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Every summer, fifty fifth graders converge on Manhattan for a week-long game design camp called Mobile Quest and magic happens.

A game is a complex system. It is a miniature world, in many ways analogous to the world we live in. The game occurs in a space or setting. It has its own physical laws or rules. It engages people or players, who generate outcomes by making choices and taking actions. Learning occurs largely by trial and error, and through this learning a clear goal or goals emerge. There is a sense of progress, a system of feedback, incentives, reward, punishment, reputation. The only difference is that the game world has been 100 percent designed, and it is an experience players can choose to walk away from. This means game designers must capture and retain players' attention and interest quickly.

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.

It’s like a Hollywood political thriller come true: a handful of people lurking in the shadows, controlling the minds of millions. New research reveals that it’s possible for a few individuals to enslave an entire network, even if they aren’t highly connected themselves.Scientists have figured out how to identify the nodes — the points that link to other points in a network — that when tweaked can control the entire network. The research, published in the May 12 Nature, might lead to more secure power grids, tricks for controlling the metabolic processes of cells and marketing campaigns that spread like the plague.

Geofencing: As long as you're here ... One of the promises of mobile advertising — at least from the merchant's perspective — has been the potential to advertise to customers when they're near your store and can act immediately (and impulsively) on your offer. To make these location-triggered offers, merchants need to delineate a "geofence" around their retail outlets — a radius or polygonal area in which customers who have opted into a deal program can be notified on their mobiles that an offer is available nearby. Indeed, Groupon is working on adding such location-based deals to its daily offers, according to a letter sent from its general counsel David Schellhase to two U.S. Representatives who were asking about Groupon's privacy policies.

By some measures, 90% of all texts are opened within three minutes of receiving them.

Goodman said that location-triggered delivery is highly effective with "exceedingly high" response rates: between 11% and 60% of users are likely to visit a store when pinged with an offer if they're nearby, and up to 46% are likely to make a purchase.

EnOcean’s sensors are the latest in a wave of increasingly connected and intelligent objects that some people have termed “the internet of things.” British microprocessor giant Arm Holdings, for example, has bolstered this development with its mbed project, which gives engineers a cheap toolkit to work on a microcontroller, and the encouragement to come up with novel ways to connect them to other (often unconventional) objects. Other companies, like EnOcean and semiconductor maker Atheros, are focused on developing low-cost, low-consumption devices that can operate on wireless networks. Pressing an EnOcean switch to turn a light on generates enough energy to send out a wireless signal, which enables communication between the switch and a wireless receiver up to nearly 100 feet away. Until recently, EnOcean sensors were only communicating amongst themselves and a specific wireless receiver within range. Now, with TCP/IP enabled communication, any computer hooked up to the internet can communicate with the sensors.

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.

PayPal has shown their new peer-to-peer NFC payment system at MobileBeat 2011 today, using two Android powered Samsung Nexus S phones.  The premise is simple -- open the app on both phones, enter the payment amount on one, and bump them together.  After the buzz, enter account details, and the payment is processed.  Afterwards, the normal email receipts are generated and sent out, just like we did it in the old days.There's no firm date when to expect this, but PayPal says "late this summer".  Another compelling reason for manufacturers to put NFC capabilities in their new models, or just a security concern?  Either way, we'll find out soon enough.  Hit the break to see a demo video.

Mobile advertising revenue reached $700 million in the U.S. in 2011, according to Gartner research group. That’s a drop in the ocean compared to Internet ad revenue, which hit $7.3 billion in just the first quarter of 2011, according to figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Concerns about privacy, tracking and the disclosure of personal information could limit the number of people opting in to targeted or local ad mobile campaigns, said Jason Koslofsky, an attorney who specializes in consumer privacy and telecommunications at Arent Fox. Businesses have also been hesitant for these same reasons. “It hurts brands if it looks as though they are generating spam,” Koslofsky said, adding,“companies shouldn’t want to be seen as though they are tracking their users’ every move.”

While 9% of adults in the U.S. said they would use their phones to learn about in-store promotions or event, interest in location-based offers was low, according to a report in February by Forrester Research. Only 6% of adults in the U.S. said that they are interested in receiving location-based retail offers on their mobile phones and only 4% are interested in receiving time-sensitive promotions such as daily specials.

Both of these hacks were fully fledged platforms, another great project was more of a utility. ScanCampaign allows users to generate their own QR codes, which the author hoped could be used for donations to charity or for campaigns such as UK Uncut – to quickly share information.

Taking disparate data sources and giving them a unified view is tricky: do the data sets match? can you link the concepts contained? and so on. These guys did a great job doing those things and provided plenty of hooks for further thought.

A research team at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden has come up with a new optical amplifier that can help boost the efficiency of backhaul optical networks, a move that could have a big impact on the overall economics of bandwidth.

Chalmers’ new breakthrough is more efficient and allows optical signals to be sent over longer distances 4,000 kilometers as opposed to 1,000 kilometers – which in turn would make the cost of building and operating the networks cheaper.

“The entire optical telecom industry is our market. But the technology is generic, and scalable to other wavelengths like visible or infrared light, which makes it attractive in areas such as measurements, spectroscopy, laser radar technology and any applications where detection of very weak levels of light is essential”, says Peter Andrekson.

Vehicle tracking and recovery remains the major application area for wireless M2M communication in the security industry, using devices that combine GPS with GSM and GPRS technologies. The main markets in terms of units and value include tracking of passenger cars and commercial vehicles. However, there are also several emerging niche markets, such as construction equipment as well as leisure vehicles and boats.

“There is still a significant untapped potential in the residential market segment for monitored alarms,” commented André Malm, senior analyst at Berg Insight. He added that only about 25% of the 30 million alarm systems in Europe are connected to an alarm receiving centre. The latest generation of monitored alarm systems with GSM and GPRS is well adapted to the residential market as many households abandon PSTN services.

Paypal has updated its mobile 2011 projection to $3 billion – marking the third time it has had to change its mobile predictions for this year. The news comes after a study from Forester Research predicted that mobile commerce will total $6 billion in 2011 and hit $31 billion by 2016. Therefore, Paypal will be responsible for half of all generated mcommerce revenue.

Mobile payments In addition to the new projections, PayPal also said the company sees up to $10 million in mobile total payment volume a day, an increase from the $6 million Paypal reported in March.

Without so much as a whisper from the retailer itself, Amazon’s Android tablet is heading our way. Rumoured to launch at the end of the third quarter in time for the holiday season, Amazon is hoping it can steal a little of Apple’s thunder and steal a little of its market share.

Amazon’s decision to launch an Appstore was a surprising one, especially because there was no shortage of alternative Android marketplaces at the time. Incorporating its patented recommendation system and its “Free App A Day”, the third-party application store won many fans in the US primarly because it has been providing customers with downloads of some of the most popular Android apps and games.

Amazon is one of, if not the world’s number one Cloud storage and service provider and is seen by many to have led the march towards the Cloud, with affordable and reliable online services that even the most bootstrapped startups could afford. Asserting itself in the hosting market has helped the company make the best of its other web-based services, namely online music downloads and its new Android Appstore.

Currently NFC is seen as one of the most exciting areas in our industry in terms of revenue generation: projections show up to 700 million NFC-enabled mobile phones will be sold by 2013, according to Jupiter Research. At Nokia, however, we would argue that the industry's current focus on secure NFC may be at the expense of realizing the potential of open NFC. As pioneers in NFC technology, and as a founder of the NFC Forum, Nokia believes that open NFC will have a far greater impact on consumer behavior and the NFC ecosystem than secure NFC will. Open NFC has the potential to spur a vast number of business opportunities for developers, retailers, advertisers, electronics manufacturers and others.

NFC tags, which cost only a few cents, offer huge potential for advertisers, retailers and others to reach, reward and stay in touch with their customers. These tags can be promoted at any location, including a phone retail point, a coffee shop, or even at the local supermarket, with immediate and measurable results.

Open NFC will benefit consumers on a much larger scale and get people familiar with using their device for NFC interactions, before secure NFC reaches a high level of penetration. As more and more NFC phones come to the market in 2011 and 2012, open NFC will change the way consumers interact with each other and open up a host of opportunities for developers both large and small.

Boring conversation? Accessories that decipher emotional cues could save your social life – or reveal that you're a jerk

The glasses can send me this information thanks to a built-in camera linked to software that analyses Picard's facial expressions. They're just one example of a number of "social X-ray specs" that are set to transform how we interact with each other. By sensing emotions that we would otherwise miss, these technologies can thwart disastrous social gaffes and help us understand each other better. Some companies are already wiring up their employees with the technology, to help them improve how they communicate with customers. Our emotional intelligence is about to be boosted, but are we ready to broadcast feelings we might rather keep private?

In a 10-day experiment in 2008, Japanese and American college students were given the task of building a complex contraption while wearing the next generation of jerk-o-meter - which by that time had been more diplomatically renamed a "sociometric badge". As well as audio, their badge measured proximity to other people.

The event, held on 27 June, showcased the latest research on next-generation body-centric communications – wireless networks worn on the human body. Future communication systems will be worn on clothing rather than held in the hand as smart phones are nowadays, and will be made possible due to cutting-edge advancements in wearable electronics. Dr Paul, from the Centre for Communications Research (CCR), specialises in the design of antennas that can be integrated into textiles through electromagnetic numerical simulation. Applications range from smart clothing for sportswear, to soldiers’ and emergency workers’ outfits, and to monitoring devices for healthcare and telemedicine. Professor Joe McGeehan, Director of CCR, said: ‘We are delighted that Dr Paul has had the opportunity to present an invited paper on her novel research is this key area. Wireless networks worn on the human body will become more pervasive, particularly in applications such as medical sensor networks for an ageing population and healthcare.’

"It's a novel user interface that's got everyone interested," said Jay Wright, a senior director for Qualcomm focused on augmented reality.

The compass-based mapping feature you see now represents only the beginning of augmented reality's promise, Wright said. In an interview, he said the next generation of augmented reality will better integrate superimposed images with reality and work with a broader set of applications. He believes it represents an elegant way of marrying the tangibility of the physical world with information available in the digital world.

There are still technical hurdles to surpass. More phones are starting to use a 1-gigahertz processor or faster, which is recommended to handle such tasks. The computer vision, he said, needs to be improved to it can scan three-dimensional objects rather than just flat images, which he expects is the catalyst to opening up the feature.

Forget consoles and PCs -- mobile gaming is prepped to be the number one gaming platform for the next decade, according to Glitch developer Tiny Speck. Vice President of Product and Operations Kakul Srivastava says we're already seeing it everywhere: "It is what is happening right now. I think the killer console is going to be your mobile device. That is absolutely where people will play more rich and involving, and even graphically intensive games."

With the newest editions of smartphones outpacing their predecessors and coming out much faster than the next console generation, Srivastava thinks it's not surprising that mobile gaming has momentum in the industry. "That pace of change is why mobile devices are going to be the console of the future. The way player interaction and player needs are changing, it's much faster than the five to seven years [of console development] that we're talking about," she said.

Last week, video eyewear maker Vuzix announced (pdf) that it has partnered with cell phone maker Nokia to produce the next generation of see-through near-eye display (NED) glasses. The glasses will use Exit Pupil Expanding (EPE) optics technology developed by both Vuzix and Nokia.Vuzix, which has been developing display technologies for the military since 1997, credits itself with creating the consumer video eyewear market, which it did in 2005 with the release of the V920 glasses. 

Nokia-enhanced NED glasses

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.