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Operating income was $13.0 million, with an operating margin of 17.9 percent, compared to operating income of $4.7 million, with an operating margin of 6.3 percent, in the third quarter of fiscal 2003. Operating cash flow was $23.1 million with a cash balance of $158.9 million, compared to operating cash flow of $12.1 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2003, an increase of 91 percent.

For the nine months ended June 30, 2004, revenue totaled $223.1 million, compared to $205.5 million for the same nine-month period in fiscal 2003, an increase of 9 percent. Operating income for the nine months ended June 30, 2004 was $42.5 million compared to $23.4 million, which included a goodwill impairment charge of $9.3 million, for the same period last year, an increase of 82 percent. Operating margin was 19.1 percent for the first nine months of fiscal 2004, compared to an operating margin of 11.4 percent for the same period last year. Operating cash flow was $44.7 million for the first nine months of fiscal 2004, compared to $26.1 million for the same period last year, an increase of 71 percent. Net income was $36.7 million, or $.97 per diluted share, compared to $5.2 million, or $.15 per diluted share, an increase of 604 percent for the same nine-month period in fiscal 2003.

During the quarter, the Company added 13 new customers while maintaining a worldwide presence of 76 countries. ACI Worldwide, the Company's largest business unit, added seven new customers during the quarter. Solutions licensed to these customers included BASE24®, BASE24-es™, WINPAY24™, and ACI Proactive Risk Manager™. ACI Worldwide also licensed capacity upgrades to 13 customers and licensed seven new applications to existing customers during the quarter.

Insession Technologies, the Company's e-infrastructure business unit, added six new customers and licensed 12 new applications to existing customers during the quarter. Solutions licensed to new and existing customers include GoldenGate™, WorkPoint®, VersaTEST™, WebGate, SafeTGate, ICE™, Automated Operator™ and AutoDBA™.

IntraNet, the Company's international payments and message processing solutions provider, added one new Money Transfer System™ customer. IntraNet also licensed one capacity upgrade and entered into 17 services contracts with existing customers during the quarter.

The Company completed the third quarter of fiscal 2004 with $232.8 million in backlog. Included in backlog are all software license fees, maintenance fees and services specified in executed contracts to the extent that the Company believes that recognition of the related revenue will occur within the next twelve months. Recurring backlog includes all monthly license fees, maintenance fees and facilities management fees and amounted to $173.6 million. Non-recurring backlog includes other software license fees and services and amounted to $59.2 million.

"We are pleased with the quarter's and year-to-date financial results," said Gregory D. Derkacht, President and CEO. "We continue to make progress on our tax-planning initiatives and other projects, and we look forward to building on our worldwide leadership position in the financial services sector with our proven software solutions."

The Company has revised its revenue estimate for fiscal 2004 from a range of $282 to $292 million to a range of $291 to $296 million. The Company has also revised its EPS estimate from $.74 to $.83 to $1.10 to $1.17, which includes the $.28 net one-time tax benefit.

"Near-field communication will allow people to carry their credit card in their phone and scan transactions. This is fantastic for customers and retailers because it takes a lot of the supply chain costs out," he said.

Location-based advertising, which O2 has already started using in the UK, is also being tipped to become a "major product line" with the increasing use of smartphones, Key explained.

"Customers can opt to receive a voucher on their mobile phone. We know when a customer is wandering past Starbucks [for example], and can send a barcode asking them if they want to go inside and get 50p off a latte," he said.

"Location-based is customer specific and is win-win. The retailer benefits, the customer benefits and [O2] sits in the middle and benefits as well."

"This is one of the largest deployments of NFC technology in the United States and shows the practical benefits this technology can deliver in terms of ease of use and convenience. There has been a lot of hype around NFC recently and PayByPhone is pleased to now put the technology in the field for real world applications," said Neil Podmore, VP of Business Development at PayByPhone. "We expect this to help kick start the more widespread adoption and understanding of the practical benefits of NFC in 2012."

The installation of mobile electronic payment systems is already catching the imagination of cities and towns around the world. With a proven role of providing parking authorities with efficient, easier-to-manage and cost effective solutions also comes real-time data to fine tune parking policies and provide parking guidance systems.

Analyst firm Juniper Research predicted that consumers around the world could generate as much as $50 billion in sales through NFC-based mobile payments by 2014. The potential for this nascent technology is huge, according to Jupiter.

PayByPhone, the largest provider of payment systems for parking across North America, has ongoing contracts in more than 60 cities, towns and universities including Miami; Dallas; Vancouver, BC; London, Paris and now San Francisco, the largest installation in the United States. Worldwide, the company handles more than 55,000 transactions per day. The company experienced rapid growth in FY 2011, logging an estimated 8 million transactions over the first six month period.

WHERE is able to target consumers based on a variety of factors including location but also search and purchase data. The goal is to be able to find nearby users and walk them into a store so they will buy a product based on an offer or deal. That will allow PayPal to close the redemption loop and show merchants how much business they are getting from PayPal, Doyle said.

We talked about the potential of offering local deals when PayPal bought WHERE. But it is interesting to see that PayPal considers WHERE a key tool in its larger mobile payments efforts. It’s not surprising, considering Google Wallet is being combined with Google Offers, but it shows that this is becoming table stakes in mobile payments. You can’t just have a great payment solution; you also need to have marketing and outreach tools to distinguish yourself from other offerings. And you need to provide merchants with more benefits than just an alternative to a card swipe. Having a way for merchants and retailers to grab people off the street is going to be key for successful payment systems. And putting coupons and deals in the hands of consumers can help convince them that it makes sense to use an alternative to credit cards or cash.

One of the problems I see, however, is that with WHERE there is no guarantee that consumers must pay via PayPal at the point of sale. A user could receive a mobile ad for a deal or coupon and then choose to pay with cash or a card, which would leave the redemption loop open. That, Doyle said, is something PayPal will be working on as it rolls out its payment system.

But he said this is part of the bigger challenge for all mobile payment providers. They have to provide more benefit than a card swipe to both consumers and merchants. It is going to take an ecosystem to accelerate adoption, said Doyle, and there is a lot more learning needed in the years to come.

“2012 in mobile payments is where location-based services were, like, three to four years ago. It’s, like, the year when things begin but it’s not where the critical adoption curve kicks in. You need consumer adoption on handsets and merchant adoption on the point of sale side. You will see it begin this year, and we will all learn a ton,” Doyle said.

That’s what Google is really interested in: Taking a slice of the revenue that comes from increased Google Offers that can be redeemed through Google Wallet. It’s also one reason why the search giant is not taking a cut of the transactions. Instead, Google is trying to exploit the big opportunity in local advertising, taking NFC along for the ride. As an early incentive, Google is throwing in a $10 credit for users to try out Google Wallet this year.

Google Wallet in tandem with Google Offers is going to be a big venture in a market that will be hotly contested. Isis, a rival NFC payment system led by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile is also preparing to launch early next year. I recently wrote about PayPal unveiling the first glimpse of its offline payment solution, which won’t leverage NFC. Square, a hot start-up, is also capitalizing on the opportunity with mobile card readers, an iPad cash register system and a digital wallet for consumers. The credit card companies themselves are also pushing their own digital wallet programs. This is going to be a crowded market and all these companies, along with a host of smaller competitors, are going to trying to make good on this opportunity in mobile payments.

Google Wallet, if you recall from the big unveil in May, is a joint venture with MasterCard, Citi, Sprint and First Data. Users can connect their MasterCard Citibank cards to Google Wallet or load up funds on to a prepaid card in Google Wallet from other credit debit cards.

Users can make payments at any terminal equipped with MasterCard’s contactless PayPass technology. Google has struck a bunch of partnerships with retailers and restaurants, who will support Google Wallet and incorporate their own loyalty programs into it. In some of these cases, retailers need to work to enable or upgrade their point of sale systems to handle Google Wallet integration. Partners include Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Walgreens, Subway, American Eagle Outfitters, Peet’s and others.

There’s still many questions around Google Wallet. Google said it’s talking to other carriers and manufacturers about supporting Google Wallet and including NFC integration, but right now, there are no other Google Wallet handsets to announce. It’s also unclear when other bank cards will be supported directly in Google Wallet though Google said it is talking to banks about adding that functionality. But Google has pitched its wallet as an open platform that anyone can participate in, so the system will no doubt evolve over time.

Google still has a long ways to go to pitch consumers on the benefits of paying by phone. As we’ve noted, many consumers are happy paying with a card. Merchants also need to see a reason to step up and make an investment in next generation hardware that can support contactless payments. This is going to take a lot of selling and a good narrative for both parties. Google hasn’t embraced big marketing campaigns in the past though it has enlisted the help of actor Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame to help tease Google Wallet. It’s going to need a lot more of that mojo to make sure Google Wallet can realize the company’s ambitions.

Dwolla sees itself more like Visa than PayPal. EBay may actually disagree with that considering that it is pushing very hard into the mobile wallets segment of the mobile payments industry and Dwolla operates in much the same way.

Dwolla wants to position itself as a go-to resource for financial institutions to create a mobile payments infrastructure in communities such as Des Moines. Square, with its recent Card Case update, is also playing in this space.

Consumers benefit from Dwolla because of the location and social features of the platform.

The benefit of Dwolla is that it is basically electronic cash. This is one of the truest "mobile wallets" concepts.

Proxi was released by Dwolla in August. It allows users to open the app and see what merchants are accepting mobile payments via Dwolla in their vicinity.

The company can position itself to be both the front end and back end of the payment process. As such, Google Wallet, Square, Intuit GoPayment (or any of the other dongle-based competitors) could theoretically tie into it as a backend.

There are no hours-worked expectations for exempt/salaried employees. We do not talk about how many hours we work or demand 40, 50, or 60 hours out of people.

We do not have a tele-work policy, handbook or tele-work rules. Tele-work is so 1970's, Work is just work. It doesn't need a location label, And, we don't have flextime.

We do not track PTO (vacation, sick time, personal time, holiday time). It's not a benefit. Unlimited paid time off as long as the work gets done is the contemporary benefit that matters.

Nobody asks permission to go to an appointment, event or any other personal activity. Ever. And they don't have to inform the team or management in an effort to be polite.

We have adopted the Sludge* Eradication Strategy - NO SLUDGE in our workplace.

We NEVER put 'mandatory' on a meeting invite. Every meeting is optional.

We don't have any limits put on how or when we can work: "No E-Mail Fridays" and "No Meeting Wednesdays" don't exist in our organization. 

Unstructured work is not for everyone That kind of approach, which management consultants like to call a “results-oriented workplace,” might be fine for a creative endeavor like programming or design, or even for businesses (like GigaOM’s) that involve brain-powered work such as writing.

There’s another risk Holman’s description of the new unstructured workplace brings up, something we’ve written about a lot at GigaOM, and that is the impact that this can have on the “work-life balance” of employees. Says Holman:

By allowing for a more flexible work schedule, you create an atmosphere where employees can be excited about their work. Ultimately it should lead to more hours of work, with those hours being even more productive. Working weekends blur into working nights into working weekdays, since none of the work feels like work.

Knowledge workers of all kinds find themselves answering emails or responding to text messages at all hours of the day and night, working on weekends, and so on. And the increasing globalization of many industries has just accelerated this phenomenon, since some staffers or contract workers may be in completely different time zones.

One thing is clear, however: This phenomenon isn’t going away; if anything, it is increasing, as more work becomes knowledge work, and as more companies try to adapt to a cloud-based and global world (flexible hours and an increase in freelance or contract work also has real benefits for companies in terms of lower costs, some of which are pushed down to the individual worker, such as the cost of health benefits).

Companies like VMWare are trying to help figure out how the nature of work changes when it occurs in “the cloud” and the workforce moves toward what CEO Paul Maritz calls the “post-document era.” Instead of sitting at desks moving paper around, more people are working in ways that are difficult to define, that involve streams of information that don’t start or stop at specific times.

Netflix has what it calls an “unlimited vacation” policy, which allows workers to take time whenever they need it, provided they arrange to have their work completed when necessary. Social Media Group, a Toronto-based consulting firm, is another that has taken this approach — one that CEO Maggie Fox described in a recent blog post.

It could just be a little booth in every department of a Wal-Mart that would be designed to handle payments for a couple of items.

One of the biggest benefits for Square could be to get Wal-Mart to leverage its existing Card Case program that allows for simple payments and transaction information between the customer, the retailer and the payments platform. The Square Card Case was unveiled in May and initially only rolled out to five cities and 50 retail partners.

Square posits the Card Case as an Amazon-style "one-click buying" method, except in the real-world as opposed to digital payments.

Users that download the app can set up a "card" from a retailer and see what is happening with the retailer, from new deals to changes in the menu. Wal-Mart could institute the Card Case in a variety of ways, from the national level for what is happening with all Wal-Mart retail stores, to dedicating local managers to updating the card case for each individual store.

In terms of that goal, the Wal-Mart adoption may have the affect of a giant marketing campaign. The greatest benefit to Square from Wal-Mart may not be actual transaction revenue, but helping to speed up the awareness and adoption of the platform.

Having thoroughly figured out how to cover giant events from ground level, they are now exploring ultra-cheap alternatives to the hundreds of thousands of dollar news choppers used for aerial reporting of big events like protest marches and police clashes. In the process, the video bloggers are discovering both how far low-cost consumer technology has come and how much farther it needs to go.

Built-in Wi-Fi allows control from an iPhone or Android phone. The Wi-Fi also beams back moderate-resolution (640-by-480-pixel) video to the phone

Introduced in 2010, the one-pound styrofoam craft has four rotors and a plethora of sensors to keep it stable and navigable. In some ways, it resembles an iPhone, with accelerometers and a gyroscope to measure movement and location, for example. Parrot says that it can fly 50 feet high, up to 11 miles per hour and stay aloft for about 12 minutes on a charge.

Shapiro tracked down a European hobbyist group that had written its own software, called Javadrone, from scratch “and did a much better job of it.” Pool first used the AR Drone, which he’s dubbed the Occucopter, in December to cover a New York City rally for immigrant rights, but he said that the video from that attempt was unusable. He also made a test-run at Occupy Albany. Pool expects his first coverage with the new software and high-quality video will be at the Occupy Congress action on January 17 in Washington, DC.

the AR Done isn’t in his long-term plans due to its clear limitations. “You need perfect weather. It just doesn’t weigh enough,” said Shapiro.

Pool and Shapiro are already thinking bigger for their projects, and developing better tech to eventually provide to other live stream journalists. “The most important thing is the zeppelin,” said Pool. Basically a big balloon, it will be able to lift a lot of gear with just a little power for the rotors that steer it. And the slow speed is a benefit: It holds the camera steady and won’t suddenly go out of control. In fact, they are trying to build copters that work more like zeppelins.

“All it needs to do is hover and take a proper picture.” Instead of relying on constant commands from the ground, the zeppelin and copter will dial in periodically for updates.

Consumers who visit premier Hoyts-operated cinemas in Australia can pay for items while in their seats by scanning a mobile bar code. Each seat in the theater has a mobile bar code placed on the arm rest. To pay for an item, users open the app on their phones and scan the QR code. They can then select food and drink items to buy and have it sent to them at their seats. Moviegoers can also enter a six-digit code located above the mobile bar code to activate the app or tap a NFC-enabled smartphone over the arm rest to pay. Users who pay via the QkR app must link their MasterCard accounts by entering their information into the app.

The new NFC initiative is part of MasterCard Lab’s work that is focusing on ramping up the company’s work with mobile payments.

“Australian consumers are renowned for their love of innovation technologies, which is why MasterCard selected this market for the pilot,” Mr. Barr said.

Payment war With similar mobile wallet initiatives from Google and PayPal, the mobile payment space is expected to heat up in 2012.

However, MasterCard is playing a unique card in mobile payments by bringing mobile bar codes and apps into play.

PayPal’s new mobile point-of-sale solution is also slated to gain traction this year with big box retailers Home Depot and Office Depot rolling it out to stores (see story).

One of the challenges technologies such as Google Wallet have struggled with is that it is only available on Sprint Nexus S 4G mobile phones, which leaves out a majority of the mobile phone industry.

Since the QkR app is available on iPhone and Android devices, the app hits a majority of the smartphone market.

MasterCard is running an NFC pilot program at movie theaters in Australia that lets consumers pay for food and drink items via their mobile devices.

For MasterCard, one of the biggest hurdles will be educating both consumers and companies about the technology, but the initiative is proof that the payment company is placing big bets on mobile payments.

“MasterCard is consistently striving to deliver the next generation in payments,” Mr. Barr said. “Specifically in this pilot, mobile payments and making life easier by enhancing the in cinema experience,” he said.

"Mobile is one of the most talked about channels in the consumer cards and payments space and for good reason; it represents the most exciting opportunity in the industry for growth, engagement, and differentiation," said Mark Jackson, Director at ACG. "As a new channel, it is a blank canvas which enables providers to innovate for the consumer and demonstrate their relevance to the consumer's lifestyle. Therefore, it is not only commercially attractive, but also strategically important."

New Sage Mobile Payments 2.0 features:One Merchant Account — Businesses can now use their existing Sage Merchant ID (MID) account to add mobile payments to their existing payment solution, and at the same low processing rate.Updated User Interface on Smart Phones — The new, completely intuitive, colorful user interface makes processing payments easier than ever.Signature Capture — Businesses can give customers peace of mind knowing a signature is required to complete their transaction. With the swipe of a finger, a signature is captured to complete a sale. A signed receipt is emailed to both the business and their customer.Tax And Tip Calculator — Businesses no longer need a separate calculator to determine tax due and tips; Sage Mobile automatically calculates both.‘App Store’ Download — By going to the Android Marketplace or Apple’s iTunes store, businesses can download the Sage Mobile application at no cost. Then, once they have called Sage to set up their merchant account, they can start accepting mobile payments.

Businesses using Sage Mobile Payments can benefit from increased chances to close sales; anytime, anywhere transactions; a secure and PCI compliant payment processing environment; real-time authorizations for expedited cash flow; and minimal cost.Sage has been providing businesses and organizations with electronic payment systems for more than 20 years. Visit Sage Payment Solutions online at www.sagepayments.com.

Sage North America today announced the launch of Sage Mobile Payments 2.0, the latest version of its Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant mobile payments product. Sage Mobile Payments comes bundled with a Sage merchant account, and allows businesses to cost effectively and securely process credit and debit card transactions on mobile devices, like cell phones and tablets, including Apple’s iPad, across all major wireless carriers. Version 2.0 focuses on enhancing the customer experience through new features designed to save businesses time and increase the security of their transactions.