• Nokia exec talks Ovi platform, really nice discussion of where Ovi is and how Nokia see the world;
• Android Market games revenues rose in October, but only 53% which isn't the kind of massive growth you might expect to see this early in Androids life...
• Android compatibility library: "During the cross-compilation process, both the application and the Android compatibility library are cross-compiled from Java to Objective-C and linked with the Cocoa Touch compatibility library to yield a native iPhone application. "
• A new theory of awesomeness and miracles, including the putative construction of a go-playing machine larger than the universe;
• Fake Steve Jobs exposes a wonderful example of doublespeak: "I sent a copy of this to Katie with a note asking how we missed out on this guy, because he’s exactly the kind of coin-operated true believer we need around here."
• 5 things I wish someone had told me: "If your significant other absentmindedly mentions that he/she never sees you for dinner anymore, you had better resolve the situation quickly"
• Who can save Palm?: "Palm can only hope for a niche role in the smartphone market. Palm’s technology can only escape this role if WebOS software will become part of a strong, larger service ecosystem. One possibility is acquisition by RIM. Consumer potential of WebOS can take Blackberry user experience to a new level..."
• It's Googles world and handset makers just live in it: "by creating flagship devices featuring their latest and greatest they ensure forward momentum for the platform"
• Russell Davies at Playful (which I'm increasingly gutted to have missed): "These aren't games, like the industry thinks of games, these are something a little less, these are Barely Games. And these, are what I wanted to talk about."

If I was going to build a dream team to run a mobile event here in the UK, it'd have to include the folks behind Swedish Beers, Over the Air, Mobile Monday, Mobile 2.0 and the Future of Mobile - all favourite events that I've ranted on about before now, and had the pleasure of participating in.

Luckily I don't have to bother building this team, because they've gone and gotten together anyway... and it looks like they're doing something a little bit different. Heroes of the Mobile Screen is running in London this December, and they've picked four very sensible topics for it: where's the money? What does all this social and location stuff mean? What do the kids make of this? And what to customers, and particularly women, want?

All really great stuff, and even better for having brought together a crowd of speakers that isn't just the usual faces...

A couple of weeks back I wandered along to Write Club, a night that James and Ellen have kicked off, hosted by the mighty Skiff. The format intrigued me - we were to be shown a photograph, then given a very short amount of time to write a story based on it: 15 minutes, then 10, then 5, then 2. Over the last 6 months I've been really interested in extremely constrained creativity, and I've been routinely surprised by how much gets achieved by teams participating in the Mobile Mountains workshops I've been running... so the format was very appealing, and perhaps less intimidating than I might otherwise have found it.

I don't think I'd written any fiction - other than proposals and press releases - since I was 13 years old, and despite doing a fair bit of public speaking, I was pretty nervous about reading my work out. James very kindly prefixed the event with a stern warning that there were to be no apologies - a staple of spoken-word events, I understand - and I felt that the timeboxed format gave me a convenient excuse for any misgivings I might have over the quality of my work. Even with that, I can't claim to be happy with it - I found myself routinely heading in the same direction, overly clever-clever stories which spend too much effort trying to be twisty, shocking or rude. Ah well - it was interesting to observe myself heading down the same track again and again, even when I was trying not to, and encourages me to work on developing a bit of breadth.

I've posted my stories, together with the photos that inspired them, below; and I'm looking forward to the next event already :)

The Harpooning of the Synchronised Swimmer (15 minutes) "My dad and I, we've been doing it for years... and he did it with his dad. I'm making it sound like a tradition, but really I think it's just us, we've got a bit of a taste for it. I'd be lying if I didn't say I enjoyed it.

I saw the quad again, on the telly - 2008 I think, Beijing - only for a brief flash as I was flicking channels. I recognised the scar dad's barb in one of the four legs as they lifted out of the water as one, then I switched over for Hollyoaks."

Shitrag migration (10 minutes)

"Fucking lazy fucking bastard paperboy, sacked off for the morning, no bloody respect" he grumbles, voice falling unsteadily from outrage to nothing as a month-old stain of ketchup catches his attention and derails his train of thought.

3 hours pass. Not even a bill, not even a flyer advertising window cleaners or new local sellers of pizza.

"Fucking bastard postie, fucking striking bollocks", he opines, to no-one in particular, and no-one nods quietly in agreement.

Bereft of any contact with the outside world but not really missing it all that much, he shuffles around the filthy flat. He can't find the takeaway menu - where'd she put it this time? So he cobbles together a filthy lunch, and for dessert repairs upstairs to enjoy a characteristically unpleasant 3pm bowel motion - relief followed by the crushing disappointment and then shame that only a hollow cardboard tube can bring.

As the sun crawls down the horizon and he settles down filthed in front of countdown, creases stretch out and thin triangular wings start to flex. Briefly darkening the view through the back window, the origami flock rises as one and heads 180 degrees off magnetic north for the long flight home.

Reluctant Ringmaster (5 minutes)

"Roll up, roll up, see the artist! Marvel at his brushmanship! Wonder at his innovative use of oils! Quake at the implied satire of his imagery!"

The top hat is unnecessarily OTT and slightly patronising. Plus it's dark and it's wet and it's late and I want to go inside and curl up with a ham sandwich, a jammy dodger, and Radio 1, but he says I'm not allowed to until it's done.

I bash out an especially unpleasant caricature of a rotund women who's brought her two children to see me. She shrieks, her eyes well up and they slope off, leaving 6 neat puddles of tears.

I get the night off.

Statue Pipe (2 minutes)

I been here 200 years, protected by Arts Council funding and a large umbrella-like structure which keeps the worst of the rain off and offers protection to the crowd which inevitably gathers beneath my chin in a storm. Penniless artists touch me up on occasion, keeping me fresh.

And then there's the museum next door, new plumbing, grade 1 listed over my grade 2, and I'm half-blinded by the new drain running through my left eye.

I'm going to be travelling east for 10 days later this month, starting on 15th. My first stop is Tokyo, where I've been invited to give a talk at the UK embassy to Japanese mobile companies. I'll be presenting some case studies of mobile success in the UK, with the aim of giving some Do's and Don'ts for Japanese businesses wanting to travel to our shores. I then have a few days in Tokyo, when I'm looking to hook up with interesting local mobile businesses; it's been nearly a decade since I last visited and I'm curious to see how mobile has evolved in that time. This time around, I probably won't be pulling out a Nokia 7110 in an attempt to impress anyone...

I'll also be taking the opportunity to pop into Aikikai Hombu Dojo to train, and hopefully see a few familiar faces. Two of the visiting instructors from summer schools past, Kobayashi Sensei and Sugawara Sensei, should be resident - and I understand that a few UK folks are coincidentally in town around the same time.

I'm then heading to China for a few days on 23rd, to catch up with our friends at Microsoft Mobile Services in Shenzhen.

I'd be very interested in recommendations for interesting people or companies to visit in Tokyo, Shenzhen or Hong Kong whilst I'm out that way.

• Richard Wiseman on luck: "unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else". I like the notion of deliberately injecting randomness into your life to expose luck...
• There's an interview with me on the Fonecast blog;
• What would a successful agile all-remote team look like?
• Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper, a good presentation on what the Guardian are up to from Mr Thorpe.
• David Hockney on the iPhone: "People from the village," he says, craning back over that shoulder, "come up to me and tease me, 'We hear you've started drawing on your telephone.' And I tell them, 'Well, no, actually, it's just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad.'"
• Ways to split user stories: "having found that people find it difficult to split in any other way than what they've done so far unless they can look at examples, I thought I should share what I teach about splitting user stories"
• Wu Tang and a wider world: "What’s more incredible: that kung fu flicks turned a middle school dropout into a millionaire artist, or that a musical and stylistic statement from Staten Island would shape culture in Mongolia and Ghana?"
• The Khronos Project: "by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time."
• Innovation at the Guardian, a nice case study of fitting R&D into a regular dev environment;
• BBC coverage of OverTheAir and Project Bluebell: "Last year it walked away with the Best Overall Prototype for a multi-limbed robot called Octobastard. This year it wanted to produce something beautiful as well as clever."
• FP All-Star Mr Revill has just come back from the ACM Creativity and Cognition conference where he was demonstrating Sim-Suite, a project he's been working on over the last few years: "The game concept is derived from European, cross-cultural gaming elements. The participants are players who compete against each other and against time. The interaction occurs through the manipulation of three sensor-enhanced boards which each of the participants operates through balancing and stepping movements."