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The Pew Internet & American Life Project’s “Teens and Mobile Phones” report indicated that black teens were more than twice as likely as whites to go online on their mobile phones, at 44% versus 21%. Hispanic teens were also relatively active on the mobile Web.In addition, teens living in households with annual income under $30,000 used the mobile Internet at almost twice the rate of more affluent groups. They were notably less likely to have access through a home computer. Pew reported that, overall, 21% of teens who had no traditional PC access to the Internet went online via mobile phones.See more at www.emarketer.com

Near-field communication (NFC) has been trashed by critics, who say it adds no value to consumers or is a technology in search of a need. But as we’ve pointed out, NFC is just a technology that can applied in a lot of different ways, apart from the digital wallet framework through which many people understand it.

Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more interesting projects and applications being built that show how NFC will be deployed outside of mobile payment situations. This not only indicates how flexible the technology is but also could help propel the overall technology in adoption, as consumers become aware of NFC and learn to use it for a variety of reasons.

Right now, NFC is still below the radar for most U.S. consumers, and the slow roll out of Google Wallet or the pending launch of Isis next year are, by themselves, only going to accelerate NFC adoption by so much. But having a host of uses for the technology could open people’s eyes and push them past any usability or safety concerns.

Leave your wallets at home, people. You'll soon be able to pay by cellphone.

Canada's three big wireless service providers are hatching a system that promises to change the way people shop.

Bell Canada, Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility said yesterday they have set up a mobile commerce company in Toronto to work on a network that would let consumers use their cellphones to pay for everything from vending machine munchies to transit trips.

Late last month, I ordered the beverage at Sightglass Coffee in SoMa, grabbed it from the counter and walked out without cracking my wallet.

Nobody chased me down because, when I first approached the cafe, the Card Case app on my iPhone detected the store's perimeter and automatically switched on. It broadcast my picture to the barista, who could then tap my pre-entered credit card number to cover the bill. The phone never had to leave my pocket.

It felt a lot like buying in the one-click environments of iTunes or Amazon, which is to say it didn't feel like buying at all. Square, the San Francisco startup behind the app, has come close to replicating the frictionless online buying experience in the brick-and-mortar world.

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.

NFC, the technology running behind Google Wallet and many mobile e-commerce applications, lurks in many of the smartphones on display at CES. But mobile commerce isn't the only reason that NFC deserves your attention.

the most potentially disruptive technology has so far gotten precious little coverage. I'm talking about Near Field Communications or NFC. Didn't get your pulse pumping? What if I told you that NFC is the technology behind Google Wallet and every other mobile e-commerce technology, and that it's likely to be built into a good many of the higher end smartphones shown at CES? If you believe industry watchers, there'll be about a half billion phones sold with the technology between now and 2015.

NFC can be used for a lot of things, and payment is just one of them. The close proximity technology can also be used to see specs and other details on retail items. As stores like Best Buy move to compete with Amazon on price, you can bet that this technology will be used to replace the pimply faced kid who actually knows a surprising amount about whatever it is he's selling. It could also be used to assure the lowest prices for price conscious consumers.

PayPal’s mobile payment system has gone live at 51 Home Depot stores in the US.

The eBay-owned company has also reported that its mobile payment volume reached $4bn in 2011.

PayPal’s new mobile payment system, which was trialled by eBay CEO John Donahoe, allows users to pay at the till by entering their mobile phone number and PIN.

Exclusive - Tinkercad, a startup that aims to introduce browser-based 3D printing CAD to the masses, has landed $1M in seed funding from True Ventures, Jaiku founder Jyri Engestrom, Delicious founder Joschua Schachter, Eghosa Omogui and Taher Haveliwala.

The company’s mission is to ‘reach and teach’ a wide audience on the use of CAD software and creating ‘fun and meaningful’ things like jewelry, toys, car parts and whatnot, using 3D printers.

Kai Backman, Tinkercad’s co-founder and CEO, explains that one only needs a browser and a couple of minutes to use its browser-based software and have a 3D project ready for printing.

Tapit is a new mobile advertising startup, founded in March 2011, that enables content sharing and offer delivery simply by tapping an NFC-enabled phone anywhere the Tapit logo can be found.

The company has now raised a seed funding round from Sydney Angels in record time – just 22 days from the pitch until the round was subscribed for. This is the fastest investment to date for Sydney Angels, the not-for-profit membership organization for angels which typically invests in Sydney-based startups.

NFC (near field communication), a short-range wireless technology, is often associated with mobile payments and mobile wallets these days, as a new way to enable purchases at point-of-sale. But that’s only one of the many possible use cases for the technology, which can also support things like sharing files and media between devices, advertising, ticketless transactions and more. It can even be used to perform actions like those found in NTT DOCOMO’s nifty “tap to follow” offering that lets two Twitter users follow each other simply by tapping phones.

Whenever people think of near field communications, they think of mobile payments. Your phone becomes your wallet and spending money becomes as easy as tap, tap, tapping all day. Well, the era of your tap-able digital wallet is not here yet. It may never come. But that does not mean there are not some very interesting uses of NFC coming down the pipeline.

For instance, there was a Coca-Cola vending machine at ad:tech this week that was tied to Google Wallet. Tap, tap, tap away and take a Diet Coke Break. At Nokia World there as a gate that could be opened with a tap from your phone. A developer is working on NFC solutions to help his father who has Alzheimer's. NFC could be great as a monetary transfer solution, but there is so much more.

Groundswell To An NFC Enabled World

Mobile payments company Boku is letting French consumers pay for virtual goods and services via their handsets.

The company is partnering with French carriers Bouygues Telecom and SFR. The deal will reach 32 million French consumers.

“France is a top priority for us in international markets, and we decided we wanted to tap into it in 2010,” said Ron Hirson, cofounder/president of Boku, San Francisco.

Debenhams is in talks to introduce till payments through mobile phones as research finds that handsets are set to become ubiquitous as a way of paying for goods in five years’ time.

The high street retailer said it is exploring ways to let customers use their mobiles to pay for goods in-store.

Harriet Williams, Debenhams’ head of digital, said, ”It is something we are looking at and talking to partners about. When we’ve done research, we’ve seen that it’s something particularly younger customers are more interested in.”

Starbucks is launching what it claims is the high street’s first iPhone mobile app payment system after growing impatient with the rate of development of mobile NFC technology.

Customers with registered Starbucks Reward Cards will be able to make purchases in all 700 UK Starbucks stores using a one-click iPhone or iPod Touch app from January. It is also developing an Android app that it hopes to launch at the start of 2012.

The coffee chain said it “did not want to wait” for the development of NFC and it becoming mainstream. Because so few handsets are currently NFC capable, Starbucks chose to develop its own mobile payment system using iPhone apps.

21 Tips for Using Twitter

A common mistake for those seeking to cope with this profound disruption is to confuse technology with innovation. Algorithms, apps and search tools help make data useful but they can’t replace the value judgements at the core of journalism.

Genuine innovation requires a fundamental shift in how journalists think about their role in a changed world. To begin with, they need to get used to being ‘curators’; sorting news from the noise on the social web using smart new tools and good old fashioned reporting skills.

I find it helps to think of curation as three central questions: * Discovery: How do we find valuable social media content? * Verification: How do we make sure we can trust it? * Delivery: How do we turn that content into stories for a changed audience?

The infographic which outlines who does and doesn’t use location-based services and why, states a number of concerns regarding the use of these services. First, 50 percent of users don’t have smartphones (I was once among this group and have since been unable to imagine life without it). 48 percent of non-users cited privacy concerns, which is very understandable because it was at the root of my apprehension until I realized I control my own privacy when using these services, and 49 percent had no motivation.

Motivation to use location-based services like Facebook Places, which is utilized by 90 percent of people who “check-in” anywhere online, shouldn’t be waning. Companies should be offering more promotions to bring in local costumers because it’s basically free advertising! 54 percent of current users use the services for discounts and coupons and 44 percent of non-users would consider using a location-based service for discounts and coupons. Why aren’t they converted? There’s just not enough good deals, in my opinion.

What’s also interesting is users are more likely to check-in with large brands (perhaps this is because those are the ones that often offer promotions) but less likely to share those check-ins with friends. When it comes to the social aspect of sharing your location, who cares if you went to Panera for lunch? Friends want to know about the cool mom-and-pop places they’ve never heard of.

The initial set of documents from the Skyhook trial (which I analyzed here last week) gave a quick flash of Google's gamesmanship. But examining the larger set of documents from the initial phase of the Skyhook trial against Google is opening a window into Google executives' views on how they sought to reinforce Google's monopoly and collect personal information from its users. These  other batches of documents (see these PDFs here and here from the trial) highlight how Google both recognizes the monopoly nature of location-based services on smartphones and how it can keep extracting private information from users while maintaining a figleaf of "consent." As the New York Times noted in a story over the weekend, the emails flying back-and-forth give an almost minute-by-minute window into the workings of high-tech negotiations-- at least until some legal-aware top managers abruptly killed email exchanges with messages like "Thread-kill and talk to me off-line with any questions."  But in the meantime, we get some quite damning admissions by Google execs on their internal practices.

When Motorola and Samsung announced they were going to use Google-rival Skyhook for their location-based services on their Android smartphones, Google on one hand responded in these internal emails by noting the superiority of Google location information precisely because they were maintaining constant surveillance on customers and local wi-fi spots to update their location maps. "We are constantlyre-mapping through our users, which keeps the data re-refreshed," said one email (see p. 44) or, from another manager, the advantage of "the large volume of device distribution that helps the data collection. (see p. 32) Conversely, the managers bemoan the doom if Skyhook gets the business from manufacturers like Motorola and Samsung and Google loses the ability to spy on customer locations through the smartphones. "It will cut off our ability to continue collecting data to maintain and improve our location database.  If that happens, we can easily wind up in a situation we were in before creating our own location database and that is (a) having no access at all or (b) paying exorbitant costs for access."

Google managers recognize this market as a classic winner-take-all monopoly situation where controlling more devices let's you control more data which in turn gives you such an overwhelming advantage in providing location-based services that manufacturers will have to use your service.  With Android phones beginning to take off strongly in early 2010, who controlled those location-based services would create a tipping point for control into the future.

GPS devices have become ubiquitous: Millions of drivers rely on them for directions.

The government hopes to construct a new air traffic control system based on GPS navigation rather than the use of radar.

They've also become an important tool in agriculture.

With a pool of nearly 1,000 college students in ten countries over five continents – including the US, the study sought to witness the effects of abstaining from social media and ALL media for a period of 24 hours.

The word “addiction” while not clinically relevant was surely on the minds of the students as this word came back repeatedly in responses. “I was itching, like a crackhead, because I could not use my phone.” – US studentFacebook is the social media “drug” of choice. “There is no doubt that Facebook is really high profile in our daily life.” – Hong Kong studentBut “Texting is the glue of social life.” “I found it hard not to text my boyfriend as I am so used to doing that as our main way of communicating during the day.” – UK studentA sense of isolation and loneliness came over many. “When I couldn’t communicate with my friends by mobile phone, I felt so lonely as if I was in a small cage on an island.” – China student Envy led to hostility. "I realized that I was having hostile thoughts towards those students who were walking around texting. I was jealous of them and it literally felt like some sort of withdrawal.” – US student

My first reaction after reading over all of the findings was ‘I think much of this is applicable to ALL social media and media users as a whole.’

1. Just Gimme My Mobile Wallet, Man There are a lot of deviations of a mobile wallet, and everyone does it differently. Essentially, the mobile wallet is exactly what it sounds like: A service that stores everything you would normally put in a physical wallet, including debit and credit cards, coupons and loyalty cards, in a mobile wallet. Not all wallets store data on the phone itself; SCVNGR's LevelUp and PayPal, for example, store data in the cloud. Your mobile wallet arrives empty, just like an wallet. You decide what goes in it. Google's mobile wallet works off of an NFC chip called the Secure Element, which acts like a secure wallet and differentiates this product from being just an app. It's also separate from the phone's main operating system and hardware.

Google launched its Wallet program in late May. The official launch (yes, a beta) happened in September. Google chose MasterCard as its official partner in the realm of mobile payments using near-field communications (NFC). At the time of launch, Nexus S 4G on Sprint with Citibank and payment network MasterCard was the only phone compatible with Google Wallet. The industry is preparing for Wallet, but the consumer side isn't quite there yet. In September, however, Visa also signed a licensing deal to include credit and debit cards in Google's Wallet program. MasterCard's has begun its shift toward technology innovator thanks to its new partnership and investment with mFoundry. This solidifies MasterCard's commitment to the field of mobile payments. PayPal has a slightly different vision for its mobile wallet. With a wallet in the cloud, consumers can select a payment instrument (credit card, debit card, bank account) and then use any Internet-connected device to enable that purchase. Really, PayPal wants to be technology agnostic, meaning that its mobile wallet should work on any device regardless of the operating system. In mid-November, PayPal unleashed its mobile wallet that features a card and a smartphone app that lets consumers store credit cards, gift cards, frequent flier miles and more. Speaking of mobile wallets, whatever happened to Apple's iWallet? NFC never did come to the iPhone4S.

2. Where NFCs Will Go, Few Do Know NFC (near field communication) enables the exchange of data between devices (typically, mobile devices) that are in close proximity to each other. NFC devices are used for more than just payments, though - they can be the link between real world actions and consumer-facing or back office systems. While card issuers love NFC options, they would force payment processors to radically redesign. Are consumers ready to trade in the swipe of a credit card for the tap of an NFC-enabled device? NFC may never be widely used as a form of payments, writes RWW mobile expert Dan Rowinski. While the technology around NFC is ready and being widely adapted within the industry, the actual infrastructure is not there yet. But the NFC hype is here. Since Google's Beta Wallet launch in September, it has partnered with Mastercard, CitiBank, Sprint, FirstData, Verifone, VivoTech (NFC partner), Hypercom, Igenico and NXP (NFC partner). On the opposing end, NFC mobile payment solution ISIS is poised to attack Google's Wallet; it recently partnered with Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T.