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Offline payments The test is running for five days, during which time anyone who downloads the app from the Android store or Apple store in Sweden and enters their PayPal credentials can receive an NFC sticker when they arrive at one of the two stores so they can tap to pay for items in the store.

“Our wallet lives in the cloud and not on devices. There are plenty of ways to access your wallet in the cloud and NFC could be a great way to do that.”

“We think it is a very interesting technology and we are looking at ways to use it,” he said. “It is one of the technologies that we are looking at – we are not betting the bank on NFC.

PayPal parent company eBay has not been a big supporter of NFC – or near-field communications – technology. However, as a leader in the alternative payments space, it makes sense that PayPal would want to investigate NFC.

“While eBay maybe hasn’t been a big proponent, PayPal has been quite vocal about the opportunity,” said Drew Sievers, CEO of mFoundry, Larkspur, CA. “PayPal is the biggest jewel in the eBay empire, so their vision is, in my opinion, the most interesting driver for eBay corporate.

“PayPal’s publicly stated goal is to become as important a payment option offline as it is online,” he said. “NFC is a potentially disruptive technology that could offer fertile ground for PayPal’s offline payments endeavors.”

NFC has been embraced by numerous companies such as Google, Isis – which is a partnership of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile – and others. However, there are significant challenges facing these companies’ efforts to expand NFC as there are still a limited number of mobile phones available that support NFC.

However, PayPal – as an alternative payment solution – also faces the challenge of getting retailers to accept PayPal payments if it were to try for a broader NFC roll out.

“PayPal faces the same challenges with NFC as everyone else in the ecosystem: NFC-enabled phone penetration combined with merchant acceptance penetration,” Mr. Sievers said.

“In fact, they face an additional challenge since nearly every existing NFC-enabled merchant takes Visa, MC, Amex, and Discover, but those same points of sale don’t take PayPal yet,” he said.

“So PayPal has two things to sell: NFC acceptance and PayPal acceptance. That’s a tough sell.”

Long-term strategy While the NFC test is limited, it is another example of how PayPal is trying to bring its technology to bricks-and-mortar retailers. PayPal wants to get merchants to use PayPal and is looking for ways to embed PayPal in the shopping experience via applications, deals and a variety of other merchant services.

“EBay is recognizing that NFC is one of those things that would enable them to grow more in a physical retail environment rather than providing online or electronic transactions,” said John Devlin, London-based group director of AutoID and Smart Cards at ABI Research.

However, it is likely to be some time before PayPal would be able to deploy an NFC solution on any kind of scale. “This is something that they are thinking about on a medium to long-term basis,” Mr. Devlin said.

“In the next couple of years, NFC is really going to be used at the local or national market level rather than an international basis,” he said. “Once it becomes more widely available, that is when PayPal would be more actively interested in pushing ahead.

The sticker model of NFC – where an NFC sticker is placed on a mobile device to make it compatible with an NFC reader – is more of a limited solution.

“It is not able to plug into the handset and take advantage of all of the different smartphone functionality,” Mr. Devlin said. “It has advantages in that you can upgrade existing handsets quickly and easily but I don’t think anyone is really pushing ahead with stickers for a long-term consumer solution on a mass market level. This indicates that this is a trial rather than a precursor to a wider deployment.”

Proximity payments PayPal expects to do $3.5 billion in mobile payments this year using its existing payments solutions. The NFC mobile app test is another way that it is experimenting with new payments solutions as proximity payments grow “This is what we’ve always done – experiment and test and be open to partnerships to drive innovation,” Mr. Nayar said. “What we are going to start to see soon is the growth in proximity payments where you need to be in contact with a reader of some sort,” he said. “This can be done with Bluetooth, RFID and NFC is another way to do it.”

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.

Here’s how Square works: A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection. The device is compatible with both the iPhone and Android. It’s similar in some ways to PayPal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email. If you haven’t seen Square in action, check out this video.

And now, a new use case has popped up for Square: political fundraising.

Square is currently being used in two campaigns. Silicon Valley VC Josh Becker, who is running for state assembly in California’s 21st district, has been using Square at fundraising events. And lawyer Reshma Saujani, who is running for Congress in New York’s 14th district, is using Square at campaign fundraising events, including at an event in San Francisco on Friday.

Since then, Square, which has been in limited beta, has been used in a variety of use cases. E.g. philanthopic organization charity:water recently used Square at the SXSW festival to collect donations.

Currently, if you want to donate money at a fundraising event, you often have to fill out a form and hand over a check or cash at the event. If you don’t have your checkbook or cash handy (which, many of us don’t), credit cards are the only option. You can write down your credit card number and info for fundraisers to charge at a later date, but you have to trust that the fundraiser keeps track of that information and paper.

With Square, there is both a convenience added for both the payee and fundraiser. The donation is instantly processed, and Square will send the receipt via SMS or email to the payee. Of course, political contributions and donations are a little more complicated because of the reporting requirements associated with donations.

For many types of donations, you need to take the donator’s name, occupation, address, and other information. Currently Square doesn’t allow users to input all of this information but Dorsey says that they are releasing Square’s API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.

Dorsey says he’s already getting significant interest from politicians and political candidates across the country, but because Square is in limited beta, is being selective about how the service is distributed. Dorsey expects Square to be open to the public sometime in the next few months.

Valued at $40 million even before launch, Square is off to an impressive start. And technology’s most notable investors and leaders seem to think so as well.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, investor Ron Conway, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Digg creator Kevin Rose, investor Esther Dyson and a host of others have invested in Square. The company also raised funding from Khosla Ventures.

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

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.

A couple of months ago we wrote about a pilot program at Arizona State University gives students NFC-enabled phones that can be used to access dormitories and university buildings. At the time we said that this is the perfect place for the widespread use of NFC to start: universities have long been known to be the birthplace of behavior-changing trends.

Let's look at the NFC Coca Cola machine. This is actually the second time that we have run across one of these prototypes (note: we were not at ad:tech this week but found this story from Mobile Commerce Daily). The first time we saw one of these Coke machines was at a reception around mobile payments from MasterCard in New York City a couple of months ago. It functioned just like any other Coke machine, except it accepted money through NFC. Make your selection and tap on the receiver instead of digging through your pocket for change.

"The combination of mobile commerce and location technology moves our business from the point of sale to the point of thirst," said Wendy Clark, SVP of integrated marketing communications and capabilities Coca Cola according to Mobile Commerce Daily. "We have to place bets and we have to take risks if we want to feel innovation in the way that we market."

We may see groundswell coming from the big brands that are looking to change how they interact with customers. NFC is not going to be adopted because the big corporations like Google make partnerships with other big corporations in the mobile and financial worlds and all of a sudden we are going to change how we go about our day-to-day lives just because they tell us so. The act of buying a Coke is one of the simplest and most straightforward acts in all of society. If you see that your friend just paid for a Coke at a vending machine with her smartphone, you are much more likely to go, "hey, I wonder if I can do that to." Once you have your foot in the door, you are more likely to use that process again.

Adapting Technology To The Situation

During Nokia World in London I met a developer that wanted to explore NFC because his father has Alzheimer's and he wanted to figure out how the technology could help him give his father a way to manage his day-to-day life. For instance, setting timers on items around the house to keep his father from doing odd things at odd moments, like opening cabinets in the kitchen at 4:00 a.m. or leaving the house at the same time and wandering the neighborhood, not knowing where he is going. If his father has a watch with NFC in it, he could program those household functions to only respond to the NFC timer at certain times of the day.

Think of it: this is how NFC will evolve. Consumers are not going to be bludgeoned from on high by companies like Google, Sprint and MasterCard. It will start as a groundswell where developers see a problem, solve a problem. Big brands, like Coca Cola or Wal-Mart, will start instituting NFC solutions and people will become familiar with the technology first. It is one thing for Google to have a big demo, roll out a bunch of partners and say "this is the future." It is another for people to actually have the technology in their hands, using it to do a variety of activities.

Even the Google Wallet competitor, ISIS, thinks that competition is good for the realm. In an interview with CNET, ISIS CEO Michael Abbott said, "competition is what this space needs." Why would he say something like that? Because Abbott understands that people learn from other people and that the more solutions there are out there for people to see the technology in action, the more will ultimately adopt it. Competition drives innovation and better products in consumers' hands. In that way, the technology adapts to the situation, not the situation to the technology.

“This deal will make it possible for consumers to buy things on their handsets without worrying about the restrictions of multiple carriers,” he said.

Boku is a global payment system focused on using the telephone number in more than 66 countries.

With Boku’s Internet + Mobile service, consumers will be able to buy virtual and digital goods from their handsets, including Facebook credits and games.

Merchants who  use the service can use Boku for purchases up to approximately $15.

Consumers can click the Boku button at the point-of-sale to make purchases. They are then taken to a landing page where they enter their phone number and view the amount.

To confirm payment, Boku sends consumers a text message. The purchase is then sent to their carrier bill.

“For customers Boku is great because it has a fast transaction time, and merchants get higher payout rates,” Mr. Hirson said. “People are more comfortable typing in their phone number than giving away their credit information,” he said. “Our model is based off of the mobile payment industry we saw in South Korea with virtual goods and a low average transaction flow.”

Boku is only one of a string of companies that see the telephone number as a key to unlocking mobile payments, especially in European markets.

Most recently, Payfone opened up its services to European mobile payment company Fortumo to draw in new merchants and consumers. (see story).

In the United States market, NFC payments are gaining traction with companies including Google, Mastercard and Citi claiming a spot next to Isis – a partnership between U.S. carriers and Discover Card and Barclaycard (see story).

“I think we’ll see more mobile payments being used with physical things like music, movies and other low-ticket items,” Mr. Hirson said. “I think we’ll also see a wave with NFC payments because there is a lot of interest and use around it,” he said.

Shoppers can also use the mobile app to view the weekly ad and sales, shop directly from their phone, browse products, check availability, scan barcodes, manage prescriptions and receive text alerts about Walgreens’ offers and exclusive deals.

Walgreens says the coupons will be available through December 24th, but details regarding its post-holiday mobile couponing plans are not yet available.

The Deerfield, Ill.-based company has 7,786 locations across all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, making this initiative one of the largest retail mobile couponing programs in the country.

The Walgreens mobile app is available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

The technology is predicted to generate high revenues, explained Howard Wilcox​, senior analyst at Juniper Research.

"NFC-based services in North America will account for nearly $47bn, or 41 per cent of the total, by 2016. The Far East and China ($31bn or 27 per cent) and Western Europe ($23bn or 20 per cent) will follow," he said.

However, Wilcox warned that there are still significant infrastructure challenges, and institutions including banks and merchants will need to have sufficient point-of-sale readers installed.

The Google Nexus S was the first smartphone to ship with NFC technology, but the hardware has seen limited use in the UK so far.

Google is to start trialling NFC services in US this summer, and O2 is expected to roll out a mobile wallet application in the UK this year.

RIM has also backed the technology, and its forthcoming high-end devices, including the BlackBerry Bold Touch, are expected to ship with NFC.

HTC, meanwhile, has taken a more cautious approach, stating that it will incorporate the technology once there is established demand.

The iPhone 5 was tipped to feature contactless payment, but the latest reports suggest that Apple will omit NFC from its fifth-generation iPhone.

I’m not implying that social media is dead or its impact will lessen, just the opposite actually. The revolution is over because we are now sitting at the decision makers table.It’s time to stop pretending we’ve discovered something new.Read more at knowthenetwork.com 

With support from the NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, the DOR and Azavea’s software engineering team were tasked with exploring these questions and publishing a white paper to present the findings of this research.  The white paper is free to download at http://www.azavea.com/augmented-reality

While the $50,000 research grant has yielded a more complete application than originally anticipated, the project team encountered a number of limitations with the current state of the technology.

The Department of Records and Azavea expect to seek additional funding in order to develop solutions for these limitations as well as bring the technology to a broader array of devices including tablets.

Most of the tech created at the conference was aimed at Egypt's upcoming elections, which civil-society activists have been obsessively monitoring. The upcoming vote is expected to be the first free election for a leader in Egypt's long, long history. Elections are expected to occur in October or November; the ruling military junta has been unclear on the exact date.

The conference's most intriguing result was a platform for crowdsourcing the new Egyptian constitution. The platform, which appears to have drawn inspiration from a similar project in Tunisia, allows users to simultaneously browse constitutional texts from multiple countries, propose articles and ideas online and to collaborate on compiling the ideas into a workable text. Owing to Egypt's special circumstances, the platform also contains extensive provisions for off-computer use--many Egyptians simply don't have regular access to either a computer or the Internet.

Other projects worked on at the hackathon included a web platform for training Egyptian election monitors and an interactive tool that allows voters to explore the policies of various parliamentary candidates.

Active contact lenses will allow sleepers in the future to watch TV, watch movies or check emails as they fall asleep. The lenses will be worn under the eyelids and deliver high quality 3D images directly onto the retina.

Futurologist Ian Pearson said: “Hotels in 2030 will offer customers a bespoke room and experience on every visit. Lonely business travellers will be able to turn their hotel room into their bedroom at home and with augmented and virtual reality, they can even share the experience with their partner anywhere in the world. Leisure travellers will be able to bring their favourite sights, sounds and smells into their hotel room for the ultimate stay.” Shakila Ahmed, spokesperson for Travelodge, said: “Technology affects our lives in so many ways it is only a question of time before it impacts on the experience of sleep. As part of our commitment to ensuring our guests get a good night’s sleep, we are always looking to the future and at new and different ways of improving our guests’ stay, whether it is by offering dream menus or home-from-home 3D uploads.”