It’s with great pleasure that we host the first June Carnival of the Mobilists, #176. Those of you regular to the Taptu blog may have noticed it has received a new lick of paint alongside the new desktop site. Keep an eye on the site and join us on Twitter to find out when the app goes live!

This past weekend was beautifully sunny in the UK, and the air is full of positive vibes, great hope and the smell of BBQ as we approach the Summer Solstice. This Carnival seems to breathe that same air of growth and progress in bringing people together through mobile technology.

Geoff Ballinger tells us about the first Mobile Monday Edinburgh – Congratulations Geoff on launching MoMo up North, we hope it leads to many new ideas and interesting discussions! The second MoMo is this evening, so if you’re in Edinburgh, be sure to join the conversation.

Also in the vein of excellent mobile events, Rudy de Waele flags up Mobile 2.0, which is now under three weeks away. For those less familiar with the event, follow the link for more details – the event is composed of a developer day on the Thursday, led by Dan Appelquist and Mike Rowehl, followed by a Startup Demo Launch Pad day which is always very promising, as well as the usual conference day. Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, will be attending the conference, so be sure to say hi if you see him!

Aaron Chua shares some highly creative and exciting possibilities where mobile helps connect online and offline, from the convenience of integrated e-commerce to pay for your coffee to location-aware search in a bookshop. Each one of these ideas seems to be an inch out of reach of our fingertips, completely possible yet not quite in place yet. What else would you like to see your mobile facilitate? Personally, I wish it could help me locate my glasses on an eyes-half-open Monday morning…

Peggy Anne Salz interviews Gypsii CEO Dan Harple for her MSearchGroove podcast, discussing Gypsii’s new iPhone application [iTunes link] which was recently launched.

Chetan Sharma investigates the advances in health-related use of mobile, following the mHealth conference. The post is worth a look just to see Chetan’s photos of the different devices used to capture medical information and potentially save lives.

Ajit Jaokar also provides a thorough event summary from the LTE World Summit in Berlin, while Eric at Mobileslate outlines some of the challenges mobile advertisers in Asia are likely to face in entering that market.

On the go? Grab the mobilespace podcast which discusses the many ways one can create a mobile site, brought to you by mJelly and Peter Glaeser of Sponsormob.

Meanwhile, if you have time to sit down with a cup of tea and want to read something nice and meaty, sink your teeth into Tomi Ahonen’s “Beyond demographics, how marketing will use mobile to collect better insights” on mobile as the seventh mass media.

Finally, Russell at MobHappy writes a thought-provoking piece on Humanity 2.0 or what he calls The Singularity – a single all-knowing, all-seeing entity that is aware of our every move and communication. What happens then? Russell presents four scenarios, but I’d be curious to hear yours.

[Image source: copenhagen, kongens have, perfect summer day by svanes on Flickr, Creative Commons]