MobileCampNYC is bringing together mobile enthusiasts, explorers and professionals from the NYC metropolitan area to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility. MobileCampNYC hopes to support the many voices helping to unlock the potential of a truly digital life. Topics may include – but are not limited to – mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents.

Collactive launched today. It looks like a service for smartmobbery:

Want to save the rain forest? Promote a candidate? Highlight the latest outrage of the day? Watch your band's latest video? Sending an email or linking to a news story or video from your blog might get a few people to take a look at what you think is important, but putting out a Collactive APB (All Points Bulletin) will get you attention where it counts: on the front page of the website, where everyone and anyone can read it.

Putting out a Collactive APB is a call to action to your friends and supporters asking them to take collective action on the web. The APB you send will not only send your supporters to the right place, but it will take full advantage of Collactive's knowledge of Web 2.0 sites so that people are doing far more than just reading a story or watching a video. They'll be using the tools Web 2.0 sites use to choose which stories make it to the front page of their site. Whether it be the 'most emailed', 'favorite', 'most popular' or 'most read' story or video, each site does it differently. Your Collactive APB will harness the collective action of your friends and supporters, taking a story or video that might have only been seen by a few hundred people and making it visible to thousands, even millions of people on the Internet.

Last week, Nokia announced several new handsets for emerging markets. At first glance, they look like what you’d expect: basic devices without the flashy features of the company’s high-end handsets. However, a couple of the most basic-looking, the 1200 and the 1208, have some cool features of their own that should give them a boost in emerging markets.

First, they support multiple phonebooks — a nod to the fact that in many developing nations, a single handset is shared among several family members or friends. The handsets allow for up to five separate phonebooks that can be managed individually, letting users have their own list of contacts, if not their own phone. Second, they have a call-tracking feature, which lets users set the maximum cost of a call before dialing. This lets users control their spending, but it also helps empower the entrepreneurs in these markets that buy a phone and airtime credit, then resell calls. Two small and superfluous features to those of us in developed markets, but two simple innovations that highlight how creative thinking can triumph even in the most basic of mobile environments.

AQI appears to have initiated the local protests, orgnized using cellphone text messages and mass-produced paper flyers in the district.

[Thanks to Charles Cameron on DoubleQuotes, via David Kilcullen, The Urban Tourniquet - 'Gated Communities' in Bagdad]

This is classic A QI info ops - stirring up the populations through a combination fo manipulation, intimidation and fear of other groups. The level of coordination and media manipulation applied in this case is also a hallmark of AQI info ops.

I once read that if you want a promotion at work or just want to improve your life, go traveling. There is just something about it. Maybe it’s seeing something for the first time or problem solving your way out of situations while traveling that makes it so beneficial. I’ve been on the road for just over a week straight now and had two instances where I really needed to use Google Maps.

I know the Google Maps application for phones has been out for a while now, and I have played with it a few times before (you know, to find cross streets in DC and such), but I never really used the application because I had no other option. I think these real life tests reveal much more about the application than just playing around with the tool.