Published 9th March

This week the Carnival of the Mobilists #214 – the weekly line-up of the best blogs and bloggers on all things mobile – comes to us via Andy Favell at mobiThinking.

It is fascinating to watch how the digital revolution; and now mobile and m-commerce, impacts different sectors, take gaming, where the business has struck gold, while in publishing, the book people can’t be sure if they’re all going to live happily ever after.

• First to publishing: as newcomer to the Carnival, Peta Andersen, of literary blog ILBNH, considers mobile’s impact on the book world, as Penguin examines how people might read books on tablet computers, such as Apple’s new iPad.
• Next to casinos (which, together with all gaming companies, are getting into mobile in a big way) as Mobyaffiliates’ James Coops (also of MJelly fame) has posted an information-packed guide to affiliate marketing and the mobile casino sector.
• If health is your thing, then the 3G Doctor, David Doherty, has provided an extensive clinic of everything mHealth related from Mobile World Congress, as he points out that this year was the first time MWC has given mHealth a proper billing.
• And finally to banking, where Jose Colucci at the Mobile Strategy blog, points out that mobile banking will only succeed through partnerships with other service providers – a great opportunity to mobile tech specialists to hit the big time.

 Sticking with money matters, here are a trio of interesting posts on mobile payments.

• One of the hurdles to contactless payment by mobile is the lack of devices that support Near Field Communication (NFC) in many countries, including the USA and Canada. David Eads at Mobile Strategy Partners considers the impact of NFC Stickers, as a big trial kicks off in Canada.
• Barbara Ballard at Little Springs Design provides a good backgrounder as she examines: making micropayments work.
• The interrelationship between mobile advertising and mobile payments is the subject of Raj Singh’s blog as he ponders cloud-based payment systems (such as PayPal), payment details on the device or the possibility that paid-for content providers, such as Apple’s iTunes, might want to become the next mobile wallet.

Meet the consumer:

• This week at Communities Dominate Brands, Tomi Ahonen turns his attention to data and how much more mobile phones tell marketers about consumers than any other media.

Going mobile – two views:

•  Good news: lots of companies going mobile; bad news: lots of mobile services with no purpose or value – so concludes Indigo 102’s Martin Wilson in Why run before you walk?. Who could he be referring to? We need to know.
• A dramatic rise in mobile boarding passes in the past year has David Murphy at Mobile Marketing Magazine (in his Carnival debut) pondering whether this is the first of many stories with eye-watering percentage growth rates to come.

Are App developers getting a raw deal from App Stores?

• What developers want and why by MSearchGroove’s Peggy Anne Salz considers how App Stores can provide a better service to developers, with a feedback mechanism, more say in how apps are marketed etc… oh, and they want to make some money, please.

Sticking with the techie stuff:

• Noting that the iPad continues Apple’s tradition of releasing mobile devices that do not support Flash, Francisco Kattan offers his hypothesis on: why Steve Jobs will never put Adobe Flash on iPhone OS devices.
  Is Windows Phone 7, launched at MWC, the culmination of, or did it replace Microsoft’s long-awaited Windows Mobile 7? At Mopocket, Mordy Gilden investigates in Photon- the Windows Mobile UI that could have been.
• Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens is researching mobile cloud computing – “Anywhere anytime secure data access” – and associated security issues. He offers a definition, resources and invites contributions.

And because no week would be complete without a piece on the Google/Apple War:

•  Cian O Sullivan of GoMo News ponders Google’s recently-awarded location-based advertising patents. (Note these patents were filed seven years ago).

There’s no best blog this week, instead here is a question for the week:

• Should a mobile handset be used for making calls? An overheard conversation in a restaurant encourages Tsahi Levent-Levi to raise the question.

Thanks to all of the mobilists for the brimming inbox of excellent submissions this week. Sorry to all of those who didn’t make it in this time – due to the number of submissions, we were forced to play by the rules, i.e. no blogs more than a week old and to limit the number of Apple-fan blogs.

 Mobilists old and new make sure you submit your blog (mobilists@googlemail.com) for Carnival #215 hosted at MJelly.

If you missed it please also see Carnival #213 over at WIP.