Carnival of the Mobilists 66
Kiran Bellubbi (SmallDoses) has an interesting insight into developing for mobile devices when he describes the use and benefits of paper prototyping and usage scenarios.
Malcolm Lithgow has a great post on contextuality on mobile devices in which he discusses the importance in user interface design of showing information in its context. Malcolm illustrates the points with the specific example of Calendaring on a number of platforms.
Martin Sauter offers the second part of his review of Nokia's new mapping and navigation software Smart2Go. This time he looks at the ability of the application to help him navigate on foot around an unfamiliar city.
Andrew Berglund (m-trends) offers commentary on the personalisation and customisation trend amongst mobile users. There's a bluffers guide to some of the newer personalisation trends and Andrew says customising mobile phones is all about extending the fashion of 'brand you' to mobile.
Farooq Anjum asks whether a prize competition to improve battery technology, in the same vein as the X prize for space flight, might not spur sorely needed innovation.
Stasys Bielinis has a post on a solar powered mobile phone from Chinese Manufacturer HTW Electronics. The phone can give 20 minutes talk time after being charged for 40 minutes in direct sunlight.
Fabrizio Errante (The Mobile Lantern) asks in Open source Symbian OS? New frontier of blasphemy whether there would be anything to gain from open sourcing the Symbian OS.
Dennis at Wap Review has a review of the mobile version of Yahoo oneSearch in which he takes us on a demo tour and finds an excellent mobile search experience combining local, web, news and image search in a sensible way.
In the wonderful world of Oz Darla Mack asks why she can't have the IM client found on her Cingular branded Nokia E62 or SIM free (unbranded) Nokia E61.
Pocket Gamer has an interview with T-Mobile's Neil Holroyd in which they discuss multiplayer gaming, gambling, original games and the N-Gage.
Ajit Jaokar offer his commentary on Tim Wu recent paper on Wireless Net Neutrality. He explores the paper in detail before offering some opinion and views of his own about the future of mobile networks.
C. Enrique Ortiz looks at the the news and implications of the inclusion of NFC in the Bluetooth 2.1 specification. He describes how NFC will be used to ease the pairing of Bluetooth devices by allowing pairing via touch.
Xen Mendelsohn asks how brokers in social networks can be used to promote mobile music. Xen talks about QR codes to ease usability and My Strands as examples of what to watch in this area and as potential answers to the $1M question.
Bill Day looks at Motorola's recent woes and says the 3 month share price comparison between Motorola, Apple and Nokia is not favourable to Motorola.
Michael Mace has a humorous post, but with a serious point too on seven companies that aren't rumoured to be buy Palm, but really should be.
David Beers also comments on the recent Palm acquisition rumours and ponders that it may be the result of stock market games.
From All About Symbian we have Steve Litchfield's editorial on the speed of S60, you'll see from the comments that it is a topic that provokes passionate responses from users.
Last Week
Here are two late entries from last week. Both David and Michael submitted further entries for this weeks Carnival, but these are just as worthy of your time:
David Beers in A new Gadget niche: Mobility in the home talks about his experience with the Nokia N800 Internet tablet describing how he has found a set of use cases that have come as something of a surprise.
Michael Mace (Mobile Opportunity) describes in eTel: the open source phone crowd talks to itself his experience at the recent eTel conference and discusses some of the highlights.
Next Week
The Carnival heads over to All About Symbian favourite Wap Review. We are always on the look out for new Carnival members. Anyone can enter a submission and the full details of how to do so can be found on the Mobili.st website
Rafe Blandford, 27 Mar 2007