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]

It’s been a while since we’ve participated in the Carnival of the Mobilists, a weekly gathering of the best posts on mobile in the week that has just ended. This week, it’s hosted by Dennis at Wapreview, who has been steaming ahead with great posts since the beginning of 2009.

My favourite post this week was Little Springs Design’s story of their office move, and the parallel between the challenges of getting a “vanilla” moving van and the inflexible phone tariffs we, as consumers, are often presented with. I view this post as a call for us all to review the usability and features of our services, products and devices this year. What could you do to give your users flexibility so that they can tailor your product to their needs?

If you’re looking for more great content, check out the first Carnival of the year which was hosted by Helen at Technokitten last week.

It’s that time again, and this week, the Carnival is hosted by Tarek Ghazali at Symbiano-Tek. Seventeen new posts on mobile advertising, mobile TV and transcoding.

Pop by his blog to read the latest entries, including ours, and to wish him a happy birthday.

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted by Debi Jones at MobileJones and contains a bumper crop of posts from all around the world and on a variety of topics; Handset companies, former handset companies, Internet companies, new entrants and social networking giants are all involved in mashups of services.

Have a look for a good roundup of this week’s mobile news.

On the heels of CTIA in Las Vegas, Mobile Point View hosts the first April Carnival of the Mobilists.

Chetan Sharma writes a roundup of CTIA for those of us who didn’t attend, Michael Mace posts a rather humourous survey conducted by Rubicon Consulting on things you didn’t know about iPhone owners, and I contributed our entry on 20 resources for mobile designers and developers.

The odds are in your favour, you’ll find some great content in this week’s contributions.

Already two months into 2008, with one of the biggest mobile events of the year behind us, we’ve reached maximum velocity. Without wanting to toot my own horn too much, we’ve done lots so far this year at Taptu. We launched the latest version of our search engine – just in time to play with it at MWC – integrating Twitter and email sharing to make it easier to pass on the results you find. And best of all, we’re having a great time doing it.

Before we jump into this week’s generous dose of writing, I’m taking the liberty of highlighting SkyDeck’s posts as a must-read for everyone. Dan at SkyDeck sounds the alarm on a seriously dodgy company called SJA Mobile (Part 1 & Part 2), who presents itself as a mobile billing service but strikes me as being nothing more than a thinly veiled scam preying on unsuspecting customers who don’t check their bills closely enough. British Telecom once pulled a similar trick on me, but this one hits the bottom of the barrel in terms of disgusting business models. If anyone can help shed light on how SJA Mobile can continue to operate with such unethical processes, please shout!

Now, on with the Carnival…

C. Enrique Ortiz reflects on local applications and getting the most out of a mobile handset, mentioning Google’s local search for Nokia handsets, the long-awaited-and-still-nowhere-to-be-seen iPhone SDK, and the Java ME apps that still seem to be in demand. Diametrically opposed is Mike Mace’s entry on the death of the mobile app, citing splintering platforms, shrinking distribution channels, and rising costs as the killers.

Tarek Esber flags up that, to ease the pain of the fragmented device market, DeviceAtlas has been created by dotMobi, in partnership with Volantis, Nokia, Vodafone and more.

Dennis writes an insightful post on Android’s significance: It won’t have a slick iPhone-like UI, it won’t be the end-all and be-all of mobile advertising monetisation questions, but its “sandbox” approach to allowing self-signed and “safe” Android apps will hopefully boost the mobile apps landscape.

Mobile 2.0

In more than 140 characters, Howard Rheingold at SmartMobs jots down why he’s completely hooked on Twitter, today’s freelancer’s water cooler.

Ajit Jaokar deconstructs how Mobile Web 2.0, a much talked about idea, will be implemented in practice, breaking it down into 11 different possible implementations.

Post-MWC Thoughts

Rudy recaps on the Mobile Monday Peer Awards, which recognised 27 startups from 18 countries during MWC 2008, John Puterbaugh reduxes on the event’s announcements, and Martin reviews the clever WiMAX demos he was privy to in Barcelona.

At SMS Text News, James Whatley throws around some ideas on how Nokia’s currently disjointed applications could be linked together to create a more enjoyable user experience. He also notes Nokia’s rather disappointing answers to some of his questions on stats and synchronising personal information.

Finally, once you’ve had enough of reading, you can listen to Paul Ruppert at Mobile Point View, who shares his podcast with Andy McGuire, GSMA VP, Mobile Innovation Marketplace.

Enjoy the reading and join us next week when the Carnival will be hosted by Mark at Ubiquitous Thoughts!

Following Mobile World Congress, everyone’s got a lot to say about what they think is the Next Big Thing in mobile, so the VisionMobile-hosted Carnival of the Mobilists is a busy one this week.

Go ahead and have a read here, but make sure you also polish up your best entries for next week’s Carnival, which will be hosted right here on the Taptu blog!

This week’s carnival is hosted by Dennis at WapReview, and includes our entry on the mobile phone sommeliers suggested by Japan. Andreas Bossard’s post looking 18 months into the future at gaming in the schoolyard piqued my imagination with its originality. Again, the Carnival is a worthwhile read!

Get some colour in your life on this grey Monday with this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, hosted by Xen Mendelsohn of Xellular Identity.

You’ll be greeted by a wide range of topics this week, including a number of interesting posts on the social aspects of mobile such as Paul Ruppert’s Super Mobile Communicators and James Whatley’s Think of the Children. In contrast, Tarek Esber hands out awards for the best phones of 2007 (Can’t agree on best phone of the year, but then I have a personal grudge against it!) and Andrew Grill wonders about 3G-equipped computers while away from home.

See you all next week at MobHappy for the next Carnival!