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China's leading location-based social service is distributing NFC window stickers to more than 3,000 merchants in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Taipei and Hong Kong

Jiepang is to distribute NFC window stickers to more than 3,000 merchant partners in six cities in Greater China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Taipei and Hong Kong.

Jiepang is China's leading location-based social service. Its users currently check in and earn rewards via a GPS-enabled smartphone app which comes preloaded on all new HTC, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and other smartphone brands in China, including all three of the new Nokia NFC smartphones announced earlier this week.

Why are embedded systems important right now? Elecia White: Embedded systems are where the software meets the physical world. As we put tiny computers into all sorts of systems (door locks, airplanes, pacemakers), how we implement the software is truly, terrifyingly important. Writing software for these things is more difficult than computer software because the systems have so few resources. Instead of building better software, the trend has been to allow a cowboy mentality of just getting it done. We can do better than that. We must do better than that.

What's on the horizon for embedded systems? Elecia White: Jewelry that monitors vital signs. Credit cards that only work when we touch them. Smart dust and nanobots. Personalized learning. Self-driving cars. Science fiction isn't so far away from fact.

If this is progress, what will 2031 be like? The very goal of embedded systems is to distribute the intelligence from a centralized computer to a smaller widget that can live in your home, on a satellite, in a car, or in your pocket. If a big desktop computer from 2011 can fit in our 2031 pockets, does that mean our smartphones will fit into an earring or disposable microdot?

Immersive gameplay where you become the character in a game is an interesting concept and one that I think the Xbox Kinect will do pretty well at.  Below is an interesting video from a developer experimenting with augmented reality and the Kinect. There are some nice touches in there such as body mapping to paint the characters costume, object detection for the particle beams. Also watch out for the example of diminishing reality thrown in at the end.

Telefonica Digital staff are to start testing NFC payments using BlackBerry smartphones, RIM announced in a blog post yesterday.

In collaboration with local banks and retailers, 350 Telefonica employees will trial the devices at its headquarters in Spain.

Telefonica CEO Matthew Key is quoted as saying the technology will be rolled out in several markets in 2012.

Research In Motion has staked its claim as a leader in the mobile payment and Near Field Communications space with the announcement of a new pilot project which will see Telefonica employees at the network operator's Madrid headquarters able to pay for goods in local retailers with their BlackBerrys.

The Telefonica Wallet for BlackBerry project will allow users of the NFC enabled BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 handsets to pay by touching their device against a reader in participating stores.

The SIM-based NFC technology stores funds and transcation details electronically on the phone's chip while at the front end an application on the device allows user to choose which cards they want to use, as well as get account balances.

Starbucks, the coffee chain, is installing a mobile payment system in the form of an iPhone app into 700 of its outlets across the UK and Ireland, following a successful US roll-out.

The Starbucks app will be available for iPhone and iPod Touch users from 5 January and allows consumers to pay for their items through their phone with the aim to reduce transaction time by around 10 seconds.

Consumers who own a registered Starbucks Card, part of the chain’s loyalty programme, will be able to link the balance on their reward card to the Starbucks app.

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.

Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates were computer science students without any real plan. They started Facebook because it was fun, used their talents, and was a novel way for Harvard students and alumni to stay in touch. Zuckerberg never anticipated it would host over 400 million members. And he had no clear idea where the money would come from. But he kept at it until, in 2007, Facebook let outside developers create applications for it, and game developers started buying ads on Facebook to keep attracting players. Hardly Zuckerberg’s strategy in 2004.And when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, started writing code in 1996 they had no clear plan or idea how they would make money either. But that didn’t stop them from starting. It wasn’t until 2002 and 2003 that AdWords and AdSense became the company’s money-making platform. Last week, in Don’t Get Distracted by Your Plan, I wrote about the importance of staying flexible, about the dangers of sticking too closely to your plan. But what if you have no plan? Read more at blogs.hbr.org

If you take the time to create good content, take the time to share it well. There is no magic formula, only thoughtfulness + tools. Know the Flow is my approach to social media data flow. Over the next week I’ll be sharing some of my theory and tips that I touched on in a recent #SoSocial presentation. Consider this the starter pack. Tools & Theory for social media content distribution

Distribution Tools

Social Blogs

Over time, using your smart-phone touch screen becomes second nature, to the point where you can even do some tasks without looking. Researchers in Germany are now working on a system that would let you perform such actions without even holding the phone - instead you'd tap your palm, and the movements would be interpreted by an "imaginary phone" system that would relay the request to your actual phone.

The concept relies on a depth-sensitive camera to pick up the tapping and sliding interactions on a palm, software to analyze the video, and a wireless radio to send the instructions back to the iPhone. Patrick Baudisch, professor of computer science at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, says the imaginary phone prototype "serves as a shortcut that frees users from the necessity to retrieve the actual physical device."

As a clinician fascinated by the use of new technologies to achieve outcomes, it’s hard to go past anything that is looking at bridging the divide between human emotions / touch and technology. Telenoid is one such project. It’s aim is to provide an effective way to transfer people’s presence. The research on telepresence is booming and it’s fairly widely accepted that videoconferencing is superior to teleconferencing and that platforms like virtual worlds provide even better telepresence sometimes. Telenoid is a step further again, providing a tangible means of interacting with someone remotely. In the second video below you’ll see its creator citing a key inspiration was the ability for remotely located grandparents to interact more with their grandchildren. That alone is laudable but for me the clinical simulation potentials stood out pretty strongly.

Real patients as simulation Imagine the ability to have a ‘patient’ reflecting the emotions and speech of a real person in combination with the current simulation functionality i.e. feedback, monitoring of biometric data etc. Taken a step further: a real patient experiencing a real health issue is able (with consent of course) to have their experience transferred to a simulation exercise in real time. There are already consumer devices on the market able to control avatars via thought processes, this is only a small step beyond that.

A specific example:

Researchers Sean Gustafson, Christian Holz and Patrick Baudisch of the Hasso-Plattner Institute have created a working prototype of a touch interface

A wearable depth camera tracks the user's movements on the surface of the palm of his or hand, corresponding to specific commands for an iPhone or other touchscreen phone, such as sliding to unlock and time settings.

Imaginary Phone allows users to control their mobile devices without taking it out of their pocket. Instead, users mimic the interaction on the palm of their hand. The interaction is tracked by a wearable depth camera which sends input events to the actual physical device. By mimicking the layout of the physical device, here an iPhone, users can operate the device based on spatial memory built up while using the physical device.

Computex trade show in Taipei.

“Investors want to know which tablet is better, which has the best price-performance, and when the non-iPad camp is going to get going,” said Angela Hsiang, an analyst at KGI Securities Co. in Taipei. “Previously, people couldn’t actually see the products. At Computex, we’ll be able to touch and use them.”

Global shipments of tablets will climb to 215 million units in 2015 from 17 million last year, Toni Sacconaghi, a New York- based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., wrote in a May 26 report. Fifteen percent of all tablets will cannibalize the sale of consumer PCs, reducing computer-sales growth by 2 percent annually between 2010 and 2015, Sacconaghi wrote.

Dorai Thodla, CEO of the US-based iMorph Inc. (http://bit.ly/F4TThodlaD), speaks frequently on the emerging trends in IT.

This Internet of things will cause another fundamental shift. The shift will be at several levels – at the chip level (hundreds of cores), at the device level (smart phones more powerful than your current laptops), at the interaction level (smart devices talking to each other), application level (smart applications leveraging all these sensors for different uses), and interaction level (caused by touch, gestures and voice inputs).

In which areas of emerging IT do you see India playing a major role? India can play many roles both as a consumer of the technology and a producer.

many ways mobile technologies are derivative of their desktop brethren. Your iPhone's e-mail app is like the e-mail client on your desktop, for example. The mobile world is the desktop world in miniature, a "lite" version. But the mobile world is no longer just following; it's leading.

we can expect to see certain aspects of desktop and laptop operating systems start imitating the little upstarts that had initially imitated them.

"It's very likely that PC operating systems will be affected by mobile devices' operating systems—and more broadly, that the lines between the two will increasingly blur," says Michael Dahlin, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, who has expertise in operating systems. "Things have evolved to the point today where the difference between the smart-phone OS and the laptop and desktop OS is narrowing—and really already pretty narrow in terms of capability and core architectures," he

Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo today announced it will develop with Twitter a set of new mobile services for its domestic customer base of 58 million. Under the deal, Docomo plans to integrate a “touch and follow” app into NFC-equipped feature phones, allowing two users to start following each other just by placing their handsets together. Docomo also says it will integrate tweets and other content from Twitter into the search results on i-mode, its web portal for feature phones starting this summer (50 million subscribers), and on the so-called “docomo market” portal for smartphones in late 2010 or early 2011. What’s most interesting though is what Docomo hasn’t officially announced but what The Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business daily, is reporting today. According to the paper, Docomo entered a licensing agreement with Twitter to harvest “masses of tweets” in Japanese for a new type of location-based service for smartphones.

Apple has informed iPhone/iPod Touch application developers that they can't include location-based advertising within their apps. The move has intensified rumors that Apple is planning to launch its own mobile advertising network. Google clearly seems to be the target here. Google recently acquired AdMob, one of the most popular mobile ad networks. Will Google "retaliate" by closing down options for Android developers? It doesn't seem like that type of policy would match their m.o. What's more, by owning AdMob, it's difficult to see why they would feel threatened by other competitors. Apple's move seems to be a step in the wrong direction. Developers who put out free apps generally try to get revenue from in-app advertising. Location-based advertising, while still in its infancy, is truly the key to mobile ads. If a company can know that you're in the vicinity, they could send you a coupon incentivizing you to visit their store and make a purchase. Of course, location-based advertising should always include an opt-in or opt-out policy, but privacy doesn't appear to be Apple's main concern here. Apple did acquire mobile ad network Quattro Wireless recently.

Who cares about ancient history? If you're a gamer you should, because it's happening again. This time, though, its console gamers lobbing the same lamentations at Angry Bird players, Words With Friends addicts, and ever-sneaky Fruit Ninjas. As smartphones and tablets get more powerful, the dedicated gaming machine looks more and more quaint. Where once software supported hardware in one big, happy family, it's all becoming rather more... disjointed. For a gamer like me, that's a little troubling. If app gaming does for consoles what those consoles did to the PC scene a decade ago, a lot of big game studios are going to be in trouble, and a lot of gamers are going to be pining for the good 'ol days.

It's hard to tell at what point mobile gaming became a serious threat to the console scene, but surely nobody at Nintendo lost any sleep when Snake crawled its way into the hearts of many a Nokia user back in the late '90s. Then, just a few years later, Steve Jobs started comparing iPod sales to those of dedicated gaming machines. I initially thought the very notion was preposterous; that an iPod didn't hold a candle to the DS and PSP I took with me on every flight. In the ensuing months, however, I've changed my tune.

In recent years we haven't exactly seen a lot of innovation on the console gaming front. Sure, there was a giant rush to jump on the motion gaming bandwagon -- Microsoft with the Kinect and Sony with the Move, even Nintendo sauntering back in with the MotionPlus -- but none of those technologies have delivered the new gameplay experiences that even grizzled veterans like myself secretly hoped they might. Nor have they succeeded in whetting my appetite for something truly new. As someone whose youth was punctuated by a three-year console cycle, booting up the same 'ol hardware almost six years later feels wrong.

Four major credit card companies are working with the Isis mobile wallet venture to install mobile payment security applications on upcoming NFC-ready smartphones in the U.S.

Visa expects to license its own software, called PayWave, to the upcoming near-field communication (NFC) smartphones sold by the three wireless carriers in the Isis consortium, a Visa spokeswoman said yesterday.

All four of the credit networks offer contactless payment software, which today is more widely used on cards containing chips than in smartphones. Isis officials said in July that having all four on board will increase consumer and merchant acceptance of NFC-ready smartphones used to make point-of-sale purchases.

Did you know that nearly 40 percent of all tweets come from a mobile device? Nearly 56 percent of Twitter users are women and 70 percent of Twitter accounts are based outside of the US. These and more fun Twitter facts can be found this infographic created by Touch Agency. via and via