To the backdrop of a Katrina rebuilding effort John Edward’s pre-announced his bid for the democratic presidential nomination. While the standard broadcast had all the technical bells and whistles of being broadcasted on YouTube and asking for email… Edwards is officially the first presidential candidate to embrace the Mobile Medium and even mention it in a speech (and in this case a very important announcement).

In this case its regarding an organization that Edward’s built to start making change now called OneCorps.

[for more and my opinion please visit my blog at Personal Democracy]

Technorati Tags: john edwards, mobile, sms, onecorps, katrina

The funny thing is TocMaG PR people sent me the bellow memo to me as letter of a problem they where trying to fix and save name with. Now, I am not a pusher of pot or anything but I actually think that what they did as a form of censorship and completely against the very concept of what social networking self publication user generated applications are all about (not to mention a violation of freedom of speech, but hey its the UK what do I know about freedom of speech in the UK).

I think it was a bad move on there side. It shows who side they are really on. This is a good way for TocMag to loose trust in its users (at least teenagers for that matter).

What were they afraid of? The carriers? The government? They are just a tool. If they are not truly user generated they should not pretend to be.

Tocmag apologises after thousands of UK teenagers download mobile joint video - I guess this means there will be no “High Times” TocMag coming soon.

An instructional video demonstrating how to ‘Make the Perfect Joint’ has been removed after thousands of UK teenagers downloaded the tutorial to their mobile phones.

Tocmag – the free user-generated mobile content service – moved quickly to delete the offending mobile magazine after a Bristol secondary school teacher alerted them to the problem.

The Tocmag was live for three days and generated over 5000 downloads to UK mobiles, mostly thought to be school children. Tocmags are automatically stored on mobile phone memories so it is impossible to know how many times it has been viewed.

The Tocmag video, entitled ‘smoke-weed’ by its anonymous author, was accompanied by a six-page ‘mini-magazine’ listing the ‘top ten activities to try when you’re caned.’

As anyone can create and upload content onto mobiles free of charge, Tocmag employ a team of human censors to filter-out inappropriate material. However, given the surge in the service’s popularity since its launch a little over one month ago (more than one million Tocmags have been downloaded in the UK already), some publications have inevitably slipped through the safety net.

‘We unreservedly apologise for this oversight and we’re doing everything in our powers to ensure it doesn’t happen again,’ said Tocmag founder Brad Ells. ‘From the outset of this project, we realised illicit content is a serious problem with user-generated material. We have conducted a review of our censorship process and ramped-up the resources we devote to ensuring Tocmag is a clean service.’

Technorati Tags: high times, tocmag

Forget about the first day of 3GSM. Join the international gathering of Mobile Monday and mobile bloggers for the Mobile Monday Peer Awards and more! Taking place on February 12th starting at 3PM at the Espacio Movistar. This is your chance to meet some of the world’s best mobile innovations. Selected by industry peers, peer award finalists will compete live before the community and a world-class jury.

15 to 20 global start-ups, previously selected by MobileMonday local chapters, will have a brief time slot to perform at centre stage and present their innovation in front of the audience and expert jury (which I guess I do not qualify for :-(.

It should be a lot of fun and I expect to see you there!

get more info here and here.

Technorati Tags: mobile monday, 3gsm, barcelona

MobileMonday New York invites you to join us for our annual holiday party kindly sponsored by dotMobi and Nokia!

Enjoy some drinks and food and mingle with other MobileMonday friends at Le Souk.

Open Bar and Buffet from 7-9 PM. A DJ, belly dancers, percussion drummers, hookahs, the works. You WILL be merry!

In addition, Nokia will be giving away three new handsets (two E62s and one E70) to lucky partygoers in a drawing! Please bring your business cards to enter.

What: MoMo New York Holiday Party

When: December 18th, 2006, 7-10:30 PM

Where: Le Souk

47 Avenue B (Cross Street: 3rd Street)

New York, NY 10009

(212) 777-5454

Map here

Directions: F at Second Ave

Cost: Free to all MobileMonday members. If you haven’t already, just register here, for free, before you RSVP.

RSVP Required

Technorati Tags: mobilemonday, new york, .mobi, dotmobi, nokia

For those of you who, like me, went out and bought a Nokia E70 (or many of the other Nokia wifi phones) you may have come across some of its Internet calling capabilities. Buying an unlocked one here in the States there is little one can do with it… however the Mobile Internet calling is slowly becoming the phenomena that I think will radically change and shake up the industry.

Skype on my wifi enabled windows mobile phone is even more of an indication.

The New York Times today has a very interesting article on the triumphs and difficulties with converged cellular/Wi-Fi service, as currently being tried by T-Mobile in Seattle. Apparently, it works well when going from cell to Wi-Fi; not so well in reverse.

I still believe that this is a technology that will radically alter the personal communications industry.

[read]

Technorati Tags: voip, wifi, internet calling

I have been waiting for a long long time to finally blog about this. Sharpcast today introduced a powerful new version of Sharpcast Photos mobile edition, delivering a completely new way to view entire photo collections on mobile phones, share desktop PC and web photos from anywhere, and get camera-phone photos automatically to a person’s PC and the web where they can be enjoyed more easily. The new Sharpcast Photos mobile edition, available today as a free download at www.sharpcast.com/download, gives consumers fast, fully automatic synchronization of their photos between their mobile phone or wireless PDA, all the PCs they use, and the web. Sharpcast Photos is the debut service built on the company’s patent-pending universal push synchronization platform, which marks the first instance where Blackberry-like push synchronization capability is available to the average consumer, outside of an enterprise setting. It automatically backs up photo collections online, organizes them into web albums, and keeps the collection constantly up to date across all of a person’s mobile phone, all their PCs and the web. Sharpcast eliminates the every-day hassles of manual uploading, tedious sharing processes, forgotten backups and sync cables so people can get on with creating and enjoying their media.

Sharpcast Photos mobile edition currently supports Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones, including popular devices such as the Samsung Blackjack, the Palm Treo 700w, the Motorola Q, and the HTC Star Trek (Cingular 3125) and the UT Starcom 6700, among dozens of others. I tried downloading it on my HTC Excalibur but apparently my Microsoft.Net Compact is not update. Anyways, more phone platforms will be supported in 2007

With the new Sharpcast Photos mobile edition client, photos taken on a person’s phone are instantaneously sent to the web and to their desktop PC, in the background, with absolutely no intervention required on the part of the user. It is true invisible computing. The gentlemen at Sharpcast are always wary when talking with me because they think I focus to much on the mobile side. It is true and I do see there point. The magic thing about Sharpcast is that it does not matter what device you have with you… your pictures and information will always be there.

Photos on the person’s desktop PC and in their online web albums are automatically visible on their mobile phone in full-screen view, without having to rely on sync cables or a mobile web browser. The organization of the albums are kept perfectly intact on the phone, and photos stream instantaneously down to the phone as they are viewed, as if the entire collection is on the phone at all times. The mobile edition is a client customized for mobile phones that allows people to share albums right from their phone directly to other people’s desktop PCs, in such a way that neither the sender or the receiver ever has to worry about the hassle of sync cables, mobile web browsers or cumbersome registrations or sign-ups. It’s faster and simpler than mobile photo sharing has ever been.

Sharpcast Photos is unlike any other photo service due to its continuous multi-way synchronization which keeps a person’s PC in perfect sync with the web and with their mobile phone. For example, when photos are edited in one location such as a home PC, the change is made everywhere else instantaneously and automatically on the person’s other PCs and in their online web albums. If photos are added through a web browser while away from home, those photos automatically appear on the person’s home PC and on their mobile phone.

Because Sharpcast Photos includes powerful desktop software and does not rely solely on web access like most services, people have access to their entire photo collection from anywhere even when they don’t have web access. Changes made to a collection while offline, for example on an airplane, automatically synchronize the next time the person connects to the internet.

Now, To add to this Sharpcast and Alltel Wireless today announced that Sharpcast Photos has been selected as the standard and exclusive photo sharing and synchronization application for Alltel Wireless’ line of Windows Mobile-powered smartphones, including the new Palm Treo 700wx and the UTStarcom PPC6700. Sharpcast Photos will be available on most new Windows Mobile smartphones from Alltel Wireless. Any existing Windows Mobile phone owner can download the application and sign up for their free Sharpcast Photos account at www.sharpcast.com/Alltel.

This is an extremely powerful tool and one that I would definitely keep my eye on.

Technorati Tags: sharpcast, pictures, file sharing

Hello! And Welcome to the 56th Carnival Of The Mobilists hosted here at MOPocket and brought to live from the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative’s Mobile Web In Developing Countries Workshop in Bangalore India where I am presenting and speaking and coordinating (hence why the carnival is running a late this week).

But enough about that, lets jump into the Carnival shall we?

Edoardo Schepis from edschepis.net has a piece (that is way beyond me) asking whether there is Is still there any Java ME Programmer Thinking in Object?

We welcome Mr Antoine RJ Wright to the Carnival with his blog Mobile Ministry Magazine and a very interesting article on the The Secret Sauce of Usability

Mr Leonard Low from mlearning.com educates us with an article on the use of QR Codes in product labelling to enable m-learning.

The always clever David Beers from Sofware everywhere lets us know how to build your own smartphone…

Dan Taylor from Mobile Enterprise Weblog tells the tale of Three Halves of Seamless Mobility.

The always enigmatic Rudy De Waele from m-trends.org reports on the Under the Radar Mobility Conference

From All About Symbian we get a great article on the Rebirth (Already?) of Mobile Television

Steve Faber from Debt blog brings up the heavy topic of mobile phones, mp3 players and mobile world domination, specifically regarding Motorola and Apple.

Rod McLaren from Mobbu.com shares from us design principles for public sector and enterprise mobile applications. The article captures a pile of ideas and considerations found useful in designing mobile applications for public sector and enterprise customers. The first focusing on local solutions.

Israeli Mobile Diva Xen Mendelsohn for Xellular Identity focuses our attention back to our mobile child within with the fourth part of her mobile youth trends… Nick Wright on Mobile Services and Youth.

Dennis (aka the Wap Review Guy) reviews CNN and tells it like it is… CNN Does Not get Mobile (at least on a Web Level).

Jason Devitt over at a very interesting blog called Brash.com has a very interesting article that is part of a series called “Manifest Destiny) this one focusing on the power of the carrier as a crippler .

Anders Borg from abiro.com offers up a little ditty about the constant chase for the technology that supposedly will make up for the non-existing revenue previous technologies have generated, and it provides a solution of sorts too.

Sagar Satapathy from the VoIP lowdown gives the real lowdown on the so called mobile voIP revolution with an eye opening article on VoIP Security Challenges: 25 Ways to Secure your VoIP Network

On the Social Networking front Kiran Bellubi from Bellubi.com talks about Mobile devices as an extension of social software.

The always on top of it Ajit Jaokar from Open Gardens points out, and rightly so, how Google’s closure of Google Answers (from a mobile perspective) was a big mistake.

Howard Rheingold from Smartmobs has a great article on Mobile Phones and Job Creation in Africa.

And for those of you doing your mobile holiday shopping Patricl Altoft from Mad4Mobile Phones lets us know what the top 5 camera phones for the Holidays are.

Mr Ortiz from C. Enrique Ortiz Mobility Weblog Gives us the guide lines for Hot Areas in Mobility (to follow and be part of)

From my own blog Mopocket I want to draw attention to an article on how Plazes Goes SMS: Text Where You Are.

As per my vote for favorite post I vote for newcomer Jason Devitt’s article that is part of a series called “Manifest Destiny) this one focusing on the power of the carrier as a crippler .

Well thats the carnival!

For more info on the carnival visit the carnival website at http://www.mobili.st.com

Past Carnival on MOpocket

41’st http://www.mopocket.com/links/#000312

21st http://www.mopocket.com/apple_talk/#000127

Technorati Tags: carnival of the mobilists, cotm