Group items tagged

The FLORA has built-in USB support. Built in USB means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up. No additional purchases are needed! Works with Mac, Windows, Linux, any USB cable works great. Currently the PCB comes with a mini B connector but future versions may change to microUSB. Either will work great. The FLORA has USB HID support, so it can act like a mouse, keyboard, MIDI, etc. to attach directly to cellphones. Our iPhone/iPad/Android app coming soon. The FLORA’s modules include: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more. The FLORA has a small but easy to use onboard reset button to reboot the system.

The FLORA is fabric friendly. The FLORA does not use FTDI headers (built in USB support) headers of any kind sticking out can grab and tear fabric. The FLORA has an onboard 3.3v 100mA regulator with protection schottky diode and USB fuse so that power is consistent and can power common 3.3v modules and sensors.

The FLORA has onboard polarized 2 JST battery connector with protection schottky diode for use with external battery packs from 3.5v to 16v DC in. Can be used with LiIon/LiPoly, LiFe, alkaline or rechargeable NiMh/NiCad batteries of any size.

Windows Phone usage grows, but slower than expected.

The patent wars worsen.

Research In Motion will no longer exist as we know it today.

Nokia uses Symbian as a backup plan (but doesn’t call it Symbian).

Windows tablets in 2012 will sell like Android tablets did in 2011.

Dual-core devices will outsell quad-core devices.

Apple’s next iPhone will be the iPhone 4GS.

There will be an iPad Pro available in 2012.

Google will split off Motorola not long after its purchase goes though.

Android’s momentum will continue thanks to Android 4.0.

Hybrid apps with HTML5 will be the norm.

Intel will announce that 2013 is the year it really gets into the mobile market.

We’ll see a smaller Kinect in 2012, with expectations that such technology fits in a mobile device the following year.

GoPayment hardware reader and payments apps can now be used by Canadian small businesses and entrepreneurs as a way to accept credit card payments on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch device. Intuit says that GoPayment for Canada and the new GoPayment card reader will both be available in early 2012.

The most physically noticeable aspects of Intuit’s newly designed reader is its color and shape. The reader is now black (compared to its older white sibling, pictured in this post), and cylinder-shaped, creating a sleeker, smaller look. The reader has been designed to feature a silicone sleeve that conforms to the phone or tablet to provide stability support to keep the reader from moving or spinning when swiping a card.

Intuit says that without the stability, the readers spin on the audio jack, causing misreads of the credit card and requiring the user to need to hold the product in place while swiping. Intuit has also improved the swipe channel of the device to read cards accurately the first time by putting it on an angle, beveling it and making it longer.

Chris Hylen, vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Payment Solutions division, says of the news today, “This is part of our strategy to offer GoPayment internationally and to innovate in ways that make it easier for our customers, in all markets, to never miss a sale.”

For Intuit, being the first to market in Canada is a big win for the mobile payments device. Navigating international markets is tricky for mobile payments companies because each country has different cards and payments infrastructure. We know Square also has ambitions of international expansion in 2012.

As for the native competitors in Canada, Kudos is a mobile card reader that is currently available in the country. VerFone’s PayWare mobile reader has also been available in Canada for some time. But considering the massive growth both Intuit and Square have seen among small businesses, the readers should see traction outside of the U.S.

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.

Google is trying to link Google Offers to its Google Wallet, which requires an NFC chip in your phone and an NFC reader at the merchant’s checkout. It has the advantage of working with MasterCard, Citi, and other large payment processors. But it also depends on a brand new technology that will take a long time to become widely available.

Mobile and local commerce go hand in hand. In a few cities, Groupon is testing out Groupon Now and LivingSocial is offering Instant Deals. In both cases, the deals appear on mobile apps and can be redeemed instantly, rather than having to wait a day for the deal to go live, as is the case with their regular daily deals. The downside of these deals is that Groupon and LivingSocial cannot take advantage of their existing deal inventory and they have to actually provision participating merchants with iPhones and iPads so that they can accept the deals and Groupon/LivingSocial can track them. Yelp is doing something similar where you have to show a redemption code to the merchant from your phone.

Foursquare and Facebook are taking a different approach through their separate partnerships with American Express. Since AmEx is the payment system, it records deal redemptions along with the actual payments. Merchants and consumers don’t have to do anything different from what they normally do. Pay with a credit card and your deal is redeemed. Except it only works if you have an AmEx card and the discount is credited to your account later.

The key to closing the redemption loop is definitely payments. Investor Chris Sacca recently told Kevin Rose in a video interview the best reason why Twitter should buy Square is because Twitter has the broadest reach to distribute offers and deals, and Square has a built-in way to track redemption. This was just an off the cuff remark in a friendly chat (Twitter isn’t even in this business yet), but it makes sense.

We are moving from a world of online ads that produce impressions and clicks to online and mobile offers that produce real sales. If the deal companies can figure out a way to actually measure those sales, it could open up local commerce in a massive way that makes what they’ve done so far look like child’s play.

That’s what Google is really interested in: Taking a slice of the revenue that comes from increased Google Offers that can be redeemed through Google Wallet. It’s also one reason why the search giant is not taking a cut of the transactions. Instead, Google is trying to exploit the big opportunity in local advertising, taking NFC along for the ride. As an early incentive, Google is throwing in a $10 credit for users to try out Google Wallet this year.

Google Wallet in tandem with Google Offers is going to be a big venture in a market that will be hotly contested. Isis, a rival NFC payment system led by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile is also preparing to launch early next year. I recently wrote about PayPal unveiling the first glimpse of its offline payment solution, which won’t leverage NFC. Square, a hot start-up, is also capitalizing on the opportunity with mobile card readers, an iPad cash register system and a digital wallet for consumers. The credit card companies themselves are also pushing their own digital wallet programs. This is going to be a crowded market and all these companies, along with a host of smaller competitors, are going to trying to make good on this opportunity in mobile payments.

Google Wallet, if you recall from the big unveil in May, is a joint venture with MasterCard, Citi, Sprint and First Data. Users can connect their MasterCard Citibank cards to Google Wallet or load up funds on to a prepaid card in Google Wallet from other credit debit cards.

Users can make payments at any terminal equipped with MasterCard’s contactless PayPass technology. Google has struck a bunch of partnerships with retailers and restaurants, who will support Google Wallet and incorporate their own loyalty programs into it. In some of these cases, retailers need to work to enable or upgrade their point of sale systems to handle Google Wallet integration. Partners include Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Walgreens, Subway, American Eagle Outfitters, Peet’s and others.

There’s still many questions around Google Wallet. Google said it’s talking to other carriers and manufacturers about supporting Google Wallet and including NFC integration, but right now, there are no other Google Wallet handsets to announce. It’s also unclear when other bank cards will be supported directly in Google Wallet though Google said it is talking to banks about adding that functionality. But Google has pitched its wallet as an open platform that anyone can participate in, so the system will no doubt evolve over time.

Google still has a long ways to go to pitch consumers on the benefits of paying by phone. As we’ve noted, many consumers are happy paying with a card. Merchants also need to see a reason to step up and make an investment in next generation hardware that can support contactless payments. This is going to take a lot of selling and a good narrative for both parties. Google hasn’t embraced big marketing campaigns in the past though it has enlisted the help of actor Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame to help tease Google Wallet. It’s going to need a lot more of that mojo to make sure Google Wallet can realize the company’s ambitions.

The startup then provides a separate “CFO App” that lets the financial officer, or the executive in charge, to approve and release payments. Both accounting manager and CFO apps are available on the iPad or via a secure web app. In turn, the bank used by the SMB gets a third web-based app that enables the financial institution to manage its MineralTree users.

Each of the three apps are linked to the startup’s payment server, which coordinates and manages all payment functions in the system, between customers, the bank, and payment service providers, etc. While it may sound like there are a lot of moving parts, in reality, the MineralTree solution provides an all-in-one, universal platform for all the payment channels an SMB or bank uses, whether it be check, ACH, wire, payment cards, PayPal, or mobile banking.

MineralTree’s payments platform is definitely niche, but for the 2.5 million SMBs currently operating in the U.S., this has the potential to solve a lot of problems inherent to the paper-based and snail-slow payment, approval, and accounting processes many are currently working with. It will be interesting to see if the team can convince the big banks that this is a workable solution for their SMB clients.

Last week, the company upgraded its payment app, Card Case, which now uses geofencing technology built into smartphones to let a user make purchases without even presenting the device. About 20,000 merchants have signed up to work with the Card Case app to date.

Listrak sampled Internet Retailer's Top 1000 online retailers, loading up carts and then abandoning them ("Hey you kids! Knock it off!") to see who would follow up. Only 14.6% sent a follow-up email, and fewer still sent a second or third email which, Listrak's CEO Ross Kramer told Internet Retailer, is where about half of the revenue comes from. Among Listrak's suggestions to retailers: get the shopper's email address first.

Intuit cuts payment rate for AT&T subscribers Intuit announced a partnership with AT&T for its GoPayment mobile payment solution, which competes with Square. Like Square, Intuit offers a free card-swiping attachment that plugs into the audio jack of an iPhone, iPad, Android or Blackberry device, allowing anyone to collect credit card payments. Intuit's basic rate of 2.7% slightly undercuts Square's 2.75%, but AT&T customers will pay even less (1.7%). Intuit originally charged customers $175 for the swiper dongle, but last January, in a bid to compete with Square, it began offering the dongle for free. Still, Intuit has struggled to gain the visibility that Square founder Jack Dorsey and COO Keith Rabois and high-profile investors like Richard Branson have brought to Square. This week's deal with AT&T is a reminder that Intuit is serious about GoPayment, which may actually offer more to merchants since it integrates with QuickBooks, its bookkeeping package that also targets small businesses.

PayPal embraces NFC (just a little) PayPal has made something of a point of not jumping on the NFC bandwagon, emphasizing the technology-agnostic nature of its mobile payments platform. Demonstrations at PayPal's recent Innovate conference emphasized payment options like PayPal's Empty Hand system, which lets you buy things with only your mobile number and a PIN. Still, NFC seems an inevitable part of the payments picture in the years ahead, and this week, PayPal delivered the peer-to-peer NFC payment technology that it promised last July. Shimone Samuel, Product Experience Manager for PayPal Mobile Applications, wrote on the PayPal blog that the technology for NFC P2P is included in version 3.0 of PayPal's Android app. No need for it in the iOS app yet, obviously, since the most recent iPhone upgrade disappointingly didn't include support for NFC. As we noted back in July, in practice, the transfer of funds through PayPal's NFC system isn't substantially different from what was already possible using Bump, which sends the transfer through servers in the cloud rather than wirelessly between the mobiles. But the NFC system will let PayPal developers acquire experience with NFC wireless transfers, which should serve them well as NFC-enabled point-of-sale terminals begin to show up next year and beyond.

Square, one of the most recognisable, is a small, square dongle that plugs into the headphone jack on an iOS or Android device, and lets the merchant swipe a customer's magnetic stripe card, converting their account data to an audio signal.

The corresponding app software encrypts it and sends it to Square's servers, which communicate with the card-processing companies to complete a transaction. The customer signs their name with a dash of their finger on the touchscreen, and they're able to have a receipt sent to them over email or SMS text message.

The main advantage to using the headphone jack rather than the iPhone's 30-pin dock connector is that the dock connector is only on iOS devices, while every mobile has a headphone jack. This meant Square could roll out its system to Android by simply writing compatible software.

But you won't see Square - or its many competitors, including the GoPayment, Intuit Credit Card Reader, Mophie Marketplace, VeriFone's PAYware Mobile, the MagTek iDynamo and others - in use at your local pub, since the UK, as well as all of Europe and most of Asia, has moved to using Chip and PIN.

Chip and PIN (also called EMV for Europay, MasterCard, Visa) is more secure, since magnetic stripes are more easily read and cloned by black-market devices, and signatures can be forged. The chips in these cards are much more difficult to clone, and even if a card is lost or stolen, it can't be used without the matching PIN. It's been standard in the UK since 2004, but it isn't widespread in the USA, with both banks and merchants reluctant to invest in the new hardware required.

But one iPhone-based card reader does support Chip and PIN transactions: the iZettle, a free EMV chip card reader with accompanying app that connects to an iPhone or iPad's 30-pin dock connector.

New company Card.io is even offering mobile developers a new way to accept card payments within their apps without needing a scanner at all. Users take a photo of their card and the account number is read and captured by the software.

The report, which surveyed nearly 600 advertisers, publishers, and video technology providers, says rates for interactive video ads are up an average of 19 percent over last year.

Some other key findings: Brand engagement is the top online video campaign objective. Sharing video via social networks is an important return-on-investment metric for buyers. Rich media overlays, pre-rolls, and content integration are the favorite ad formats. Page-roll, expanding video banners, and post-rolls are the least favorite. Video ad spending on the iPad is up 18%, the highest among all devices. Average CPM for Premium content, broadcast content online: $21-$30 Average CPM for Mid-Tier, professionally produced content: $11-$20 Average CPM for User Generated Content: $0 – $5

eBay says that the amount shoppers in the U.S. that bought and spent via eBay Mobile more than doubled this Thanksgiving over last year. GSI Commerce saw a more than three-fold (345%) increase in U.S. mobile sales this Thanksgiving compared to 2010. And Searches through the local product listings platform Milo increased 557% percent over Thanksgiving Day 2010.

The dramatic rise in payment volume via mobile phones isn’t particularly surprising considering all the hype around mobile shopping this holiday season. But a 500 percent increase in payment volume for PayPal is still impressive for mobile shopping and we haven’t even seen the full numbers for Black Friday or Cyber Monday yet.

So far, things look positive for Black Friday, eBay says that as of 11 a.m. PST, PayPal is already seeing a more than six-fold increase (538%) in global mobile payment volume on Black Friday 2011 compared to the same time period on Black Friday 2010.

Metaio's view is that AR is "more than a marketing gimmick or hype, it's actually an interface revolution". However, there are currently relatively few companies able to take part in this revolution, since creating AR content remains the preserve of developers willing and able to get to grips with the tools.

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.

One of the Telegraph’s examples Quilty-Harper gave was a map of what the UK would look like if the 2010 election was decided by people voting under the AV. He said the Telegraph is moving away from Flash graphics, which is not supported by the iPad.

Alastair Dant, lead interactive technologist at the Guardian, gave a run down of how news websites use interactive content.

OWNI considers itself a think tank and as describes what they do as “augmented journalism”.

“There’s a lot of under used resource” in the UK when it comes to creating maps, Quilty-Harper explained, saying the US is ahead of the game. He gave a tip that the Met office has an amazing resource of data on weather. Federica Cocco is editor of OWNI.eu and demonstrated the power of bloggers, data journalists, activists and graphic designers working together.

He listed the use of photos, slideshows, the interactive timeline, maps, charts and graphics, open-ended systems or “games”, which are interactive and allow users to make choices about what should happen, for example.

His view of the future is one of “lots of screens” as people use phones and tablet devices and of HTML5, which provides cross browser compatibility, overcoming the current problem.

Dant’s three tips for making interactive content are: 1. Google Fusion Tables 2. Tableau 3. Dipity, which is for timelines.

A question on how interactivity affects the audience and visitor numbers resulted in Paul Bradshaw discussing how many interactive maps and graphics go viral.

“With interactivity you get engagement”, Bradshaw said, and people spend a lot more time on the page – five times longer in the case of the data store, Bradshaw said.