Here's a riddle for you: what's plastic, in your pocket right now, and ruins bar trivia nights around the country? A mobile phone!

Your mobile can help you do all kinds of interesting things, from finding directions, to finding trivia answers (aka cheating), to finding potential new friends.

One thing you couldn't do -- until today -- was easily give to the charity of your choice.

Exciting news nonprofiteers: mGive now allows you to collect $5 or $10 donations via text message.

Each year for the last couple of of years, we've used the NTC as a showcase for new technologies we think you should be thinking about. This year, we're going mobile, in support of the local New Orleans nonprofit community.

Here's how it works:

Subscribe to the NTC campaign by texting TXTNTC to 69866 or completing the form in the full blog post.

You will receive messages only during the conference. We'll feature a different New Orleans nonprofit on each day of the conference. They will send you a few messages each day, with some unique opportunities and special surprises:

• Wednesday: The National World War II Museum
• Thursday: Tipitina's Foundation (Home of the venue for the Salesforce.com Foundation After Party.)
• Friday: Renew Our Music

Last week, I had the great pleasure of visiting Austin, TX for the TIG conference. I gave a presentation on the power of municipal wireless networks and mobile devices -- two great flavors that are going to taste even better together!

James spent some time heckling me from the front row, but he finally took pity and let me finish. Turns out, it was a good presentation for him!

Here are my slides, should they be useful to you. Props to MobileCommons for letting us do the demo.

| View | Upload your own

Flickr Photo: johnmukA couple of weeks ago, my 2-year-old was kind enough to let me listen to NPR on our way downtown, and I heard a funny little snippet about Spain's most popular ringtone:

...a royal voice saying “Why don't you shut up?” — the recent outburst of Spain's King Juan Carlos to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela at a summit in Santiago, Chile.

I meant to blog it but forgot. (I think my mind was trying to erase the subsequent event of that car ride, namely listening to "A Spoonful of Sugar" 13 time in a row.)

Imagine my delight when Katrin Verclas, esteemed former NTEN ED, tweeted a link to an Economist piece stemming from an event she ran in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It's a great summary of some of the cutting edge mobile work that's going on around the world, from election monitoring in Nigeria to getting around censorship in Pakistan -- and it references the King Juan Carlos ringtone.

Are mobile phones really the next big thing? It certainly looks that way. An article in the Baltimore Sun points out that the US market is really busy right now making sure that the next generation of mobile phones will be much more than phones:

Somehow -- and I really couldn't tell you how -- I ended up on the mailing list for Electronic Retailer magazine. I was about to toss it into the recycling bin when I noticed a story on mobile marketing. Now, the magazine is produced by the Electronic Retailing Association, so most every story in the magazine is a sunny picture of how lucrative and awesome various electronic marketing options are. But there are some interesting stats to behold.

According to one article, a recent Forrester Research piece says that:

• 90% of US mobile phones are text enabled, but only 35% are using the functionality
• Only 11% of US mobile users surf the Internet on their phones

According to Forrester's marketing blog, exactly WHO the 35% of text messaging users are is no surprise: 80% of 18-24 year olds use some form of messaging on the phone.

Great article in the New York Times today about a text messaging campaign gone awry. It's a really great piece of reporting. On the surface, it covers the decision last week by Verizon to censor a text message that NARAL Pro-Choice America wanted to send to its supporters. This week, Verizon reversed the decision, saying "It was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy."

What's most interesting though, is the structure that leaves these kinds of decisions in the hands of the providers. The Times says:

...legal experts said private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. The laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on ordinary phone lines do not apply to text messages.