ReadWriteMobile

Easy, instant push notifications are a phenomenon of modern mobile technology. They deliver news, app updates, requests and prompts to users to complete an action. Mobile developers, marketers and advertisers all see push notifications as a key way to reach an audience at the most personal level: straight into their pockets.

This level of personal interaction is precisely what makes consumers not entirely trust push notifications. It is a mixed bag: They love notifications when they are useful, hate them when they become a vehicle of spam. For developers, this is a fine line. There is a fundamental disconnect between technologists and consumers when it comes to push notifications. Many developers think push is a wonderful, useful tool. Most consumers would prefer to be left alone. Developers: what do you think consumers think of push notifications? That is the subject of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

Whenever user privacy comes into question, the reaction is predictable. The tech media will flare up with outrageous and accusatory headlines, the mainstream media will pick up on it and put a couple talking heads on air to decry the practice and users will start talking in bars about how "company xyz" is spying on them. If we are lucky, the controversy will get tech writers sniping at each other and there will be a Congressional investigation.

One more thing ... what will it be this time around? Apple's so-called iPad 3 is said to be announced in the first week of March and the rumor mill thinks it has pretty much nailed what the device will entail. A higher resolution screen, faster processor, better battery and a quality camera all packed in the same 9.7-inch form factor running iOS 5. Is it a technological marvel of the mobile revolution or just another ho-hum iteration from Apple?

If you are a device specification geek, the lusty deets from the iPad 3 are likely to excite you more Megan Fox announcing she is coming back for Transformers 9: The Rise and Fall of Prime set in the year 0001 A.D. during the height of the Roman Empire. If not, well, you might be out of luck with the iPad 3. It is hard to get pumped up for a device that, in reality, will be a nominal upgrade over the already great iPad 2. That is why I am waiting for the "one more thing" from the iPad 3. Are the iPad 3 rumors underwhelming? That is the topic of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

You would think that a company with 423 million monthly active mobile users would find a way to squeeze some revenue out of them. Easier said than done. The biggest question to come out of Facebook's S-1 filing for its IPO was how the company could monetize its robust mobile app ecosystem. How will Facebook do it? Stitching in mobile banner ads is not likely a solution for Facebook. We explore Facebook's opportunities and ask for your opinion in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

This week, Hewlett-Packard announced the open source roadmap for webOS along with the next edition of its application framework, Enyo 2.0. As we wrote yesterday, the time for webOS to shine may lie ahead. What it comes down to is how well the open source community responds to webOS and whether or not the original equipment manufacturers will ever decide to build webOS devices.

The favorable response of the community and OEMs is not guaranteed. Many think webOS is as dead an operating system as Aramaic is a language. That may include former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein who is leaving HP after his commitment to the company elapsed. Is there still potential for webOS and Enyo or have we seen the last of the once-promising mobile operating system? That is the topic of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

There is a new word making the rounds in technology circles that has caused a stir this week: "clopen." The nature of clopen is that a platform is ostensibly open to be built upon but it must while also creating a profit for the company providing the platform. The clopen argument this week has centered around Android with the fundamental question: How open is Android, really?

Android is open source. Even by the most traditional definitions, the mobile operating system open for developers, manufacturers, carriers, custom ROM builders and hobbyists to build upon. From a consumer perspective, the nature of Android "openness" is cloudy. Is Android "clopen?" Answer for yourself in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

Throughout the year we have tracked the how developers have made design decisions, and the tools available to small-to-medium businesses for creating websites on the mobile Web. On Tuesday we wrote about a new suite from Conduit that makes it easier than ever to create dynamic websites for native platforms and the mobile Web. Yet, despite all of Conduits tools, apps and the mobile Web are in danger of falling into the trap of cookie-cutter design.

There are almost a million apps in the wild between the major platforms, with Android and iOS making up the vast majority of them. Let's be honest here: many of those apps are subpar and unimaginative. The mobile Web is not much better. Yet, there is hope. That is the subject of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

Almost every company in the mobile ecosystem that is in one way or another associated with Carrier IQ right now is in a world of hurt. Is the outrage over what the data that CIQ collects justified? What some call spying, others may call pertinent, actionable data designed to improve consumers' lives.

Is it spying or is it benign data collecting? We outline both sides below and it is the topic of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

So, there is going to be a Facebook Phone, if a week long series from AllThingsD can be trusted. It will come from HTC, the same original equipment manufacturer that brought us the ChaCha and the Salsa, some of the first smartphones with the "F" button concept that brought users straight to a Facebook interface for a social layer baked right into the device. Facebook needs to continue its hard push into mobile, but does a dedicated device, based on Android, make any sense?

Foremost, Facebook might want to consider changing the name of the mobile platform. Facebook Phone does not inspire confidence in consumers. It was code-named Buffy when it was being developed by a team of top-notch engineers more than a year ago. That was a derivative of the "social layer" that was nicknamed "slayer" by the group. One of the reasons that Google has done so well is because Android sounds cool and Google did not change the name when it bought the company from Andy Rubin in 2005. There is a lot of potential things to like, or hate, from a Facebook Phone. We examine those and it is also the topic of this week's ReadWriteMobile poll. Vote below.

App developers have been working on iOS 5 since it was announced in at Apple's developer conference in June. That encompasses most of the summer and the start of autumn. iOS 5 officially drops about a week from today, on October 12. Was it enough time to deal with the new features and APIs that Apple has baked into iOS 5?

We want to know: what was the most difficult or important aspect of iOS 5 to develop for? From Game Center to Notifications to the new graphics APIs or iCloud, there are several new moving parts of iOS 5 to deal with. Check out some comments from prominent iOS developers below and take this the ReadWriteMobile poll.