Carnival of the Mobilists #191 – Mobile learning, Aural AR, SIM cards, and the impact of technology on our lives

Welcome to the Carnival of the Mobilists #191!

It’s my first time hosting the Carnival and I’m delighted to bring you some of the top mobile blog submissions from the last week while adding a little “Canadianana” to the mix.

This is a very important week for Mobile in Canada as the inaugural Mobile Innovation Week is bringing together a powerhouse lineup of speakers from around the world.

Although some of us have been lucky enough to travel to CTIA or the World Mobile Congress over the past few years, most Canadians are only just discovering how mobile fits into their marketing mix and haven’t been exposed or enlightened by the content being delivered this week.

Some of the speakers are already well known to Carnival enthusiasts as they have been frequent contributors. You can check out the press release here or look at the full schedule here.

What’s also exciting for the Canadian market is that this event marks the first time the Mobile Marketing Association has ventured north of the American boarder to support and promote an event. Canadian Mobile marketers have been looking to launch a Canadian chapter of the MMA and this event may be the first step towards that goal.

You’ll be able to follow tweets from the events by searching for #mmw09

Enough about Canada – let’s burn some bacon with this week’s top 5 submitted posts to the Carnival:

• As any Canadian knows with a GSM enabled device (Rogers or Fido), SIM cards allow consumers to essentially take their account with them from phone to phone without having to reprogram them like they do on CDMA based phones (Bell or Telus).  C. Enrique Ortiz from About Mobility (it’s It’s the Application, Stupid!) brings a Slideshare presentation on SIM cards including industry standards, types, some interesting numbers. Check out his post here.

• There has been a ton of buzz lately over augmented reality and its potential applications on mobile. Mark A.M. Kramer over at Smartmobs has highlighted an iphone application that may be relevant for aural AR and mobile learning. Check out his post here.

• With smartphones approaching 25% of all phones in Canada and in many other markets, mobile learning is quickly becoming a hot topic. Mark Hooft over at Ubiquitous Thoughts (thoughts and ideas about mobile learning) has put together a great roundup of all things happening (good and bad) in the mobile learning space. Check out his post here.

• We know that the Youth are usually among the early adopters – especially when it comes to mobile, but that doesn’t mean we know how to market to them or influence them. The editors over at Mobithinking.com interviewed youth marketing expert Ian Stewart on How to reach young consumers using the mobile channel. Included are 5 things you should know about mobile and youth and 8 tip for successful engagement with youth using mobile. This is my article of the week! Check it out here.

• Does Technology Connection Mean Life Disconnection? Dr. Jim Taylor shares his thoughts on the topic which really goes beyond mobile and makes you consider the broader impact and implications of technology on our lives. I’d also like to welcome Jim to the Carnival as I believe this is his first published submission! Check out his post here.

Thanks to this week’s contributors! The Carnival will be hosted next week at AboutMobility and you can catch up on this summer’s other Carnivals by clicking here.

If you are new to burning the bacon, take a look around at the archives for some great content and feel free to follow me on twitter @Phryl for the mobile and digital snippets between the blog posts.