Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

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.

HANOVER: O2 is to introduce new services in the UK in the coming months, including a wallet application and direct-to-bill and peer-to-peer payment facilities, as the company looks to take advantage of mainstream smartphone use.

The services are already available in countries such as Germany and Kenya, and will be made available to UK customers soon, according to Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 parent company Telefónica, during his keynote at CeBIT.

"We see ourselves being an aggregator of services and payments. As a mobile business we are uniquely positioned. Telefónica across the world has 190 million customers, and we know everyone's payment history and credit references."

iTnews is reporting this morning that the Bank of New Zealand has begun a Near Field Communications (NFC) payments trial, in partnership with Vodafone NZ and Visa.

The news comes quickly after the Commonwealth Bank announced its ‘Kaching’ iPhone app. Kaching will use a case over the phone to enable contactless payments, as well as allowing users to pay to mobile, Facebook and email.

CBA’s Kelly Bayer Rosmarin will present in Australia’s only dedicated NFC conference. To find out more about NFC in Australia and New Zealand, click here.

Taiwan's Acer Inc. plans to launch smartphones with near field communication (NFC) technology, which will allow users to make remote bill payments and contactless payments for retail and public transport, a company manager said Thursday.

"Telecom operators have forecast that NFC technology will become critical for smartphones next year, and I think other cellphone makers will also regard this technology as a default function on their products by that time," said Vincent Chen, product manager of Acer's telecom business department.

The current Mango operating system does not support NFC technology, but the next release of the Windows mobile platform -- Windows 8 -- is likely to feature the function, Chen said.

While tablet computing may in future transform the whole computer industry, it is already changing the way we look at augmented reality. And this is not only because of the big display. More and more different devices for multiple OS platforms are expected to appear on the market, equipped with advanced sensors such as high-resolution cameras. The cost of data roaming is likely to drop and considering the millions of people expected to buy such a device in the next few years, there are incentives enough for optimizing augmented reality (AR) tablet software and to start creating really useful and fascinating applications taking full advantage of the promising, new capabilities. metaio, with its junaio 2.6 release, a junaio plug-in for third party app integration, and the revised mobile AR SDK Unifeye 2.5, is well prepared and ready to go for the next generation of AR applications. If you want to learn more about mobile AR in general and on tablets, everything is summed up here: http://www.metaio.com/specials/augmented-reality-on-tablets/ And here you can find a movie with almost everything we´re working on: 3D tracking, markerless 2D tracking and image processing, virtual manuals, interactive TV, smart packaging, advertising as a service, context sensitive product visualization, AR gaming and so on. By the way: to my knowledge it´s the first AR demos running on the Android 3.0 based Xoom!

One in five smartphone users currently use location-based "check-in" services on their phones, representing 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers, or about 7 percent of the nation's total mobile phone population, according to a recent study from comScore, a Reston, Va., audience measurement service. That's quite a jump from the piddling 4 percent figure announced after the results of a Pew Research Center survey were released just last November. But for small business owners who've been looking to geolocation services to put them on the map in front of new customers, that growing propensity for check-ins is certainly welcome. The comScore study found that 16.7 million mobile phone subscribers accessed retail sites and shopping guides on their phones during the one-month test period. Further, 12.7 million of those participants said they did so on a smartphone -- a figure that represents 17.6 percent of the nation's smartphone users. That's an impressive growth statistic when you consider that companies like Foursquare and Gowalla launched in 2009 and 2007, respectively.

At the close of an almost three-hour hearing on cell-phone tracking, Sen. Al Franken said Tuesday that he still has "serious doubts" that consumers' privacy rights are being respected when it comes to location-based services via iOS and Android. "I think that people have a right to know who is getting their information, and a right to decide how that information is shared and used," said Franken. "After having heard today's testimony, I have serious doubts that those rights are being respected in law or in practice."

"We need to think seriously about how to address this problem, [especially since] mobile devices are only going to become more and more popular," he continued. "This is an urgent issue we'll be dealing with." Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the new Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, heard testimony from Apple and Google executives today about how their mobile platforms collect and use location-based data, and what type of control users have over that information. Google said that any location-based data it collects via its Android mobile operating system is anonymous in nature and the majority of that information is deleted after one week. "The location information sent to Google servers when users opt in to location services on Android is anonymized and stored in the aggregate and is not tied or traceable to a specific user," said Alan Davidson, director of public policy at Google. "The collected information is stored with a hashed version of an anonymous token, which is deleted after approximately one week."

The first dual-core Android tablets only arrived in February, but Nvidia is already showing off an improved quad-core chip that’s expected to power tablets by August. The system-on-a-chip, codenamed “Kal-El,” has four computer cores and a dozen graphics processors that will offer a huge performance boost in mobile devices. Nvidia announced the chip in February, with support for 1440p video playback, which is higher than most HDTV sets.

Kal-El should bring faster device response times, vastly improved graphics, quicker camera applications and more. But perhaps the chip is too impressive when it comes to product timing.

the first dual-core tablets launched in February and slates using this new quad-core chip could be available by August, that means the very young Google Honeycomb tablet market is essentially running through a product cycle in six short months

We’ve already told you about Juniper Research’s bullish forecasts of the augmented reality services. According to latest figures we have from the research company, the market for mobile enterprise applications featuring augmented reality elements is expected to exceed $300 million by 2015. Among the deployments that will help this grow, Juniper points to areas as diverse as corporate utility, surgery and counter-terrorism.

A company called Logica is already working with the UK government on a project that could identify current and future AR capabilities, whilst evaluating them against various security and counter terrorism scenarios.

According to the report author Dr Windsor Holden, “It is highly likely that AR apps which would also incorporate location awareness will soon be developed for security service handhelds – if they are not already in development.”

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.

at http://www.yellowbrck.com. Email PDF Print New York, NY (PRWEB) May 12, 2011 YellowBrck is a new location-based social network mobile application created for moms and dads on the go. By downloading the free YellowBrck iPhone/iPad app in the App Store, parents can easily share their activities and locations with friends and other parents, as well as score special savings incentives from retailers. YellowBrck was created as a way to connect parents, help them share tips on ways to keep their children entertained, and learn about the latest family spots and events nationwide. By checking into YellowBrck on a regular basis, users are able to earn discounts and rewards from their favorite retailers. YellowBrck empha

is a new location-based social network mobile application created for moms and dads on the go. By downloading the free YellowBrck iPhone/iPad app in the App Store, parents can easily share their activities and locations with friends and other parents, as well as score special savings incentives from retailers. YellowBrck was created as a way to connect parents, help them share tips on ways to keep their children entertained, and learn about the latest family spots and events nationwide. By checking into YellowBrck on a regular basis, users are able to earn discounts and rewards from their favorite retailers. YellowBrck emphasizes the social aspect, allowing parents to meet up with nearby parents, keep tabs on what activities their friends are doing, and discover family-friendly places in their neighborhood. An impromptu playdate at the park or a last-minute trip to the museum is easily shared on YellowBrck for others to join in. Parents are also able to check-in for everyday tasks pre-listed on the app, including potty training and getting dressed, with the chance to “win” virtual stickers and real world savings from online and brick & mortar retailers, including Totsy, Ecomom, Dapple, Abe’s Market, Torly Kid, and many more.

Since location-based check-in app Foursquare was launched at South by Southwest in 2009, the app has seen exponential growth, reaching over 7.5 million users this year.

Apart from gamification through leaderboards and badges (or stickers, or pins), the motivation for users to participate in location-based networks is severely lacking.

1)make it easy and 2) create value. Users want to put in less effort and receive more value.