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Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Wii U to feature NFC technology - 0 views

www.thatvideogameblog.com/...ii-u-to-feature-nfc-technology

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 28 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has announced that the Wii U will feature NFC, or Near Field Communication, tech. That means the company’s next-gen console will have the capability to read and scan physical object and incorporate them into the digital world.
  • You’d think Nintendo is slightly losing its focus on what should be a gaming console, but the implementation of such a technology could very well work for games too. Just think Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. In addition, it could be a viable way to purchase content off of the newly announced Nintendo Network, by simply having the tablet scan in credit card information, which it will be able to do.
  • The Wii U can “read and write data via noncontact NFC and to expand the new play format in the videogame world,” said Iwata, adding that the technology “will enable various other possibilities such as using it as a means of making micropayments.”
D'coda Dcoda

Wireless bandwidth: Are we running out of room? [29Jan12] - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...th_Are_we_running_out_of_room_

wireless bandwidth

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 04 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Wireless bandwidth is like land in Manhattan -- it's extremely valuable because they're not making more of it.
  • But we sure are using more of it. The wireless-industry association CTIA reported in October 2011 that the number of wireless devices in the U.S. had, for the first time, exceeded the number of people. And Mobile Future, a coalition of vendors and consumers, estimated in a March 2011 report that by 2014, voice traffic will comprise only 2% of the total wireless traffic in the United States -- a worrisome statistic because, as the report noted, smartphones consume 24 times more data than old-school cell phones, and tablets consume 120 times more data than smartphones. (See Data needs bandwidth, but how much? for details.)
  • The result: Wireless networks are edging near capacity, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Credit Suisse conducted a survey last year that revealed mobile networks in North America were running at 80% of capacity, with 36% of base stations facing capacity constraints. The average globally for base station capacity utilization, the report said, was 65%.
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  • The problem is going to get worse before it gets better. With advancements in connected cars, smart grids, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, and domestic installations such as at-home health monitoring systems, wireless demands will only increase. As with all things mobile, there are no simple answers, if only because potential solutions rely on agreement among a sizable and incompatible array of players -- from spectrum owners (both telcos and broadcasters) and regulators to government agencies and, of course, consumers demanding the latest in cool devices and applications.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

How Visa Plans To Dominate Mobile Payments, Create The Digital Wallet And More | TechCr... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...te-the-digital-wallet-and-more

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • It’s no secret that credit card companies are shelling out big bucks and aggressively forming partnerships and deals to start cashing in on the mobile and digital payments innovations currently taking place. American Express, which recently debuted its own digital payments product Serve, has been particularly aggressive on the partnerships front, striking recent deals with both Foursquare and Facebook. Mastercard has bet on NFC with a partnership with Google for Google Wallet and bought online payments gateway DataCash for $520 million last fall. And Visa has made a number of major moves in the mobile and digital payments space of late; including making an investment (and taking on an advisory role) in disruptive startup Square, buying virtual goods payments platform PlaySpan for $190 million, and acquiring mobile payments company Fundamo for $110 million. We sat down with Visa’s Global Head of Mobile Product Bill Gajda and the company’s Head of Global Product Strategy, Innovation and eCommerce Jennifer Schulz to discuss how the financial company is planning to compete in both mobile and digital payments.
  • In May, Visa announced its plans for the digital wallet. We’ll explain this initiative later in the post, but part of this platform would allow you to access your loyalty points, credit cards and more from your mobile phone at the point of sale. And the third pillar of Visa’s mobile strategy is incorporating value-added services like real-time alerts, contextual services, and offers at point of shopping based on where you are.
  • Gajda explains that Visa is licensing mobile payments applications PayWave for integration with the ISIS wallet and the company is actively looking for other ways to integrate with NFC into the company’s mobile payments structure.
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  • Of course, some aren’t so bullish on NFC, notably eBay (who owns PayPal) CEO John Donohoe, who in a recent earnings call said merchants refer NFC “not for commerce.” And odd statement considering PayPal just dipped its toes in the NFC pool with support for Android.
  • Gajda tells is, “I think for some people NFC will replace the actual physical credit card but it will be a long time before NFC replaces all payments.” He believes that we are going to start seeing more traction by end of this year but says the capability of “taking credit cards and putting them on mobile phones will represent the long tail” in payments. But he adds, “the pieces are in place for NFC to take off.”
  • The second part of the Visa’s mobile strategy involves the digital wallet and the mobile web. Gajda says that as e-commerce ramps up on mobile phones, there is a need for one-click, simple username and password checkout experience in a transaction being made on a mobile device. That’s an area where PayPal has been working hard to dominate in but Visa sees room for other players. Should we expect a PayPal-like, one-click mobile payments technology coming from Visa soon? Perhaps, the company hasn’t been afraid to enter PayPal’s territory in the past, launching a peer to peer payments service earlier this year.
  • Gajda tells us that the biggest challenge of mobile payments in the current market the massive amount of fragmentation in the mobile industry. He explains that with all of the various mobile operating systems, specific manufactured phones, applications and more, keeping up with pace of innovation on the development side is a major challenge for Visa.
  • Visa actually tested a partnership with retailer The Gap earlier this year which alerted customers via SMS of discounts in stores near them. Gajda tells us Visa is working with a number of other retailers and banks on similar deals which will be announced soon.
  • Gajda says there are a number of other factors at play in the mobile payments place that need to be highlighted when talking about mobile payments. International is a huge growth area in mobile payments. He tells is that outside the U.S., there are a large number of people who have mobile phones but don’t have banking relationship or credit card. In fact, he says there are 2 billion people in world that have phone, but don’t have a bank account or credit card.
  • In these markets, Visa’s goal is to bring prepaid accounts, purchasing power and other financial services to basic phones. These could include topping up a mobile phone with airtime, buying transit tickets, peer to peer payments. And this goal was the mean reason behind the purchase of behind the $110 million purchase of Fundamo. The company’s platform delivers mobile financial services to unbanked and under-banked consumers around the world, including person-to-person payments, airtime top-up, bill payment and branchless banking services.
  • Connecting with the small business world that don’t yet use credit cards or are new to the system is another area where Visa feels there is strong potential, especially with mobile payments. That’s why the company invested in disruptive mobile payments company Square and took an advisory role in the company. Gajda says that the power of Square is that it is enabling small businesses and independent workers such as doctors, designer and other merchants to start using credit cards and grow their businesses. It would make sense for Square and Visa would somehow work to harness the power of their partnership (As of April roughly two-thirds of transactions using Square’s payments service were through Visa credit cards.), but it’s unclear what the two companies will reveal any new co-produced products soon.
  • MOBILE Gajda explains that there are three prongs to Visa’s mobile payments strategy. One of these is NFC, and focuses on payments using a mobile phone at a physical store. For background, NFC (near field communications) enables people to make transactions, exchange digital content and connect electronic devices with a simple touch. As we’ve seen with Google Wallet, Android phones such as the Nexus S are being built with NFC chips, making your cell phone a mobile wallet. Visa recently joined the ISIS network, a NFC mobile payment network that is a joint venture formed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. ISIS will soon launch in a number of markets, including Utah and Texas.
  • But he says that there is still so much room for innovation around how we pay with mobile phones. “With the rise of smartphone usage, we are already seeing a lot of innovation around commerce,” he explains. “It’s inevitable that this will extend to the payments around the sales in mobile commerce.”
  • DIGITAL Visa’s digital payments guru Schulz outlined her strategy for digital payments at the company, which centralizes around the creation of the digital wallet. Schulz says that because of the fact that e-commerce is being more easy and convenient with customers, especially with m-commerce, the underlying payments infrastructure has to evolve.
  • And Visa’s answer to this is a new digital wallet initiative. Here’s how it works. Users will have an account, and they can add their credit card numbers (and cards from other credit card companies such as American Express and Mastercard). Visa is partnering with a number of financial institutions to offer this product to their customers.
  • Users can also load their loyalty points and rewards cards, as well as organize their shopping lists. Schulz describes it as a “wallet in the cloud.” But she says the key to the success of the wallet is a seamless, one-click payments experience for the consumers. So Visa has partnered with a number of large-scale retailers (which will be announced soon) to integrate what Schulz refers to as a ‘new acceptance mark’ on a merchant payments page.
  • So there will be a button you can click on, which will prompt you to sign-on and then will sync your digital wallet with the purchase in your shopping cart. So for example, imagine you had a camera in your cart, and Visa offered a 20 percent off at camera’s purchased at BestBuy, the wallet would sync and show the discount in your cart. The same works for loyalty points and more.
  • Visa competitor American Express is also working hard to innovate both at the large retailer level, as well as among smaller retailers, with GoSocial.
  • She compares the digital wallet offering to “two-hand clapping.” ” You can have a digital wallet,” Schulz explains, “but you need a merchant solution of click to buy, and Visa’s going to transform that experience.” And Schulz highlights another recent acquisition, Playspan, has helping drive a simplified commerce experience, a.k.a. click to buy, within game or within app.
  • Of course adding another checkout experience to online retailers’ sites can be a complicated and time-consuming process. But that’s where Visa’s $2 billion acquisition of CyberSource comes in. CyberSource is said to process about 25 percent of all e-commerce dollars transacted in the United States, and operates e-commerce for hundreds of thousands of retailers. Schulz says this relationship has helped speed up the pace of implementation.
  • Creating the digital wallet, both on the mobile and web platforms, is no easy task. Visa has a name for itself in the credit card industry but the fact is that the brand still has to attach innovation to itself in order for people to take these products seriously. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Google’s Mobile Wallet news created waves, even though NFC technology is in its early stages.
  • Schulz explains that the idea behind the wallet is that consumers want control over their wallet and want to have payment information and access available to them at all times. She believes that the digital wallet will click to buy incorporated on retailers’ sites is essential to the future of e-commerce in both the U.S. and emerging markets.
  • While Visa, American Express and others are looking to capitalize on the changes taking place in the payments industry, it is a challenging effort. Local commerce is a big part of this, and everyone is trying to find a way to close the redemption loop. But e-commerce, amongst larger retailers, is also a multi-billion dollar market that Visa hopes to continue to play in with products like a digital wallet. And in-store payments, whether that be through NFC, Square or others, represent another market.
  • I’ve been talking to a number of executives of payments companies and founders of innovative payments startups, and while their objectives are different, they all seem to agree on one thing. It’s early and there is still much more innovation were going to see in the next few years in the online and mobile payments space.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

PayPal: Mobile payments and location-based offers go hand-in-hand - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

gigaom.com/...n-based-offers-go-hand-in-hand

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • As we have been reporting, PayPal is gearing up to launch an in-store payment system that will compete with Google Wallet, Isis, Square and others. But the company isn’t just building out a point-of-sale transaction network. It’s looking to engage consumers well before they set foot in a store.
  • Walt Doyle, the CEO of WHERE, which was acquired by PayPal last year, said that will be a key battleground in mobile payments, pulling in consumers off the street. WHERE, which operates a location-based ad network, will be used as a way for merchants and retailers to engage consumers with deals and offers and lure them into stores, where they can check out using PayPal’s upcoming payment system. Doyle told me in an interview that the system will make mobile payments interesting to both consumers and merchants.
  • “If you only enforce payments without content advertising or offers, it’s simply not compelling from the acceptance side or from the consumer side,” Doyle said.
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  • WHERE is able to target consumers based on a variety of factors including location but also search and purchase data. The goal is to be able to find nearby users and walk them into a store so they will buy a product based on an offer or deal. That will allow PayPal to close the redemption loop and show merchants how much business they are getting from PayPal, Doyle said.
  • We talked about the potential of offering local deals when PayPal bought WHERE. But it is interesting to see that PayPal considers WHERE a key tool in its larger mobile payments efforts. It’s not surprising, considering Google Wallet is being combined with Google Offers, but it shows that this is becoming table stakes in mobile payments. You can’t just have a great payment solution; you also need to have marketing and outreach tools to distinguish yourself from other offerings. And you need to provide merchants with more benefits than just an alternative to a card swipe. Having a way for merchants and retailers to grab people off the street is going to be key for successful payment systems. And putting coupons and deals in the hands of consumers can help convince them that it makes sense to use an alternative to credit cards or cash.
  • One of the problems I see, however, is that with WHERE there is no guarantee that consumers must pay via PayPal at the point of sale. A user could receive a mobile ad for a deal or coupon and then choose to pay with cash or a card, which would leave the redemption loop open. That, Doyle said, is something PayPal will be working on as it rolls out its payment system.
  • But he said this is part of the bigger challenge for all mobile payment providers. They have to provide more benefit than a card swipe to both consumers and merchants. It is going to take an ecosystem to accelerate adoption, said Doyle, and there is a lot more learning needed in the years to come.
  • “2012 in mobile payments is where location-based services were, like, three to four years ago. It’s, like, the year when things begin but it’s not where the critical adoption curve kicks in. You need consumer adoption on handsets and merchant adoption on the point of sale side. You will see it begin this year, and we will all learn a ton,” Doyle said.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Does Facebook hold the future of mobile payments in its hands? - Mobile Commerce Daily ... - 0 views

www.mobilecommercedaily.com/...f-mobile-payments-in-its-hands

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • With more than 200 million mobile users, Facebook and its currency platform Credits is poised to be the future of how we pay for both virtual and physical goods.
  • Right now there are various different technologies and start-ups actively looking at ways to penetrate the mobile payments market. Each company has taken a different approach, from digital bar codes to near field communication (NFC).
  • Introduced in May of 2009, Facebook Credits was originally designed as a virtual currency to allow people to make purchases within games and non-gaming applications on the Facebook platform.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Much like Apple with iTunes, Facebook takes a 30 percent cut on every dollar spent through the Credits platform.
  • Today users can buy Credits with 15 currencies, including U.S. dollars, Euros, the British Pound and the Venezuelan Bolivar.
  • It is important to first highlight, that for any mobile payments system to work, consumers will need to open some form of application to allow users to connect the phone to complete the payment. 
  • To date, Facebook sees over 200 million unique users accessing the social network through a mobile devices each month.
  • Almost all of the major brands who would adopt mobile payments in the beginning (i.e. Best Buy, Gap, Target) have invested heavily into growing a Facebook presence. It is this ability to connect to users and their social graph through a Facebook payment option that makes Credits and mobile payments an attractive model.
  • From this point, it is Facebook’s network that makes its payment option so attractive. As I scan my phone to finalize my purchase, I am presented with the option to share this purchase with my friends. Selecting yes, opens up an additional discount for my friends and I. From there my friends have the option to use the promotion through Best Buy’s ecommerce page or on location.
  • For now, Facebook prefers to play down talk of its broader ambitions for Credits. The 30 percent tax Facebook imposes on those who accept Credits might be too high to allow for the regular sale physical goods and services.
  • Other big players include PayPal who has more than 81 million active registered accounts and 210 million accounts, in 190 markets and it supported 24 currencies.
  • One factor that is definite is the speed at which small business will adapt mobile transactions.
  • Probably an even bigger player is Apple and its 100 million iTunes users. The iPhone is set to be the main phone to drive mobile payments, even if other phones offer these features. But one thing is for sure: the mobile (social) payments market will be fragmented for the first few years and Facebook is easily in the position to come out victorious.
  • While analysts feel 2011 is the year for mobile payments, there is still uncertainty of how quickly consumers will move their wallet to a digital format or what platform they will use. 
  • Google, with its Google Checkout and Android phones is also set to be a big player. With NFC technology being implemented on all future Google phones, we expect a mobile payment app preloaded on these phones. 
  • Third-party companies such as Bling Nation and Square to name a few win over merchants by cutting the transaction process fee by as much as 50 percent. With consumers swiping their debits cards more so than ever, this is a huge savings for any company.
  • Additionally, the three major U.S wireless carriers, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile partnered with Discover Card to form a mobile payment company called “Isis,” a venture to provide mobile payment carrier billing solution for payments.
  • The closet form of mobile payments in the U.S. that can be utilized nationally is the Starbucks digital gift card. 
  • While this option only applies to Starbucks stores, consumers can now makes purchases by scanning their phones.
  • The biggest challenge, currently keeping mobile payments from going mainstream is technology adoption. 
  • Not only do consumers need to carry a phone that has the correct technology, retailers also need to implement technology that connects with the phone.
  • Other challenges that could cause slow growth are the number of companies attempting to break into the space. 
  • From small start-ups to large tech companies such as Google and Apple, many consumers could be slow to adopt as they wait it out and see which platform becomes widely adopted.
  • To truly accelerate growth, we believe a large company needs to step up and look at the opportunity as a way to break into the $6.2 trillion retail market by covering the costs of technology adoption.
  • One player who is seen to have this ability is Apple. 
  • As the largest tech company in the world, rumors have come up, that Apple will implement NFC technology into the next generation iPhone 5 and with 100 million users already connected through iTunes, giving away the retail technology to scan mobile payments could be a quick way to gain accelerated usage.
  • Though it cannot be applied to all of your purchases, Starbucks seems to be the furthest along, allowing customers to purchase digital gift cards that can be scanned at all Starbuck locations nationwide.
  • To help accelerate growth, implementing a rewards program will draw more consumers to try the new payment platform.  This option to collect and track rewards is one of the key features that have helped Starbucks see quicker adoption.
Dan R.D.

Does Twitter have more influence than Facebook? | Media | guardian.co.uk [07Nov11] - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...twitter-facebook

facebook twitter competition growth value 1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 07 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • You hear things about Facebook. You see things. As its audience matures, a subtle shift might be under way. Of course, numbers remain staggering. Facebook is heading toward the 800 million users mark, mostly by conquering new markets. The growth is distributed as follows: Middle-East Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America grow by about 60% a year; Europe by 35% to 40%; and North America by 25%.
  • It now seems Facebook's usage is undergoing a split. Active Facebookers become increasingly engaged, spend more time doing more stuff, while "reasonable" users (over 25) become more reluctant and careful.
  • older people are joining in western markets, while a younger audience grows in emerging ones. More changes are under way as the internet spreads on both landlines and mobile devices: over the past three years, China added more internet users than exist in the US today. Furthermore, in the fastest growing markets, Facebook captures more than 90% of all social network traffic. So, for the near future, Facebook doesn't have a growth problem.
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  • Who benefits from such shift? Twitter, primarily. Globally, Twitter's microblogging/social network is much smaller than Facebook, with a reported 200 million users, only a fraction of which are really active. Business-wise, Facebook is 30 times larger than Twitter and is expected to gross $4.27bn this year, according to eMarketer ultra-precise estimates; that's more than twice last year's revenue. As for Twitter, its advertising strategy is gaining traction: again, eMarketer expects Twitter to make $139.5m, up 210% from the previous year.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Troll Sues Groupon, Yelp Over Mobile Commerce Patent | TechCrunch [08Nov11] - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...lp-over-mobile-commerce-patent

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Yelp and Groupon are both being sued by a company called Mobile Commerce Framework, an obscure patent troll that earlier filed a similar patent infringement suit against Foursquare.
  • On April 6, 2010, Mobile Commerce Framework (MCF) was issued US Patent No. 7,693,752 by the USPTO, for reasons unknown to mankind. In summary, this patent describes:
  • a subscription-based system for providing commerce information for one or more mobile devices for one or more merchants. Some techniques employed feature a subscription-based method for presenting commercial resources to a mobile device. The method involves receiving mobile device user information relating to a geographic location to locate one or more merchants within a subscription-based shopping network, and receiving mobile device user information relating to a merchant type within the subscription-based shopping network.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Visual Information Retrieval: the Next challenge in Information Management - ERM Expert... - 0 views

www.aiim.org/...enge-in-Information-Management

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 07 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • In the past 20 years, a lot of research has been done towards visual information retrieval on pictures and video files. Not all of it has been successful. But on the last years, the quality of these visual search engines has reached levels that are beginning to be acceptable for eDiscovery, compliance, law enforcement and intelligence applications.
  • More and more electronically stored information (ESI) is non-text based or does not contain any searchable text components: sound recordings, video and pictures are growing exponentially in size and more and more collaborative and social network applications support (only) these information formats.
  • In addition, a whole generation is growing up that no longer uses written communication forms such as letters or emails: they only use social networks and other new media forms for communication and collaboration.
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  • Electronic files containing one of more text components or embedded objects with text components can be searched by using text-based queries.
  • Document scans (images) and even pictures can be enriched with the text of the original document or even with recognizable logo’s in the pictures. The same technology can also be applied to video shots.
  • Audio and the audio component of a video file can be processed by a phonetic search engine and users can search the content by looking for specific words or phoneme sequences.
  • In addition, audio-, pictures- and video files can be searched on contextual information such as the file name, added meta-information or text that surrounds the picture or the video on a web page.
  • Web search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo use primarily contextual text information from pictures and video’s to search on these object. This text can be tagged by users or can be found in the file name, file location, surrounding text on the webpage, etc. In some cases, words that are recognized in the images and videos with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is used, or nudity is recognized and filtered, but that is about it. There is not or limited influence from pure visual information retrieval technology such as: give me all outdoor pictures or all images with a helicopter in it.
  • State-of-the-art visual search technology should address all of these aspects and support both text-based as image or video example based querying, result navigation and viewing.
  • Ranking images is based on complex statistics and other mathematical properties that are not always intuitive to humans.  Users need a much more exploratory and visual result list that uses all available dimensions when searching images and videos.
  • There are many use cases in the field of visual information retrieval varying from searching pictures on the internet to recognizing faces of hooligans at the entrance of a high risk football match, monitoring airports with surveillance cameras and investigating child abuse.
  • Many of these applications are highly specialized applications requiring a lot of specialized knowledge and experience to work effectively.
  • However, I expect that in the next year or five, real visual information retrieval will become a core component of in-house Enterprise Information Management systems as more and more information consists of pictures and videos that are not annotated and therefore hard to find.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon give Isis mobile payment network a $100 million boost -- Eng... - 0 views

www.engadget.com/...sis-mobile-payment-network-a-1

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • How do you compete with Google's new Wallet mobile payment system? Well, a $100 million cash infusion certainly couldn't hurt. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have plans to invest just that amount in Isis, sources told Businessweek. That sum is likely to grow, since taking on Google is no small feat, especially considering Wallet is already off the ground, with nationwide retail partners and support for MasterCard PayPass. Though Isis first made its debut last year, Google Wallet, which was announced in May, has clearly taken the lead. Isis is little more than a top-level website at this point, though with three of the nation's largest carriers providing support, it could have a chance to catch up -- especially if the carriers elect not to partner with Google, leaving Sprint as the sole wireless provider. We're glad to see some potential healthy competition for Wallet, especially considering that it was looking like Google was poised to create a monopoly. We expect much more to come on the Isis front, but in the meantime, hold on to those wallets -- cell phone payments may be in your future, but for now, paper and plastic are where it's at.
Dan R.D.

IBM's Andy Piper: Negotiating the Internet of Things - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...-andy-piper-negotiating-th.php

5RFID_IOT

shared by Dan R.D. on 19 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • He is officially called the "Messaging Community Lead" for IBM's WebSphere message queue (MQ) architecture, which is a title that grants some modicum of honor without claiming too much authority. Andy Piper has become IBM's point man for the concept of a planet enmeshed in billions, perhaps trillions, of signal-sending, communicating devices. The case may be made that anything that can be "on" could be made to send a signal on a network - perhaps something as simple as "on" itself, periodically. The possibilities for a world where the operating status of any electronic device may be measured from any point on the globe, are astounding.
  • Two weeks ago, IBM and its development partner Eurotech formally submitted Message Queue Telemetry Transport protocol to the Eclipse Foundation open source group. It's being called "the" Internet of Things (IoT) protocol, but in fairness it's only one candidate. It would serve as the communications mechanism for devices whose size may scale down to the very small level, with negligible power and transmission radius of only a few feet.
  • One example application already in the field, Piper told RWW, is in pacemakers. Tiny transmitters inside pacemakers communicate using MQTT with message queue brokers at their patients' bedsides. Those brokers then communicate with upstream servers using more conventional, sophisticated protocols such as WebSphere MQ.
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  • "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.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

RIM and Telefonica team up on NFC mobile payments pilot - IT News from V3.co.uk [24Nov11] - 0 views

www.v3.co.uk/...team-nfc-mobile-payments-pilot

3BT_NFC mobile payments digital wallet

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 25 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Research In Motion has staked its claim as a leader in the mobile payment and Near Field Communications space with the announcement of a new pilot project which will see Telefonica employees at the network operator's Madrid headquarters able to pay for goods in local retailers with their BlackBerrys.
  • The Telefonica Wallet for BlackBerry project will allow users of the NFC enabled BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 handsets to pay by touching their device against a reader in participating stores.
  • The pilot is set to be rolled out to Telefonica employees worldwide and, if successful, could be a precursor to commercial services rolling out from next year, according to the network giant.
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  • The SIM-based NFC technology stores funds and transcation details electronically on the phone's chip while at the front end an application on the device allows user to choose which cards they want to use, as well as get account balances.
  • The news comes as Barclaycard and Visa Europe announced that the O2 arena in London will be rolling out more than 250 contactless card readers across the venue to allow users with contactless cards or NFC enabled phones to pay more quickly and easily.
  • Barclaycard and Orange in May announced their SIM-based Quick Tap payment service for NFC enabled mobile phones, starting with the Samsung Tocco Lite.
D'coda Dcoda

Pip.io may be the worlds first true social network - 1 views

knowthenetwork.com/...rlds-first-true-social-network

long form conversations social platform opportunities web2.0

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 25 Apr 10 - Cached
    • D'coda Dcoda
      D'coda Dcoda on 25 Apr 10
       
      the article says that Pip.io is the world's first true social platform because it, alone, enables long form conversations
  • Name one social platform that is focused on enabling long form conversations.
Dan R.D.

Internet of Things - How it will change the world [25May11] - 0 views

news.google.com/...url

5RFID_IOT

shared by Dan R.D. on 25 May 11 - No Cached
  • Dan R.D. on 25 May 11
     
    According to a recent report by Amdocs, experts are predicting that there wil be seven trillion networked devices by 2017, delivering a connected life that has immediate access to data, media, communities and communications across a broad range of devices We have been promised this interconnected world since the 1980s, bu imitations such as costs and the size and capabilities of chips and infrastructure, have kept many innovations on hold However, 4G and IPv6 now offer vast superhighways of space and speed delivering what's needed for machine to machine (M2M) communication to take place on a grand scale. Add to this the fact that Moore's Law remains a constant, chips have become both smaller and more affordab
Dan R.D.

Startling Facts That Show How HUGE Indian Tech Is - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/india-tech-facts-2011-5

1UE_NS

shared by Dan R.D. on 30 May 11 - No Cached
  • Dan R.D. on 30 May 11
     
    http://www.businessinsider.com/india-tech-facts-2011-5#-8 1,210,000,000 current populationmobile phone penetration is 50% higher than TVIndians in rural areas 742,500,000 72% of populationtwo-and-a-half times the population of USAmobile subscribers 791,000,000 67%growing by 20,000,000 ever month50% of indians are 25 yrs or belowIndian mobile subscribers 791 million vs TV 520 millionnumber of SMSs sent via India's airtel network 90 billion10 billion mobile ads sent each monthestimated value of Indian mobile value-added services 2011 = 2011 US 3.5 billion100,000,000 internet users in India 8% populationgrew by 25% in the past 12 monthsaverage Indian web users spends 26 min online each day60% of Indian web users access via internet cafes31% of Indias rural population is unaware of the internet's existence.estimated value of eCommerce in India 2011: US $10 billion18% of India's rural Internet users travel more than 10km to access the internettop reasons rural Indians are adopting the internet: entertainmentestimated value of eCommerce in India in 2011: US $10 billionthe value of Indian eCommerce grow by more than 60% in 2010number of social media users in India: 33,158,000 - that's 2% of India's populationIndian web users spend 3 hours per month on social sites96% of Indian IT firms forbid social media use at work
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