobile industry folks (including me, in case you were wondering). Rudy De Waele has given us (well me at least) a lot of food for thought with his take on what 2009 will bring. I'm just hoping he knows as many start-ups as I think he does so that number 10 doesn't sound so terrifying. C Enrique Ortiz discusses the future for Mobile Applications in 2009 (including the ongoing debate between native and web apps) whilst Frederic Guarino tells us why 2009 is the year of the Mobile Web.

Mobile Marketing

Looking more at the mobile marketing side of things, Andrew Grill has done a comprehensive review of Social Media Marketing and shares some of his thoughts on its contents with its implication for mobile, and mjelly shares knowledge on mobile internet affiliate marketing schemes and newcomer Dave Levy of MLTDA talks to us about the growth of mobile email and its impact on campaigning (political, marketing or otherwise).

Mobile Development

In terms of mobile development, Tom Hume (rightly) questions mobile context and argues there is more than one mobile context and asks you which one/s you're going to choose. There are interesting things afoot with barcode ticketing for UK railway companies according to Masabi. Vision Mobile tells us about the Adobe Mobile Packager and what that means in terms of where the desktop and mobile environments are headed.

The Industry

Ajit Jaokar over at Open Gardens shares his theory about Net neutrality being like capitalism... covering global connectivity, the fact that human nature is to gravitate towards freedom and what impact that has on MNOs in the mobile broadband world and beyond whilst Steven Hoober of Little Springs questions where the device ends and the network operator starts and what that means for customer service.

Devices and software

Ever thought about how secure your iphone is? Well you can find out here from allaboutiphone.net, and more importantly, what you can do about it whilst Tams Blackberry Blog tells us why the Blackberry Storm is failing and being returned.

Twitter is obviously the new black, in case you were wondering, and Wap Review has done a fantastic review of the best twitter mobile web clients on the market today so there's no excuse now to keep up with your twitter feed. Meanwhile, Igor Faletski takes new mobile browsers through the acid 2 test with some very interesting (and visual) results.

And last but not least, Judy Breck of Golden Swamp (and worthy guardian of the Carnival of the Mobilists) ponders the mobile as a knowledge tool and the part that plays in the Outliers (aka Story of Success).

Post(s) of the week

This is a hard one with such good quality posts and writers this week (as ever). For predictions, then you really must read both Chetan Sharma's and Rudy De Waele's posts. And personally, I'd like to see more discussion around Tom Hume's post on there being more than one mobile context. Perhaps some of you may indulge me?

Carnival of the Mobilists

The last Carnival of the Mobilists of 2008, #154, can be round here and next week's carnival 156 will be hosted by Wap Review. And if you're wondering what on earth the Carnival of the Mobilists is all about, then have a read of this and join us on the ride that is 2009.

Technorati Tags: mobile,carnival,carnival of the mobilists,mobile marketing,mobile web,mobile internet,devices,mobile software,mobile browsers,predictions,statistics,mobile statistics

Carnival of the Mobilists #151 is up at Golden Swamp

And I have to say that Judy Breck has done a rather good job of it this week with contributions from faces both old and new (and also of managing to run the Carnival of the Mobilists so well over the last few months). And of course I'm thrilled to bits that I'm included on the list too. Go check it out for this week's best writing in mobile.

Technorati Tags: carnival of the Mobilists,mobile

Carnival of the Mobilists #139 is at mobscure :: obscure trends of mobile

I'm thrilled to be included in this week's Carnival of the Mobilists which is being hosted this week by Canada's Mobscure.  I'm in good company, as ever, including Tomi Ahonen, Andrew Grill, mjelly and Judy Breck. Go check it out and have a read of this week's best blog writing in mobile.

[Great choice of Carnival pictures too, Igor!]

Next week's Carnival will be hosted at Judy Breck's Golden Swamp. For more information on the Carnival of the Mobilists, then check out the FAQs on the website. It's easy to submit your blog post and the more voices we have to choose from, the better.

Technorati Tags: Carnival of the Mobilists,mobile,blog

Carnival of the Mobilists #139 | mobscure :: obscure trends of mobile

Carnival Catch up

If you're interested in things mobile, then the weekly Carnival of the Mobilists is a must-read every week. Each week there's a different host and that week's host does a round-up of the best of the blogs on mobile. I've been catching up on my carnival reading and links to the last few are here:

No 83 is over at the hostess with the mostest, Judy Breck at Golden Swamp
No 82 is over at C Enrique Ortiz's About Mobile blog (love the carnival picture btw).
No 81 has an Egyptian theme over at the relatively new Symbiano-Tek blog.

I made it into Carnival of the Mobilists #70 this week

This week's Carnival of the Mobilists is up - no #70 in the series - and it's a very comprehensive round up of what's up in mobile in the last week by Michael Mace from Mobile Opportunity. And I make it in too which is even better! Go have a read and see what's going down.

You can find the links to previous Carnivals at the Carnival of the Mobilists website. You can also find out there how you can contribute to the Carnival.

Carnival of the mobilists 61 - mobilist matsuri!

Jan Kuczynski has done a great job of this week's carnival with a Japanese flavour over at Wireless World Japan - go check it out.