Group items tagged

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Square Setup: For many merchants, Square has been the dream alternative to PayPal. By allowing customers to swipe physical cards with nothing more than a dongle on the merchant’s iPhone, it’s changing the way that many companies do business. Just snag a dongle, install the app, tie it to your bank account and you’re done. Onboarding with Square is supremely simple. Pros: Supremely easy to use. Flat 2.75% fee on any swiped transaction. Goes to 3.5% + 15¢ per transaction if the card is entered manually. Next-day deposits directly to your bank account. Cons: Square is intended as a business tool, rather than a peer-to-peer platform. Your friends will need to swipe a card to give you cash.

Clover Pay Setup: Clover came out of the gates with a killer team and a mobile app that’s top-notch. If you can get an invitation to the somewhat-closed beta you can be set up on Clover in a matter of minutes. Pros: Super-simple process for requesting and making payments. Numerous methods for requesting and sending, including face-to-face, by email or over SMS. Fee-free for non-commercial use. Cons: Low limits on funding your account via credit cards, as well as withdrawal to PayPal. $2000 monthly cap on ACH funding or withdrawal. Adoption seems to be slower than other services.

Who Should You Use? That’s the real point here, right? You want to know what option is best. Unfortunately, there’s not any one that rises completely above the others. Dwolla and Clover are my two choices for the most promising, but PayPal’s ubiquity keeps it as a necessary thorn in my side. The real answer has a lot more to do with how you plan on using the service.

If ubiquity is important to you, there’s only once choice and that’s PayPal. But if you’re willing to give up a bit of convenience, then Dwolla’s $0.25 per transaction and bank-account-augmentation are compelling features. I have big hopes for Clover, mainly because it’s a great team and a beautiful app. But I’ve yet to talk to anyone who’s actually used the service.

Finally, there’s an elephant in the room here…and in the image at the top of this post. Google Wallet. Unfortunately there are a lot of factors that prevent Google Wallet from being a be-all, end-all solution. The primary problem? It’s locked to Android right now. And even then it’s locked to only a select few Android phones. It’s a big promise, but one that will take a lot of time to come to fruition.

The end result is that there probably isn’t one “great” choice, just yet. But we’re moving in the right direction and that’s important. For me, it’s a combination of (begrudgingly) using PayPal when I have to and reverting to Dwolla when I can. Maybe your situation will be different, but hopefully this has helped you gain some insight.

With more phones and more options opening every day for mobile and peer to peer payments, the waters are getting a bit muddied. At the request of some of TNW’s Twitter followers, we thought we’d put together a list of the leading options, including the pros and cons of each. Expect this post to be updated as the landscape changes.

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.

“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.

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

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

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.

Indium

Tantalum

Besides the direct environmental impact of mining the Earth, there is a more immediate threat. You’ve no doubt heard about conflict diamonds or ‘blood diamonds‘, which are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, invading army’s war efforts or a warlord’s activity. Well, your mobile phone contains a similarly valuable commodity that’s been at the center of controversy in recent times

Tantalum is one of the best superconductors on Earth, and it’s used to coat capacitors to obtain more power from less energy. This basically means that laptops and mobile phones don’t need batteries that are larger than the device itself – so this is one of the chief reasons why you can slip your iPhone in your pocket rather than carting it around in a wheelbarrow. In central African countries such as The Democratic Republic of Congo,the mining of the mineral coltan – from which tantalum is extracted – it has often been argued fuels wars and encourages child slavery. And these arguments are well-founded.

However, the majority of tantalum production shifted to Australia, and Western Australia became the world’s largest source of mined tantalum concentrates. The mine closed in late 2008, and has only recently reopened.

In 2010, major concerns were raised as to the availability of tantalum and the effect this would have on the supply chain. “The impact, the real concern, is actually obtaining the metal,” said Dennis Zogbi, CEO of Paumanok Publications, which researches the component industry and the tantalum markets. If the stockpile of tantalum ever runs out, this could be disastrous for the electronics industry.

Tantalum minerals are also mined in Canada, China, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, and mass reserves were found in Venezuela in 2009, and in Columbia a year later.

Bloomberg reported a couple of weeks ago that the first conflict-free tantalum has recently been certified by The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition and Global e- Sustainability Coalition (EICC/GeSI), an initiative backed by companies such as Apple and Intel.

Ethical electronics

Then there’s Indium, a rare chemical element you may or may not have heard of. Zinc ores are the primary source of indium, which – when isolated – is then used in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and touchscreens.

Despite the best efforts of environmentalists, governments, businesses and consumers, there could be another ‘small’ obstacle to contend with if we’re to protect the Earth’s natural resources. And that is China

Last year, 85% of all indium was devoted to making indium tin oxide for use in LCD products, and the demand is predicted to grow at 15% a year over the next few years

A UN report published last month found that there are virtually no recycling initiatives in place for indium, and Thomas Graedel, one of the report’s eight authors, warned that a failure to re-use metals such as Indium doesn’t bode well for the future

“If we do not have these materials readily available at reasonable prices, a lot of modern technology simply cannot happen. We don’t think immediate shortages are likely but we are absolutely unable to make predictions based on the very limited geological exploration currently conducted.

The case for recycling

Your old mobile phone has circuit boards, batteries and an LCD screen – these all contain harmful materials that, when dumped in landfill sites, eventually break down and leak into the environment.

Over time, the likes of lead, cadmium and mercury pollution can be hazardous to the environment and to our health. It was for this reason that, in 2006, California became the first US state to make it mandatory for all mobile phone retailers to establish a collection and recycling program for mobile phones. The law also prevents residents from disposing of old mobile phones.

It’s very difficult to reclaim tantalum once it has been transposed onto an electronic component. For this reason, it’s important that you choose how you dispose of old devices carefully. Some organizations will promise to ‘safely’ recycle your handset, but this is very vague and may not mean the components are being reused. Given the amount of effort and strife that may have gone into producing it, you should ensure that it is actually reused. But this is something governments and industries need to help consumers achiev

The UN report analyzed the recycling rates of 60 metals, and 34 of these have recycling rates of less than 1%. Among the least-recycled metals were tellurium and gallium – which are used in solar cells – and lithium, a key element in your phone and laptop batteries.

China is a leading producer of indium, whilst Canada and Bolivia are also large producers. And Cornwall, England, was also found to hold significant indium deposits earlier this year too, something which could prove massively beneficial to the UK economy

As reported recently in National Geographic, China supplies 97% of the world’s so-called rare earth elements, elements we all rely on for all our high-tech gadgetry, including mobile phones and laptops. And in 2010, China gave a hint of what the future may hold for the rest of us, when it stopped shipments of rare earth elements to Japan for a month following a diplomatic dispute. This had a big impact on the price of rare earths on global markets. China is expected to reduce its rare earth exports to help protect the country’s own rapidly growing industries. Indeed, it’s worth noting that almost two-thirds of rare earth metals produced in China are already consumed ‘in-house’, so to speak.

If China does decide to cut back on its exports, global prices will sky rocket. Dysprosium, for example, is used in hard-drives and it now sells for over $200 a pound (roughly half a kilo), but the disturbing thing is that the price was only about $7 eight years ago

It’s thought that the global demand for many rare earth metals could exceed the supply as soon as the end of this year.

So how serious is this? Well, China has almost half of the planet’s rare earth reserves. The US holds about 13%, whilst Russia, Australia and Canada also has some stockpiles, so we’re not quite at the critical stage yet. But the writing is very much on the wall for many industries, not just electronics.

The real promise of NFC goes beyond convenient payment for coffee, because every swipe of your phone becomes an opportunity to exchange data and trigger an application. You can use NFC to record your payments, and to exchange other information. Discounts, entry tickets and special offers could all be offered using this technology. Y Combinator start-up Tagstand makes NFC-enabled stickers and 'smart posters' to use in ads, trade-stands and other locations. These stickers allow you to tap your mobile phone on anything and do anything from sharing contact information, to sharing music, starting a multiplayer game or providing a discount coupon. MIT Media Lab produced a short 'day in the life' video to illustrate more possibilities, including a carbon footprint app that would use data from your purchases and transport choices.

There are already a few phone handsets that support NFC, but many more will be launched in 2012. The Nexus S is the first mainstream handset that already has NFC built in, but Nokia, Blackberry and Samsung are launching NFC phones soon and the Apple rumour mill suggests that next year's iPhone will have mobile payments. (NFC world has an exhaustive list of handsets).

Ultimately, NFC is another example of a technology that will connect together the 'Internet of Things'. Along with RFID and GPS, it provides another way for us to use our phones as a window into a world of data from connected devices and printed objects, making a seamless link between our data and the increasingly data-driven world around us.

“We are looking to provide innovative services to our customers,” he said. “We have to be competitive and to be competitive you have to offer these services.

Banks that feature a rewards program will increasingly look to mobile to drive interactivity for the program and drive customers back into mobile banking apps.

For example, City Bank Texas will introduce a new service early next year that enables customers to quickly and easily temporarily turn off their debit card via the mobile app if they have lost it and then turn it back on just as easily. Currently, customers have to find and call the bank’s 800 number to accomplish this.

Mobile check capture Many of the big banks currently give customers the ability to deposit checks into their bank accounts using their mobile phones. However, next year more banks are likely to jump onboard and offer this service to meet consumer demand. Malauzai Software’s research shows that a lot of bank customers are investigating remote capture on their mobile phones even if they have not made a deposit yet. For those customers who are using the service, they typically deposit one to two items per month. “We see mobile check capture becoming really big in 2012 – we expect over half of our clients to adopt it next year,” said Robb Gaynor, chief product officer and co-founder of Malauzai Software Inc., Austin, TX.

“If we can move certain things to mobile so customers can do them on their own time via mobile, it’s a big advantage. It is a stickiness that gets them to stay with us.”

For example, City Bank Texas offers a rewards account that enables customers to earn higher interest rates and ATM fee refunds based on how much they use the bank’s various services. However, because there was no way for customers to keep track of how many transactions they made or how close they are to earning a reward, customers were frequently calling the call center for this information.

To address this, City Bank Texas put a real-time reward monitoring service in its mobile app. Now customers can use the app to find out how many more transactions they need to reach the next level of rewards.

Person-to-person payments Person-to-person payments have been around for several years but use has been limited because the transactions did not take place in real time. However, with Visa recently changing certain rules to enable two consumers to exchange debit card information in a secure way, person-to-person payments will now be able to show up in someone’s checking account within seconds. Visa is expected to roll out a solution for person-to-person payments in the first quarter of 2012. “With real time settlements, you will see a lot more customers use person-to-person payments,” Mr. Gaynor said. “We see this as the beginning of real mobile banking.”

Some banks may try to ease customers into mobile payments to get them comfortable with the idea. For example, City Bank Texas will give mobile customers next year a way to manage their prepaid, loyalty and gifts card via the mobile app.

“This is the first step to moving customers to mobile payments concepts,” City Bank Texas’ Mr. Simpson said. “New companies are sprouting up weekly to do mobile payments but the problem is that the debit card is not broken yet – it is still relatively easy to swipe that card.

Mobile marketing Mobile offers and deals from retailers and third-party services such as Groupon and others were a big phenomenon in 2011. Next year, banks will be looking to cash in on the opportunity here by providing local offers via their mobile banking apps. Bank customers will be able to opt-in to the service so they can receive offers via the mobile banking app when they walk past a local business making an offer and redeem the offer via the app as well. In the past, banks have been reluctant to allow other business to market to their customers but because of the personal nature of a mobile phone and the ability to serve offers based on a customer’s location, this is starting to change. “We see this as a huge opportunity for banks to start making money through the mobile channel as offers are redeemed,” Malauzai’s Mr. Gaynor said “We feel it can be pulled off in an unobtrusive, value-added way.”

Customized apps Currently, a lot of banks have one mobile app for all of their customers. However, next year there will be a growing number of customized banking apps that are tailored to the needs of a specific customer group. For example, regional banks could customize apps based on which local market a customer belongs to. Or, an app could be customized to the needs of college students, who often have a different set of services available to them. “The first generation of mobile apps lost some of the customization found in Internet banking but now we are seeing more customized mobile experiences,” Mr. Gaynor said. “This is an example of how mobile banking is getting smarter and banks are trying to deliver a better mobile experience,” he said.

“I thought someone would be able to change the way people shop, but I didn’t think it would be a startup because this will happen quickly and you also need brands that people trust. And PayPal is one of them. It takes the combination of a trusted payment company and the cooperation with great brands that people trust to change how people shop. I thought I would be able to convince all the major retailers all around the world because I have had  relationships with them for 30 years,” Kingsborough said.

Even with the departure of PayPal’s president Scott Thompson, who is now Yahoo’s new CEO, PayPal hasn’t missed a beat and is executing on its vision, Kingsborough said.

Solving consumer and merchants needs Kingsborough came in and honed the in-store payment initiative, which was underway well before Kingborough arrived. He focused on appealing first to consumers and making it simple for them to grasp, before ensuring the merchants could be able to understand the value of the system. Then he went about getting the cooperation of merchants, criss-crossing the country to call upon retailers and payment infrastructure companies to get them on board. Along the way, he helped PayPal pick up necessary components like location-based service WHERE, whose CEO Walt Doyle was personally persuaded to sell by Kingsborough. The plan is now to start rolling out the payment system in the second quarter though the first U.S. trials have already begun with Home Depot.

Kingsborough said he was drawn to PayPal’s approach to payments because it was aimed at solving deep consumer and merchant needs. He said competitors who focus on near field communication and other alternative payment systems are too often preoccupied with the capabilities of their technology, but they’re not addressing the pressing needs of users.

“Competitors think they’ll solve how easy it is to pay at retail, but that’s not a consumer problem. Their problem is how do they become masters of shopping and use their money smartly and organize their efforts to shop online, in-store and on mobile,” said Kingsborough. “We have a holistic approach. We ask the consumers [what they] want to do. They want to save money, save time and feel important in stores.”

NFC: a feature, not a solution That’s partly why he thinks NFC in particular isn’t ready for prime time. He said it’s going to take a while for it to proliferate in stores and on handsets. But more fundamentally, it doesn’t make consumer’s lives better.

“Do I think NFC will work someday? Maybe. But to me, NFC is a feature, not a solution that solves problems. If your strategy is NFC today, you need a new strategy,” Kingsborough.

Google and Isis, the carrier consortium including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, are pushing hard on NFC and are angling to become the go-to mobile wallet for users, who will be able to pay at point-of-sale terminals with a tap of their phone. Many of the pieces for NFC fell into place for the technology in 2011, though there are still many hurdles ahead toward a broad rollout (subscription required) and mass consumer adoption.

PayPal’s approach bypasses many of the hardware constraints of NFC and pushes a two-pronged approach to in-store payments. Users can either use a PayPal Access card connected to their account, or more intriguingly, enter their phone number and PIN at a POS terminal and access their PayPal account. PayPal takes a user’s identification and turns it into a token, which is authenticated in the cloud, so no actual credit card numbers or financial data travels back and forth.

What it takes to win Kingsborough said the companies that win will be comprehensive and ubiquitous, allowing consumers to conduct transactions wherever they want to. By going with a software-based approach, PayPal can address about 8.2 million of the 10 million point of sale terminals with its payment system, without forcing retailers to buy new hardware. Then it’s up to PayPal to convince retailers to jump on board. It’s doing some critical work by signing deals with payment infrastructure companies like AJB Software Designs, which helps connect the point of sale terminals at many tier-one retailers to payment processors and financial institutions. Merchants that use AJB will have an easy path in enabling PayPal payments in store. PayPal is talking to other point of sale companies such as Verifone.

Merchants won’t just be getting a potentially cheaper alternative to credit cards. In PayPal’s vision, they’ll also be getting a way to push out offers to consumers, both in-store and nearby. Kingsborough said PayPal is working through its mobile app to address a variety of needs of merchants, from helping them manage online, mobile and in-store sales to improving loyalty and offering targeted discounts to users. Those additional tools will be rolled out over time in the next year or two. Google has outlined early plans to also provide coupons and offers to consumers using Google Offers in conjunction with Google Wallet.

Providing value But the other important winning determinant will be providing valuable, relevant and easy-to-use services to consumers, becoming the one mobile wallet they turn to, said Kingsborough. He said using tools like WHERE’s targeting and location technology will allow merchants to not just push out deals but deliver very context-aware content. For example, he said a clothes retailers might be able to message a nearby customer, letting them know they’ll earn $5 in their PayPal account that day if they buy jeans that they’ve purchased in the past. And, with the right permissions, the merchant may also be able to know the customer is with two friends and offer a group discount.

“It’s not just the capabilities of location-based services or understanding what a person just did; but it’s about being highly relevant to the person using the services,” Kingsborough said

He said in the battle to become the preferred digital wallet, PayPal will be the simplest for people to use, allowing people to link their credit, debit and loyalty cards, even potentially their drivers license. Just as people stick primarily to one browser, he said consumers will want to rely on primarily one wallet and he believes that PayPal will be that provider.

“Ours to lose” Kingsborough said it’s the whole offering that makes PayPal’s approach a winner. It’s a trusted name with more than 100 million users worldwide and it’s focused on providing value to both consumers and merchants with an easy path to ubiquity. “This is ours to lose,” he said. “I’m very confident about that. Otherwise, I’d be golfing right now in Hawaii.”

This is a much bigger deal than it may seem, as World Payments Report 2011 informs: -- 15% of all card transactions will be mobile by 2013.-- 20 billion credit card transactions take place each year.

PayPal should be shaking in its boots. And as for Google Wallet? One day, you'll be paying for your public transit fees using iTunes and your iPhone.

There's three ways Apple may choose to create a payment infrastructure. It is possible there are more, but we'll settle on three for now:

-- NFC support in the iPhone 5Advantages: NFC is fully supported by the credit companies.Disadvantages: NFC isn't yet ready for prime time, but is expected to reach a much wider market by 2013.

-- Bluetooth-based payments: Advantages: It is possible now to use Bluetooth to make secure payment exchanges.Disadvantages: There's no agreed financial Bluetooth-based transfer standard, meaning there's no back-up or insurance in case of fraud.

-- Over-the-airAdvantages: Does it matter if you wave your device across a terminal? Why not pay from where you are? You could buy goods and services in this way.Disadvantages: I would argue that Apple's devices would still require RFID tags in order that payment status be easily verified. If RFID is required, then NFC makes sense.

What makes Apple's iTunes approach effective is that by using its existing credit service as a bank, it achieves an immediate potential user base of hundreds of millions of people, while also offering an extra layer of protection between banks and customers. If fraud takes place, Apple's insurance should protect a customer, reducing the risk to the banks.

Tie these NFC systems up with Apple's other in-development mobile technologies and there's lots of potential scenarios.

Some statistics may be of interest:-- 50,000 Dutch nurses now use NFC  to track and manage home healthcare visits.-- The Museum of London already offers interactive NFC services.-- Over 60% of manufacturers plan to put NFC in cars.

It's unclear whether the research has been published in peer-reviewed journals: if it has not, additional salt must be added to interpreting the findings.

Substantial research into potential health effects of cell phone use on humans has been conducted, and there is no conclusive proof of danger. Some studies have found possible links between phone use and cancer, but the findings are weakened by limitations that make results difficult to interpret. Many studies have found no effects at all. Some, highlighting the difficulties of studying statistically rare events, have even found that phones reduce cancer risk. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a link between cell phone use and increased glucose metabolism in the brain, which, like other studies finding biological effects, may or may not imply a health effect.

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.

The second half of the NFC conundrum is that there are a lot of hands reaching for the supposed pile of money that NFC payments will enable. Look at Google's announcement of the Wallet product. Or the ISIS partnership between Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. Google is partnering with Mastercard, CitiBank, Sprint, FirstData, Verifone, VivoTech (the NFC partner), Hypercom, Ingenico and NXP (another NFC partner). All of these large companies are going to want a slice of the pie. Where does that leave the retailers? You know, the ones that are actually trying to make money with good and services? Sadly, on the outside of the circle. The carriers are the biggest culprits, wanting to take as much as 50% of transaction revenue because it is "going over their pipes." The financial services companies will be happy taking their normal rates in the 1.75% to 3% range as long as there is a promise that more people will pay electronically (read: sans cash). Between retailers, partners and infrastructure, NFC has years to go before it will be viable for all parties involved.

What will happen in this time frame? Think about the so-called "4G" technology WiMax. The technology is already becoming antiquated with LTE and all the major carriers are working on the next version after that. Sprint is keeping a hybrid of WiMax and LTE going forward but overall it is a tech that died before it even matured. NFC may be the same. What if there are massive leaps in quantum teleportation in the next several years? Does NFC become the WiMax of the payment world?

Maturation Of Direct Carrier Billing The "I do not see myself buying a fridge with this" line comes mostly from the direct carrier folks. Direct carrier billing is the perfect area for micro-payments and payments that stem from ease of use. Think of parking. If you could pay for your parking on the street with your phone, would that convenience be worth an extra couple of cents on the dollar to you? The direct to carrier ecosystem has evolved to the point where it actually makes sense for offline and online use. Zong (acquired by eBay for PayPal integration), PaymentOne and Boku are the leaders in this space. PaymentOne has processed $5 billion in mobile payments and lets users pay with their phone numbers, validating transactions via text. Zong allows that capability as well. Payment One's "One Care" features, announced last week at CTIA, makes direct to carrier billing safe and secure. Transparency is important in mobile commerce because consumers do not really trust their phones to handle their money quite yet. The most important aspect of direct to carrier billing now is that the revenue mechanism has been flipped. It used to be that merchants only got some 40% or less of payments while the carriers and partners took the rest. Even with high margin transactions, that is unacceptable. Today, direct to carrier billing provides the merchants with more than 80% of the revenue, sometimes nearly 95%.

The Dongle World: Smartphones As Credit Card Readers Square, VeriSign and Intuit are pushing hard into the dongle department. Jumio is doing the same thing, just without the dongle. There is not much to be said about the dongle world that we have not already touched on at ReadWriteWeb outside of the notion that it is bringing easy credit card readers to the mobile masses.

The dongle competitors are not worried about what is happening in the ecosytem because it does not really touch their core business. For instance, PayPal does not see NFC or dongles infringing on its business in any way, shape or form. As Laura Chambers, PayPal's head of mobile, said in a recent interview, "we are not worried about much in the ways of competition. There is a lot of white space in the industry for horizontal movement."

What Is PayPal Really Doing? In the interview with Chambers, the first question I asked was, "Why does it seem like PayPal has become a "me too" operator in mobile payments?" It is a fair question, even if Chambers balked to acknowledge that PayPal has been in "me too" mode for the last year or so. PayPal has ignored the dongle movement and NFC is not on its radar as a technology it feels it needs to integrate. "What is the difference between a tap versus a swipe?" Chambers asked. "We are working with what works in the current infrastructure ... We have sat down with consumers and merchants to work with them on what they want." PayPal is growing sideways because there is not a ton of room right now to grow vertically. PayPal will get into NFC solutions when the time is appropriate. Its strategy now is to create as much flexibility for consumers as possible through its mobile wallet program. PayPal's stance is data driven - the company can track when and what consumers buy from mobile phones and tablets. Hence, PayPal is focusing on the shopping end of the spectrum, as opposed to a pure payments play. "60% of people buy more and spend more on mobile," Chambers said. "But, we see that people are not really buying different things on mobile ... the No. 1 driver of growth in mobile payments is boredom." That fits in well with what PayPal sees as "couch commerce." They released a study recently saying that mobile shopping is going to boom this holiday season. As such, PayPal is ready to deploy an end-to-end solution for merchants and consumers to reward loyalty and provide deals and offers along with digital receipts. PayPal believes that it has a lot of room to grow in mobile through these types of horizontal movements. We are also seeing this on a non-mobile front with eBay partnering with Facebook and the Open Graph API and the new X.Commerce initiative that consolidates the PayPal, Zong, Magento, RedLaser and Milo technologies. The company is calling it an "open commerce ecosystem."

Future Of Mobile Payments This article is the first in a series of the trends in mobile payments that ReadWriteWeb will be working on in the next several months. There are a lot of questions and the answers are just beginning to emerge. Who are the winners in the space? Are retail shops in danger of "becoming expensive fronts for online shopping," as Chambers said in the interview? Does NFC really have potential to disrupt offline payments or is it just cool technology? These questions and more are what we will be tackling in the months to come.

The next of these changes is increased security on mobile devices.

Just a few weeks ago, Forrester Research said, “It’s time to repeal Prohibition” about Macs in the workplace, but the real changes are going to come from the smartphones and tablets.

Together, three trends lead to an Internet of Things, where smart phones use NFC to make statements about the physical world. For example, there has already been an art exhibition that lets visitors vote for their favorite display by tapping with their smartphone. But more importantly, there’s an Internet of Secure Things coming. You will be able to use your smartphone to badge in to work, unlock your PC, start your car or motorcycle (the prototype of that is already working), as well as merely pay for things.

Together, three trends lead to an Internet of Things, where smart phones use NFC to make statements about the physical world. For example, there has already been an art exhibition that lets visitors vote for their favorite display by tapping with their smartphone. But more importantly, there’s an Internet of Secure Things coming. You will be able to use your smartphone to badge in to work, unlock your PC, start your car or motorcycle (the prototype of that is already working), as well as merely pay for things. It isn’t going to all happen in 2012, but we are likely to look back at 2012 as the year when it took off.

It isn’t going to all happen in 2012, but we are likely to look back at 2012 as the year when it took off.

That’s where the $10 of free pizza comes in. Merchants can add rewards to LevelUp that are already waiting for customers the first time that they use the app. Customers earn free credit at that merchant every time they spend money there using the app. It functions like a loyalty card.

But is that enough to get people scanning their phones instead of their credit cards? T-Mobile is betting on it. They’ve partnered with the startup to provide merchants with scanning hardware that replaces the merchant app and makes it easier to accept LevelUp payments. Since launching in October, the startup has accumulated 100,000 users and teamed up with more than 1,000 merchants in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

With more than 350 locations, Villa Pizza is their biggest partner merchant yet. If you had plans to be in Time Square on New Years Eve, would LevelUp’s $10 deal persuade you to check it out with your phone?

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.

Customers also need an Orange credit card, Barclaycard or Barclays debit card to transfer money onto the Quick Tap app.

Barclaycard is touting the system as highly secure, highlighting the fact that users can opt to input a PIN every time they make a payment.

Using mobile phones to make payments is a natural extension of the smartphone, according to Pippa Dunn, vice president at Orange.

"We no longer use our mobile phones simply for talking and texting. Apps, cameras and music players allow us to use them for a lot more," she said.

"Orange Quick Tap is the first of its kind, a service that allows you to pay for everyday items just by tapping your phone wherever you see the contactless payment symbol. It's going to start a revolution in the way we pay for things on the high street."

Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, told V3.co.uk that this will be the first of many services as near-field communication (NFC) technology becomes a common feature on Android, BlackBerry and possibly Apple devices.

"[However], a little more work needs to be done on the service side as there are different kinds NFC approaches being used by the providers," she said.

There are currently 12.9 million contactless cardholders in the UK, and Barclaycard expects the new service to drive adoption.

O2 is gearing up to introduce NFC services during 2011, including a wallet application and direct-to-bill and peer-to-peer payment facilities.

Analyst firm Juniper Research predicted that NFC will be built into one in five smartphones by 2014 as mobile payment and interactive promotions take off.

Over 23 million NFC-capable smartphones are expected to be in circulation by the end of 2011, according to Juniper.