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It is clear that MasterCard have taken mobile payments seriously, if the number of initiatives announced during the past period is an indication.

As one of the big card payment providers and a major player in payments in mature economies, this is further ratification of the importance of this industry for emerging markets.

Utilising Intel two-factor authentication in conjunction with Symantec to bring more secure mobile payments to market (Read here)

Leading coffee chain Starbucks is bringing its mobile payment system to its chain of 700 stores in the UK, allowing owners of the Apple iPhone to make payments for their purchase straight from their handset.

The mobile payment service is already up and running in the US, and is scheduled to launch in the UK from January 5th, when the mobile app should be launched in the Apple App Store.

The company claim that customers using the service reduce transaction time by around 10 seconds, which soon adds up when you are serving hundreds of customers a day. Customers who use the app can still get Starbucks freebies and other promotions added to their account.

Orange and Barclaycard have launched the UK's first contactless payment service allowing customers to pay for purchases using a smartphone.

Orange Quick Tap allows payments of up to £15 in over 50,000 outlets around the country, including Pret A Manger, McDonald's and Subway.

Customers have to purchase a Samsung Tocco Lite smartphone to use the service, which is available for £55 on pay-as-you-go or free on a £10 per month, two-year contract.

Research In Motion has staked its claim as a leader in the mobile payment and Near Field Communications space with the announcement of a new pilot project which will see Telefonica employees at the network operator's Madrid headquarters able to pay for goods in local retailers with their BlackBerrys.

The Telefonica Wallet for BlackBerry project will allow users of the NFC enabled BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 handsets to pay by touching their device against a reader in participating stores.

The SIM-based NFC technology stores funds and transcation details electronically on the phone's chip while at the front end an application on the device allows user to choose which cards they want to use, as well as get account balances.

Near-field communications (NFC) technology will be built into one in five smartphones by 2014 as mobile payment and interactive promotions take off, according to a report from Juniper Research.

Over 23 million NFC-capable smartphones are expected to be in circulation by the end of 2011, said the NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments report.

This willl rise to around 300 million by 2014, and half of these devices are expected to be active in the US.

HANOVER: O2 is to introduce new services in the UK in the coming months, including a wallet application and direct-to-bill and peer-to-peer payment facilities, as the company looks to take advantage of mainstream smartphone use.

The services are already available in countries such as Germany and Kenya, and will be made available to UK customers soon, according to Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 parent company Telefónica, during his keynote at CeBIT.

"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.

The unthinkable has happened: Twitter has decided to make money. Longtime users of the microblogging service, which for years has operated without a viable business model, are anguished at the prospect of paid ads appearing among their tweets. But advertising is just the tip of the iceberg. Twitter’s vast and ever-growing data store will be the true profit center, say company execs — both for Twitter and for independent developers.Exactly to what extent Twitter plans to make its data available to outside parties remains unclear, but the company’s APIs are already accessible for developers to access its services, and last October it signed deals with Google and Microsoft to allow tweets to appear alongside search results. Now Twitter is reportedly developing “analytical products” aimed at marketers who want to mine the Twittersphere for insight into public opinion about companies, products, and brands — and it’s encouraging others to do the same.Read more at infoworld.com

Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates were computer science students without any real plan. They started Facebook because it was fun, used their talents, and was a novel way for Harvard students and alumni to stay in touch. Zuckerberg never anticipated it would host over 400 million members. And he had no clear idea where the money would come from. But he kept at it until, in 2007, Facebook let outside developers create applications for it, and game developers started buying ads on Facebook to keep attracting players. Hardly Zuckerberg’s strategy in 2004.And when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, started writing code in 1996 they had no clear plan or idea how they would make money either. But that didn’t stop them from starting. It wasn’t until 2002 and 2003 that AdWords and AdSense became the company’s money-making platform. Last week, in Don’t Get Distracted by Your Plan, I wrote about the importance of staying flexible, about the dangers of sticking too closely to your plan. But what if you have no plan? Read more at blogs.hbr.org

As part of a Data Privacy Day report, Microsoft commissioned a study of over 1,200 hiring and recruitment managers. In one segment, they asked what kinds of sites they considered in researching applicants online. The short answer: almost everything. As PC World put it—and as Jason detailed in his online identity primer—having a decent-looking personal web site, with blog-like material showing your grasp of topics and general up-to-date skills, is the best defense against anything and everything else a potential employer or contractor might find about you online. Then again, take a look at how many online realms hiring managers peek into when peeking at you. It's reassuring, if you've put time into cleaning up your online image, and perhaps a wake-up call if you've still got LOLcats littering your photo service pages

Not very impressive, if these are the trends occupying the Facebook public mind. BTW (by the way) FML stands for (Fuck My Life). What can that be about? It’s #2 and I’ve never heard of it! It does not sound very positive. Is it the equivalent of whining? It’s a genuine question.Amplify’d from www.independent.co.ukTop Status Trends of 2009:1. Facebook ApplicationsSpecific words: Farmville, Farm Town, Social Living2. FMLSpecific word: FML3. Swine FluSpecific words: Flu, Swine Flu, H1N14. Celebrity DeathsSpecific words: Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Billy Mays5. FamilySpecific words: Family, Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, Kids6. MoviesSpecific words: New Moon, Transformers, Star Trek, The Hangover, Paranormal Activity and Harry Potter7. SportsSpecific words: Steelers, Yankees8. Health CareSpecific words: Health Care, No one should have to…9. FBSpecific words: FB, FB Friends, News Feed10. TwitterSpecific words: Twitter, RT11. YearsSpecific words: 2008, 2009, 201012. Lady GagaSpecific words: Gaga, Poker Face13. YardSpecific word: Yard14. ReligionSpecific words: Easter, Lord, God15. ISpecific words: I, isFacebook Memology ranks the most commonly used phrases or words in people’s status updates in 2009 and compares them to the trends seen in 2008.Read more at www.independent.co.uk

nterested? The backbone of Conversational Currency ™ is whatever social medium a person likes using. Where one takes it from there is the value this community provides

Amplify’d from www.conversationalcurrency.comThis community shares  tactical applications with community members on a one-to-one basis. We do not share the ‘secret sauce’ on a static website since there exists a myriad of customized solutions which can be developed using the fundamentals and vehicles being invented.Since we based all communications using the power of social media, we ask viewers to start with a very general engagement opportunity:Here we invite the world of bloggers who want to discuss, and propagate their knowledge about, and need for “Conversational Currency ™ “. A special invitation goes out to brands who can advertise their “conversations” on our site, and ultimately learn about our ‘solution’ one-on-one.Selected blogs (and particularly brand implementation plans) will be inserted into Business Week…drawing national attention and exposure to your demonstrated ability to turn ‘Conversation into Currency’…and perhaps be the 1st!!Read more at www.conversationalcurrency.com

AirStrip Technologies is setting your doctor free. The Texas based company is developing a suite of hardware/software solutions that allow physicians and nurses to monitor important vital signs from their smart phone. Now, your doctor can use her iPhone to keep track of heartbeats, nurse’s notes, exams results, and drug doses even when she is out of the hospital. AirStrip already has their obstetrician application (AirStrip OB) up and running in facilities across the US, and they’re working on similar Apps for critical care, cardiology, imaging, and lab work. By extending their virtual presence, doctors may be able to provide better healthcare 24/7. This may also be a sign that virtual diagnosis, monitoring, and expert support are poised to revolutionize medical practice. You can check out a free demo of AirStrip OB at the App Store, or watch a local news segment on the program in the video below.Read more at singularityhub.com

(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/f92935/global_mobile_br) has announced the addition of the "Global - Mobile Broadband - Location Based Services Insights" report to their offering. Despite the hype regarding this technology since around the year 2000; we have just recently begun to see applications for this technology become available to mass audiences. This is thanks to services like FourSquare and Facebook Places offering users the ability to check-in. The future of mobile Location Based Services will continue to emerge as handsets with smarter capabilities, new apps and user interfaces continue to permeate the market. This report provides a broad global overview of trends and developments in the mobile location based services industry, including a brief overview of GPS.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/f92935/global_mobile_br

The Meaning of Being There is Related to a Specific Activation in the Brain Located in the Parahypocampus

Social Presence in Virtual World Surveys

Moderating Effects of Social Presence on Behavioral Conformation in Virtual Reality Environments: A Comparison between Social Presence and Identification

Literacy has evolved beyond the definition of the ability to read and write. Literacy now includes the ability to seamlessly interpret on-screen information, such as the graphics in a videogame, and the ability to rapidly decode symbols. To be effective, gamers must be able to quickly decipher each game’s symbols and conventions, which is essentially what good readers have to do in terms of deciphering the alphabetic code.

Serious Games are not replacing literacy activities, they ARE literacy activities.

Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. Students are developing new reading skills that are neither taught nor evaluated in school.

roughly 30 percent more individuals in the U.S. carry a smart phone than buy a daily newspaper.

New York Public Library In a move that embodies the public intellectual history of America and the perfect application of social media, the New York Public Library plans to celebrate its centennial smart phone style.

It recently launched a “Find the Future” Foursquare badge that encourages and rewards exploration of public libraries in New York City. It transforms visitors into library ambassadors who, via location-based check-ins, end up promoting library services, programs, and collections to their Foursquare friends.

The first dual-core Android tablets only arrived in February, but Nvidia is already showing off an improved quad-core chip that’s expected to power tablets by August. The system-on-a-chip, codenamed “Kal-El,” has four computer cores and a dozen graphics processors that will offer a huge performance boost in mobile devices. Nvidia announced the chip in February, with support for 1440p video playback, which is higher than most HDTV sets.

Kal-El should bring faster device response times, vastly improved graphics, quicker camera applications and more. But perhaps the chip is too impressive when it comes to product timing.

the first dual-core tablets launched in February and slates using this new quad-core chip could be available by August, that means the very young Google Honeycomb tablet market is essentially running through a product cycle in six short months

I was especially interested in commentary on the Chinese market by Robin Goad, Hitwise UK’s research director, who adds some sharp focus on the huge growth in micro-blogging in China – and the tool of choice isn’t Twitter: [...] Chinese Internet users are primarily interested in micro-blogging when it comes to social media.  Sina Micro blog (China’s alternative to Twitter) accounted for 1 in every 158 Internet visits in China for April 2011. This makes China one of the most voracious micro-blogging nations worldwide, with a greater market share of visits going to micro-blogging sites in China than in the UK, US, France, Canada, Australia or India. Twitter is by far the most dominant micro-blogging platform in the UK and US, but Twitter accounted for 1 in every 250 visits online in the UK and 1 in every 555 in the US during April 2011, much lower than Sina Micro’s dominance of the online market in China. What’s more, this data doesn’t take into account mobile or 3rd party applications, so the actual usage of micro-blogging in China is likely much higher than our statistics suggest. The metrics Robin posted underline the sheer scale of what’s happening in China in terms of connecting people. Add that info to other metrics such as Royal Pingdom’s The incredible growth of the Internet since 2000. It shows China as clearly the top country on the internet with 420 million users (compared to 22.5 million in 2000).

The internet of things with its unprecedented level of connectivity does not only catalyze the rise of “social” but also the rise of “smart.” And smart means complex. Increasingly, products and services are multi-functional, multi-layered, and connected to a broader ecosystem of services, serving as a platform for added-value applications. Companies, across industries, are beginning to develop smart solutions – from smart phones, smart energy, smart healthcare, smart housing, to smart mobility, and more. Smart ecosystems have emerged as the lynchpin of innovation – as the holy grail for user experiences that brands can truly own.

What if “connectedness” was a new modus operandi for brands and required them to be “smart brands”? By textbook definition, smart systems are self-organized systems with built-in feedback mechanisms and the ability to constantly reorganize themselves in order to adapt to their ever-changing environment. They are capable of describing and analyzing a situation, and taking decisions based on the available data in a predictive or adaptive manner, thereby performing smart actions.

as Allison Fine, author of Social Change in the Connected World, puts it aptly: “It is counterintuitive but true; the more decision making we push away from the center, the more powerful our social networks become. That’s the power-to-the-edges concept.”