Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Google Reader (463)

  • This is because we are in the midst of unprecedented technology change, population growth, and global exposure. The world is changing so quickly that no one can predict even 12 months out.
  • Understanding what people want, at the exact moment they may want it, in the fashion they wish to consume it. This is how a new rule to the game may get introduced. Old schoolers spend millions behind the curtain researching scientific data. The new American Dreamer just listens, watches, and reacts.

• NFC Company ViVOtech Unloads Its Reader Business, Will Focus On Software Going Forward | TechCrunch

  • ViVOtech has made progress on that front: it has unloaded its reader business to ID TECH, and says its focus will now be on making software
  • ViVOtech has been one of the more notable names in the NFC technology space, and was responsible for over half the NFC terminals found in big-name retailers such as McDonald’s, Home Depot, Whole Foods and more.

• Solving Real World Problems with NFC Mobile Phones. The Next Generation in Customer Service.

  • NFC is here today, but most people don’t even know it. The reason people don’t, is because it’s pushed as either a mobile payment technology, or a novelty for hobbyists. The reality is that NFC is the fastest growing, and most powerful technology today. Narian realized years ago, that NFC could make lives better, in a completely new and revolutionary way
  • Near field communication (NFC) is a revolutionary new technology, now found in 10’s of millions of phones today. Many are now familiarizing themselves of NFC’s boundless capabilities, including Mobile Payment via Google Wallet and Isis Wallet, Mobile Ticketing

• Local web developers cash in on switch to HTML5 | Technology | Business in Vancouver

  • Steve Vestergaard said. "HTML5 is allowing us to use the browser to directly render the video.
  • sales of HTML5-enabled smartphones are projected to hit one billion in 2013.

• Exclusive Romney Interview: On Humility and Tax Returns - Businessweek

  • government is the least productive—the federal government is the least productive of our economic sectors. The most productive is the private sector. The next most productive is the not-for-profit sector, then comes state and local governments, and finally the federal government. And so moving responsibilities from the federal government to the states or to the private sector will increase productivity.
  • Don’t forget! It’s the private sector jobs that pay for government workers. So if you have fewer government workers doing work more and more productively, that means private sector work will grow.

• 3D Printing Industry

  • While traditional paper printers use a moving toner cartridge head to form lines of text, adding row upon row of toner as the paper moves through the printer, 3D printing works much the same way. Instead of toner, however, a free-moving printer head precisely deposits layer upon layer of plastic or other material to create a solid object from the bottom up.

• 3D Printing with Peter Weijmarshausen - Forbes

  • the time to market is compressed immensely. The other key aspect is that the risk of going to market is almost non-existent, because your investment is only the design of the product itself
  • 3D printing allows you to make incredibly complex designs at no additional cost: interlocking components, naturally hinged parts, semi-translucent surfaces, and even objects that can move on their own without assembly

• Let’s Clear Up Some Details About Square’s Big Partnership With Starbucks - SplatF

  • Starbucks will use its existing point-of-sale registers and infrastructure to add Square to its stores. For now, there won’t be any Square-powered iPad registers, no cute little Square credit-card readers, and no geolocation-powered Square “tab” feature. Starbucks may add more Square features in the future, Schultz said, but for now, it seems mostly a back-end thing. (That’s the easiest, fastest, safest, and cheapest way to start, so it makes sense.) Square will handle credit- and debit-card transactions, but Starbucks’ existing infrastructure will handle the rest.

    Starbucks cashiers will scan a Square barcode on your phone to “pay with Square”, the same way they currently scan a barcode on your phone’s Starbucks app

• Stratasys: Don't Ignore The Risks - Seeking Alpha

  • General Electric (GE) has already announced a push into using additive manufacturing processes whether 3D printing or something else. At the recent Farnborough Air Show the company announced the making of parts for the LEAP engine by using the SLM 250HL additive manufacturing machine. What is to stop this manufacturing giant from building machines as well?
  • Naturally building a competing technology or product might not be simple, but assuming Stratasys and 3D Systems have this market as a duopoly might be disastrous to an investment thesis

• Exclusive: Amazon seeks leader for patent acquisitions | Reuters

  • Amazon has hired executive recruiting firm Argos Search to help the company hire an intellectual property "Acquisition and Investment Leader" to "identify and evaluate strategic IP acquisition and licensing opportunities," according to a job description obtained this week by Reuters.

  • The search suggests that Amazon is trying to amass more patents, either through acquisitions of patent-rich companies, purchases of patent portfolios or licensing, according to intellectual property experts. It is also a sign that the world's largest Internet retailer is serious about being a long-term player in mobile devices and digital content, they say.

    Amazon is known for developing its own patents, but mostly in the e-commerce area. An expansion into mobile devices and the delivery of digital content to those devices will require a lot of different patents, intellectual property experts say.

    "As they get into wireless devices and digital media, they realize the best way to handle this is to get more proactive in IP," said David Pridham of IPNav, which helps companies make money from their patents.

• Square, Starbucks aim to give mobile payments a jolt | Internet & Media - CNET News

  • Square will process credit and debit card transactions at U.S. stores. Also, Starbucks customers will be able to make purchases with Pay with Square -- Square's payer app -- at Starbucks locations later this fall.
  • The service, founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is being positioned as an alternative to the much-touted but still emerging near-field communication (NFC) technology. Square's system still lets you pay for goods and services using your mobile phone without the need for cash or a credit card. But instead of having users tap their phone against an NFC-enabled register or terminal, Square's system also lets users "check into" a store through phone, pick up items, and pay for them through Square account.

• NFC Focus: What is NFC and Contactless Payment? - International Business Times UK

  • Near field communication is basically a contactless, wireless means of transferring data between two objects. It is activated when two antennae communicate with each other through a magnetic field, for example an NFC-enabled smartphone and an NFC enabled point of sale payment terminal," explains Philip Robinson, head of payments at Lloyds Banking Group

  • When NFC technology is included in a mobile phone, it can be embedded within the SIM card in something called a secure element.

     

    This is similar to using the gold chip on a debit or credit card to store user information such as your credit card number and expiry number

  • When you put your debit or credit card into a terminal, that is what it reads and then it verifies your PIN number and you make your payment. That same information gets embedded in the SIM card in the secure element, which is as secure as that chip on a card

• New app allows instant connection to wi-fi network for friends | The Cloud Blog

  • Android smartphone users can now instantly connect their friends’ devices to a WiFi network with the help of a new app. InstaWifi uses either near field communication (NFC) technology or quick response (QR) codes – depending on the devices in question – to allow other phones to pick up all the details they need to access the same WiFi internet connection, reported phonesreview.co.uk.
  • NFC technology is being harnessed as more than just another way to pay for items. She suggested the real benefit of InstaWifi is that people can invite others to use a WiFi network without ever giving up their password, as it is automatically transmitted from one phone to another without ever being displayed to users.

• Apple could play key role in driving NFC | ZDNet

  • Following speculation that the upcoming iPhone 5 will be NFC-enabled, industry watchers note that Apple's latest phone may increase the adoption of near field communications (NFC) transactions, but it is the collaboration of the entire ecosystem of players will ultimately be needed.

• Apple wins NFC-enabled barcode-reading "shopping list" patent

  • an NFC-capable barcode-reading shopping assistant.
  • While there are existing readers on the iOS App Store that allow users to scan a variety of codes using an iDevice's camera, including UPC and QR codes, none offer the capability of directly linking scans to purchases or stored credit card information. Apple's '276 patent describes such a solution.
  • Apple's patent describes a comprehensive app that offers lowest price indicators as well as an option to create shopping lists and read or write product reviews when a barcode is scanned. The "Shopping" app can also be integrated with Maps to offer store locations as well as in-store directions.
     
     Scanning is done in one of three ways: object recognition or code recognition through the device's camera, NFC or a dedicated barcode scanner.

• Why Google May Be Secretly Happy That Apple's Dropping Its YouTube App - Forbes

  • the Apple YouTube app doesn’t allow ads to be run against all those billions of videos views a month that YouTube draws on mobile devices
  • Because she can’t run ads on the iPhone YouTube app, and no ads means no money generated. Multiply that by thousands of artists, movies, and all kinds of content that advertisers want to run ads against–ads that will bring in up to $3.6 billion in revenues this year, by Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney’s recent estimate for YouTube. Now you realize why Google may not mind much that the creaky old adless Apple app is heading for the trash can icon.

• NFCNews | Report: 100 million NFC phones to ship in 2012

  • Approximately 100 million NFC-enabled mobile devices are expected to ship globally in 2012, according to a new report from Forrester.

      

    The report, “NFC: What Lies Beyond Contactless Payments,” predicts that the increasing number of NFC mobile phones, coupled with a growing NFC infrastructure, will cause NFC to emerge as the standard for contactless solutions across the world – namely in South Korea, Poland, Turkey, the U.K., the U.S. and France.

  • According to Husson, the key long-term driver for NFC is that it can enable many new product and service experiences beyond just mobile contactless payments. These include transport ticketing, loyalty and rewards, authentication and ID, and “immersive marketing.” Husson predicts that NFC will also expand into other consumer and workforce connected devices, facilitating content and app sharing and cross-device experiences.

• Social Discovery Is Pushing Search and Social Closer

  • people are more likely to accept a friend's opinion or advice than that of a general crowd or a search algorithm. Having been built on algorithms, Google and Bing are looking for ways to include social discovery in their traditional search results.

• Talk to Me, One Machine Said to the Other - NYTimes.com

  • Machine-to-machine communications has been around for more than two decades, initially run on landline connections and used for controlling industrial processes remotely. With advances in mobile broadband speeds and smartphone computing, the same robotic conversations are now rapidly shifting to wireless networks.

  • Currently, about a third of all machine-to-machine communication involves so-called smart utility meters, which perform duties like sending data on household electric and gas consumption to utilities; the utilities use the information to tailor production to actual demand. In Europe, all households in Sweden and Italy are equipped with smart meters, many of them running wirelessly. In Austria, a law will require five million homes to be equipped with smart electric meters by 2019.

     Another third is taking place in the auto industry, through car and truck fleet management systems, which allow transport companies or corporate car managers to track their vehicles in real time, or that are used by emergency accident, repair and location services like General Motors’ OnStar system, now installed on a quarter of new GM vehicles. In Europe, similar technology is beginning to appear in preparation for 2015, when the eCall initiative, an E.U. law requiring all new cars to be equipped with wireless transmitters will take effect. The transmitters would automatically report accident data, as well as airbag deployment and location, to emergency responders

     But it is variations on consumer applications

• Near field communication will make credit cards, cash obsolete | Kidela

  • Standards have been created that allow the NFC technology to be put into smartphones. A phone can serve as both an active and passive device. As an active device, it can exchange information with other compatible smartphones by simply bumping the phones together. It can serve as a passive device when passed next to a reader or interrogator. To assure that the information that is exchanged is secure, the NFC connection creates a secure channel and the transmitted data is encrypted.
  • One technology trend that is making an impact in 2012 is near field communication (NFC). Like Wi-Fi, it is a form of wireless communication between two devices. One is a tag, which is passive and holds information, and the other, which is known as a reader or interrogator, can read and transmit information, and can also change information on the tag if it is authorized to do so
  • Standards have been created that allow the NFC technology to be put into smartphones. A phone can serve as both an active and passive device. As an active device, it can exchange information with other compatible smartphones by simply bumping the phones together. It can serve as a passive device when passed next to a reader or interrogator. To assure that the information that is exchanged is secure, the NFC connection creates a secure channel and the transmitted data is encrypted.

• On Track Innovations Moves To Protect NFC Patent In Lawsuit Against T-Mobile - PaymentsSource Article

  • On Track Innovations, or OTI, seeks compensation for the alleged infringement or a “reasonable royalty” for use of the technology, the complaint states.
  • It is not surprising that OTI seeks to protect its NFC-technology patent because the company considers itself a pioneer in contactless payments.

  • OTI was “an active participant” in helping MasterCard Worldwide develop contactless-payment technology with PayPass cards in 2003 and Visa Inc. with payWave cards in 2007, Bashan says.

     

    The company has been at the forefront of NFC development, Bashan contends. The payments industry tends to term different forms of contactless technology as NFC without a full understanding of how it works, he adds.

     

    The key aspect of true NFC technology is that it allows a consumer to initiate a payment transaction through a mobile handset at a terminal that has an NFC reader and, in turn, instantly receive information back to the handset about the payment balance, a store coupon, loyalty program points or updates, Bashan says.

     

    “Constant feedback and a personalized program is what NFC is all about,” Bashan says. “We really are in the first steps of this technology, which will provide many more capabilities [for consumers and merchants],” he adds.

     

    It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to any infringements on the more than two-dozen of its recently awarded NFC patent

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.