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The coins will be limited edition and will be produced in silver as well as gold. The silver 5€ and gold 10€ will be issued on June 22, 2011.

The Royal Dutch Mint has produced what is the first QR coded coin to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the mint in Utrecht.

The Royal Dutch Mint has produced what is the first QR coded coin to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the mint in Utrecht.

By nearly every indicator, Russians are embracing social and digital media in ways deeper and more impactful than most other countries around the world. For those looking to do business in the former Republic, significant opportunities now exist to leverage this new wave of social adoption.

Consider that in the first four months after its January 2010 launch in Russia, Facebook use grew by 376%, and today more than 4.5 million people use the site regularly. Nearly three-quarters of those making the switch from homegrown social platforms such as Vkontakte (with tens of millions of members) to Facebook are under 27, signaling a generational desire to engage in global communities and interact with brands, celebrities, friends and politicians in decidedly new ways. Twitter usage, while still in its infancy in Russian, grew three-fold in 2010.

And while it should come as little surprise that nearly 80% of the Russian population owns a mobile device, the dramatic adoption of smartphone technology and advanced mobile usage are beginning to change the way in which businesses — and the government — communicate. According to Nielsen, Russians under 24 are the third-largest users worldwide of “advanced mobile data,” behind only China and the United States.

It may seem unlikely, given its track record in technological development, but Africa is at the centre of a mobile revolution. In the west, we have been adapting mobile phones to be more like our computers: the smartphone could be described as a PC for your pocket. In Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the world's electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led phone users and developers to be more resourceful, and African mobiles are being used to do things that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on.

The mobile banking phenomenon spread quickly to other countries in the developing world. Uganda's largest telecom company, MTN Uganda, created its own version, MobileMoney, in March 2009. Within a year, 600,000 Ugandans had signed up. Now, thanks to aggressive recruitment drives to win more subscribers – MTN agents trolling the streets for new customers are known as "foot soldiers" – the service has more than 1.6 million users.

Mobile phones carry huge economic potential in undeveloped parts of Africa. A 2005 London Business School study found that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people in a developing country, GDP rises by 0.5%. As well as enabling communication and the movement of money, mobile networks can also be used to spread vital information about farming and healthcare to isolated rural areas vulnerable to the effects of drought and disease.

Recent developments suggest that mobile payments at scale is getting close

There has been a flurry of activity in the mobile payments space lately

While these developments are helping to enable mobile payments and build awareness, it still is not clear which solutions are likely to drive the most usage

“You know,” said a good friend of mine last week, “there’s really no such thing as big data.” I sighed a bit inside. In the past few years, cloud computing critics have said similar things: that clouds are nothing new, that they’re just mainframes, that they’re just painting old technologies with a cloud brush to help sales. I’m wary of this sort of techno-Luddism. But this person is sharp, and not usually prone to verbal linkbait, so I dug deeper.

And this was his point about big data: that given how much traditional companies put it to work, it might as well not exist. Companies have countless ways they might use the treasure troves of data they have on us. Yet all of this data lies buried, sitting in silos. It seldom sees the light of day.

Small, agile startups disrupt entire industries because they look at traditional problems with a new perspective. They’re fearless, because they have less to lose. But big, entrenched incumbents should still be able to compete, because they have massive amounts of data about their customers, their products, their employees, and their competitors. They fail because often they just don’t know how to ask the right questions.

Of the 65.2 million tablets predicted to be shipped in 2011, Apple will continue to dominate the tablet market with 40 million iPad shipments and hold a 61% share of the market, a new research report from Digitimes reveals. In the first six months of 2011, tablet shipments increased more than 420% from the previous year, with sales expected to increase into the second half to boost the number of shipments by 150% from a year earlier. Apple is expected to contribute more than 25.5 million iPad shipments in the second half of the year alone, up 76% compared to the first half of the year.

Google made a $12.5 billion bet on Monday that its future — and the future of big Internet companies — lies in mobile computing, and moved aggressively to take on its arch rival Apple in the mobile market.

The Silicon Valley giant, known for its search engine and Android phone software, rattled the tech world with its announcement that it would acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, allowing it to get into the business of making cellphones and tablets.

The deal, which requires regulatory approval, would also give Google a valuable war chest of more than 17,000 patents that would help it defend Android from a barrage of patent lawsuits.

I am very skeptical about gamification in enterprise software and deeply suspicious about the hype around it in my company and outside. I have been searching for a while for a good introduction to behavioral mechanics that engage people. I found this talk by Amy Jo Kim very useful for the kind of work I do. She has worked in areas where social media and game mechanics intersect. Game mechanics change people's behavior Games engage us in flow, unfolding challenges over time to the player The 5 foundational elements of game mechanics are Collecting The power of completing a set Points Game points are points given by system Social points are given by other players. They drive collaboration. Redeemable points drive loyalty in those who care Leader boards drive player behavior such as competitive behavior Levels are short hand of points earned. Feedback Feedback accelerates drive to mastery. Feedback is fun Social Feedback is more powerful than system feedback Exchange Structured social interaction Explicit exchanges Adding a friend in facebook Implicit exchanges Are more powerful than explicit exchange Gift exchange Customization Character customization Customization engaged players and makes them stick Social media trends influencing game mechanics Accessibility Social media is making games more accessible to more people Recombinant Syndicated

Research group Gartner issued a special report on Thursday, noting that Apple will have a "free run" in the tablet market this holiday season as rivals continue to lag. The group sees worldwide media tablet sales as on track to reach 63.6 million units this year, a 261.4 percent increase from 2010.

Gartner predicts Apple will hold on to a dominant 73.4 percent of the market this year, though down from 83 percent in 2010. Android is expected to remain in second place, with the firm assuming that no other platforms will manage a 5 percent share of the market in 2011.

By the end of 2015, the company's tablet share is expected to slide to 46 percent.

But points and badgest are a very basic “carrot” approach. Pink says that in the main carrots and sticks don’t work except for basic repetitive tasks where there is little intrinsic motivation.

For anything involving knowledge or creativity, what matters is: Autonomy – deciding how and when to do things Mastery – the reward in gaining a skill and learning Purpose – the sense that the task is part of a greater goal.

What concerns me is that points and badges are none of the above, they are just  extrinsic motivation.

Mobile users with NFC-enabled devices will no longer need a special application in order to exchange contact details or other types of data between their phones thanks to a new NFC specification which has just been released.

a standardization of the Simple NDEF Exchange Protocol (SNEP) to use peer-to-peer mode for data exchanges.

the new specification extends the NFC data exchange format (NDEF), which previously described how data, like a website URL for instance, would be moved from an NFC tag to a NFC-enabled phone by tapping or waving a mobile device within close proximity to the tag.

In South Africa, the continent’s strongest economy, mobile phone use has gone from 17 percent of adults in 2000 to 76 percent in 2010. Today, more South Africans – 29 million – use mobile phones than radio (28 million), TV (27 million) or personal computers (6 million). Only 5 million South Africans use landline phones. Nielsen’s recently released Mobile Insights study in South Africa, which examined consumers’ usage of and attitudes toward mobile phones, networks and services, reveals a number of interesting insights such as: -- Nokia rules: More than half (52%) own that company’s handsets, followed by Samsung and BlackBerry, and 56 percent of those currently using other brands indicated their next handset would likely be a Nokia. -- SMS text messaging is practically ubiquitous among South African mobile customers, and is used by almost 4.2 times more people than e-mail. More than two-thirds (69%) of consumers prefer sending texts to calling, in large part because it is less expensive, and 10 percent believe texting to be a faster way of communicating.

QR code technology arrived late to North America for numerous reasons, and with Near Field Communication (NFC) fast emerging, it is a valid concern that it may not tip the adoption needle in time to establish itself as a household communication tool.

With the release of the Google Wallet, Google has been building a lot of support for NFC. This may explain why they replaced QR codes with NFC for Google Places. Another reason may be because the stickers they distributed to the retailers were intended to be permanent, in which case NFC makes more sense. They may be a bit ahead of the market on this, but if they are distributing millions of these stickers across North America, it pays to plan ahead. Following their announcement, a vast number of articles surfaced with some variation of “QR codes are dead”. This in my opinion was a bit excessive considering Google Places is the only implementation where they made the changeover.

Getting away from Google, let’s briefly look at the expected rate of NFC adoption. Smartphones have been available on this continent for at least 4 years and they currently hold approximately 33% of the market. Google’s Nexus S is one of the first phones to be available with NFC technology and it was released only this spring. Blackberry will start releasing models this fall, and Apple has yet to confirm whether they will include NFC support in the iPhone 5. It’s not unreasonable to expect NFC gaining mass adoption no sooner than 2-3 years.

According to calculations by Cisco, 50 billion devices will connected to the Internet by 2020. Top technology infrastructure companies like IBM, HP and Ericsson are investing big in the Internet of things. IBM envisions a smarter planet, Ericsson envisions the social web of things.  But when I look at these visions I get the feeling something is missing—the consumer. Well, she's there, but always in a passive role. These visions are more about automation and efficiency. An exemplifying scenario can go something like this one, from Cisco: Imagine your morning meeting was pushed back X minutes, and your car knows there has been an accident on your driving route causing a Y minute detour; this is communicated to your alarm clock which allows you Z extra minutes of sleep and signals to your coffee maker to turn on the appropriate minutes later. Or, from Ericsson: You call your wife on your way home in the car, asking what she wants for dinner. When you arrive home the oven has calculated with precision the time it should turn itself on and at what temperature, depending on the groceries you got from the store. I'm sure these are plausible scenarios, but I don't think the killer apps of IoT will be the connected car or Internet-oven. 

I'm much more interested in big questions like: What will be the iBeer moment of Internet of things? What will be the Farmville of connected devices? These are the seemingly silly applications that always pop up in the wake of new technological possibilities. The simple, cheap, entertaining stuff. Humans are a curious species, and we don't always make rational decisions.

UW researchers say this new type of transistor could one day understand or even control body functions.

Materials scientists are looking at these proton-based microscopic transistors for future advances in prosthetics and biological sensing.

In the body, protons activate “on” and “off” switches and are key players in biological energy transfer. Ions open and close channels in the cell membrane to pump things in and out of the cell. Animals, including humans, use ions to flex their muscles and transmit brain signals. A machine that was compatible with a living system in this way could, in the short term, monitor such processes. Someday it could generate proton currents to control certain functions directly.

In a matter of hours, Facebook is going to host f8, its annual developer conference.

My sources are telling me that the company is going to make some sort of announcement around NFC technologies at the event as well.

The Places product will have some NFC elements built into them, and the social network is working closely with some hardware vendors.

For years, scientists have kept track of who’s who by attaching colored bands to birds’ legs and then keeping a vigilant eye out for the marked bird to return. Now, a technology called RFID (radio frequency identification) is automating that vigilance, and yielding more detailed information than scientists ever dreamed possible. A recent study at the Cornell Lab kept track of 129 separate songbirds on a staggering 650,000 individual feeder visits over a period of 5 months (see “What We’ve Learned Already,” below). Instead of pulling 24-hour vigils, the scientists needed to spend only about 6 hours per week tending these wired feeders.

The majority of Canadians would be happy with a cash-free future using digital forms of payment instead of carrying currency, according to a new PayPal Canada survey.

Leger Marketing polled 1,512 Canadian adults online and found 56% would prefer using a digital wallet.

Thirty-four per cent would rather carry a smartphone than a pocket full of change to make a payment and 36% would use their phone to pay for something as inexpensive as a $5.50 latte or as big ticket as a $272.30 iPod.

The idea of a making payments via your mobile has been a slow adoption in Canada, mainly due to the lack of devices with NFC capabilities. A report last week noted that 10% of Canadians currently use a “mobile wallet” to pay for select items and bank via their cellphone, but 40% are interested in using it in the “future”. The Big 3 carriers (Rogers, Bell and TELUS) joined together to create Zoompass, Visa and MasterCard are conducting trials and a mobile payment trial is underway in Montreal called “MoneyCell”. So the ability to pay by your phone will become second nature over the next year to two years in Canada. PayPal Canada recently hired Leger Marketing to conduct a survey to see how comfortable Canadians were with the idea of a “digital wallet”. PayPal noted that they have “always provided digital wallet functionality” and 1,512 Canadians took the online survey between May 9th – May 12th. The survey revealed that 34% would rather carry a mobile phone to make a payment than a pocket full of change. 36% stated they would make mobile payments that range in all price points, such as an iPod ($272.30) or a latte ($5.50). 38% believe that paying from a mobile device is more convenient.

A 2009 analysis from Juniper Research (News –Alert) of the $110bn NFC opportunity forecasted that one in every six mobile subscribers (about 17 percent) globally will have an NFC enabled device by 2014. Adoption was expected to be highest in the Far East,with use very limited outside of that region.

By 2014,Juniper now predicts that North America will account for just under half of NFC smartphones,followed by Western Europe.

The latest forecast from Juniper Research suggests that at least 20 percent of smartphones will support NFC by 2014,about 300 million phones.