Carnival of the Mobilists 98: Hey Google, Trick or Treat?

Photo by Toby Ord. License information here.

[Edited to fix a typo; I apologize if you get a second copy in your feed.]

This week's Carnival of the Mobilists comes just after Halloween, a holiday when (at least in the US) people are disguised in costumes and kids fantasize about all the great candy they're going to get.

In the spirit of the holiday, Google has been keeping its mobile plans in disguise, and many of the Mobilist authors are speculating about the candy we'll get from them:

Skydeck makes some very interesting predictions about what the Google phone OS will do, and how much Google will subsidize it. I especially like the financial analysis.

In the second part of a three-part post, Abshishek Tiwari speculates about the services that might be included in a Google phone.

John at Nellymoser gives a long discussion of Apple and Google's efforts to open up the mobile ecosystem.


Other goodies in the bag...

Taptology does a nice job of comparing the buzz-building skills of Nokia and Apple to the buzz-killing behavior of Motorola and SonyEricsson.

Barry at StayGoLinks argues that the mobile web will take off when voice can be used as an interface to it, and gives a nice roundup of some recent voice-related technology announcements. Barry, I hope you're right. But speaking as a frustrated (non)user of Dragon Naturally Speaking, I'm not holding my breath.

Tarek Speaks Mobile enthusiastically reviews the new update to the Nokia N95, and says Motorola could learn something from it.

C Enrique Ortiz discusses the US mobile industry and the power of the operators.

Mob Happy rolls out a mobile version of its site, and discusses the traffic that resulted.

Xellular Identity reviews the various pricing and service plan options for ringback tones around the world. I had no idea there was so much diversity.

Vision Mobile gives a very detailed discussion of efforts to make mobile phone software customizable and flexible. It's an excellent overview.

Should schoolchildren in New York who perform well in class be given free cellphones and prepaid minutes as a reward? Yes, says Judy at Golden Swamp. She reviews the controversial proposal in New York and gives some interesting thoughts on the potential use of mobile phones in education, based on her own experiences.

Post of the Week. It was a hard choice. Although Vision Mobile's post is very detailed and worthy of consideration, I chose Golden Swamp as the Post of the Week because it gave me an interesting new perspective.

Next week the Carnival will be at Ubiquitous Thoughts.