On Blog Action Day, thousands of bloggers are writing about the environment. One issue. One day. Thousands of voices.

Why not take action today and do one thing to help the environment and clear up that odds and sods drawer you’ve been meaning to empty since the last Spring cleaning?

If you’re in the UK, find a padded envelope, write “FREEPOST Fonebak” on it, stick it in the post and feel that halo shining above your head for your good deed of the day. £5 will be donated to BBC Children in Need for every reusable mobile phone received and the rest will be sent for recycling to ensure that nothing ends up in landfill.

If you’re anywhere else in the world, look for a mobile phone recycling service nearby.

Wow, the excitement and buzzing in the office has just hit a 12, on a scale of one to ten.

On Monday, five members of the Taptu squad will be attending the Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. We’ll be on the Mobile Launch Pad, presenting alongside Mippin, Webwag, KyteTV and more.

Until then, we’re all putting a hand in to put the finishing touches to the beta and the conference prep!

Come say hi to the Taptu team if you’re at Mobile 2.0 on Monday.

Welcome to this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, I’m thrilled to be hosting it here on the Taptu blog.

The turnout in posts has been great, and we’re covering a wide range of topics today; from web3.0 to free speech, and from Burmese dissent to UFO sightings. There’s also a sneak preview surprise for all Carnival readers at the bottom of this post… So what are you waiting for? Read on!

Innovation in Developing Markets

From Mobile Active, guest writer Abi Jagun from the University of Manchester deconstructs the hype on mobiles in civil society, in particular in developing countries. Kevin Smith from Vodafone Betavine touches on the inventiveness of some African services when faced with a problem, from “beeping” each other to transferring funds via a mobile payment service. In a similar thread, Paul Ruppert at Mobile Point View posts the first of a two-part series on mobile transactions, interviewing Michele Scanlon, an expert on mobile payments in global emerging markets.

Controversy in America

Abhishek Tiwari discusses the seemingly game-changing decisions Sprint has made over their wireless offering in the US, moving away from the binding contracting model and transitioning to a subscription model without users being tied to a specific device. Echoing some of the Sprint news mentioned by Abhishek, Jason Devitt from Skydeck tells us about Verizon Wireless (almost) declining to allow Pro-Choice America send messages, explicitly requested by users, about abortion, on the grounds that the subject matter was too controversial.

Ian Welsh of The Agonist questions net neutrality in the current oligo/monopoly of the telecoms landscape, putting out red flags around AT&T and Verizon’s questionable termination clauses.

Learning From the Past

Reflecting on the launch of the Sputnik 50 years ago, Judy Breck reminds us that today’s educators should use mobiles to support lessons in a positive way rather than resort to banning them from classrooms.

A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words

Mark van ‘t Hooft at Ubiquitous Thoughts posts his observations on the dilemma military generals are facing in the current Burma/Myanmar protests with regards to the use of mobile phones and information virality. Also musing on the impact of new technologies, Krisse from All About Symbian wonders about UFOs and the effect of cameraphones on the sightings. Quick, get your camera out, there’s something weird up there!

The Web Is Abuzz…

Meanwhile, C. Enrique Ortiz from …about mobility comments on Jason Calacanis’ “official” definition of Web 3.0, and Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens writes on the “Phonetop”, mobile equivalent to the desktop, ODP and widgets as the possible future of mobile apps.

Dennis from Wapreview looks at the mobile version of Gawker Media sites I’m a big fan of; Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Valleywag, Wonkette and Defamer. Verdict? “It’s nice to see that a big publisher like Gawker is thinking of mobile, but these really aren’t very good mobile sites.” Read on to find out why. Tarek Esber from tarek speaks mobile… takes us through how the mobile web saved the day twice by allowing him to connect to important information in a quickie, taking him to destination.

Mobile Conference

This week, Rudy De Waele points us to the Mobile 2.0 Conference, which is taking place in San Francisco next Monday, 15th October. Presented by Mobile Monday and The Open Group, the event brings together experts and thought leaders from all aspects of mobile; investors, mobile carriers, device manufacturers, application developers and web technologists.

Coincidentally, Taptu will be presenting in one of the Mobile Launch Pads and showing some pretty exciting stuff! Have a look at the agenda and the speakers list and come tell me you don’t want to be there? I’ve been informed there are a few places left for those who’d like to attend.

And Finally… The Sneak Preview!

This brings me to the sneak preview you’ve been waiting for; we’ve decided to invite Carnival readers to have an early look at the Taptu mobile search beta, before we launch publicly. Want to have a look? Just leave a comment using a legitimate email address or email me on hello@taptu.com and you’ll get access to our private beta tomorrow.

Next week, the spotlight for the Carnival will be on the Symbian Smartphone Show, so see you there!

Another big milestone passed this week – we went live on Facebook with our new Music Wall application.

As a mobile search company, why are we doing this? Well, we prioritised music-related content early on as one of the first types of search that Taptu handles really well on mobile. The Music Wall takes advantage of our huge content index to give Facebook users a great way to express their music preferences to friends. It will also help us promote the Taptu mobile search service to the Facebook community.

Matt and Marc, the User Experience guys, created the look of the app, allowing you to put your top 5 songs or videos straight on your profile. They set themselves the challenge to create the most attractive, cool looking and easiest to use music widget that exists in the Facebook platform. iLike was our benchmark for comparison and Apple’s Coverflow was a big source of inspiration. We hope you like it and have as much fun finding some obscure songs and videos for your profile.

We’re also gearing up for Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco on October 15th, when the Taptu service will go public for the first time. Feedback from our first private beta users has been very good with coverage in the US with Symbian Guru, France and Germany. Between now and the 15th we will be extending more and more private invitations, so if you’ve registered for the early beta service then expect to hear from us very soon!

I’m at the Future of Web Apps in London today. So far, I’ve attended the intro keynote with Om Malik and Michael Arrington, followed by Heather Champ & Derek Powazek on “We’ve got this community: Now what?”. I’m now in Tony Conrad’s “Future of Search”.

The main running thread of all talks so far is quite clear: Nobody knew what would happen next after launching their app. And in fact, few ended up where they expected to go. Someone this morning said that the real work on a web app really begins after you launch (see, I was listening, but didn’t take note so not sure who said this…) You need to listen intently, watch your users and see what they make of it. Odds are you’ll notice that they’ve hacked your app and use it in ways you would never have imagined. That’s your cue to harness their creativity and evolve accordingly.

Sometimes, Web 2.0 big names can get a bit cocky about success, but I think this is one point everyone agrees on: You just don’t know what’s going to happen next when you launch a startup.

But then, that’s why we’re in this business; that’s where the fun stuff happens!

It’s been a few weeks since we last linked to the Carnival of the Mobilists, but we’re quickly approaching the 100th!

This week, it’s hosted by Tomi Ahonen of Communities Dominate Brands, with topics ranging from the Blyk launch to Smart Mobs’ satirical Scroogled piece.

Next week, the Carnival is hosted by yours truly, right here on the Taptu blog! Looking forward to reading everyone’s best entries. (Want to contribute? Details are here)

This weekend, a hundred mobile addicts gathered in the Fjord offices in London for the first mobileCampLondon, an event organised by volunteers, headed by Victor Szilagyi and Christian Lindholm. The idea behind BarCamp events is to get people together to share and learn in an open environment. Rather than listening to thinly-veiled sales pitches and being talked at, the emphasis is on collaboration, discussion and demos.

Seeing the developers, designers and creatives get together for the weekend was refreshing. We usually tend to keep the geeks locked in the server room usually, you see, but here they were let out to play, and play they did! While the balance was somewhat in the favour of geekier topics, the talks ranged from techy to social to artistic; Exploiting social network APIs, using RFID on the underground, location-based games and integrating mobile into art – the latter being easier to grasp for my simple mind!

Beyond all the talks, presentations and topics scribbled on the grids, there were random conversations, cozied up in the colourful bean bags area, and the fascinating meeting of ideas.

At the end of the day on Saturday, Terence Eden from Vodafone bravely tackled the seemingly unavoidable topic of the Novarra transcoder and user-agent masking, which has been widely criticised in recent weeks. He gave a very welcome demo and geek perspective, speaking in honest – if not blunt – terms, agreeing that Vodafone has learnt a lot from the firey discussions and experimenting. While I still feel that the user-agent masking is a big mistake, seeing the transcoded results on a much older Nokia phone allowed me to understand how the service might be useful in some conditions.

Overall, mobileCamp led to some unexpected meetings and the conviction that, everyday, more people are taking interest in creating apps, websites and all sorts of wild and wonderful things for mobiles!

[tags]mobile, phone, mobilecamplondon, mobilecamp, london, barcamp, taptu, taptology, technology[/tags]