Week 31 of the Carnival of the Mobilists is now online at All About Symbian.

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Week 30 of the Carnival of the Mobilists is now online at Darla Mack.

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I’ve been testing Plazes Mobile Beta for about a week. If you don’t know it already, Plazes is the popular social networking tool that, as their FAQ explains, “adds physical presence to the web. The Plazes website automatically detects your location and connects you to people and places nearby. See people in your area, discover other locations and follow the whereabouts of your friends.” Well, now it’s going mobile.

One big advantage Plazes Mobile has over competing MoSoSo apps is that it ties in with the computer-based version of Plazes as well, meaning that my buddies don’t have to be mobile themselves for me to keep track of them. Jim’s in the office? I can ping him about work. He’s at home? I can give him a call about meeting for a beer on Friday. He’s in the pub round the corner? We can have that beer now. This is presence taken to the next…

Week 26 of the Carnival of the Mobilists is now online at Wap Review.

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Undoubtedly inspired by the success of the Nokia blogger outreach program run by Andy Abramson, which has already seen a number of N90 and N70 handsets lent out to select bloggers around the world (and with other devices like the N80 and the E61 almost certainly coming soon), Nokia has just launched two blogs here in France to promote the N91 and the 3250:

• I am my music - le blog du Nokia N91
• Twist and Play - le blog du Nokia 3250

They’re interesting, but perhaps a little too corporate and controlled. Andy’s approach - “Here’s a phone, go ahead and blog what you think of it” - is a lot more honest and true to the original spirit of blogging (whatever that may be).

The Nokia Research Center has been working on a project to put a web server on your mobile phone.

For quite some time it has been possible to access the Internet using mobile phones, although the role of the phone has strictly been that of a client. Considering that modern phones have processing power and memory on par with and even exceeding that of servers of the early web, there really is no reason anymore why webservers could not reside on mobile phones and why people could not create and maintain their own personal mobile websites.

The client binary is now publicly available for download.

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Found via S60 Blogs

This is one for Martin Sauter, if he hasn’t seen it already - Rui Carmo from the Tao of Mac on “The Razor-Thin Mobile Computer“.

The most interesting thing regarding mobile computing for me is that connectivity has finally become ubiquitous. With UMTS, I don’t have to look for a Wi-Fi hotspot - all those wet dreams regarding municipal Wi-Fi in the US have been a reality for me for a couple of years now as UMTS (and now HSDPA) coverage was rolled out in Portugal, and most of the places I need to visit in Europe every now and then are catching up pretty quickly.

And with easy access to mobile data, your entire working environment changes - you don’t need to carry gigabytes of e-mail, documents and whatnot in your laptop. In fact, you don’t even need to have the applications there.

Week 25 of the Carnival of the Mobilists is now online at Judy Breck’s Golden Swamp.

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Wireless-Watch.Community, a project developed by Tokyo-based Mobikyo KK (publishers of the Wireless Watch Japan media site) with the aim of building a global portal that combines a range of mobile media voices, has launched this week and I’m one of the contributors.

As with the Carnival of the Mobilists, I like the idea of gathering lots of insightful mobile writing in one place.

Why not take a look?

Week 24 of the Carnival of the Mobilists is now online at Jim Hughes’s Feet up!.

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If you ever wondered who bought all those N-Gage QD handsets that Nokia claims to have sold - other than me, that is - then I think I may have at least part of the answer.

I took the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux last week (or, more precisely, the iDTGV), and I was surprised to find N-Gage “gaming consoles” being offered for hire from the buffet car, along with DVD players and the ubiquitous blow-up pillows. For six euros, I could have picked up an N-Gage, a headset and one (unspecified) game chosen by GamePlazza.com.

Interestingly, there was no mention of the fact that the device is also a telephone. If it had been a little cheaper, I might have considered getting one to see whether it came with a SIM card.

Week 22 of the Carnival of the Mobilists is now online at Helen Keegan’s Musings of a mobile marketer.

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I was about to write a long post with my thoughts on last night’s third Mobile Monday Paris gathering, but I see Martin Sauter has got there before me with a very complete round-up (and a lovely photo of yours truly), so I’ll be brief.

My favourite presentation of the evening was Alex Kummerman of Clicmobile’s talk on Are You Here?, a MoSoSo app that lets you alert your friends and other contacts when you are in a certain location in order to facilitate social interactions. I’m looking forward to their launch in France.

This is the second event I’ve attended where Alex was present - he was also at the 3GSM Gathering of the Mobilists organised by Rudy De Waele - and I really must get round to speaking to him one of these days.

Week 21 of the Carnival of the Mobilists is now online at Justin Oberman’s mopocket.

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It seems the Motorola RAZR is the most popular handset in Europe, although perhaps this is not the case in France as I don’t know anyone who owns one.

In the first quarter of 2006, the RAZR posted a 6.2 per cent share of the mobile market, with nearly 5.3 million mobile consumers purchasing the Motorola handset.

Several smartphones such as Nokia’s 6630, N70 and 6680 also make it into the top ten (in 6th, 7th and 8th position respectively). How many people who own these phones take full advantage of their “smartness” is open to question, but still, it bodes well for the future.