Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

I'm sure that I am not the only one who has noticed. There are certain previous Carnival hosts (who shall go unnamed) who have been shirking their hostly duty to their mobilist brethren and sistren, namely the duty to pummel us with carnivalistic pictures plundered from Flickr and Google every week. After observing this I swore a solemn vow that when it came my turn I would not fail the mobilist flock in this regard. Carnival of the Mobilists #44 would supply enough cheesy Mardi Gras pictures to choke an elephant. I hope by the time you've finished reading you'll agree that this fine tradition has been thoroughly upheld and the Carnival put back on the straight and narrow way set forth by the mobilist prophets of yore.

Lest you think I am being facetious, let me tell you that in my hometown of Manitou Springs, Colorado, we take the annual celebration of "Carnivale" very seriously. All pictures seen here are from our local observance of this important festival. For us, Carnivale is a commemoration of pretty much anything that's socially deviant or tasteless. So, in that same spirit, let us begin! If you start to notice that the pictures pick up some theme you find in the text or articles by our fine contributors, you're very astute. But you're probably mistaken.

Now, I'm relatively new to the Carnival, but it didn't take long for me to realize that most of you contributing mobilists are geographically separated from me by a big, cold ocean. To be sure, we share a common bond, but I was nevertheless grateful to countryman Michael Mace this week for giving a terrifically detailed and often humourous explanation of how to understand the differences between Europeans and Americans in their attitudes about their cells mobiles. Just as I was starting to really admire you Europeans for putting my colonial mobilism to shame I read Chetan Sharma's (recommended!) mid-year update on Worldwide Wireless Data Trends and remembered that we're all mobile duffers compared to our gadget-loving friends in the East. Tomi Ahonen at Communities Dominate Brands underscored this point again in his discussion of the extraordinary Japanese consumption of advertisements on their phones--phones which in Japan have a built-in wireless payment mechanism. Martin Sauter offers some business logic that should give Americans hope that the rest of the world won't leave us completely in the dust when it comes to 4G networks.

If it weren't hard enough for people on different continents to understand each other, Xen Mendolsohn at Xellular Indentity points out that the wireless operators can't seem to come up with a common language to describe services they offer to people in the same country. And we wonder why consumers are confused. Now, if there's one thing we Americans do well it's inventing buzzwords and hyping them to high heaven. The new mobile buzzword just annointed by the inimitable Dave Winer: "river." Read Benardo Carvalho's explanation at rawsocket.org or everyone will think you clueless at your next gathering of mobilists. I notice Carlo blogged this one at MobHappy, too, and suggests it may be meaningful--not as a new concept, but as a notable event signaling that mobile data is finally attracting attention.

Before we leave the subject of confused consumers (a running theme in the CotM) Patrick Atolf blogs about five helpful phone features you probably never use--and probably should. If he's right that most people don't know about this stuff it raises a perennially interesting question: how to help people discover cool software that they would use on their phone if they only knew it was there. Then there's Tam Hanna looking at the other side of the coin: a kind of mobile software that no one needs but which some vendors are happy to sell them all the same. Barry Welford explores the idea of "choice overload"--the pushback that occurs when consumers have so many choices they walk away in confusion. If he's right it may be more important to consider in the mobile space than in richer, more immersive media. Meanwhile, Daniel Taylor shakes his head in disbelief of what sounds like the silliest VoIP product ever. Luckily it's free, which seems to be the price at which even a really confused consumer will buy. I bought three.

Also free is some nifty server-side software called Simple Machines Forum that Dennis at WapReview took for a spin. In addition to a web forum for desktop browsers, SMF produces a phone-friendly mobile version right out of the box.

Like this young woman, Rudy De Waele felt compelled to show off his stuff this week. If you want to hear him go on and on about his fantastic new Nokia N91 music phone with 4GB of built-in storage, Wi-Fi, and the S60 platform's new killer browser, by all means go right ahead. The N91 doesn't run on the 850MHz GSM band where I live, but I didn't want one anyway. I'm sure Rudy's right that it's as good or better than any iPhone we could expect from Apple, but I'm quite happy with my ancient Samsung i500 and it's 16Mb of storage. Really.

I am.

Speaking of exhibitionism, Keren Flavell at the Mobile Media Show has been giving some public presentations of her own, lately, but ran into a little problem: how do you demo your sexy mobile user interface to a large group when it runs on a 2-inch phone screen? She reviews some options and suggests a solution, but ultimately is not satisfied. Like Keren, I'd love to hear what others have tried for this.

Next in the Carnival parade are the developers. Anders Borg walks through his reasoning process in choosing the best phone for mobile application development. (Here's a Europe/US comparison for you: the phones he considers sound great but not one of them will be offered by a US mobile carrier. Even the Nokia E61 will have the Wi-Fi and 3G radio removed at the behest of the carriers here, resulting in a crippled device called the E62. Go figure.) Arjan Olsder at the Mobile Games and Gaming Blog has a great interview with a developer at the Dutch gaming shop CodeGlue, which has enabled players to get involved in creating and customizing the games they play. And Enrique Ortiz reminds us that while you may not remember what you did during Carnival when you wake up the next day, your smartphone may remember every unprotected Bluetooth chat session you engaged in. When it comes time to sell it, make sure you know how to wipe it...clean.

Thankfully, the cops are around to keep things from getting too far out of hand during Manitou's Carnivale celebration. But in some parts of the world the police are as likely to behave as criminals as they are protectors. One of the most important roles that mobile phones play in places like this is the role of impartial witness to abuses of authority. Emily Turrettini at SmartMobs highlights an important post at Global Voices about how citizens armed only with cameraphones have been able to turn up the heat on abusive police. Justin Oberman at MoPocket looks at an effort here in the US to use text messaging prompted by television ads to create a similar kind of accountability for legislators.

My own contribution was this piece about a renegade wireless ISP not far from Manitou Springs. This tiny local company is shaking up the wireless industry with a low-cost Wi-Fi mesh network that creates a mobile broadband wide-area network of the sort we didn't expect to see without 4G. I'm hoping they come to my town next!

For my pick of best post for the week I have to go with the peoples' choice. Mike Mace's piece European vs American mobile phone use was linked from several sites that I've noticed, and for good reason: it's some of the most eye-opening and entertaining analysis of how technology is shaped by culture and history that you're likely to see on the web.

Thanks for all the great contributions this week, hope I didn't offend anyone, and a big thanks to our sponsor, Khosla Ventures. Next week the Carnival moves on to Mobilecrunch. Bye now!