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I’m so convinced that the Siri of today is just touching the tip of the iceberg for such a future, that I expanded on this topic in detail this week in a lengthy GigaOM Pro report (subscription required). I’d say “read the report out loud” for you, but Siri isn’t quite that good. Yet.

Dealing with Image Performance We want to try to get rid of as many images as we can. For the images we keep, we want them to be as lightweight as possible. If images are a necessity for particular parts of your mobile web app design, then there are a couple of extra steps we can use to trim off any excess fat from your files.

Use Adobe Fireworks for Transparent PNGs

Using ImageAlpha If Fireworks sounds like too much of a bother, check out ImageAlpha. Once installed, all you need to do is drag your images into its main window and then tweak the export settings to remove excess data from the images.

To learn more about using PNGs in web designs, see the Web Designer’s Guide to PNG Image Format.

Leveraging CSS3 Mobile web browsers these days are pretty advanced. Android devices use a mobile version of Google Chrome, whilst the iPhone does the same with Apple’s Safari. Some mobile devices come with mobile Opera and others allow you to install a browser of your choice such as mobile Firefox. So we’re talking about some pretty good browsers in terms of CSS3 and HTML5 feature support. CSS3 allows us to render things through code that would previously have required an image. We can use color gradients, draw rounded corners, create drop shadows, apply multiple backgrounds to HTML elements, and more — all of which can help improve performance and decrease development times.

If you look at a typical application interface via your smartphone, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll find CSS3 being used.

By using CSS3, we can reduce data transfer — particularly images and possibly excess HTML markup. We let the browser and the device do the work to render the interface more quickly.

HTML Canvas If you fancy a little more work, then you can improve speed even further using the canvas element. Although using CSS gradients eradicates the loading of a physical image, that method still causes the device’s rendering engine to construct an image in the browser, which can result in a performance reduction depending on the device and browser.

Hardware Acceleration When it comes to mobile web apps, Apple’s mobile devices are a major consideration that we need to be aware of because of the current popularity of the iPhone and iPad. Safari 5 (on all platforms) brings hardware acceleration into the mix. If you’re not familiar with the feature, Apple describes it as follows: "Safari supports hardware acceleration on Mac and PC. With hardware acceleration, Safari can tap into graphics processing units to display computing-intensive graphics and animations, so standards like HTML5 and CSS3 can deliver rich, interactive media smoothly in the browser."

Be Cautious of CSS3 Rendering Performance As brilliant as CSS3 is, certain properties can slow down a web page. WebKit-based browsers, for instance, really seem to struggle with shadows in particular, so just be careful that you don’t apply too many of these to elements of your interface until the issue has been resolved.

Consider the Offline User Experience Finally, let’s briefly discuss HTML5 offline data storage.

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.

Within the Sensei architecture, each sensor and actuator network is conceived as an 'island' that, through an interface middleware, can be connected to the overall system and can publish data independently of the technologies they are using or the type of information involved. An island could be a home, a bus station, a car or your own personal network of smart clothing and mobile devices. From a privacy and security perspective, each user is able to control which type of information they wish to share and with whom. 

'If we are going to deploy billions of wirelessly interconnected sensors and actuators, the impact in terms of energy consumption and carbon footprint could become very significant. It is thus very important to develop sensors and actuators able to scavenge energy from their environment and communicate with ultra-low power energy consumption,' Dr Hérault says. 

Efficient sensors, operating within the Sensei architecture and coupled with technology developed in a parallel EU-funded project 'Wireless sensor network testbeds' (Wisebed), are already in the process of making their real world debut. As part of the 'SmartSantander' initiative, a follow-up project to Sensei, 12,000 devices are being deployed in the northern Spanish city of Santander over the coming year. In a first implementation they will be used to monitor available parking places and inform drivers about where there is space available, helping to smooth the flow of traffic in the city and reduce pollution. 

In this project, sensor and actuator networks will be set up in Santander to provide smart street lighting, dimming the lights to save energy when there is no one on the street, for example, and turning them up if some kind of incident or increased activity is detected. In Aarhus, the main focus will be to collect data about the water and sewage infrastructure, shape the information and use it in an intelligent and autonomous way. In Berlin, partners are working on the development of 'intelligent waste baskets' in order to optimise waste management. The Trento partners, meanwhile, are focusing on the development of intelligent water management in order to improve the utilisation of water for both drinking and energy generation in mountain areas. In Birmingham, transport infrastructure and services, including trams, buses, roads, cycle paths and walkways, will be optimised leading to streamlined transitions between modes, time saving and greater efficiency across the board. 

In 2010, Nordic Choice Hotels was first to try mobile NFC key technology in hotels: It was an important learning experience that helped identifying needed improvements and changes

“When Nordic Choice Hotels conducted an NFC key pilot in 2010 at our Clarion Hotel Stockholm property we learned that mobile keys are the future for hospitality. We also learned of some limitations to the technology and it was decided not to expand the trial,” said Svein Krakk, Nordic Choice Hotels CIO. “Indeed the pilot we ran was very educative and helped us identify several areas that needed to be improved in order to make NFC viable within a hospitality environment.

“The No. 1 priority for Nordic Choice Hotels is to provide freedom of choice for our guests," Krakk said. "Freedom to choose the phone you prefer, to use any mobile operator, to use mobile keys or ordinary keys independently or in combination. We started looking for alternative technologies addressing some of the shortcomings of the pilot. First the user interface needed to be improved. With the latest generation of NFC phones it is not very easy for the end user to figure out how to position the phone vis à vis the lock reader. We also wanted a solution that bypassed the SWP protocol which is designed to make the solution mobile operator and mobile carrier dependant. The pilot was limited to one mobile operator. More than 1,500 mobile operators / carriers exist around the world and our guests could come from anywhere, so offering a solution that works only with one or a few carriers would be pointless.”

Hotelier’s independency and cost control are key "Equally important, the SWP standard drives the cost and complexity if implementation towards areas that hoteliers do not like," he said. "It implies a long list of fees to pay to the mobile phone carriers and it places our brands and hotels in a state of dependency that is not acceptable. In addition, we felt that using a solution that would make us dependant on one lock vendor only was not a good idea."

A good mobile front desk bypass solution must be guest centric, supported by a strong business case and must be deployable for real "In 2010, we also tested the Mobile Key solution by OpenWays with CAC™ technology," Krakk said. "We appreciated that it was compatible with all cell phones worldwide, that it was easy to use and that it was mobile carrier independent. Equally important, the pilots conducted were great successes both from a technology and a guest satisfaction stand point. As a result, we decided to deploy Mobile Key by OpenWays in several hotels and we are continuing as we speak. "We also decided to challenge OpenWays to think about the next steps and to include NFC as part of their strategy," he added. "Obviously, we wanted an NFC solution that would be free of the identified shortfalls but also would allow us to eventually offer more services to our guests in the years to come. We do realize that it will take years before NFC phones reach any form of critical mass, nevertheless we want to be sure to deploy and invest in the most future-proof platform while our dependency on both mobile carriers and lock vendors would be minimal. As a result, OpenWays proposed to us Mobile Key DUAL© with Pure NFC™. We were immediately seduced with the open architecture of the OpenWays solution. We were thrilled with the idea to offer a DUAL platform allowing us to leverage all mobiles today with the CAC™ technology while building an infrastructure for when NFC will be reaching critical mass. We are now looking forward to go live with several hotels this year."

Mobile Key DUAL© with Pure NFC™ is very unique: The solution is protected by 26 patent filings and patents; It allows OpenWays' customers to deploy globally without having to ever worry about knowing if their guests have the right phone or the right carrier; And, it works with all phones and all carriers. "Pure NFC™ allows adding NFC features while still being fully carrier and lock provider independent," Metivier said. "It is highly secured and operates on trusted networks. It leverages modern cryptology combined with highly secured OTP (One Time Password) principles. Implementation costs are significantly lower than with the sole SWP protocol and significant engineering efforts were invested in making the user interface intuitive. This was achieved with the design of very specific RFID antennas designed to provide high reading performances with the next generation of NFC handsets. Other areas of focus were ergonomics and human factors. With NFC, what appears to be a good idea -- because you simply have to wave your phone to a lock to open it -- can sometime be a very bad idea when you truly analyse user behaviours and expectations."

A solution compatible for both new build and existing hotel locks Like Mobile Key by OpenWays, Mobile Key DUAL© with Pure NFC™ can be applied to existing hotel locks and/or major renovations. New locks that are factory made with the OpenWays module built in can be provided by the major electronic lock vendors.

A solution that works with ALL cell phones and ALL Smartphones With Mobile Key by OpenWays, all smartphones can receive an app and leverage any data network (2G, 3G, 4G and even the hotel WiFi network) to use Mobile Key. The same is true for hotel staff who use our “Mobile key for Master Keys” that offers much more security (real time master key management) and flexibility than traditional plastic cards.

A “green” solution that contributes to reduced waste Mobile Key is green. The more guests use their mobile phones as room keys, the less plastic key cards will end up spoiling the environment. Today everyone is concerned about the planet, and hoteliers want to allow their guests to contribute to waste reduction programs. Because Mobile Key by OpenWays is only made with data, it is the cleanest room key a hotelier can offer. "With Mobile Key DUAL© with Pure NFC™, we are making a giant step forward and confirming our global leadership in key management via Mobile phone," Metivier said. "Mobile Key DUAL© with Pure NFC™ is a solution that is going to be 'new for long time' and will be also applied to many other market segments outside the hospitality industry, such as residential, commercial buildings, university campuses, and more. "We would like to thank our partners Nordic Choice Hotels, Nokia, NXP, KABA SAFLOK and Ariane systems that are making these first 2012 deployments possible," he said.

About OpenWays | OpenWays is a global solution provider of mobile-based access-management and security solutions. With offices in Chicago, Las Vegas, Seoul and in Europe, OpenWays provides technology solutions allowing for the secure issuance and delivery of access rights and keys process via any cell phone operating on any network. The OpenWays solution is truly unique as it is built on the concept of credential dematerialization. The OpenWays mobile room key solution works on ALL the 6 billion cell phones in service in the world today. For more information, please contact Barb Worcester at +1 440 930-5770 or email barbw@prproconsulting.com. More information can be found by visiting www.OpenWays.com.

EnStratus has been on something of a hiring binge lately, including bringing on popular cloud blogger (now GigaOM contributor) and former Cisco cloud strategist James Urquhart as VP of product strategy.

"Look, this is engineered for a constrained environment," Piper emphasized. "But because of that, [these devices] are actually extremely efficient at doing things like conserving battery, and using very low bandwidth. So [MQTT] is actually a fairly sensible protocol for both the machine-to-machine (M2M) space that we're addressing with the Eclipse announcement, and also the mobile explosion as well. All these devices need to be connected."

"It's not as such about replacing the Web; it's about enabling devices to talk to the Web," says Piper. "And these devices are unlikely to have user interfaces; they're really about just collecting data."

IBM's model (like all IBM models through history) is layered and given a mnemonic. There are three classes of devices: intelligence, interconnect, and instrumentation. Unlike Microsoft's model, which argues that intelligence can be driven completely to the edge at the device level, IBM maintains intelligence at the core, maybe even in the cloud. Instrumentation, on the other hand, doesn't need to be all that intelligent. In fact, it can be essentially autonomic. But it can still communicate, and MQTT would be its protocol.

"When you look at the wire trace of an HTTP packet, you end up with a lot of stuff in the headers which you don't see as a user," he tells RWW. "HTTP was designed for getting documents to a user interface. And it's been kind of bent and twisted into being used for inter-application and server-side communication, and that's fine when you have the bandwidth. But if you just want to send, 'The temperature is ___,' and then send 61.7, 60,7, 61.7, every five seconds, you really don't want to be doing a full HTTP post to send that information to an endpoint. So [MQTT] is asynchronous push; it's not request/response, which is what HTTP is."

Current networks of devices, such as Cisco routers, utilize small packets of health and status data that some literally call "weather reports." They're sent at specific intervals, and when they don't arrive on time, servers conclude something may be wrong. Such "weather reports" have been said to constitute a majority of the actual messages sent between routers and other devices at the lower levels of the Internet.

Levelup is a mobile payments system at its core. It currently has 100,000 users across four cities (Boston, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco) with 600 merchants signed up.

The basic payment structure is that LevelUp provides the merchants with an Android smartphone with a QR code reader and consumers with the LevelUp app that has a personalized QR code that effectively acts as the interface to their wallet

Users tie their debit/credit cards to the QR code in LevelUp's app. The security behind that is what could be considered a triple-blind token system. No actual payment information is being stored on the device (unlike the Google Wallet, for instance) and there are three steps from the phone to the bank to obfuscate where the payment is actually coming from.

Then there are the deals and game mechanics. When merchants sign up, they are prompted to give buyers a credit.

The more times that people pay with LevelUp, the more opportunities for credit to be accumulated (hence, the notion of leveling up to a new offer).

About 45% of users return to pay full price at the merchant and users on average use LevelUp about twice per week. The location system comes in by seeing on a map in the app what merchants close to you are using the service and what kind of deals they have.

"With LevelUp being transactional, we wanted to make it as fundamentally simple as humanely possible," Priebatsch said. "Frankly you should never have to do anything other than just pay with it and good things should happen to you and that should make you want to keep using it."

LevelUp has a certain type of groundswell that other local mobile payments options do not. In that way, LevelUp's closest kindred spirit is more likely to be Dwolla than it is something like Square or Google Wallet

There has been talk of SCVNGR being acquired but it is more likely that the company will eventually make partnerships with other ground-swell mobile payments companies like Dwolla.

What LevelUp and Dwolla have done is created a local ecosystem of merchants willing to use mobile payments in their communities. This is the bottom-up approach and, as of yet, is proving to be as effective than the top-down approach taken by companies like Google and PayPal.

What are the pain points for mobile payments? For the consumer, it is having the app and the ability to tie it to a payments process. LevelUp cuts down on the pain points by having the ability to tie the wallet to a debit/credit card through its triple-blind token system and using QR codes.

According to Priebatsch, QR codes are not necessary to the process. Any interface (like NFC) will do but the QR code is working for now and LevelUp can work with any device that can project a black and white image

This is where Priebatsch starts to get deep into the nature of payments and the notion that money is nothing but a form of information that transfers from one point to another. Priebatsch's grand plan, that translates well to a five to 10 years down the road for the company, is to bring the payments process down to "interchange zero" where the cost of moving that information from Point A to Point B is next to nothing.

Here is the philosophy, according to Priebatsch:

People will eventually make the flow of money more and more efficient, and the cost of transferring information, or money as information, will eventually converge to zero. This concept is something that we describe as "interchange zero". And as money flows frictionless-ly, all sorts of great things happen around that. You get to pay less at the store because the business does not have to pay interchange on top of their prices.

The really fascinating thing with that, is that a new monetization model needs to be found for the payments industry because somebody needs to make the $50 billion dollars a year to actually support the whole thing. And I believe, and I have a game mechanics background, that the way that that money is going to be replaced, as the idea of me paying you to just move money back and forth goes away, the way that people are going to make money on payments is taking the information inherent in payments and applying a series of game mechanics.

To create a series of actions which get consumers to spend more and come back more often. And this help the business make more money off of each transaction. So the payment, as a utility, will be frictionless, and the money will flow to the company, enterprise, person, organization who can add the most value to the transaction."

“They naturally think about a future in which traditionally ‘online’ interactions make their way into the physical world, and vice versa – a concept already playing out in augmented reality, transmedia storytelling, the Internet of Things, and other recent tech developments.”

Why Aren’t Computers More Human? The majority of kids (77%) imagined technologies with more intuitive modes of input (e.g., verbal, gestural, and even telepathic), often capable of human-level responsiveness, suggesting that robots with networking functionality and real-time, natural language processing, could be promising areas of opportunity for companies in education, entertainment, and other industries

Technology Improves and Empowers: Instant access to people, information and possibilities reinforces young users’ confidence and interest in self-development. One-third of kids invented technologies that would empower them by fostering knowledge or otherwise “adult” skills, such as speaking a different language or learning how to cook.

1. Speech dialogue knowledge building technology supports the latest modern lingo and newly coined terms

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a new eyes-free and hands-free speech interface in which, by simply speaking about what the user is interested in, the system pulls up relevant information and reads it out loud. For instance, when the user speaks a particular phrase from a news headline that the system has read, the system will read more detailed articles related to the topic at hand.

2. Technology that selects from homonym variants based on previous exchanges

3. Technology for providing appropriate responses

In addition, for audio tour systems employed in museums, the technology can provide more detailed information. For example, additional information could be offered just by saying a word that comes up in an audio tour or in a description of an exhibit.

Home electronics makers themselves look well placed. Samsung, LG (SEO: 066570), Panasonic and their ilk, including Sony, are already preferring to ship their own smart TV interfaces with their TVs. Samsung TV already has almost 1,000 apps for its Smart TV system.

To summarise - in six months’ time, Android will be trumping iOS for apps and will be the dominant smart TV platform, Schmidt suggested.

Pat Polillo, vice president of sales and support for AJB, told me it’s unclear how many of AJB’s more than 140 major retailers will sign on with PayPal’s system when it becomes available later this year. But he said it’s an appealing option for retailers who don’t have to upgrade their point-of-sale hardware to accept payments from PayPal’s mobile payment system. He said five retailers have already asked if AJB will be working to support PayPal’s system.

“What’s nice about PayPal’s solution is it doesn’t require NFC hardware. That’s how you can envision that retailers would say it makes sense, because it uses the infrastructure already in their stores,” Polillo said.

PayPal plans to strike similar agreements with other payment ecosystems, PayPal spokesman Anuj Nayar told TechCrunch earlier this week.  Nayar told me recently that PayPal’s in-store payment system will roll out over the next 12 to 24 months. This is the beauty of PayPal’s approach because it doesn’t require consumers or merchants to have NFC devices, which is something PayPal has harped on a number of times. And if PayPal can do a good selling job on retailers, it has a pretty quick path toward a broad deployment.

But getting in stores is just the first step for PayPal. It has to show more value for merchants. As I wrote recently, PayPal is looking to leverage location-based offers to help drive traffic to retailers and encourage users to pay via PayPal, which can close the redemption loop and help show retailers the efficacy of using PayPal. But there needs to more ways for merchants and retailers to connect to consumers. Being able to establish a user’s presence inside a store will allow a merchant to send them offers and discounts. PayPal has shown off how it hopes to help merchants do this by encouraging users to scan QR codes when they enter a store for a coupon. And it is planning to let consumers scan items to check for inventory or purchase products directly from a store aisle and have it shipped home.

All of these other added elements are going to be necessary for PayPal to sell its system to merchants, who need more than just another payment system. Those elements will come in time but for now, PayPal is laying the ground work to be in a lot of stores later this year.

The SDiD 1020 RFID based SD Card supports ISO 15693, ISO 14443A standards, Philips I-Code SLI and Texas Instruments Tag-it HF. The SDiD 1020 can be customized for industrial, enterprise and government applications.

Both the SDiD 1010 and 1020 Cards operate in the 13.56 MHz frequency range, over a distance of typically a few centimeters. The SDiD Card supports PDAs and Smartphones with SD Card slots and an SDIO interface based on Microsoft Pocket PC OS 2002, Windows Mobile 2003, and Palm OS 4.1.

Wireless Dynamics Inc. is introducing the SDiD Card, the first RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Reader/Writer SD (Secure Digital) Card in the industry. Users can now utilise their Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and Smartphones as portable RFID terminals. Applications include reading and writing RFID tags for the health-care, pharmaceutical, retail logistics, and other industries.

The SIG has been working on combining Bluetooth and UWB since May this year and the specification is set for introduction in the first part of 2007 with prototyping following in the latter part of 2007.

NFC operates over very short distances - a few centimetres or less - and is optimised for secure communication between devices with minimal user configuration.

"Using different kinds of XML signature wrapping attacks, we succeeded in completely taking over the administrative rights of cloud customers," said RUB researcher Juraj Somorovsky in a statement. "This allowed us to create new instances in the victim's cloud, add or delete images."

The researchers suggested that many cloud offerings are vulnerable to signature wrapping attacks, due to a deviation between performance and security when dealing with Web services.

Along with cross scripting attacks, the researchers uncovered gaps in the AWS interface and in the Amazon online story through which executable script code could be smuggled, or open to cross-site scripting attacks. Through the attack, the RUB security team was able to access customer data.

"We had free access to all customer data, including authentication data, tokens, and even plain text passwords," said RUB researcher Mario Heiderich. "It's a chain reaction. A security gap in the complex Amazon shop always also directly causes a gap in the Amazon cloud."

Along with Amazon's public cloud offerings, the RUB security crew also found single wrapping attack and cross site scripting vulnerabilities in private cloud services, including open-source cloud play Eucalyptus Systems. Eucalyptus also immediately closed the security gap when notified by RUB researchers.

"A major challenge for cloud providers is ensuring the absolute security of the data entrusted to them, which should only be accessible by the clients themselves," said Prof. Dr. Jorg Schwenk.

Somorovsky added: "Therefore it is essential that we recognize the security gaps in cloud computing and avoid them on a permanent basis.

Facebook continues to outfit as many mobile devices with the ability to access its network, having already signed deals with numerous carriers around the world to provide free access to its networks regardless of handset. With MediaTek already working with handset vendors in India, Philippines and Indonesia, Facebook could see additional growth in these regions.