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"This is one of the largest deployments of NFC technology in the United States and shows the practical benefits this technology can deliver in terms of ease of use and convenience. There has been a lot of hype around NFC recently and PayByPhone is pleased to now put the technology in the field for real world applications," said Neil Podmore, VP of Business Development at PayByPhone. "We expect this to help kick start the more widespread adoption and understanding of the practical benefits of NFC in 2012."

The installation of mobile electronic payment systems is already catching the imagination of cities and towns around the world. With a proven role of providing parking authorities with efficient, easier-to-manage and cost effective solutions also comes real-time data to fine tune parking policies and provide parking guidance systems.

Analyst firm Juniper Research predicted that consumers around the world could generate as much as $50 billion in sales through NFC-based mobile payments by 2014. The potential for this nascent technology is huge, according to Jupiter.

PayByPhone, the largest provider of payment systems for parking across North America, has ongoing contracts in more than 60 cities, towns and universities including Miami; Dallas; Vancouver, BC; London, Paris and now San Francisco, the largest installation in the United States. Worldwide, the company handles more than 55,000 transactions per day. The company experienced rapid growth in FY 2011, logging an estimated 8 million transactions over the first six month period.

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.

Twenty-two EU member states signed the treaty at a ceremony in Tokyo on January 26. Other nations interested in signing the agreement have until May 2013 to do so. According to Wikipedia, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement “creates a governing body outside national institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.” The scope of the agreement includes counterfeit goods, generic medicines, and pirated copyright-protected works.

The provisions of ACTA grant copyright holders direct powers to demand that ISPs remove material from the Internet, without the requirement of a court order, and permit foreign influence over ISPs in the United States. Advocates of the treaty seek to give copyright holders the ability to demand that users who do violate intellectual property rights have their Internet connections terminated as a punishment. To enforce such a system would require the creation of an individual Internet ID.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports: The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes”/Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers.

The EFF has been vehement in its opposition to ACTA, particularly regarding the secrecy surrounding the treaty negotiations. Likewise, Michael Geist, in writing for Copyright News, asserted that ACTA was “shrouded in secrecy.” He pointed out that ACTA negotiations did not include civil society groups or developing countries, noting also that “reports suggest that trade negotiators have been required to sign non-disclosure agreements for fear of word of the treaty’s provisions leaking to the public.” The European Commission denied this allegations in 2008, arguing, “It is only natural that intergovernmental negotiations dealing with issues that have an economic impact, do not take place in public and that negotiators are bound by a certain level of discretion.”

As noted on Wikipedia, opponents of ACTA also assert that it will impinge upon freedom of expression and communication privacy. A large number of the World Trade Organization’s 157 members have voiced concerns that the treaty would have a negative impact on trade. Others have pointed out that ACTA does not include provisions for legal safeguards protecting ISPs from liability for the actions of their subscribers. Without such provisions, ISPs will be forced to invade the privacy of their subscribers in order to protect themselves. Aaron Shaw, research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, stressed that “ACTA would create unduly harsh legal standards that do not reflect contemporary principles of democratic government, free market exchange, or civil liberties.”

The technology news and information website ArsTechnica.com argues that ACTA encourages ISPs to collect and provide information about suspects by providing for those ISPs “safe harbor from certain legal threats.” In protest against the treaty, the hacktivist group Anonymous hacked into the Federal Trade Commission’s cybersecurity advice website on January 24, replacing the homepage with the Anonymous logo, a rap song, and a message threatening more attacks if anti-piracy legislation in Congress were to pass. According to The Next Web: The message left temporarily on OnGuardOnline referred to the Stop Online Piracy Act, The Protect Intellectual Property Act and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. If they pass, the message said, "we will wage a relentless war against the corporate Internet, destroying dozens upon dozens of government and company websites."

One blogger from tech site Mashable found this week that Google's Ad Preferences page assume that she was middle-aged - and a man, simply because her interests included technology and computing.  The profile page, called Ad Preferences, is hidden away inside a settings menu in Google Accounts, but can be accessed directly here. This sort of in-depth profiling raises alarm bells with privacy activists. 'Consumers have increasingly digital lives and they are developing an unfathomably large data trail every day,' says Rainey Reitman, activism director for privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'There has never been another time in history where privacy was under the kind of assault it is today.'You can opt out of the tracking, or manually edit your details. Google also  does not store information on controversial subjects such as pornography. The Ad preferences page came to public attention following a sweeping change to 'privacy policy' which comes into effect on March 1, although the preferences page was launched some time ago. YouTube data, Gmail information and search data will all be used to build up ever more accurate advertising profiles and also the company claims it will make searches more personalised.

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.

d not only need consent to collect the information, but should have to delete it after a certain amount of time and keep it anonymous, according the panel.

The recommendations are not binding in themselves, but are likely to inform national policy decisions in EU countries.

The most important thing that Tolva said that he has been able to change in the first months of the young administration is integrating technology into more of Chicago's governing culture. "If a policy point is being debated, and decisions are being made, people are saying 'let's go look at the data.' The people in office are new enough that they can't run on anecdotes. There's the beginning of a culture merging political sensibility with what the city is telling us."

But arguably no big business has smashed the clock quite so resolutely as Best Buy. The official policy for this post-face-time, location-agnostic way of working is that people are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done.

So bullish are Anderson and his team on the idea that they have formed a subsidiary called CultureRx, set up to help other companies go clockless. CultureRx expects to sign up at least one large client in the coming months.

It seems to be working. Since the program's implementation, average voluntary turnover has fallen drastically, CultureRx says. Meanwhile, Best Buy notes that productivity is up an average 35% in departments that have switched to ROWE.

"It wasn't hugs and smiles," she says of Ressler's and Thompson's campaign. "Managers in the old mental model were totally irritated." In the e-learning division, many of Wells's older co-workers (read 40-year-olds; the average age at Best Buy is 36) expressed resentment over the change, insisting that work relationships are better face-to-face, not screen-to-screen. "We have people in our group who are like, `I'm not going to do it,'" says Wells, who likes to sleep in and doesn't own an alarm clock. "I'm like, `that's fine, but I'm outta here.'" In enemy circles, Ressler and Thompson are known to this day as "those two" and "the subversives."

`How are you going to measure this so you know you're getting the same productivity out of people?'"

Achen could see that not only was his team's productivity up, but engagement scores, or measuring job satisfaction and retention, were the highest in the dot-com division's history.

"For years I had been focused on the wrong currency," says Thompson. "I was always looking to see if people were here. I should have been looking at what they were getting done."

Achen says he would never go back. Orders processed by people who are not working in the office are up 13% to 18% over those who are. ROWE'ers are posting higher metrics for quality, too. Achen says he believes that's due to the new office paradox: Given the constant distractions, it sometimes feels impossible to get any work done at work.

But it's worth remembering that most big companies fail to grow at the rate of inflation. That's true in part because the bigger the company gets, the harder it is to get the best out of each and every employee. ROWE is one of Best Buy's answers to avoiding that fate. "The old way of managing and looking at work isn't going to work anymore," says Ressler. "We want to revolutionize the way work gets done." Admit it, you're rooting for them, too.

There are no hours-worked expectations for exempt/salaried employees. We do not talk about how many hours we work or demand 40, 50, or 60 hours out of people.

We do not have a tele-work policy, handbook or tele-work rules. Tele-work is so 1970's, Work is just work. It doesn't need a location label, And, we don't have flextime.

We do not track PTO (vacation, sick time, personal time, holiday time). It's not a benefit. Unlimited paid time off as long as the work gets done is the contemporary benefit that matters.

Nobody asks permission to go to an appointment, event or any other personal activity. Ever. And they don't have to inform the team or management in an effort to be polite.

We have adopted the Sludge* Eradication Strategy - NO SLUDGE in our workplace.

We NEVER put 'mandatory' on a meeting invite. Every meeting is optional.

We don't have any limits put on how or when we can work: "No E-Mail Fridays" and "No Meeting Wednesdays" don't exist in our organization. 

Unstructured work is not for everyone That kind of approach, which management consultants like to call a “results-oriented workplace,” might be fine for a creative endeavor like programming or design, or even for businesses (like GigaOM’s) that involve brain-powered work such as writing.

There’s another risk Holman’s description of the new unstructured workplace brings up, something we’ve written about a lot at GigaOM, and that is the impact that this can have on the “work-life balance” of employees. Says Holman:

By allowing for a more flexible work schedule, you create an atmosphere where employees can be excited about their work. Ultimately it should lead to more hours of work, with those hours being even more productive. Working weekends blur into working nights into working weekdays, since none of the work feels like work.

Knowledge workers of all kinds find themselves answering emails or responding to text messages at all hours of the day and night, working on weekends, and so on. And the increasing globalization of many industries has just accelerated this phenomenon, since some staffers or contract workers may be in completely different time zones.

One thing is clear, however: This phenomenon isn’t going away; if anything, it is increasing, as more work becomes knowledge work, and as more companies try to adapt to a cloud-based and global world (flexible hours and an increase in freelance or contract work also has real benefits for companies in terms of lower costs, some of which are pushed down to the individual worker, such as the cost of health benefits).

Companies like VMWare are trying to help figure out how the nature of work changes when it occurs in “the cloud” and the workforce moves toward what CEO Paul Maritz calls the “post-document era.” Instead of sitting at desks moving paper around, more people are working in ways that are difficult to define, that involve streams of information that don’t start or stop at specific times.

Netflix has what it calls an “unlimited vacation” policy, which allows workers to take time whenever they need it, provided they arrange to have their work completed when necessary. Social Media Group, a Toronto-based consulting firm, is another that has taken this approach — one that CEO Maggie Fox described in a recent blog post.

With that much data, there's a back-end business for the company in aggregating and anonymizing the information so it can analyze it and feed data back to merchants on which offers are most effective and when. Indeed, the company's self-service tool with which clients can manage their offers online also includes some data tools for this type of analysis.