The Carnival of Mobilists (CoM) is on at Skydeck this week with a great line-up of posts from authors and pundits (many of whom are MSG authors and enthusiasts, I’m pleased to say).

Andrew Grill, whom I highly regard for his ability to zero in on the key components of successful location-based services, literally provides us with a blueprint for a new way to deliver mobile advertising to consumers based on aggregated information. As he points out: User data, segmented by characteristics such as calling patterns (where we call and how often we call), direct (permission based) user profiling, and cellular location are three inputs that will help drive user acceptance of mobile advertising.

Another post that stands out comes from Ajit Jaokar, who reviews Cincinnati Bell’s strategy under the leadership of Jack Cassidy. His post also happens to be a perfect complement to this Q&A, which takes a closer look at the carrier’s on-device portal (ODP) launch and commitment to being the on-ramp to the open mobile Web. And speaking of the open mobile Web, this post from John Puterbaugh expertly explains the role of widgets in the larger scheme of things.

But the post I’d like to highlight comes from Dennis at WAP Review. He walks us through the issues around transcoding (reformatting PC sites for display on mobile devices) and updates us on the tie-up between Openwave and Sprint to overcome the downside of transcoding (namely, poor usability, broken links and a disruption in downloads). There’s good news to report and Dennis commends OpenWave, Sprint and InfoGin for “recognizing the value of off portal mobile publishers and content vendors” by adopting Rules for Responsible Reformatting: A Developer Manifesto, a document called that offers suggestions on how content reforming could/should/must work.

Dennis also summarizes a webcast hosted by Sprint and Openwave to discuss Openwave’s OpenWeb roadmap and larger questions around transcoding. In July, Sprint, in partnership with Motricity, will launch Mobile Internet 2.0, a new mobile portal enabling users to “customize their portal view to include only the content they want and will also suggest content to users based on links they have clicked in the past.” Once again – more (choice) is better, but open is best.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, On-Device Portals, Personalization, Usability, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.