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Google Offers went live in Brooklyn, New York today, much to the happiness of everyone from Kings County to Gowanus. Google Offers, a direct competitor to companies like Groupon and Living Social, first landed in Manhattan this past July with Belgian fries and mango chutney at Pommes Frites. Today, Google’s daily deal service is offering $4 general admission tickets to the New York Aquarium, which is 73% off the normal $14.95 price tag. The Aquarium, which is located just off the Coney Island boardwalk is open year round and features animals such as California sea lions, stingrays, tropical fish, moray eels, penguins, seals, otters, walruses, starfish, sea turtles and sharks!

Location Media Microsoft Mobile Sessions Shareables Social Media Twitter Video Editions Africa Asia Australia Canada Europe India Latin America Middle East UK United States Languages France Nederland Polska Portugal Romania Russia Google Offers is now live in Brooklyn: Starting with $4 for SHARKS! 9th November 2011 by Courtney Boyd Myers Google Offers went live in Brooklyn, New York today, much to the happiness of everyone from Kings County to Gowanus. Google Offers, a direct competitor to companies like Groupon and Living Social, first landed in Manhattan this past July with Belgian fries and mango chutney at Pommes Frites. Today, Google’s daily deal service is offering $4 general admission tickets to the New York Aquarium, which is 73% off the normal $14.95 price tag. The Aquarium, which is located just off the Coney Island boardwalk is open year round and features animals such as California sea lions, stingrays, tropical fish, moray eels, penguins, seals, otters, walruses, starfish, sea turtles and sharks!

New mobile payment services help banks realise the future of payments

Visa Europe, Europe’s leading payments technology company, today announced the launch of Visa Mobile Person-to-Person payments and Visa Alerts: two new services designed to help consumers manage their money and make payments using their mobile phones.

the new services give Visa Europe’s member banks the tools to respond to growing consumer demand for fast, secure, convenient and innovative ways to make and manage payments using their mobile phones.

IDC’s Q1 scorecard for smartphones in western Europe is out. Nokia’s sales are sliding 10% year-on-year in a market for all phones growing at 5%, while the smartphone sector grew 76% (how long before we stop using the word smartphone, you might well ask). Nokia’s smartphone market share has gone from 57% to 19.6% in two years. Europe’s biggest handset maker is now Samsung and the fastest growing is HTC. The biggest platform is Android, with 35.7%, followed by Apple iOS on 20%, and then Symbian and BlackBerry OS.

4 out of those 5 companies are heavily committed to Android, and two are also committed to Windows Phone,

In the Android sphere, Sony Ericsson has announced the latest lot of Xperia phones. They’re keeping the Xperia Mini brand from the hit X10, and the Mini Pro gets a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Both run Android 2.3/Gingerbread and get a new Facebook app.

Attention smartphone users: the recent launch of the first two satellites for Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system (GNSS) could make things a lot more interesting in about four years.

Galileo will deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to one meter range, compared to 10 meters for GPS, the European Space Agency (ESA) states, and it plans to give non-European users access.

Meanwhile, Apple’s new iPhone 4S has a chip that will be able to access Glonass (the Russian version of GPS), Engadget reports. Other manufacturers, including Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics and Texas Instruments, will also support Glonass — and Galileo as soon as it is operational — with new chipsets and software able to receive and integrate all three main GNSS systems.

Putting sensors and actuators in everything from homes and cars to shoes and coffee cups promises to make our daily lives easier, safer and more efficient. But such 'ambient intelligence' requires a merger of the virtual and digital worlds. EU-funded researchers in the Sensei project are bridging the gap and their results are already leading to 'smart cities' being set up all over Europe.

'Today, the internet world is a virtual world of data mostly stored and accessed from servers,' says Dr Hérault. In the future, we will have an 'Internet of things' in which a multitude of things in the real, physical world will be digitised continuously: in many situations, we won't just be asking web servers for data, we will be asking sensors in everyday objects for data, he suggests. 'We need to understand how best to interconnect the real world and the virtual world.' 

An open service interface that uses semantic information to process data means that information is accessible and understandable to both humans and machines.  'You could ask, for example, "What is the temperature on Oxford Street?" The system would decode that semantic information, access sensor networks on Oxford Street that have temperature sensors, check the reliability of each network with regard to information quality, and return an answer,' Dr Hérault explains. 

The arrival of NFC in handsets has been talked about since the world was young, but big steps are finally being taken towards making its availability more widespread. Samsung’s new Galaxy Nexus device supports NFC through Google Wallet; RIM and Telefónica recently announced a new trial of the technology in Europe next year; and America’s big three networks have formed the ISIS alliance to enable a common architecture for NFC mobile payments.

There have been rumours that Microsoft is working on an NFC payment platform to rival Google Wallet, while this week, it was suggested that NFC will soon play a part in how Microsoft devices communicate with each other. Coleman didn’t spill the beans on any specifics, but did say that “in the not too distant future, there are some exciting things that will be coming through with NFC from Microsoft.”

In an interview on Windows Phone with TechRadar, Will Coleman, product manager at Microsoft UK, said that “NFC is supported by it, but needs to be enabled by the OEM. So if any [manufacturer] wants to enable it, that can be done by all means.”

Before the American people were protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, the president managed to sign an international treaty which would permit foreign companies to demand that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) remove web content in the United States without any legal oversight. Entitled the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the treaty was signed by Obama on October 1, 2011, but it is currently a subject of discussion because the White House is circulating a petition demanding that senators ratify the treaty.

the White House has done some maneuvering — characterizing the treaty as an "executive agreement" — thereby bypassing approval by members of Congress. Concerned by this action of the administration, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore., above left) sent a letter to President Obama in which he declared: It may be possible for the U.S. to implement ACTA or any other trade agreement, once validly entered, without legislation if the agreement requires no change in U.S. law. But regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law ... the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress' authority, absent congressional approval.

Similarly, TechDirt observes: ... [E]ven if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement? The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the President legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.

With the Nokia NFC (Near Field Communication) shell on their phone, consumers will be able to access a variety of services and exchange information with a simple touch gesture.

The Nokia NFC shell offers consumers access to browsing, and text message services simply by touching tags that contain service shortcuts. Consumers are also able to give their favorite service shortcuts to other users by touching another NFC-compatible device with their phone. In addition, the Nokia NFC shell comes with tags that can be used for creating own personal service shortcuts.

The NFC technology evolved from a combination of contactless identification (RFID) and interconnection technologies. NFC operates in the 13.56 MHz frequency range, over a distance of typically a few centimetres. NFC technology is standardized in ISO 18092, ISO 21481, ECMA (340, 352 and 356) and ETSI TS 102 190. NFC is also compatible to contactless smart card infrastructure based on ISO 14443 A, i.e. Philips MIFARE technology, as well as Sony's FeliCa card.

PlaySpan, a virtual goods monetization platform, has been acquired by Visa. According to the release, Visa will pay $190 million in cash for the company, plus additional payouts for performance milestones. The deal comes nearly a year after Visa spent a whopping $2 billion on e-payment company CyberSource. Visa says that the acquisition of PlaySpan complements the CyberSource deal and will extend the company’s presence in digital and mobile commerce.

This is a big exit for PlaySpan, which has raised a total of $46 million in funding since its launch four years ago. PlaySpan has been growing like a weed, striking partnerships with a number of social network, gaming and media companies, including Viacom, Disney, Facebook, Ubisoft, and Sanrio.

PlaySpan’s flagship product UltimatePay is a ‘Monetization as a Service’ platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user’s location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience. Currently, PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games, virtual world publishers and social networks.

The best of mobile technologies are now combined to offer hoteliers the most advanced front desk bypass solution that is 100% deployable today, 100% future proof, 100% compatible with the major electronic locks and 0% dependent on Mobile Phone Operators/Carriers

Modern travelers are expecting self-service options to make their journey easier. Who did not dream to one day be able to arrive at the hotel and go straight to the room without having to go through the burden of the check-in process? Thanks to Mobile Key by OpenWays, guests can already choose to proceed straight to their room upon arrival and securely open their door with their cell phone. They are no longer forced to wait in line at the front desk – unless they want to.

100% Deployable Today / 100% Future Proof / Truly Ubiquitous "Mobile Key works TODAY with ALL cell phones worldwide. With NFC (Near Field Communication) enabled cell phones gradually hitting the market in larger volumes during 2012 and 2013, we are pleased to announce Mobile Key DUAL© with Pure NFC™," said Pascal Metivier, Founder and CEO of OpenWays. "Mobile Key DUAL© combines the established and highly ubiquitous CAC™ (Crypto Acoustic Credential) technology with both RFID and NFC technologies so we can offer the only 'fully deployable today' while 'fully future proof' solution to our customers. Thanks to Mobile Key DUAL©, hoteliers can offer today a mobile-based front desk bypass solution to all their guests while being sure that the investment they are making is made for the long run."

You hear things about Facebook. You see things. As its audience matures, a subtle shift might be under way. Of course, numbers remain staggering. Facebook is heading toward the 800 million users mark, mostly by conquering new markets. The growth is distributed as follows: Middle-East Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America grow by about 60% a year; Europe by 35% to 40%; and North America by 25%.

It now seems Facebook's usage is undergoing a split. Active Facebookers become increasingly engaged, spend more time doing more stuff, while "reasonable" users (over 25) become more reluctant and careful.

older people are joining in western markets, while a younger audience grows in emerging ones. More changes are under way as the internet spreads on both landlines and mobile devices: over the past three years, China added more internet users than exist in the US today. Furthermore, in the fastest growing markets, Facebook captures more than 90% of all social network traffic. So, for the near future, Facebook doesn't have a growth problem.

Advertising and content network operator Adconion this morning announced that it has acquired smartclip, a European digital video advertising startup.

Smartclip’s network of in-stream and connected TV distribution partners stand to increase the volume of inventory available across Adconion’s digital distribution platform, which delivers targeted ads and content across display, email, social and both in-banner and in-stream video.

Adconion says that, with the inclusion of over 500 new publisher sites from the Smartclip portfolio, Adconion will significantly grow its content network (current reach is said to be close to 700 million unique users) and expand its footprint to 17 countries worldwide.

Inviting customers back to their carts

Only three out of every 10 online shopping carts actually make it to checkout, according to email marketing vendor Listrak. That's 70% of carts lying abandoned in the virtual corridors of ecommerce. Listrak wants to improve those numbers. It's one of several vendors offering "shopping cart abandonment solutions" — essentially, programs to follow up with shoppers who've left the store and ask them, "Haven't you forgotten something?"

Retailers would love to close more of those sales: Listrak estimates $18 billion lost in sales to U.S. retailers every year. A Forrester study last May found that 89% of consumers had abandoned a shopping cart at least once. Forrester's authors attributed that high rate to growing user sophistication: as shoppers become more experienced online, they are more likely to comparison shop even as they move toward checkout. Other industry observers offer a simpler explanation: shoppers are shocked at high shipping costs. A 2006 study by Goecart blamed comparison shopping, high shipping costs, and plain old running out of time as the leading causes of abandonment.

New technologies, apps and add-ons let smartphones both receive and make payments, and the next generation of phones in the coming years will go further than ever to letting your mobile replace your wallet.

Cash transactions are getting rarer with debit and credit cards being accepted nearly anywhere, but you still run into places that stubbornly remain cash-only, whether it's a lunch wagon, a little independent café, or even an artist selling paintings at a market.

Lately, several solutions have popped up for small businesses - or anyone, really - to accept card payments by attaching a card reader to their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, or other smartphone.

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.

Back in 2007, the Chief Executive of Visa Europe claimed that we could all be living in a cashless society by 2012. With that milestone fast approaching, it’s safe to assume that notes/bills and coins won’t be going the way of the dodo that quickly, but a new forecast has emerged from another giant from the finance world.

PayPal has produced a new report which will be released shortly – Money: The Digital Tipping Point – in which it predicts not only that consumers won’t need cash to go shopping, but they won’t need a wallet at all. And when can we expect this vision to be realized? 2016, it seems.

We’ve written quite extensively about mobile payment technology in recent times. Back in September we spoke with Ben Milne, founder of peer-to-peer Web and mobile payment platform Dwolla, who discussed the future of m-commerce. And prior to that, The Next Web’s Brad McCarty looked at how NFC will get its piece of the $4 quadrillion payments pie. There’s little question mobile payments will play a big part in the future of commerce. But will it completely outmanoeuvre paper, coins AND plastic by 2016?

45 mobile operators have pledged their support for subscriber identity module (SIM) based Near Field Communication (NFC) implementations in an announcement made by mobile industry trade body the GSM Association (GSMA).

The large existing user-base of low-cost, mid-tier, NFC-less feature phones popular in emerging markets is a prime target for this technology. However, technical difficulties have prevented the adoption of SIM-based NFC. As the SIM card slot is located behind the battery, radio signals to and from the NFC module are effectively blocked in many phones.

Potential applications for this technology include mobile payments, public transit access, event ticketing, secure access to buildings or vehicles, identification, and person-to-person (P2P) data sharing.

The series of events will be launching in Paris, Brussels, Madrid, London, Milan and Berlin on the 18th of May, the aim of this high-tech outdoor treasure hunt is to encourage people to rediscover the environmental treasures hidden in these great cities by harnessing every day technology in their search for geocaches, rewards and fun. For all those taking part the rewards are multiple: besides the satisfaction of discovering beautiful outdoor locations, the geocaches, the give-aways and the joy of adventure, Timberland is offering a hiking trip to Iceland

a group of international researchers meeting in Istanbul, Turkey has released what they call “stunning proof” that confirms findings from the Council of Europe -- pulsed digital signals from cell phones disrupt DNA, impair brain function and lower sperm count. A meeting convened by Environmental Health Trust, with the Turkish cancer society, and Gazi University, revealed the new research that the scientists say shows damage to DNA, brain and sperm

Nesrin Seyhan, an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) and NATO and head of the Biophysics Department and Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory at Gazi University in Ankara, presented findings that he says confirm the warning that just four hours of exposure to cell phone radiation disrupts the ability of human brain cells to repair damaged genes. “We are deeply concerned about what this could mean for public health,” Seyhan said. Prof. Wilhelm Mosgoeller from the Medical University of Vienna, who has led European research teams, said he found that the cell waves induce DNA breaks. Despite industry claims to the contrary, he says DNA breaks are real.

Insect studies A research team at the University of Athens said insect studies have demonstrated that acute exposure to GSM (Global System for Mobile) signals brings about DNA fragmentation in insects’ ovarian cells, and consequently a large reduction in the reproductive capacity of the insects. Further studies, they said, demonstrated that long exposures induced cell death to the insects in the study. Other researchers said throughout a gestation period, exposure to radiation for just six minutes a day affects the bone formation of fetuses. The researchers also worry about the effect of cell phone use on children.