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For disruptive mobile payments startup Square, 2011 was a year of massive growth on many levels. The startup ended the year with over 1 million merchants using the mobile payments platform to accept credit cards (there are only 8 million merchants who accept credit cards in the US). In November, Square announced it was processing $11 million in payments per day (up from $4 million a day in July). Sir Richard Branson, Kleiner Perkins, Visa, and other investors poured over $100 million over the course of the year into Square, with the company’s latest valuation pegged at $1 billion. And Square announced a number of new product innovations, including Card Case, a new iPad app and more. Not to mention the unveiling of  retail deals with Apple, Wal-mart, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Target. It’s hard to imagine how Square could top such an eventful year. But according to COO Keith Rabois, 2012 will prove to be even more monumental for the mobile payments company.

Square is kicking of 2012 with two new retail deals, OfficeMax and select UPS Store locations. With these new retailer partnerships, Square is now being sold at 10,000 retail locations, up from 9,000 at the end of last year. Square’s credit card readers sell for $9.99 in stores but each purchaser can redeem a $10 credit to their bank account. According to Rabois, retail sales of Square has been a large driver of adoption. In fact, currently 80 percent of U.S. population is within 15 minutes of a Square device sold at a retail location.

Beyond expanding retail deals (there are more to come, he says); Square will also be looking to upgrade the experience of running a business, end-to-end, on the iPad. Last May, the company debuted new iPad app Square Register, a high-powered point of sale replacement for cash registers and point of sale terminals. This year, the startup will add to the capabilities of this software, enabling small businesses to grow and manage their operations off of the device.

Barclays Group analyst Ben Reitzes spoke to Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer about the threat the new $199 e-reader/tablet hybrid poses to their uber-dominant iPad. Apparently the two execs were as cool as ice cubes in a fire-proof box on the matter. After the conversation, Reitzes wrote in a note to investors that the low price point will likely make some waves, but that the Android-based Kindle Fire also means more fragmentation in the tablet market--a phenomenon that has helped keep the iPad on top of the heap. Here's more of what Reitzes had to say:

While compatible with Android, the Apps work with Amazon products. The more fragmentation, the better, says Apple, since that could drive more consumers to the stable Apple platform. We believe that Apple will get more aggressive on price with the iPad eventually but not compromise the product quality and experience.

That remains to be seen. Amazon has so far contended that it's not looking to compete head-to-head with the iPad. The Kindle Fire's specs are significantly more spartan than those of Apple's slate, and--coupled with the disruptive price point--target a completely different type of tablet buyer (the iPad 2 starts at $499).

4. Offers, Offers and More Offers With the daily deals craze dying down post-Groupon IPO, mobile offers are springing up. Google Offers, Google's response to Groupon's daily deals, continues to expand and personalize its deals. It recently stepped into the mobile commerce space with an Android app. Amazon entered the daily deals space with Amazon Local. Mobile commerce isn't a part of the story, but with Amazon's hefty investment in Living Social and an infrastructure far more mature than Groupon's, Amazon may be waiting for just the right moment before really making its move. Meanwhile, daily deals superhero Groupon moved further into the location-based mobile commerce space through a partnership with Loopt. Soon after the Loopt announcement, Groupon launched Groupon Now, which inserts real-time, location-based offers into the daily deals game. Such offers are usually only available for a few hours, do not include the typical Groupon tipping point and are meant for impulsive mobile users.

5. Shop Till You Sit: Tablet Commerce Tablets are all the rage this year. A recent study by eMarketer.com predicts that one in three online consumers will use a tablet at least once a month by the year 2014. Appel iPads are positioned to dominate the tablet market until 2015. So what are people doing on their tablets? Shopping, naturally. And thus the boom of tablet commerce. Amazon.com, the top revenue-producing Internet retailer, naturally leads the pack with a strong tablet-optimized site. Couch commerce, the act of sitting on one's couch and shopping from a smartphone and tablet, saw a strong increase this year - especially after Thanksgiving dinner and on Black Friday. Amazon launched its Kindle Fire tablet on September 28. ReadWriteWeb Writer Jon Mitchell calls it a store with a screen, quite literally suggesting that its sole purpose is to be a media consumption device. As the Kindle Fire continues to gain consumer mindshare and more developers flock to the Amazon Appstore (don't call it the App Store, OK?), we expect more tablet commerce growth in this area. Shopping catalogs designed specifically for tablets will add to the tablet commerce experience. Google launched a shopping catalog app for tablets back in August. Google Catalogs, as they're called, are like "window shopping with your iPad and Android tablet." The only potential problem for retailers? Now they won't have catalog readers' home addresses on hand.

6. Location and Local Groundswell: Chicago to Des Moines to Boston and Back Again The partnership between daily deals service Groupon and location check-in Foursquare was a big one. The two got together and made it happen. Or, as the Groupon blog says, "when we think of mobile addiction beyond Now! we think foursquare, and many of you guys do, too." The idea of positioning daily deals on Foursquare as an "addiction" doesn't exactly insure longevity; rather, it signals imminent burnout. But hey, we'll forgive Groupon's marketing team - with Groupon's stock prices slumping, the company is needs to keep looking for new ways to hit up consumers. Dwolla, mobile payments system based in U.S. mobile payments capital Des Moines, Iowa, seeks to completely sidestep credit cards. Unlike its main competitor PayPal, Dwolla does not snag a percentage of the transaction; instead, it asks for a shiny silver quarter, regardless of the transaction amount. LevelUp from Boston-based SCVNGR brings location-based gaming to the daily deals space. The idea is simple: Users will receive better deals the more they use the system. Much like the "unlocking" of Foursquare badges, LevelUp users will unlock new "levels" of awesome deals with particular merchants as they continue buying. Like its competitor Dwolla, SCVNGR recently began building local mobile payments into LevelUp.

According to the Irish Times, one secondary school is getting rid of school books and replacing them with iPads. The iPads will be phased into use starting September, when all 90 first-year students at the college will be given the option of using the Apple machine instead of a bag full of school books.“We received huge support from the teachers and parents for the idea – we had 96 percent support – but in no way is this obligatory," school principal Jimmy Finn told the publication. “Parents have the choice to go with the iPad or school books like it was always done.”

In the United States, the average cost of school books per semester is $400 to $900 and up or $2,400 to $3,200 or more (depending on degree). Textbook savings wouldn't be the only benefit. Publishers that ordinarily charge $100 or more per book to make up the high cost of color printing, durable covers, and modest distribution could save significantly and possibly even generate more money for textbook authors by making the material more public than school book stores.

While the focus of this post is not specifically Apple or the iPad, it’s almost impossible to talk about successful mobile strategies without recognizing that the iPad has created a transitional moment for the Learning & Development world. The reasons why have been the subject of countless blog posts, but I think DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, in this video from TechCrunch, says it best:

“[The iPad] it’s the first device that actually is a reflection of me – or us. It’s so revolutionary that it’s no longer about me adapting myself to somebody else’s set of programmings or the way in which a device is going to engage. It is the reverse. It is as though I’m looking in a mirror.”

While it took the iPad to make learner-controlled content a reality, this level of flexibility is now the gold standard for delivery to any device, be it tablets, smart phones or any number of performance support devices.

iPad is not exactly an e-reader. It is a hybrid that hovers between a cellphone, a computer, and in some unbelievable respects, an e-studying device. What it does precisely, no one can somewhat pin down. It houses a formidable instrument that may do anything else from enjoying top definition movies to providing an outstanding gaming console and, smartly, everything else in between. E-studying capabilities included. In the beginning look, iPad seems to run away as a winner in lots of things. But if pitted in opposition to Amazon’s Kindle, does it even stand an opportunity?

Of the 65.2 million tablets predicted to be shipped in 2011, Apple will continue to dominate the tablet market with 40 million iPad shipments and hold a 61% share of the market, a new research report from Digitimes reveals. In the first six months of 2011, tablet shipments increased more than 420% from the previous year, with sales expected to increase into the second half to boost the number of shipments by 150% from a year earlier. Apple is expected to contribute more than 25.5 million iPad shipments in the second half of the year alone, up 76% compared to the first half of the year.

What geocaching is to the physical treasure hunt, Aurasma should be to the virtual one. With Aurasma, the treasure isn’t physical – it exists only in the digital world. Take your iPad with you around town and check out the app to find locations near you where Auras can be found.

Once you’ve found a location, look at it with your iPad and the app to see an augmented reality surprise, which could be anything from an e-greeting to a picture to an animated video.

For example, friends could create greetings and put them in the front of your house. You’ll be able to see them by going outside and looking at your house using the app. You can create Auras, too, either for friends or the general public to go out and discover for themselves.

Computex trade show in Taipei.

“Investors want to know which tablet is better, which has the best price-performance, and when the non-iPad camp is going to get going,” said Angela Hsiang, an analyst at KGI Securities Co. in Taipei. “Previously, people couldn’t actually see the products. At Computex, we’ll be able to touch and use them.”

Global shipments of tablets will climb to 215 million units in 2015 from 17 million last year, Toni Sacconaghi, a New York- based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., wrote in a May 26 report. Fifteen percent of all tablets will cannibalize the sale of consumer PCs, reducing computer-sales growth by 2 percent annually between 2010 and 2015, Sacconaghi wrote.

The Lab’s first game went live this week, called Ball Invasion (here’s a link on iTunes). It’s a shooter in which the world around you becomes a canvas for playing: hold your iPad 2 in front of you, and it becomes a window on a world that fills with targets that you can chase and shoot. The game’s fun enough, but really the excitement is all about the technology. While you’ve no doubt seen augmented reality before, the difference here is 13th Lab is using a complex computer vision technique known as SLAM — that’s Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. This is a system developed in part by NASA for use in robotics, which allows an object (like, say, a drone) to look around, build up a picture of the world and then understand where it is.

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.

Apple’s closest competitor in the mobile industry is Google, a company that develops and maintains the fastest growing mobile operating system on the planet. But even Google was forced to admit that its Honeycomb operating system was not up to standard, having previously condemned vendors for creating tablet devices that ran Android builds that were specifically tailored for smartphones.

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.

Whether Newsstand was Apple’s strategy all along, I don’t know, but I think it might have been. The app is the unit of distribution for newspapers and magazines, not the “issue” or the “article”. This puts more work on the publishers’ shoulders — they need to design, create, and maintain software, not merely publish content — but it gives them more control over the reader experience and more potential for creativity and differentiation.

Why not the same thing for TV channels? We’re seeing the beginnings of this, with iPhone and iPad apps like HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and the aforementioned Bloomberg TV+. Letting each TV network do their own app allows them the flexibility that writing software provides. News networks can combine their written and video news into an integrated layout. Networks with contractual obligations to cable operators, like HBO and ESPN, can write code that requires users to log in to verify their status as an eligible subscriber.

Why not the same thing for TV sized displays? Imagine watching a baseball game on a TV where ESPN is a smart app, not a dumb channel. When you’re watching a game, you could tell the TV to show you the career statistics for the current batter. You could ask the HBO app which other movies this actress has been in. Point is: it’d be better for both viewers and the networks1 if a TV “channel” were an interactive app rather than a mere single stream of video.

With the exception of the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, the Android tablet race is starting to look like the PC race of the early 2000s: SPEEDS AND FEEDS ... and not a lot else. Case in point is Asus' Eee Pad Transformer Prime, the first quad-core tablet to hit the market. That's right, people, four whole cores!

quad-core tablet

For $499, the price of a 16GB iPad, you get 32GB, and can get up to 64GB for just $100 more. It will ship with Android 3.2 Honeycomb, but Asus promises that it will get an over-the-air update to the eagerly anticipated Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich "at a later date." Great, terrific, you know?

Shares of Amazon were down about 1% $202.52 by mid-morning Friday. The stock is up about 13% for the year to date. The Kindle Fire is estimated to cost a total of $201.70 to build each unit, a number that includes a bill of materials — or BOM — of $185.60, with another $16.10 in manufacturing costs for each unit, iSuppli estimates. The tear-down estimate does not include cost figures for software, licensing or royalties that Amazon may pay on the device.

Amazon began shipping the Kindle Fire on Monday, after first unveiling the device in late September. The tablet costs $199 — about 60% less than the cheapest iPad from Apple Inc. /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL -0.16% , which currently dominates the tablet market. Analysts expect the Kindle Fire to make the largest dent in the tablet market next to the iPad, after other devices using Google’s /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG -0.89%  Android operating system have largely failed to generate strong sales. The low price of the device, along with Amazon’s large library of books and other digital content, are expected to contribute to the appeal of the Kindle Fire. But Amazon does not break out data on its device sales.

at http://www.yellowbrck.com. Email PDF Print New York, NY (PRWEB) May 12, 2011 YellowBrck is a new location-based social network mobile application created for moms and dads on the go. By downloading the free YellowBrck iPhone/iPad app in the App Store, parents can easily share their activities and locations with friends and other parents, as well as score special savings incentives from retailers. YellowBrck was created as a way to connect parents, help them share tips on ways to keep their children entertained, and learn about the latest family spots and events nationwide. By checking into YellowBrck on a regular basis, users are able to earn discounts and rewards from their favorite retailers. YellowBrck empha

is a new location-based social network mobile application created for moms and dads on the go. By downloading the free YellowBrck iPhone/iPad app in the App Store, parents can easily share their activities and locations with friends and other parents, as well as score special savings incentives from retailers. YellowBrck was created as a way to connect parents, help them share tips on ways to keep their children entertained, and learn about the latest family spots and events nationwide. By checking into YellowBrck on a regular basis, users are able to earn discounts and rewards from their favorite retailers. YellowBrck emphasizes the social aspect, allowing parents to meet up with nearby parents, keep tabs on what activities their friends are doing, and discover family-friendly places in their neighborhood. An impromptu playdate at the park or a last-minute trip to the museum is easily shared on YellowBrck for others to join in. Parents are also able to check-in for everyday tasks pre-listed on the app, including potty training and getting dressed, with the chance to “win” virtual stickers and real world savings from online and brick & mortar retailers, including Totsy, Ecomom, Dapple, Abe’s Market, Torly Kid, and many more.

Research group Gartner issued a special report on Thursday, noting that Apple will have a "free run" in the tablet market this holiday season as rivals continue to lag. The group sees worldwide media tablet sales as on track to reach 63.6 million units this year, a 261.4 percent increase from 2010.

Gartner predicts Apple will hold on to a dominant 73.4 percent of the market this year, though down from 83 percent in 2010. Android is expected to remain in second place, with the firm assuming that no other platforms will manage a 5 percent share of the market in 2011.

By the end of 2015, the company's tablet share is expected to slide to 46 percent.

The latest is a survey showing that IT professionals expect tablets to outnumber desktop machines in schools within the next five years.

The results, revealed by a Piper Jaffray analyst, point to the growing popularity of the iPad among technology directors at schools, all of whom are already testing and deploying the device on some level. The survey cited didn't have the biggest sample size (only 25 were polled), but the trend is consistent with other reports we've seen, and certainly Apple has been pushing the device for educational purposes.

Administering the devices from an IT standpoint can be challenging in a school environment, something that's already being felt in the enterprise market. It's an issue that school IT directors are already dealing with in school districts that hand out laptops to students.