Photo by Rick Takagi Some rights reserved.

After a long holiday break, the Carnival of the Mobilists is back. I’m honored to host it here at Wap Review with a great selection of posts from all areas of the mobile scene.

History and Prognostication: It’s the time of the year to review where we’ve been and what’s ahead.

• Mad4mobilePhones‘ Patrick Altoft highlights a prediction by researcher Dr Martin Illsley that 2007 will be the year for complaining by picture message.

• C. Enrique Ortiz at Mobility Weblog offers his analysis of mobility’s current state as well as predictions for this new year in Thoughts on Mobility 2007.

• I’m happy to say that Greg Clayman, “mtv networks’ wireless media guy” at twofones shares my enthusiasm mobile Gmail and Reader. Greg has an idea what Google’s next mobile move might be in Google Mobile.

• At Abiro – Mobile News Anders Borg looks not one, but 15 years into the future and speculates that The future mobile phone is most likely not a phone.

• MobHappy‘s Carlo Longino spotlights the mobile highs and lows of the past year in That Was The Year That Was.

Reviews: Looking at new mobile hardware and software

• Rudy De Waele at m-trends.org reviews four new S60 handsets in Nokia Nseries: Leaps Ahead!

• At Smart Mobs, Gerrit Visser looks at a new SMS based local mobile community built on sharing events and bands in A MySpace for the mobile generation.

• My own contribution is a look a promising but as yet incomplete LoSoSo (Local Social Software) app, Socialight – Geocoded Stickynotes

• Troy Norcross at Mobile Marketing & SPAM explains why mobile search isn’t working in Yell.com lost in mobile search.

Technology: How stuff works and how to make it better.

• Ajit Jaokar at Open Gardens weighs the merits of two competing technologies for enabling dynamic rich mobile content – one proprietary, the other open – in Flash Lite is not WICD – But it should be! which is my pick for the Post of the Week.
  

• Mihai Preda at The anatomy of a project offers a likely to be controversial proposal for the Java ME development community in JAD is BAD. In the process, Mihai does a good job of explaining the Java app installation process in layman’s terms.

• Treo Today‘s Azizi Jennis goes off on one of my pet peeves, proprietary mobile cable connectors in It’s time for a mobile device connector standard

• Phil at Moonsider Mobile provides some advice for users about mobile’s biggest religious war in CDMA vs. GSM, which one is the best for you?

• At SmallDoses, Kiran Bellubbi presents his theory on why SMS is so successful and what that means for mobile application designers in Designing better mobile apps – learning from SMS’s stickiness

• David Beers at Software Everywhere takes a look at the mobile Linux code that Access has Open Sourced in ACCESS opens source to Linux application framework

Business Plans: Winners and Losers and how to be the former:

• Sagar Satapathy discusses Yahoo’s Voice over IM entry and it’s implications for Google and VOIP providers like Vontage in VoIP + VoIM Phone War Heats Up at VoIP Lowdown.

• Carnival newcomer Nick Wright at Vir(tu)al Marketing and Media has a great analysis of where user generated video content on mobile is (and isn’t) going in Media Mobile video turns to self-defeating broadcast model.

• In Ringback Tone Market Challenges (Part II) Xen Mendelsohn at Xellular Identity proposes a new off portal business model for ringback tones.

• Andreas Constantinou proposes a new model for selling handsets, a modular approach where extra cost features like an FM Radio, Bluetooth, HSDPA or enhanced security are added at point of sale in Retail idea #3: Selling hardware features at VisionMobile Forum.

• Mobile Opportunity’s Michael Mace in Sprint and WiMax: Are these guys serious? is bullish on the US carrier’s WiMax plan – if they actually pull it off.

That wraps up the 58th edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists. Next week’s host is Thomas Landspurg at TomSoft.

If you have something to say about mobile, consider contributing your blog post to the Carnival. Visit mobili.st to learn how.