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Vantiv, a provider of mobile payment solutions, announced a new point-of-sale product on Friday that it will be rolling out in partnership with Verizon Wireless. The product, which is currently in field testing, includes custom tailored applications and an Android-based point-of-sale solution for accepting payments. The applications will be available in Verizon’s Private Application Store for Business. “Merchants and consumers are seeking greater mobility, control and timely access to data,” said Bill Weingart, Chief Product Officer of Vantiv. “We’ve teamed with Verizon to combine our payment and security expertise with Verizon’s ability to tailor development of mobile technologies to address those needs.” Verizon Wireless is also a member of ISIS, an initiative in which it has partnered with AT&T and T-Mobile to provide customers with NFC-based mobile payment options. Vantiv’s full press release follows after the break.

Vantiv Introduces Next Generation Mobile Payment Solution Teams with Verizon to Develop and Deliver More Flexibility and Opportunity for Merchants to Grow Their Businesses CINCINNATI, Jan. 31, 2012  — Vantiv, LLC (formerly Fifth Third Processing Solutions, LLC), a leading integrated payment processor, today announced that its customers will be the first to use an innovative point-of-sale device and system that will help merchants more effectively conduct business.

Vantiv is conducting a field trial of a new mobile payment solution developed in collaboration with Verizon. The new solution is architected on the Android operating system and features end-to-end, secure point-of-sale payment capabilities and business applications using Verizon’s Private Application Store for Business. As a result, Vantiv customers can tailor point-of-sale applications to meet their needs while taking advantage of remote device management.

With NFC baked into Symbian Belle (and a few Anna builds!), the number of applications with NFC capability keeps on growing. The latest addition to the number is Foursquare, as detailed in the NFC blog post quoted below. You can now just walk up to a Foursquare check-in poster at an event, tap your phone to it, even if the application isn't already running, and bang, you're checked in. 

From the blog post: The latest addition to the growing number of NFC enabled apps like Angry Birds Magic, Poken, Bounce and Asphalt5 is Foursquare. With the newest version of the application you can use your NFC enabled phone to check-in automatically by just tapping and NFC enabled/tagged poster. No more tedious steps of launching an application waiting for location fix, connecting etc... With NFC this is all done with a simple tap. Furthermore, the developer made it even easier for the user to check-in - without the need to have the app running - just tap and the app starts automatically and checks you in. Pretty awesome and again demonstrating the convenience of NFC! In a separate post Andreas explains how as a developer you can implement application autostart .  Foursquare with NFC support is available in the Nokia Store for Symbian NFC enabled phones (download Symbian version here, N9 support coming soon) . And the best thing about it is that it is not a separate application just for NFC sake. Developers simply added the support for NFC to the existing application version!

Symbian phones with NFC currently number six: the Nokia C7/Oro/Astound, plus the 700/701/603, and all future Nokia smartphones going forwards will also have NFC baked in.

Near-field communication (NFC) has been trashed by critics, who say it adds no value to consumers or is a technology in search of a need. But as we’ve pointed out, NFC is just a technology that can applied in a lot of different ways, apart from the digital wallet framework through which many people understand it.

Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more interesting projects and applications being built that show how NFC will be deployed outside of mobile payment situations. This not only indicates how flexible the technology is but also could help propel the overall technology in adoption, as consumers become aware of NFC and learn to use it for a variety of reasons.

Right now, NFC is still below the radar for most U.S. consumers, and the slow roll out of Google Wallet or the pending launch of Isis next year are, by themselves, only going to accelerate NFC adoption by so much. But having a host of uses for the technology could open people’s eyes and push them past any usability or safety concerns.

DUBAI — Digital contactless payment has become more popular among UAE travellers as they prefer to make payments and seek information in a visual format on a device, according to a latest global industry study.

Around 32 per cent of UAE respondents find using their phone rather than cash or credit cards to pay for things “extremely appealing” as against 24 per cent globally, revealed a major global industry study “From chaos to collaboration: How transformative technologies will herald a new era in travel”.

Commissioned by Amadeus, a travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, the new report outlines the way new technologies and social change will transform travel by 2020. The study challenges the industry to overcome the uncertainty and stress of modern-day travel through the application of new innovations.

May 24, 2011—CustomerIn Systems, a Canadian software-development firm located in Vancouver, B.C., is providing Near Field Communication (NFC) solutions for restaurants, bars and other entertainment establishments.

The first of what the company hopes will be many NFC solutions is a restaurant application dubbed the Connected Restaurant. This application, which has been deployed and tested, allows diners to use their mobile phones to request a table, order a drink and receive other services via their NFC-enabled phones.

known as SimpleNFC.com will provide developers with application software to build their own NFC solutions, and enable them to purchase software kits and tags.

We observed the emerging trend of online dating among today’s tech savvy generation and in order to simplify it, we decided to launch Dates Near Me, a free mobile dating service which caters towards the requirements of today’s generation. The iPhone dating application works by broadcasting the location of users based on GPS signals that permit them to find nearby singles and meet up right away if they desire. “Begin your search to find a like-minded companion, friend, lover or date using DatesNearMe mobile phone dating application on your iPhone and Google Android. With the singles showing an ever increasing desire for on the spot gratification, we realized the importance of mobile dating technology”, remarked the CEO of DatesNearMe.com Few reasons that make DatesNearMe better than any other mobile dating application are: 1. Highest level of privacy and security settings so that you can flirt with comfort. 2. Find singles around you with the help of our map view or list view. 3. 100% Free. Definitely no charges or catches. 4. Filled of features with high user friendliness. 5. Create your profile in less than no time. Just a few clicks if you update from Facebook. 6. Add users to your hot List, and see who has added you to theirs. 7. Easily flirt with hotties with winks, smiles and live messages.

Tools for collaboration The Internet of Things will introduce new smart objects to our homes. One challenge is to find effective solutions to enable different products to work together. Currently no standardised tools or distribution platforms exist in this area

A group of Norwegian researchers have been addressing this issue. In the research project Infrastructure for Integrated Services (ISIS) they have created a platform for developing and distributing applications for the Internet of Things. The platform encompasses a programming tool for developers, called Arctis and the website ISIS Store for downloading applications. The project has received funding from the Research Council of Norway's Large-scale Programme VERDIKT

"In a 'smart' everyday life objects and applications often need to be connected to several different communication services, sensors and other components. At the same time they need to respond quickly to changes and the actions of users. This requires very good control over concurrence in the system, which can be difficult to achieve with normal programming," he explains. Dr Kraemer believes that the tool will make it easier to create new applications, adapt them to existing applications and update software as necessary.

Visa, Philips team to promote 'contactless' credit card PARIS — Visa International and Royal Philips Electronics have unveiled an exclusive partnership agreement under which the two companies will jointly develop and promote the application of contactless chip technology for payment transactions.

Visa, Philips team to promote 'contactless' credit card PARIS — Visa International and Royal Philips Electronics have unveiled an exclusive partnership agreement under which the two companies will jointly develop and promote the application of contactless chip technology for payment transactions.

Visa, Philips team to promote 'contactless' credit card PARIS — Visa International and Royal Philips Electronics have unveiled an exclusive partnership agreement under which the two companies will jointly develop and promote the application of contactless chip technology for payment transactions.

Isis, the near field communication mobile wallet venture from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, took another step forward with the announcement that it has selected SIM card maker and digital security specialist Gemalto as its trusted service manager (TSM) for the wallet. The deal means Gemalto will manage the secure element on Isis phones, overseeing the transfer of payment credentials from banks and payment services to the Isis wallet application on phones.

Gemalto will essentially hold the payment keys for Isis, controlling which service providers are able to tap Isis for contactless payments. It won’t participate in the actual transactions but will enable a host of applications, from payments to coupons and loyalty cards.

The deal is an important step for Isis, which is moving ahead toward a launch in the first half of 2012 in Salt Lake City and Austin before a larger nationwide roll out. The joint venture will compete with Google Wallet, which launched in September with partners Sprint, MasterCard and Citibank and First Data as its trusted service manager.

Best Buy will send its Geek Squad into the cloud, after purchasing Boston-based mindSHIFT Technologies in a deal valued at $167 million.

MindSHIFT provides online applications and data center services for small to medium-sized businesses, boasting over 5,400 clients across the U.S., and with the purchase, Best Buy plans to extend its reach into the business world, including the legal, healthcare, financial, nonprofit, and education markets.

With its ubiquitous brick-and-mortar stores — and its Geek Squad driving Volkswagon Bugs from IT issue to IT issue — Best Buy believes it’s well positioned to offer cloud computing services to businesses with neither the time nor the resources to support their own IT infrastructure.

In the past 20 years, a lot of research has been done towards visual information retrieval on pictures and video files. Not all of it has been successful. But on the last years, the quality of these visual search engines has reached levels that are beginning to be acceptable for eDiscovery, compliance, law enforcement and intelligence applications.

More and more electronically stored information (ESI) is non-text based or does not contain any searchable text components: sound recordings, video and pictures are growing exponentially in size and more and more collaborative and social network applications support (only) these information formats.

In addition, a whole generation is growing up that no longer uses written communication forms such as letters or emails: they only use social networks and other new media forms for communication and collaboration.

Popular SaaS startup New Relic made its name monitoring application performance, but has added server monitoring to the mix to make the service more functional. It’s actually a natural fit for New Relic, though, as what’s going on with the servers can have a big impact on how an application is running.

The new server-monitoring information is displayed in context with application-performance data so that users can drill down to the cause of a problem once they see performance start lagging. On the server side, New Relic monitors CPU, disk and memory utilization, network activity, and processes, which SVP of Product Jim Gochee told me lets the company keep an application-performance focus while hitting the key metrics that affect system health.

New Relic claims more than 13,000 active users.

Face.com has launched the alpha of their new API. Now, almost any site could find faces on photos.Face.com, the company responsible for Facebook applications Photo Tagger and Photo Finder, lets you take any photo and quickly identify who is in it and where they are in the photo. This facial recognition is a boon to those tagging photos, and now Face.com is ready to bring a similar capability to the rest of the internet. May 3rd saw the launch of their new open API capable of scanning images and rapidly identifying the location, orientation, and identity of human faces. The API platform is meant for web designers who want to include a facial recognition feature on their own website. With this API, any company could let you upload a photo of yourself and find other photos of you in their database. Now in alpha testing, registering to try the API is free and very quick. Face.com, operated by Israel-based Vizi Labs, is looking to share the API with the developer community to see if the next killer application for facial recognition will arise organically. Eventually, platforms like this one may help your face become an access point to all the digital data about you on the web.

Read more at singularityhub.com

Now Mobilizy, the leaders in augmented reality geo-location applications for mobile have taken the next major leap by combining augmented reality with GPS navigation software. Wikitude Drive is the award winning GPS navigation application for Android devices, it has already been awarded numerous prizes including the “Galileo Master 2010” of the European Satellite Navigation Competition, “Global Champion” of the NAVTEQ LBS Challenge and Winner of the “World Summit Award 2010”. Previously available for Austria, Germany and Switzerland the application is now available for Spain, UK, France and Italy. What’s different about Wikitude Drive from other navigation applications is it overlays the live route over the camera feed rather than using a traditional map view.  This new augmented reality view enables you to see exactly where you are going and the route without having to take your eyes off the road ahead. Having said sometime back that someday AR will change navigation, it’s been enjoyable playing around with the beta and testing the UK maps. As everything is stored on the server all the maps are up to date and I was even able to navigate to my house which hasn’t even made Google Street View yet. Turn by turn instructions are given clearly using a speech engine so you’ll always have the expected voice instructions.

Twitter is updating its authentication system to give users more control over how third-party applications can access their accounts. Applications will now have to explicitly request additional permission from the user during the authentication process in order to send and receive direct messages on behalf of the user. At first glance, the change seems like a welcome improvement to the Twitter APIs. Support for granular permission tiers is one of the technical advantages of authority delegation systems like OAuth

Twitter's approach to implementing the feature comes with some serious problems for third-party client implementors

The OAuth standard was originally intended to enable server-to-server authentication for limited third-party access to non-public APIs. It is poorly suited for open APIs with an arbitrary number of independent third-party applications. More significantly, it doesn't address the needs of desktop and mobile authentication at all. Despite the significant limitations of the standard, it is being adopted and mandated by a number of social networking services, including Twitter.

“Wireless sensor networks are the enabling technology for key applications in defense, health care, home and industrial automation and energy management. Technology leaders have recognized this fact and are providing high end application solutions for their customers based on advanced WSN technology. The Millennial Net Energy Management System which includes LEM energy sub meters, wireless pneumatic thermostats and numerous other devices allow for monitoring and control of commercial, public and light industrial buildings of several hundred thousand square feet with unprecedented scalability and reliability, leading to substantial energy savings and ROIs of around 1 year,” said Dieter Schill, President and CEO of Millennial Net.

This gateway connects the networked devices to existing Building Management System via BACnet or communicates with hosted internet-based application for monitoring and control. The devices are designed to work with legacy HVAC systems, fixtures, and appliances, making it unnecessary to upgrade HVAC equipment to save energy. Energy savings are achieved by improved compliance and energy policy enforcement.

RFID tag information can be communicated in real-time to the enterprise database through Wi-Fi, CDMA, GSM or Bluetooth connections associated with PDAs and Smartphones. The SDiD Card allows for safe and secure product and client information storage, updates and processing.

The SDiD Card also supports Near Field Communication (NFC) technology allowing consumers to use their devices to access product and entertainment information, compare prices and perform transactions. Consumers can make contactless payments, redeem coupons and points and receive instant promotions and rewards. NFC is a combination of contactless identification and interconnection technologies developed by Philips and Sony. NFC enables short-range radio frequency (RF) communication between personal electronic devices. The NFC based SDiD Card allows PDA and Smartphone users to access product information or entertainment content such as pictures, music and video clips by waving their mobile devices in front of a smart poster or kiosk. Users can also exchange such information with other users through NFC or mobile connection of their devices.

Wireless Dynamics offers two SDiD Card versions, the SDiD 1010 and the SDiD 1020. The SDiD 1010 is a NFC-based SD Card supports ISO14443A standard, NFCIP-1, Philips MIFARE tag and Sony's FeliCa tag. It is ideal for contactless payment, advertising and promotional applications.

Turkcell, Turkey’s largest mobile operator, has announced the launch of a SIM-based NFC road toll payment application on the Turkcell T11 smart phone.

Developed in collaboration with Bank Asya, the app allows users to migrate their plastic KGS toll payment cards onto their T11 smart phone to pay for fares when crossing bridges and freeway turnpikes.

ment cards onto their T11 smart phone to pay for fares when crossing bridges and freeway turnpikes.

Luxtera, which makes a optics chips that has characteristics of a standard silicon chip, has developed a hybrid chip for the data center market that can achieve speeds of more than 100 gigabits per second. Those are the same speeds that telecommunications firms are enabling via long-haul cables to handle the massive demand for bandwidth worldwide, but in this case are designed to handle the next wave of big data and networking-intensive applications inside webscale and cloud data centers.

Luxtera was founded in 2001 and builds chips that allow messages to be sent at the speed of light, but instead of using specialty materials that optics chipmakers such as Infinera use, Luxtera uses traditional silicon chips made using the CMOS process. This cuts down on the cost of the chips and makes it possible to use them for high-volume jobs, such as switching in the data center.

Luxtera’s single chip opto-electronic transceiver includes four fully integrated 28Gbps transmit and receive channels powered from a single laser for an aggregate unencoded data rate of up to 112Gbps. The device is targeted for 100Gbps Ethernet, OTN and InfiniBand applications as well as emerging OIF (Optical Internetworking Forum) Short Reach (SR) and Very Short Reach (VSR) electrical interconnect to host systems. … The optical transceivers can be socketed directly onto the customers’ switch or server boards for both backplane and rack mount connectivity.

In this survey-based report, we look at the business drivers and adoption levels for social business and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, the benefits and issues being highlighted by users, and what platforms and infrastructures are being used for delivery.

We take a short look at three specific applications – Enterprise Q&A, Open Innovation, and Sales & Marketing collaboration – and make recommendations for maximizing the benefits from these new systems of engagement.