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It's time for another installment of the Carnival of the Mobilists, this time hosted right here on the WIP blog. A big thanks to all the mobilists who sent in their posts this week, and a big welcome to everybody visiting our site for the first time. After you're done checking out the week's best blogging about mobile, be sure to take a look at our Events Wiki, a comprehensive listing of mobile events and conferences, as well as our App Store Wiki, the most complete listing of mobile app stores -- currently tracking 84 -- on the web.

But let's get on with the Carnival!

Windows Phone 7, the latest work from Microsoft, was a popular topic this week, with both Terence Eden and Tam Hanna taking it on. Terence has a solid list of pros and cons about the new OS, with quite a few problems but a lot he likes about it as well, while Tam features an interview with a Microsoft evangelist for the corporate line on what to expect from WP7. Another emerging technology that's been getting a...

Steve Litchfield has this week's installment of the Carnival of the Mobilists up at his Phones Show site, so be sure to check it out for the week's top mobile blog posts, including Caroline's recap of her NGMN presentation on developer risk. Check back in with us on Monday, when we'll be hosting the next edition!

I had the pleasure of being asked to speak again to the NGMN Industry Conference, this one was held in Shanghai from June 2-4, 2010 at the Shanghai World Financial Center.  The last conference was held in June of 2008 in Frankfurt.  Both times I was asked to bring the developer perspective.

For those who don't know, the NGMN or Next Generation in Mobile Networks is one of the most significant organizations in our industry.  Their mission is to: to complement and support the work within standardisation bodies by providing a coherent view of what the operator community is going to require in the decade beyond 2010.   It is a C-suite group that decided that LTE IS the next generation mobile network the industry will use.  I am always flattered to get the opportunity to present to this group, which also included presentations by the likes of Jianzhou Wang, Chairman and CEO, China Mobile.  I am also impressed that they have made the effort to think about the developer perspective at...

The July edition of the WIP App Store Report is now available for download. Based on data from the WIP App Store Wiki, the report this month takes a look at the growth over time of the number of app stores in the mobile ecosystem. The wiki now tracks 79 app stores; while that's up just 2 from June, it brings the total number of stores launched during the first half of the year to 36. So can we expect the number of launches to continue to grow so rapidly? Check out the report to find out our predictions.

Google announced yesterday that it's added iPhone and Android apps to its search results when users search from a mobile device running one of those platforms. So, for instance, if a user searches for "download shazam", the top search result should be a link to the relevant app in the Android Market or iTunes App Store. In theory, anyway -- Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read/Write Web says there are still some kinks that need to be worked out (indeed, I can't seem to get it to work on my Droid Eris running Androind 2.1 yet).

One of Thibaut's current interests is what he calls "App Store Placement Optimization", or APO for short. Just like search engine optimization, APO is concerned with making apps appear at the top of search and other listings in app stores. As the number of apps grows and grows, APO will become an important skill for companies and people trying to drive downloads and sales of their apps.

The question then becomes, how will Google's app results work, and how will...

Holly Kolman at mobiEnthusiast.mobi has this week's installment of the Carnival of the Mobilists, where you can find the best blogging on mobile. Topics this week include:

• mobile finance
• mobile VoIP implementation
• net neutrailty
• and, of course, the Apple iPad

So be sure to check it out!

I was up in San Francisco earlier this week for the Google I/O event, and as expected, Android played a big part in the proceedings. A number of big announcements involving the platform were made, and it was also interesting to see that at the I/O Developer Sandbox (the closest thing the event has to an expo floor), the section showing off Android tools, services and devices was bigger than any of the others focused on other Google areas of interest.

There were three big pieces of Android news:

• Version 2.2 of the platform, named Froyo, was formally announced. Many of the features of 2.2 had been going around the web for a few weeks, but this was its formal introduction. Engadget has a good rundown of all the new features, including Flash support in the browser, the ability to store apps on external memory. Froyo also supports tethering and mobile hotspot services, and is significantly faster, both in UI and the browser, than earlier versions. It should be available for the...

James Cooper has this week's Carnival of the Mobilists up over at Mobyaffilliates, where you can find the best mobile blog posts from the last week. Included is our post on the recent Blackberry WES 2010 event, while others cover mobile advertising, the mobile Web, Android and more! Be sure to check it out.

Calling Canadian MobileDevelopers - Join a GSMA OneAPI Hack-a-thon

The GSMA has put together a global initiative called OneAPI.  It's all about network APIs and making it easier for application developers to work with the operators - you only develop to OneAPI, have one set of T&Cs and get access to multiple carriers. 

The first pilot is in Canada, with Bell, Rogersand TELUS! And the first APIs open are messaging, location and operator billing.   We need YOU, the developers, to work it, play with it and tell us WHAT YOU THINK!  Other international operators will follow shortly.  So get in on the ground floor now!

Join us for a briefing session and stay to hack-a-thon with refreshments and prizes.

Sign up on the WIP website for a Hack-a-thon in these cities:

- Montreal:       Thursday, May 13

- Ottawa:          Monday, May 17

- Toronto:         Tuesday, May 18

- Vancouver:    Thursday, May 20

http://www.wipconnector.com/wipjam/oneapi

OR  Get started right away,...

The May edition of the WIP App Store Report is now available for download. The WIP App Store Wiki now lists 75 stores, up from 68 in April. The new entrants included:

• AndroidAppShop
• R-World
• TomTom App Store
• LePhone App Store
• Softwareload
• android.pdassi.de

The announcement of the TomTom App Store, which will sell apps for the company's new PNDs running a WebKit-based platform, brought up an interesting trend: we're starting to see more and more App Stores for devices that aren't phones (at least not in the traditional sense), but are open to mobile developers. For example, there's AutoLinQ from car parts maker Continental. The company is working on an in-car computing system that will run Android, and it will eventually open the system up for outside developers. Android's being used in several different ways beyond phones, including on web tablets and even televisions.

We decided to take a look at the App Stores we're tracking the wiki by the type of...