Friday’s Pick and Mix #15

GLOBAL – Welcome once more to Friday’s round-up of the interesting posts from the furthest reaches of the World Wide Web. If it’s mobile and it’s worth having a think or a chuckle over, we’re on it. If you’ve come across anything that fits the bill, or a blog we ought to add to our reading list, let us know in the comments. Read on to see what caught our eyes and ended up in our bookmarks this week.

* First up, you’ll doubtless have heard the rumours that the Web is dead, according to the editors over at Wired. Fortunately, these rumours are somewhat exaggerated. Here’s mobile analyst Ajit Jaokar on some of the confusions and misconceptions that he argues lie behind the proposition.
* The Nseries blog produced an interesting post this week on which are the most connected countries, as measured by the number of mobile phones per head. The results will probably surprise many people – it turns out that the top two countries are Taiwan and Luxembourg, for example.
* While we’re on the subject of who talks the most, research outfit Nielsen reports that, in the US at least, it’s African-Americans, women and Southerners.
* We’re always interested to hear of new initiatives that can help make our phones more eco-friendly, but how about this report from cellular-news? Mobile phones made from cashew nut shells.
* Via BoingBoing, we found this rather unusual advert for a mobile network. Is your phone a monster?
* And finally, if you feel your phone lacks the necessary gravitas for high-level business meetings, then you should probably invest in a cellfoam…