Jacob Beckley is Vice President of Innovation at full-service marketing agency Fusion92. 

NFC – near field communication – is a hot new trend that has the potential to revitalize the direct mail marketing sector. It enables marketers to deliver content via an embedded NFC chip that allows wireless communication when a user touches a smartphone or mobile device to a piece of marketing collateral or brings the device into close proximity with an NFC tag.

Although NFC technology has been around since the 1980s and marketers are increasingly using it today, the technology was slower to catch on in marketing than QR code technology. QR codes – two-dimensional matrix codes that are often printed on direct mail marketing material – have found a ready user audience in the marketing realm for several years now. QR codes appear on everything from movie posters to fast-food restaurant drink cups to ketchup bottles. With QR codes, consumers can scan the printed code with their smartphone’s camera to be connected to online digital content.

Both NFC and QR codes serve a similar function: They are a bridge between the physical and digital worlds. NFC codes create a digital bridge to physical collateral, and unlike calls to action that require consumers to type in a URL or scan a code to get redirected to an online message, with NFC, all the consumer has to do is touch their smartphone or mobile device to the collateral for an instantaneous connection. It’s a unique way to connect the physical and digital spaces. This makes both technologies highly attractive to marketers.

But despite the current popularity of QR codes, many analysts believe that NFC technology is poised to replace QR codes as the marketing tool of choice. That’s because NFC is generally easier to use: Depending on the scanning application, QR codes can take seven or more steps to direct users to the digital marketing content. NFC codes don’t require any action on the part of the user other than bringing the device into close proximity to the tag.

However, QR codes got a huge head-start over NFC, mainly due to the fact that popular smartphone manufacturer Apple has been slow to embrace NFC technology. But other tech giants like Google have recently rolled out new products that use NFC, such as the Google Wallet, which uses NFC to transmit payment details to merchants for wireless transactions. Additionally, Samsung and other mobile smartphone makers have paved the way by incorporating NFC technology in their smartphones since as early as 2006.

NFC and Direct Mail

The use of NFC as a marketing tool is on the rise, but it’s not yet pervasive. That means marketers who use it now are early adopters. This is a unique opportunity for marketers such as direct mail specialist to get ahead of the curve. It is also an opportunity to build a digital bridge for consumers with a tool that eliminates the need for the target audience to take multiple steps to reach online content.

In the past, one obstacle to widespread NFC adoption was the need to embed chips or tags in the call to action material, which could take many forms, including letterhead paper, poster stock, business cards and virtually any other material on which a marketing message can appear. However, the development of NFC-enabled papers and plastics eliminate this barrier, opening up many new NFC applications, including use of the paper to create direct mail pieces of all types.

Developments like NFC-enabled paper, creating cheaper methods of tag production and technology adoption will help push NFC usage rates higher, as will Apple’s embrace of the technology since it is becoming more commonplace. The technology’s applications are practically limitless. Proximity marketing applications can allow merchants to convey messages to any smartphone within range of a particular product, allowing marketers to precisely target messages to consumers and gauge reactions to offers in real time.

Marketers who are early adopters of this emerging technology tool can differentiate themselves from competitors by developing analytics around the technology. This can provide a major strategic advantage. Marketers can also use NFC to improve their tactical approach by eliminating the need to create short URLs, relying instead on proximity to complete the connection between the direct mail marketing piece and the online offer.

By giving marketers a new way to bridge the physical and digital gap, NFC technology offers unprecedented opportunities to brands that want to convey a tech-savvy image while delivering valuable offers and collecting vital consumer insights. NFC is positioned to revitalize the direct mail marketing sector, enabling instantaneous delivery of relevant messages affordably and effectively.

photo credit: scott_bl8ke via photopin cc

Sony is showing that it’s got the “touch” — at least with its new One Touch tech.

Sony showed off its One Touch technology at the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s based on near-field communications (NFC). With One Touch, you tap your phone to another device and automatically establish a connection. Once you do that, you can begin a data transfer. If you tap your phone’s NFC chip to the same spot on an audio player, the audio player will start playing the song on your mobile device. If you tap the phone to a TV remote, you can transfer a photo from your smartphone to the TV screen. The same happens with a video.

NFC has a short range of just a few centimeters. Once you establish the connection, the devices complete the data transfer using either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct, depending on what is built into your consumer electronics gear. The transfer of one screen to another is known as remote mirroring, and it was a very popular trend at CES. The trend should really help people who want to show YouTube videos or family pictures on a big-screen TV. The Sony One Touch feature will also work with a backup device. And with One Touch, you will no longer have to manually pair an audio headset or ear piece. You just pair them via One Touch.

Of course, it only works with Sony devices, not across a bunch of manufacturers. When the day comes when you can use NFC across manufacturers, it will truly be useful.

Here’s a video demo below.

We’ve seen the clash of titans in mobile as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have released new phones, tablets, and mobile operating systems. We’ve seen a single network connect over a billion people worldwide. We’ve seen the once-great mobile company of the far European north forced to hawk its headquarters to raise cash. And we’ve seen social media move from cutting-edge to mainstream as the Obama campaign celebrated four more years.

In every year, we see winners and losers: companies, devices, or operating systems. Here’s our look at some of the biggest successes and failures of 2012.

The winners

	Android What more can you say about Android? With 75 percent market share in the third quarter of 2012, the free mobile operating system from Google looks poised to take over the world.
	Samsung  Not many companies sell 55 million smartphones in a quarter. Samsung did, and it will probably do it again.
	Galaxy S III Samsung is hot in large part due to its top smartphone, the Galaxy S III. With over 18 million units shipped in the third quarter, and 30 million shipped in five months, it’s easy to see why.
	iPhone 5 Sure, it was Time’s gadget of the year. But more importantly, iPhone 5 catapulted Apple back into the smartphone leadership position, at least in the U.S.
	iPad Mini We called it immediately: light, portable, awesome, and expensive. And it even looked better up close and person in our review. But we had no clue it would become one of Apple’s best-selling iPads. And now that it’s probably going Retina in April/May, it’s just getting better.
	YouTube YouTube continues to be the online leader, by far, in online video with 800 million visitors and billion-view channels created by individuals and brands. Despite getting the boot from iOS6, YouTube just continues to grow, with 25 times the video streams of its nearest competitor.
	Twitter 2012 is the year that Twitter went mainstream, reaching 500 million users mid-summer and just recently announcing 200 million monthly active users. And despite major new API restrictions that soured its relationship with developers, a very public spat with Instagram, and an evolving shift from social utility to media company, the company continues to grow and solidify its space in fast-breaking news.
	Instagram With a sale initially priced at almost $1.3 billion and an exploding user count, not even a tone-deaf terms-of-service change that spurred a class action lawsuit and a possible exodus of some users can keep Instagram off our winner list.
	Google Android is hot — 75 percent market-share hot. Search is still a massive strength for the iconic company that runs an ad 30 billion times each and every day. And so Google makes over $100 million a day – and hits our list of hot companies in 2012.
	ARM With the vast majority of the chips in smartphones running ARM processors, ARM has people wondering whether the mobile juggernaut will challenge Intel for CPU dominance. That’s still a stretch, but not nearly what it was just a few years ago.
	Reddit With 3.8 billion page views and 46 million unique visitors in October — double the previous year’s numbers — Reddit is continuing its torrid growth. And it doesn’t hurt when the POTUS himself chooses your site to do an informal meet-the-people session — which required 60 dedicated servers.

Next page: The losers

Pages: 1 2 3

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apparently, we love Wi-Fi.

Total cumulative global Wi-Fi-enabled device shipments reached five billion in 2012, according to ABI Research. And the pace of innovation isn’t slowing, with new Wi-Fi protocols rolling out in 2013 and close to 20 billion WiFi-enabled devices predicted to be in the market by 2017.

Naturally, we’re familiar with Wi-Fi in our laptops and smartphones. But the next level of Wi-Fi penetration, the firm says, is likely to be in home automation and smart, connected cars, as manufacturers continue to connect formerly isolated devices, equipment, and other things.

What’s up next? More speed, according to ABI’s Peter Cooney:

“Wi-Fi continues to develop as a technology in many ways,” Cooney said, adding that “the 802.11n protocol is now well established and has pushed the envelope increasing data rates, expanding Wi-Fi into the less crowded 5GHz space.”

The newest Wi-Fi protocols will vastly improve wireless data transfer speeds, with 802.11ac bringing gigabit-Ethernet style speeds and 802.11ad blazing up to a theoretical maximum speed of seven gigabits per second. 802.11b, by contrast, can only manage 11 megabits per second.

Of course, it’s not just Wi-Fi that is connecting our stereos, lights, cars, and smartphones. It’s also the full spectrum of communication technologies such as Bluetooth, UWB, NFC, and Zigbee. In fact, despite the fact that Wi-Fi is pervasive and powerful, it may be one of the least popular wireless communication protocols, as ABI is also predicting that in 2013 all of these technologies (combined with Wi-Fi) will result in more than five billion shipments of wireless connectivity chips in 2013 alone.

Which means that our devices will be smart and connected, even if we’re frying each other with all those radio waves.

photo credit: Palagret via photopin cc

Most of those five billion chips won’t be in phones, as tablets, sensors, cameras, lightbulbs, refrigerators, and more increasingly get connected to the Internet.

I talked to Peter Cooney, a wireless analyst with ABI, just before the the research company’s London offices closed for the Christmas long weekend.

“While the base market is primarily things that we know like smartphones and tablets, the growth is for the internet of things … those devices are growing very quickly,” Cooney said.

Of course, a lot of chips are being made for and shipped in more standard devices, Cooney added: smartphones, tablets, laptops, and netbooks. Even old-school feature phones are incorporating Bluetooth in addition to the standard cellular connectivity radios.

And one technology that we’re not seeing much of this side of the Atlantic is poised for a breakout: NFC. In fact, it’s more than poised, according to Cooney.

“NFC has gone from two million devices in 2010 to 100 million in 2012,” he said. “Android is really driving that growth, but NFC is coming of age … and integration into smartphones is driving growth in other areas.”

In fact, many “other” areas — as in not phones, not tablets, not laptops — are also getting a lot of wireless innovation.

“Really, any kind of consumer device is getting wireless chips,” Cooney told me this morning.

That’s something we’ve seen a lot of this year: sensors and connected switches for windows and doors, lights, heating, and more. SmartThings wants to help you control the real world, as does ReelyActive. And while NFC has been the next great thing for some time, we’re seeing a ton of innovation in the home automation space using multiple wireless protocols.

One of the big trends ABI is seeing is integration — like what Apple did in the iPhone 5 by marrying the LTE and global 4G chips into one.

“They’re essentially integrating to reduce cost and size,” Cooley said. Broadcom, one of the leading suppliers in the “combo IC” (integrated chip) market, will continue to dominate, ABI said.

Even old-fashioned technologies are showing new tricks: Bluetooth smart is coming out, and faster Wi-fi (WiGig) is on the horizon. It all ads up to a lot of wireless devices.

“In 2013 cumulative shipments of Bluetooth-enabled devices will surpass 10 billion and Wi-Fi enabled devices will surpass 10 billion cumulative shipments in 2015,” Cooney said in a statement.

The internet of things, indeed.

photo credit: Gramophone Maryland via photopin cc, BrickArt!san via photopin cc

Tapit, an Australian startup that just pulled in $2.3 million in its first institutional round of funding, is turning that need-to-touch into a marketing opportunity. The company makes chips that can be placed on physical objects like outdoor ads, retail shelves and windows, product packaging, public transportation, tourist information points, etc.

Once tapped with an NFC-enabled phone, these chips open up a world of content that matches that tag. Content is brand specific, and could be a brochure, a coupon, a link to social media network or app download center, or a competition entry form.

Many mobile phones these days have NFC capabilities, and Tapit seeks to capitalize on this trend by providing customer engagement opportunities to advertisers. The platform collects consumer data as well, and offers it clients analytic reports on their behavior. Clients include Microsoft, Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, Coca Cola, and Virgin Mobile.

This Series A round was led by Monash Private Capital, an investment firm based in Sydney. The money will expand Tapit’s presence around the world. Read the press release.

More than 1 million Android mobile devices are shipping each week with a technology called near-field communications (NFC), which allows you to tap your phone to another a device and transfer data instantly.

But that’s not fast enough for chip maker Broadcom. Today, the Irvine, Calif.-based company said it is introducing a new chip at the upcoming 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show that lowers the cost of NFC. It does so by packing the NFC capability within a chip that has a total of four radios, including Bluetooth, FM radio, Wi-Fi, and NFC. By packing several features together, Broadcom is able to reduce the overall price of every feature on the chip.

NFC is a short-range technology that allows someone to tap a phone with an NFC chip against another device with an NFC chip and establish a data link. You could, for instance, transfer a video from a smartphone to a tablet in an instant by tapping them together lightly.

The new Broadcom chip will be available in early 2013. NFC will enable new applications such as mobile payments, which are expected to grow from $4.2 billion in completed transactions in 2012 to $100 billion in 2016, according to ABI Research. John Devlin, an analyst at market researcher ABI, said, “We predict that over three and a half billion NFC-enabled devices will ship over the next five years, opening up huge market opportunities for companies like Broadcom. As a leader in wireless combination technology and with strong existing OEM relationships, Broadcom is well positioned to capitalize on this growth in smartphones and other consumer electronic devices.”

Broadcom also launched a single-card solution that combines its 5G Wi-Fi chip with a stand-alone NFC chip. NFC is expected to be used in game controllers (it’s currently used in the Nintendo Wii U tablet), TVs, remote controls, computer keyboards, mice, headsets, printers and more. One cool use is tapping a smartphone on a TV to transfer a video to the TV.

Photo via Shutterstock

Tyfone provides secure mobile financial transactions and identity solutions. Its products include a mobile banking platform, a mobile wallet, identity management, contactless near-field communication (NFC), applications to bolster marketing campaigns, as well as complementary hardware products. Tyfone has over 50 issued and pending patents. By striking a partnership with the Portland-based company, the U.S. government can leverage the technology to serve national security.

In a statement, Technology VP at In-Q-Tel Jay Emmanuel said “We believe that Tyfone’s technology has the potential to address a wide range of complex government and commercial secure identity challenges.” Read the press release.

You have to hand it to Microsoft. The hardware running Windows software has become more diverse with the introduction of Windows 8. And one of the most intriguing new designs for a computer comes from Sony. The Vaio Tap 20 Mobile Desktop lives in a space between a touchscreen tablet and a full-fledged all-in-one PC. The machine is a pretty good choice if you’re looking for a family PC with multiple personalities.

The machine is just the sort of device that could get people interested in using a PC again, even in a world of iPads, iPhones, and all sorts of other devices. It is just the sort of thing that PC advocates had in mind when they began thinking about reinventing the PC in the age of portable electronics.

The Vaio Tap 20 has a 20-inch touchscreen that can be detached from its stand. You unplug it from the wall and carry it around the house as if it were just another tablet computer. It runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes on battery power, or you can plug it into a wall with a laptop-size power cord/AC adapter.

The possibilities for its use defy simple classification. It’s not just a kitchen computer. You can use it with a wireless keyboard and mouse on your kitchen table, or you can use it as an electronic artist’s canvas. It can be an ever-changing board game with a glass surface instead of cardboard. And you use it on battery power and stay connected on Wi-Fi as you move from one part of the house to another. I’m using one (Sony sent me a loaner) to write this review right now, near the rest of the family, whereas I would normally be stuck all by myself in an office.

The ins and outs

The screen measures 19.75 inches across by 12.inches high, and it is 1.5 inches thick. The machine weighs under 11.25 pounds. That makes it heavy enough that you’ll get plenty nervous if your young child carries it from one room to another. It has indentations on its sides that make it easier to carry. The stand is attached to the back of the device and is sturdy enough to support the machine at any angle you prefer.

This simple flexible stand gives the computer multiple user scenarios. If you tilt it all the way up, it’s just like an all-in-one desktop. If you tilt it at an angle, it invites you to touch the screen, or kick back to watch a movie. If you lay it flat on the table, you can allow multiple people to gather around the edges and use it at the same time.

The machine is made for collaboration because it has a wide-viewing angle, so more than one person can see what’s on the screen at the same time. The Tap 20 uses Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine 2, which delivers good picture quality on an in-plane switching (IPS) panel. The Bravia technology reduces noise artifacts in videos that you watch at a resolution of 1,600 x 900. The battery is removable.

Sony’s one-touch function lets you listen to music and view photos across an array of near field communications (NFC) wireless devices. You touch one device against another to establish a wireless connection. If you happen to have a Sony Xperia smartphone, you can tap it against the Tap 20 and then transfer a YouTube video that you’re watching on the small screen to the Vaio’s bigger screen. The machine has a webcam that you can also use with simple gesture controls.

The Tap 20 has advanced audio technologies, including Sony’s Clear Phase, XLoud, and other technologies. It comes in black or white.

Apps at your fingertips

The Windows 8 touch-oriented, tile-based user interface makes it easy to scroll through different apps and try them out. It is colorful, full of visually appealing icons, and the tiles are big enough to hit accurately even if you’re using your thumb. You can get to the Start menu easily if you tap the icon in the middle of the screen at the bottom. Or you can swipe sideways from the edge of the screen to draw up a set of navigation choices, such as search. By virtue of its being a Windows 8 machine, the Vaio Tap 20 is easy to learn for any computer user.

Sony partnered with digital arts software firm ArtRage on the finger-painting app, which comes with the PC for no extra cost. The ArtRage Studio offers natural painting tools such as oil paints, watercolors, and utilities that make drawing with a finger or stylus simple. You can trace a pattern using your finger or stylus.

Sony also included Sony Pictures’ My Daily Clip, a movie-trivia game that lets four players gather around the Tap 20 PC to watch a Sony Pictures movie clip and answer trivia questions to gain points they can trade in for prizes. You can also use the family scheduling app to post memos or calendar reminders for family members.

I played with a drawing program called Family Paint (pictured at top). With that program, you can fingerpaint with someone else at the same time, coloring pages or playing simple games like tic-tac-toe. I was also mildly entertained by PuzzleTouch, where you can put together the pieces of a puzzle using your fingers.

Pluses and minuses

Pricing for the base machine starts at $879. That’s a hefty price, considering it comes with a somewhat slow, low-voltage Intel Core i3 1.8-gigahertz processor. You can tell the processor is a little weak as you wait for it to switch from one app to another, or just from one screen to another. The machine wakes up fast, but app-loading time is noticeable.

Like other Windows 8 machines, the machine can be used with keyboard, mouse, and touchscreen at the same time. If you want to switch windows from one open web page to another, you can simply swipe your finger across the screen. That’s a lot easier than using a mouse to accomplish the same task. The benefits of using a machine like this include the ability to run Microsoft Office, with all of its bells and whistles.

Other points for and against: The screen is drip resistant and has a drain in case you spill something on it. The machine uses Intel integrated graphics, so it’s not going to be satisfying for hardcore gamers.

Conclusion

The good thing is that this machine is unique and could be quite appealing to people who fit its usage scenarios. If you’re an artist, you’ll like it. If you like playing simple board games with the kids, you’ll like it. If you find touchscreens easier to use than a mouse sometimes, you’ll like it. And if you want to stay in touch with the family as they move from one room in the house to another, you’ll like it’s versatility. It is a well-designed machine that makes the PC more personal. It’s for people who want something different from the boring old Windows PC.

The Vaio Tap 20 is available for shipping shortly. You can order it at Sony’s online site for $879.99 for the base model with an Intel Core i3 processor and four gigabytes of random access memory (RAM) and a 500-gigabyte hard drive. A $999 version includes an Intel Core i5 processor, and an $1,199 version has an Intel Core i7 processor. The more expensive versions have bigger hard drives and more main memory. If you buy it, you’ll definitely be better off with a more expensive model that can get rid of some of the lag in loading apps and switching screens.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google Wallet, which just recently made big changes to support Visa, American Express, and Discover cards, is now apparently making even bigger changes. As in, back to the future changes.

Remember how digital wallets were supposed to be all about losing those bulky physical wallets and resultant ass bulges, and just using a nice clean app on the same mobile computer you sometimes use to talk to your mom?

Not any more.

Source: Android Police

Google credit card?

According to a leaked report at AndroidPolice, Google Wallet has pivoted into an actual credit card. But not your daddy’s credit card.

This one morphs into a Visa card when you want to pay with Visa, a MasterCard when you want pay with MasterCard, and so on. Simply set the payment processor of your choice in the Google Wallet app, and the smart credit card shifts identities. Given the fact that the update last month that added Visa also moved Google Wallet users’ payment credentials to the cloud, it could be the case that payment selection is made at the server level.

The idea, apparently, is to leapfrog the lagging adoption curve at the point of sale and device level — still no NFC support from Cupertino — and go back to the tried and true, with a twist.

Apparently, PayPal-like person-to-person transfers and money balances are also going to be part of the new and improved Google Wallet.

I’ve asked Google for confirmation or comment, and so far, it’s a definite “no comment.”

If true, this is interesting and weird and possibly genius, although when I first heard it I thought it was the stupidest thing ever.

Saying I’ll put that on Google may just be the stepping stone we need to transition to the coming more virtual world. And it would give Google Wallet instant viability on iPhone in addition to its Android home turf.

photo credit: TruShu via photopin cc

Tomorrow, the Paris-based company that built MasterCard’s PayPass SDK and counts McDonald’s and Reebok among its mobile commerce clients will release the Airtag Kit, a full collection of everything developers need to start building mobile payment apps.

MasterCard’s PayPass technology already enables swipeless credit card use: tap the card on the reader and go. Now the credit card giant, with the help of Airtag, is extending the same technology to NFC-enabled phones.

“The Airtag kit is the second part of our partnership with MasterCard, and contains all of the hardware and software needed to build and test PayPass apps, including resources for the developer community,” Airtag chief executive Jérémie Leroyer, who has moved to the company’s New York offices, told me this morning.

The hardware in the Airtag Kit includes a Samsung Galaxy S III, a USB contactless card reader which simulates an NFC point-of-sale terminal, five SIM cards (UICCs) that include EMV chips similar to those in secure PIN-enabled credit cards, and two demo sales tags to simulate NFC-enabled merchandise. In addition, tutorials, manuals, and forums are available to help developers get started.

Source: Airtag

The Airtag mobile payments developer kit

The kit retails for $4,550, which includes one year of access to the developer program. The developer program alone is $3,250, which suggests the hardware is valued at around $1,300.

With the kit, a developer will be able to create apps for mobile payments incorporating NFC technologies, such as the capability to order online and pick-up in-store without having to use a credit card, or simply payment at point of sale. But at those prices, not every startup will be able to afford one — certainly not on Y Combinator-type money.

Whenever NFC comes up, the inevitable question also arises: What about the iPhone?

“It’s very difficult to guess what is going to be in a new version of the iPhone,” Leroyer said, accurately. “But we didn’t expect NFC in the iPhone 5 … usually what Apple does is let others go into the market, see what they’re doing, and then bring out a version of the technology a year later.”

However, Airtag likes what Apple is doing with Passbook — especially the geofencing — and uses it in the Go McDo product the company built for McDonald’s. NFC does enable better security, Leroyer told me, and the company does expect Apple to add NFC capability in iPhone’s next major iteration.

And he welcomes Apple’s entry into the market:

“NFC is very powerful, but very complex. We need players like Apple to simplify the ecosystem, and simply NFC development. That’s where we want to go, and we share this ambition with MasterCard.”

Some, including Seth Priebatsch, founder of SCVNGR and mobile payments company LevelUp, might say be careful what you wish for.

photo credit: 401(K) 2012 via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Business cards are objects increasingly out-of-place in our technology-focused times. But don’t tell that to Moo, which is working on a way to keep business cards relevant by combining them with near-field communications (NFC).

With their internal NFC antennas, Moo’s new business cards can be programmed to link to webpages, portfolios, business information, or even just contact details. Others can then access the data just by tapping the cards to their cell phones.

Sounds good, but there’s one big problem: Most phones (including the iPhone) don’t support NFC, which means that Moo faces an uphill struggle with its new product out of the gate. (It’s probably a good thing the company doesn’t plan to sell these until early next year.)

While the use of NFC is new for Moo, combining business cards with a new bit of technology isn’t. The company already offers QR code-equipped business cards that work in a similar way to their newer NFC counterparts. But like NFC, QR codes have yet to really take off.

Still, it’s not hard to envision a time when an NFC business card would link to, say, a Flavors.me page.

Here’s the big question: With cellphones now near-ubiquitous, why even bother with business cards?

Photo: Moo

Like sorting socks.

I really could not believe the pitch at first when it hit my inbox. BlackSocks.com has given socks RFID chips, a scanner, and an iPhone app, all so that you can … wait for it … sort your socks.

The Blacksocks app

And know the life story of your socks: How often they’ve been washed, what the “sock ID” is, which sock it should be partnered with, whether it is a left sock or a right sock, whether it is paired or … divorced, when it was made, and when you ordered it.

I am not making this up. I almost wish I was — it would make a perfect story for The Onion.

The socks themselves cost $189 for a 10-pack and the scanner, and you can order them online. The app, which you can also use to determine the blackness of your black socks, is free from Apple’s app store — it doesn’t have an Android version yet. Google groupies, make of that what you will.

Blacksocks founder Samy Liecht takes this very seriously, unveiling the socks, the app, and the scanner in a very stylish, Ikea-esque, Apple-like product demo video … which turns into inadvertent comedy when you show it to any woman (or at least the two I tried it on).

It even has a pairing functionality to mate new partners when one sock — alas — kicks the bucket earlier than first spouse.

Perhaps I am just clueless, but frankly I don’t care which of my socks is left or right or whether they get matched up or not. I can tell if my black socks are black just by looking at them, and I know that it’s time to replace them when they get holes.

Blacksocks: Because it would be a disaster if one of your socks paired up with the wrong partner.

Here is the demo video — enjoy:

photo credit: Lotus Carroll via photo pin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

I haven’t had a lot of kind words for NFC, the mobile payments mechanism that some have touted as the Next Big Thing in payments. I’ve knocked it for being a kludgy experience that doesn’t deliver any meaningful consumer value over swiping a credit card.

Apple didn’t include NFC in iPhone 5. eBay CEO John Donahoe quotes a merchant as saying NFC stands for “Not For Commerce”, according to The Guardian. Isis, a mobile-carrier-backed proponent of NFC, has again delayed its launch of an NFC trial in a couple of small markets. That trial already represented significantly scaled back ambitions.

But NFC has another big problem: Even when you think it might work, it doesn’t.

As someone who follows the payments space closely, when I see a merchant that has an NFC-enabled terminal, I try to use it. (That is, if I haven’t already swiped my card, which is an almost instinctual behavior.)

In one case, I tried using NFC at a McDonald’s (purely as a test; I go to great lengths for VentureBeat readers.) After 12 attempts at tapping, I gave up and swiped my card because I felt bad for the cashier who might be getting dinged for a long transaction time while I played with the technology.

The latest trend I’ve noticed is that, among some merchants who have new NFC-capable terminals, the NFC reader isn’t enabled. I walked into a Staples in San Francisco that had recently upgraded its point-of-sale hardware to the terminal in the photo above. The clerk said they’d been installed in the last week. I pulled out my Galaxy Nexus phone, tapped, and nothing happened. Just to be sure it wasn’t my phone, I pulled out my NFC-enabled Starwood American Express card. Again, nothing happened. I swiped my card and it worked just fine.

I’ve had several similar experiences at Walgreens stores. Walgreens actually promotes Google Wallet, one of the leading proponents of NFC, including in this YouTube video. The NFC reader on the terminal just isn’t turned on.

The only place I’ve been able to get NFC to work reasonably reliably is at Macy’s.

For users, this creates a significant deterrent. If it fails even a third of the time people try to use it, why should they bother? Especially when there is no meaningful benefit to using it. Consistency of user experience is important. Swiping my credit card nearly always works. Currently, I’m batting 50% when it comes to NFC. It’s quite possible that I’m a “complete dumbass,” as one VentureBeat commenter claimed, but I don’t think I am.

On the flip side, merchants don’t currently have an incentive to ensure that the terminals work. If the magnetic stripe reader doesn’t work, it potentially costs them a lot of sales. That’s something that merchants will place a high priority on fixing. If the NFC reader doesn’t work, it’s not a big deal because consumers can still use the magnetic stripe.

Even when NFC does work, it’s not a compelling experience. But when it can’t even perform up to its minimal threshold for success, that’s a serious problem.

Happy about the new iPhone 5? You should be … or maybe you shouldn’t, because the announcements made today weren’t everything that we’d hoped for. In fact, some are startlingly painful. Here are eight that almost make today feel like a bad day:

1. No HD radio on the iPod Nano or any iOS devices

Most people may not care, but that’s just because you just don’t know about HD radio. It’s basically the same as today’s FM radio except that it’s a better digital signal rather than a standard analog signal. It’s clearer, crisper, and provides a better listening experience. Oh, and it offers up to three channels per station.

Because it’s digital, HD radio can actually have multiple channels for individual stations, so your favorite FM station can have different stations to listen to. Here in L.A., some FM stations have their parent AM radio stations shared on the same frequency, or even their webstream as another channel. That way, you get more radio stations over the same spectrum of radio waves.

But Apple completely skipped over HD radio again, as the company has done year after year since the Zune HD came out with the feature. And not only is there no HD radio, radio itself is limited solely to the iPod Nano. If you have any other Apple product (iPhone 5, iPod Touch, etc.), you’re out of luck. Because apparently if you can get Internet over Wi-Fi, which is obviously everywhere, who needs the radio?

2. No NFC

While it’s use is minuscule today, but NFC (near-field communication) is a simple technology that allows users to share pictures, websites, and other tidbits of data by putting your phone in close proximity to another NFC-enabled device. The feature, which has been on Android phones for about a year now, isn’t on all devices, but it has made significant headway, especially in light of Google Wallet and other services which are attempting to transform our phones into our wallets.

With mobile payments in mind, and with Apple traditionally at the forefront of creating new ways for people to purchase goods, no NFC on the iPhone 5 can only mean one of two things: The company doesn’t have it’s own method of mobile transactions like NFC, or it simply isn’t done developing it and refuses to use the current standard. In either case, if you’re heading down to Jamba Juice and don’t want to pull out your wallet, don’t get an iPhone.

3. The camera lens isn’t faster

Camera technology on smartphones is all the rage these days. Nokia has their Pureview, and Apple is saying that their new camera is the best yet. I’ve done significant testing on smartphone cameras, and the iPhone 4S is still has one of the best cameras on the market. But the lens? It’s not faster.

As a photographer, I can tell you that the difference between an f-stop rating of f/1.4 and f/1.8 is the difference between a good shot and a great shot. Moreover, smartphone cameras have gone down to f/2.2, including a vast number of competing phones like the HTC One series and Nokia Lumia 900. You may think that the difference between f/2.2 and f/2.4 is moot, but remember, this is Apple talking about how they’re improving the iPhone. Yet the most critical aspect of any camera — how fast it shoots — is completely forgotten.

4. No USB 3.0/Thunderbolt support

After five years of the iPhone stuck on USB 2.0, and Apple finally transitioning with their latest line of MacBooks to USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, is it really so hard to make the most popular phone in the world transfer data through a cable a little faster? Is it?

Based on what Apple showed today, apparently it is. The new Lightning cable is a USB 2.0 connector, meaning it transfers data, if at full speed, at 35MB/s. Sure, that’s fast … but if you’re backing up gigabytes to your computer, that’s going to take a long, long time. It does today. I just backed up a bunch of new games I got for my 16GB iPhone 4S, and it took around 20 minutes to fully sync.

Is Apple addressing that problem in any way, knowing full well that they have both the technology and means to do so at little cost? Nope.

5. No iPad Mini

While some of the other disappointments are actually hurtful, Apple not revealing anything about the rumored iPad Mini at today’s event was a sad letdown, like waking up in the morning really thirsty for orange juice and finding an empty carton in the fridge. Then again, as Devindra pointed out late last month, the iPad Mini reveal is expected to come in October. Shucks, I guess we’ll just have to wait a little while longer.

6. The Lightning adapter is ridiculously expensive

As first discovered by Gizmodo’s Casey Chan (caution, NSFW), the new Lightning adapter that makes any older iPhone peripheral work with the iPhone 5 costs an absurdly expensive $30, or $40 for a 20cm cable. This is compared to the $10 adapter for the updated MagSafe power connectors that the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines use. Charging $30 or $40 for a simple adapter is so obnoxious that it’s actually a mockery of Apple product buyers who want to use their older iPhone/iPod Touch accessories.

Because, you know, you have to pay extra if you want to use Apple’s newest toy with old equipment. We wouldn’t want to make the new, shiny iPhone look bad for no penalty.

7. No increase in available storage

As an owner of the iPhone 4S and iPad, both 16GB versions, it only took a few short months (or, in the iPad’s case, weeks) to fill up that space with games, media, and apps. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explained last week at the Kindle Fire HD reveal that products with high definition displays need more space, simple as that. Apple knows this full well; the iPad’s display has a huge resolution of 2048×1536, which makes apps take a lot of space.

The iPhone 5? It has a bigger display, too, but no boost in capacity. If you want a device, you can pay $200, the standard for high-end smartphones (plus a 2-year contract), or you can pay $300 for the 32GB model. Or better yet, $400 for the 64GB version. Oh, and remember, the iPhone has no expandable storage, so what you buy is what you’re stuck with. Sixteen GB isn’t enough space these days, especially with so many great apps available … but I guess that isn’t Apple’s problem.

8. No price decrease for extra storage

The only thing worse than not increasing the amount of storage is still charging the absurd $100 fine for more space. For 16GB, $200 is reasonable, but $300 for $32GB? No. Just no. And $400 for 64GB? Give me a break. Flash storage today at those capacities costs nothing; it’s essentially pure profit for Apple no matter how much they charge, and while nearly every other major hardware device charges $50 for every major increase in storage space, Apple hasn’t lifted a finger to do so.

The worst part is, as much as we hate it, if you’re low on space now like I am, the only viable option is to pay the $100 ransom for more on the next phone.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The long awaited mobile payments service Isis is set to debut in September, according to a Bloomberg report. But it’s tough to muster much excitement when the core technology behind Isis, near-field communication (NFC), almost seems more like a fantasy today than when it was a hot mobile payments buzzword years ago.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve seen legitimate mobile payments solutions launch and thrive without NFC. Take Square’s mobile wallet app, which you can use to pay for purchases with your phone without the need for NFC hardware. Even PayPal has been exploring alternative methods of mobile payments with its point of sale solution.

Most damning for NFC are the major partnerships both Square and PayPal have recently landed. Square’s teaming up with Starbucks to entirely replace the coffee shop’s credit card processor, and its app will also work with existing Starbucks scanners at the register (again, no need for NFC). That deal also led Starbucks to invest $25 million in Square.

PayPal, meanwhile, just announced a partnership with Discover, which would bring PayPal payments to more than 7,000 Discover merchants in the U.S.

NFC received plenty of hype several years ago as the golden child of mobile payments, which led to the formation of Isis in late 2010. But since then more practical methods of paying with your phone have emerged, and at the same time, the impracticality of NFC became more evident (which likely had plenty to do with Isis’ delayed launch).

The hardware issue remains a problem for NFC: It requires special chips inside of mobile devices, which still aren’t nearly ubiquitous enough, and NFC readers at retailer registers.

Isis’ biggest competitor is Google Wallet, another NFC-based solution, which has failed to make a dent in the mobile payments arena. Google’s biggest problem is that it has only partnered with Sprint for Google Wallet — Isis has the advantage of being jointly owned by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

Isis CEO Michael Abbott told us back in February that he doesn’t believe there’s a mobile wallet war, and he may just be right. There’s room for Isis to coexist among current mobile payment solutions, and it has a good shot of cementing itself as the leading NFC wallet thanks to its carrier connections. Juniper predicts NFC payments will hit $74 billion by 2015, so there’s good reason for Isis to stick it out, even if it doesn’t look like NFC is going to take off right away.

But now, more than ever, NFC mobile payments feel like an answer in search of a problem. Swiping credit cards isn’t exactly difficult for consumers, and it’s a system that we’ve come to understand. Swiping your phone doesn’t seem like a much more convenient alternative, and in many ways it could be more problematic for consumers.

Isis recently joined the newly formed Mobile Payments Committee, something that we’re hoping will give the industry some clearer direction.

There’s still plenty of room for mobile wallets to disrupt the way we pay — just look at the Pay with Square with app, which lets merchants charge you just based on your name and face. In many cases, you won’t even need to pull your phone out of your pocket.

That’s true innovation: something that makes life easier for consumers, merchants, and payment providers alike.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Right now it’s the best of times for mobile payment companies, with new ideas and startups cropping up what seems like daily.When and if Apple announces NFC-equipped iPhones, it might become the worst of times.One of the big iPhone rumors (don’t worry, it’s not a stylus) is whether or not Apple will go “all in” on the payments game. It’s set itself up pretty well with its Passbook app, which is designed to store all kinds of information from plane tickets to loyalty cards, but not optimized to let consumers actually complete the act of paying for something.

It’s a cautious, “wait and see” approach that is actually quite smart of Apple — it can sit back and watch while startups like mine cage-match it out to become the top mobile payment network. And as Apple often does, it can choose to arrive at the cage-match with a stun gun.

This year’s rumored weapon of choice: NFC.

Let’s look at a world where the next iPhone has NFC, and one where it does not. What will happen to the rest of the mobile payment ecosystem?

Scenario 1: iPhone with NFC

Headline: Here’s How The New iPhone Will Kill Every Mobile Payment Provider

The immediate scene: Apple CEO Tim Cook unveils the new NFC-equipped iPhone. If there were TV crews capturing mobile payment CEOs throughout the US as this moment happened, it would be like a night at the Oscars where no one had remembered to prepare a phony reaction for when they lost.

The immediate conclusion: Just as Apple owns the entire music e-commerce experience through iTunes, it too could control the entire real world commerce experience through the iPhone.

Apple has amassed a huge collection of credit card numbers over the years. Now it has access through Passbook and distribution through the iPhone. As an iPhone-wielding consumer, you could store an entire wallet within Passbook and use various cards at any place with an NFC terminal. Geofencing — the Passbook app’s ability to instantly call up the right card based on the consumer’s proximity to a terminal — makes the transaction absolutely mindless, which is key to consumer adoption.

WTF is really happening: Apple might be making a move to dominate the entire payment infrastructure, but there are many, many factors in place that make it nearly impossible to do immediately. The current payment infrastructure (comprised mostly of point-of-sale systems) has taken decades to build and won’t be gone overnight due to NFC or anything else, really. It’s kind of like the power grid. There are alternative energy sources, but the power grid has such ubiquity and control over the general population that it will take years and years to undo.

Apple historically doesn’t integrate with other players out there — whether that means a different mobile operating system or a retail point-of-sale system. While this has served it very well in building other ecosystems, it could pose a problem within the payment industry itself.

While Apple will instantly capture the attention of millions of consumers because of its rabid fanbase alone, it’s not likely that it can overtake the entire payment processing chain by maintaining its closed-network approach.

WTF is really happening: If the new iPhone doesn’t have NFC, Android can and probably will take the lead in capturing this market share ASAP. Then the rest of the mobile payment companies out there will have Google Wallet to contend with.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Talk of mobile payment services has hit fever pitch this week. Adding to the cacophony is an update from Discover that it has officially partnered with Google to support Google Wallet, an NFC pay-by-phone application.

Discover cardholders can now save their credit card to their Google Wallet directly from the Discover Account Center and continue to earn rewards for charges made via the application, the company said in a press release Thursday.

If the news sounds familiar that’s because at the start of August, Google announced that its Wallet application supported all major credit cards, including Discover. But as American Express was quick to point out, the card integrations did not come with the express approval or support of the card companies.

The Discover announcement today, then, is merely a gesture, albeit a big one, indicating that the banking and payment services company has officially given its stamp of approval to Google Wallet. Consumers, however, should appreciate the news because it means that now when they pay with Discover via Google Wallet, they won’t have to sacrifice their cash-back bonuses.

While Google works to make its NFC system for tap-to-pay convenience more attractive to consumers, top retailers have opted to cut out the middlemen and make a mobile payment network of their own. That network, announced yesterday and dubbed Merchant Customer Exchange, was formed as a new company and is developing a mobile pay application to be used at participating merchants, which include 7-Eleven, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, and Shell. Dunkin’ Donuts, meanwhile, followed the lead of Starbucks and released its own mobile application for payments by 2-D barcode scan today.

Wallet photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Sometimes companies do something just to feel like they’re making progress, even if that something makes no sense. That’s the only way I can rationalize what Google is doing with the latest twist on its Wallet initiative.

Wallet previously allowed consumers to load their credentials from select Citibank MasterCards onto their phones so they could make payments at brick-and-mortar merchants. It supported only a few phone models and was usable at only a small percentage merchants. None of the cards I regularly carry in my wallet, including a Citibank Visa, qualified. With yesterday’s announcement, Wallet still only supports a few phone models and merchants. But now you can load your credential from any major credit card.

The way Google is going about this doesn’t even make a small amount of sense.

It’s creating another layer of cost for itself and increasing its liability. At the same time, it is potentially depriving customers of rewards that are increasingly common on credit cards.

Despite what Google likes to claim, paying with Google Wallet isn’t as simple as tapping. The real process is: unlock your phone (if you have a security lock), launch the Wallet application, enter your PIN, select the card you want to pay with and then tap. When the first tap fails, tap again. And then again. In a recent test, it took me six tries to get an NFC tap to take.

Behind the scenes, the way the new Wallet works is that there’s a proxy credit card. When you make a purchase at a merchant, the merchant doesn’t see your credit card. They see a proxy credit card. Then Google turns around and bills your actual credit card. (Your credit card number is stored in the cloud and used by Google to do this.) At a minimum, this adds another layer of interchange fees, which Google is eating.

It also shifts liability to Google, because Google is the merchant of record. If you have a problem with a transaction and you contact your credit card company, they go to Google. Google then has to go to the original merchant.

The only possible justification for this service, other than showing “progress”, is to get consumers’ credit cards on file.  But there are much cheaper and better ways to do this.

Consumers also potentially lose out on rewards. Many credit cards, like Chase Freedom and Discover, offer bonuses for spending in certain categories. For this quarter, Discover is offering 5% cash back on gas, theme parks, and movies. But as far as Discover knows, your purchase was with Google and likely won’t have the right merchant category code that is used to determine whether your purchase qualifies for the bonus. My Citi Foward card offers the equivalent of 5% back on all purchases at restaurants.

It’s a lose, lose.

If this takes off, it has the potential to cost Google a lot of money. But it’s so stupid that it won’t take off.

Photo credit: R.Ashrafov/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Near-field communication helps you pay for things using your phone, quickly get through subway turnstiles and more. But NFC could give a hacker access to your phone just by standing next to you.

NFC interacts using small tags that can be as thin as stickers. These tags contain a small antenna that detects the incoming interaction. Realistically, you need to be very close to your target to successfully get the NFC interaction going. Charlie Miller, principal research consultant at Accuvant Labs, showed a video at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas of him following a friend, with his hand awkwardly close to his buddy’s back pocket. But you only need to consider how many pick-pockets exist in the world to realize how real this attack could be.

Miller admitted the attack is difficult to perform, and many of the bugs he found in NFC are not too extensive. Indeed, he blamed this on the fact that NFC chips are small and only have so much space to hold data.

But he was able to exploit a bug in Nokia’s N9 smartphone that really showed the power of an NFC hack. The N9 has a feature in it called “pairing,” which allows the phone to connect to other devices using Bluetooth and NFC. In the N9′s case, you can use pairing to transfer the song you’re listening to on your device to a dedicated speaker.

If a hacker creates a tag that can pair the phone, she can have access to the Bluetooth network and eventually make it into the rest of the phone. Miller demoed the hack and pulled all the data from the phone, including the photos  and address book. He also showed that you can sen text messages to other phones using the hacked phone, as well as make calls.

His message to the mobile security community? Make phones prompt the user before accepting an NFC connection.

“NFC attacks are really hard to test,” said Miller at the Black Hat conference. “The biggest takeaway is, before you push a webpage to me or something, for God’s sake, give me the option to say no.”

Image via Meghan Kelly/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Imagine walking into a coffee shop and swiping your phone across a NFC tag to get access to Wi-Fi, instead of begging for the Wi-Fi password. Or, imagine swiping your phone as you enter a store to check-in on Foursquare.

With Samsung’s TecTiles, a new programmable NFC (near-field communication) tag format, you’ll be able to do all of that, and more — assuming you own an NFC-enabled Samsung Android phone.

Samsung is launching TecTiles alongside its much-anticipated Galaxy S III smartphone later this month, in a clear bid to make NFC something more than just the pipe dream standard of the mobile payments industry. I’m not yet convinced that TecTiles will be a hit for Samsung, but the tags are definitely a much-needed step forward for the NFC format.

The TecTiles themselves don’t look particularly high-tech — they’re just small stickers with built-in NFC chips. You can program them using the free Samsung Tectile app on any NFC-enabled Android smartphone (Google Play shows that the HTC One X supports the app). They’ll retail for $14.99 for a pack of five in carrier stores, as well as on Samsung’s website.

I was able to see the TecTiles in action at a small press gathering earlier this month, and they worked as advertise. Using the Samsung Galaxy S III, I was able to swipe several pre-programmed TecTile tags to do things like turn the phone silent, add a business contact, and change the screen brightness.

Programming a TecTile was dead simple as well. In addition to the items I mentioned above, you can also program the TecTiles to do things like make a call, updated your Facebook status, launch an app, or connect on LinkedIn. Samsung will undoubtedly add even more interesting functionality to the format over time.

When asked if Samsung would ever consider opening up TecTiles format to other manufacturers, PR staff said that’s a possibility — though there’s nothing definite in the works. The mobile industry will eventually need to converge on some sort of NFC tag standard, and Samsung’s technology is already  the leading contender. Both LG and Sony have released their own tag offerings, but those are more expensive and work on fewer devices than Samsung’s.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The current state of the mobile payment industry could at best be called slightly confounding, or, at worst, a complete mess.

But in spite of increased competition from stakeholders like Square, PayPal, Google, Mastercard, Intuit and, most recently, Verifone, the mobile payments industry is still set for some major growth.

According to Gartner research director Sandy Shen, mobile payments are set to top $171 billion this year. That’s a sixty percent jump over last year’s numbers, which totaled roughly $105 billion, Gartner said.

While much of that will be fueled by the larger companies, a significant percentage of the burden will be carried by smaller mobile payments players who will be better able to address specific regional needs, Shen noted.

Very much still in its infancy, the mobile payment industry has been defined so far by stakeholders aggressively jockeying for influence and market share. It’s a realm where Google is competing with the likes of MasterCard, and where established payment companies like PayPal are catching up to mobile-focused incumbents like Square. It’s an industry where the world is on its head.

One of the more interesting bits in the Gartner report concerns near-field communications (NFC), which has been a staple of mobile payment systems like Google Wallet. Gartner says that NFC transaction adoption will stay low until 2016, which doesn’t exactly bode well in the short-term for Google. The real progress in NFC will come from mobile ticketing, not retail purchases, Shen says.

If there’s a takeaway from the report it’s this: Mobile payment won’t reach its full potential  until consumer behavior shifts and the various stakeholders find a way to cooperate. Neither one of these things has a great chance of happening, however, until a clear frontrunner emerges.

Mobile payments photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Check-in service Foursquare is helping its BlackBerry fans bridge the cross-platform communication gap, enabling them to exchange tips, lists, venues, and profiles with friends by way of near field communication support in the newest version of its BlackBerry app.

Friday, the New York-based company has released an update to Foursquare for BlackBerry that makes the app speedier, more accurate in the GPS department, and now able to support smart-tagging on NFC-enabled devices. The company has also moved app activity notifications to the BlackBerry inbox.

“You can share places and tips among other BlackBerry and Android devices (or even check in at places with NFC stickers), with a simple tap of your phone,” Foursquare explained in a blog post on the update.

Foursquare added NFC capabilities to its Android application in February (but only for devices running Android 4.0). So while a limited pool are able to take advantage of the nifty new tech — the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and the BlackBerry Curve 9370 devices come equipped with NFC technology — the update at least keeps Foursquare’s BlackBerry users on par with their Android pals, and lets them tap to exchange information with each other. How touching (pun intended).

The startup has actually been experimenting with the intersection of NFC and its service for more than a year now. Foursquare was testing a tap-in system at its New York headquarters in March of last year, but ran its first consumer implementation in partnership with Google at last year’s Google I/O.

Unfortunately, covetous, would-be early adopters on iPhone and those toting around unsupported Androids and BlackBerries will just have to exchange Foursquare tips and check in the old-fashioned way.

Foursquare, which has raised more than $71 million in funding, recently surpassed 20 million users and 2 billion total check-ins.

Photo credit: Dennis Crowley/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Gartner recently reported that more than 200 million near field communication (NFC) enabled handsets will enter the marketplace by the end of 2012. While this is encouraging news for the evolution of contactless payments and the mobile wallet, it’s only one piece of the puzzle.

In order for the technology to establish a foothold, it will need some long term cooperation between the four ‘pillars’ of the market. This will include NFC device developers, the payment platforms they run on, the merchants that enable them and the consumers who ultimately must have confidence in them. Three of those can be tracked. The fourth, consumer confidence, will be harder to gauge and ultimately define the evolution of contactless transactions in the United States.

While significant growth in the number of consumers with NFC-enabled devices is positive, the increase is irrelevant if there is nowhere to use the technology. Merchants will have to invest in point-of- sale equipment upgrades to enable contactless payments. At a minimum, this will require attachments for existing equipment and many merchants will have to install completely new payment readers. Additional enhancements to merchant networks and point of sale systems may be required to allow consumers to make use of mobile wallet functionality. A variety of merchants (McDonalds, Duane Reade) are on the leading edge of contactless payments.  Assuming the market continues to evolve, those ‘first to market’ providers will have an inherent advantage.

A proliferation of NFC-enabled devices in the market and merchants set up for contactless payments are both key components to the evolution of the contactless space. However, an equally important third piece of the puzzle is the platform itself.

Card issuers and their associated networks, also known as the payment card industry, have invested large amounts of time and money to enable contactless payments. Companies such as Isis are working to provide depth to the contactless market though the introduction of a mobile wallet. Those companies are betting that enabling consumers to make payments, receive and redeem offers, and manage loyalty programs via their mobile device will be attractive enough to replace the wallet and credit cards.

Similarly, companies such as Isis are betting that the ancillary benefits of mobile payments (loyalty programs, coupons and daily deals) will be enough to encourage merchants to adopt the technology. Chief among the incentives will be the ability to better connect with potential customers.

Of the four contactless payment pillars, the three already noted have a measure of predictability and can be tracked. The fourth, and perhaps most critical component of contactless evolution, will be consumer confidence. Companies investing the time and money to enable a new method of payment are making the assumption that U.S. consumers are ready to accept the security of contactless transactions.

This acceptance will be the most difficult issue to measure, but will ultimately dictate the pace at which contactless transactions are adopted.  The early stages of internet commerce were impacted by security concerns and these same concerns will shadow the evolution of mobile commerce.

As the contactless marketplace evolves, stories will continue to appear that focus on individual elements of the overall picture. While relevant, it is important to maintain focus on the related components that define the space.  All will play an equal part in determining the speed at which the market evolves and the success of migrating consumers to a new commerce format.

Terry Flanagan is a partner at Navint Partners, a Chicago-based management consulting firm specializing in change management. Terry has worked with some of the earliest adopters of mobile payments in implementing mobile payment strategies and infrastructure.

NFC payment photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Today wasn’t the best day for Nokia to announce a new device, given the company’s lowered Q1 expectations, but maybe the new Lumia 610 will help distract press from the company’s dire financial situation.

After being rumored for some time, Nokia officially announced the Lumia 610 — the first Windows Phone to include support for near-field communications (NFC) — at the WIMA NFC event in Monaco. The phone will launch on the UK carrier Orange in the third quarter, and it will include support for NFC mobile payments from Visa and MasterCard.

Nokia says it added an NFC software stack on top of the Windows Phone OS to enable the functionality, as Microsoft’s platform doesn’t support NFC natively yet (that’ll come in the Apollo update later this year). The technology will let you make mobile payments and interact with devices, such as Nokia’s NFC Bluetooth headset, simply by tapping the phone. The Lumia 610 is Nokia’s 8th NFC-enabled phone within the past two years.

The phone isn’t a direct competitor to the Lumia 800 and 900 models, as it sports just a mere 256 megabytes of RAM and likely a slow processor. Instead, Nokia says it’s targeting a “younger, broader audience” with the Lumia 610. I suspect by next year, we’ll see NFC in all of Nokia’s flagship devices.

Nokia’s Andrea Bacioccola dives into the tech behind the phone in the video below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The mobile experience is in a renaissance period, from phones to tablets to autos and more. We’re seeing multi-core processors come to mobile devices to enable new applications like intense gaming and HD video playback, and we’re seeing advanced user interfaces, such as gesture and eye tracking, that could greatly improve the mobile experience. Then there’s Near Field Communications (NFC). Many predict NFC will bring one of the most significant improvements to the mobile experience of all.

Imagine optimizing your in-car controls by taping your smartphone to the dash of your car: GPS and Bluetooth capabilities engage, Google navigator launches, and the mirrors, seat controls, and steering wheel adjust to fit your body perfectly.

Throughout the day, a single touch of your mobile device lets you purchase your morning latte, enter the secured parking area, and unlock your office door. Once at your workstation, one touch aligns your computer environment for maximum productivity.

When you’re ready to turn in for the night, you touch a discreet tag next to your pillow to automatically set your home alarm, mute your phone, and turn off Wi-Fi to save battery life, plus set the radio to wake you at 7 a.m. the next morning.

This level of ease and control is a reality: These one-touch technologies are all in the pilot stages or already available on the market. Within a few years, NFC has evolved from a promising concept to a fully realized technology.

NFC allows electronic devices to securely communicate across short distances. These communications can take the form of commands, data exchange, authentication protocols, and even financial transactions. Today, NFC capabilities are cropping up in everything from mobile devices to tiny Xperia Smart Tags (from Sony) that you can place anywhere in the physical environment to trigger a customized series of wireless commands.

For consumers, NFC offers a new level of convenience and ease when conducting a wide range of day-to-day activities.

NFC systems reach vertical markets
But NFC does more than enhance consumer technology. Its capabilities are now rolling out across a wide range of industries, including security, commerce, retail, automotive, transportation, and logistics.

For example, NFC is currently being piloted as a way to control an organization’s security access, with an NFC chip embedded in each employee’s smartphone providing a specific level of access to a facility. This type of wireless security could allow a company to see significant savings over the installation and maintenance of a hard-wired system.

In the retail industry, Google’s recent announcement that its replacing its Google Checkout offering with NFC-enabled Google Wallet has many retailers looking more closely at this technology. As well as offering a fast, secure transaction process, NFC systems offer retailers powerful marketing capabilities. Eventually, NFC technology could enable retailers to anticipate shoppers’ needs as they enter the store and to push after-purchase support and promotional opportunities to buyers.

The transit industry is also showing increasing interest in contactless payment following the successful rollout of London’s Oyster program, where travelers use a plastic smartcard on the Tube, National Rail, tram, and bus instead of paper tickets. The original Oyster system was based on RFID, but it’s now being upgraded to support NFC devices. Most recently, Scandinavian Airlines and Japan Airlines began using NFC technology to enable “smart” boarding passes that function as a mobile payment system, wayfinder, and booking system for hotels and transportation.

Massive NFC boost set for 2012
NFC will benefit from global exposure during the London 2012 Olympics. Two of the event’s official sponsors, Visa and Lloyds TSB, will be offering a special NFC-enabled “Olympics phone” that will allow attendees to make one-tap payments throughout the site. Technology experts will be watching closely to gauge the success of the world’s first “touchless Olympics.”

In addition to this high-profile boost, big brands such as Barclaycard and McDonald’s are launching awareness campaigns in 2012 to educate consumers about the benefits of the technology.

And in addition to the impact of Google Wallet on the consumer population, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon will be launching Isis, an NFC-based virtual wallet and payment system, later in 2012.

Exponential growth predicted
A lack of NFC-enabled handsets on the market has held NFC adoption back in recent years, but analysts say this trend is about to reverse.

Deloitte predicts the number of devices with embedded NFC will reach 200 million by the end of 2012 and that by 2013, 300 million NFC smartphones, tablets, and e-readers will be in consumers’ hands. Gartner estimates that by 2015 a full 50 percent of smartphones will be NFC-enabled and NFC semiconductor revenue will reach more than $1 billion.

Enhancing your vertical offerings with NFC
If your organization is beginning to explore NFC’s potential for the products and services you deliver to consumer or B2B markets, it’s important to understand the possibilities and limitations of the technology.

Here’s a set of best practices to keep in mind:

1. Keep the wide variety of execution environments in mind. NFC involves a variety of execution environments, with components residing in the back end, on the handset software, and on the secure element. This kind of sophisticated technology requires a development team with a suitable breadth of knowledge and experience and a holistic understanding of all execution environments.
2. Take contiguous technologies into consideration. NFC deployments must be designed with a clear understanding of the payment instruments, business models, and value chains they’re built on, along with an understanding of the complex relationships between these elements.
3. Find the right balance between safety and ease of use. NFC must be designed with a strategic balance between security and usability in mind. Veer too far into locked-down security, and the user experience becomes cumbersome. At the same time, users won’t embrace functions unless they know their data, privacy, and financial assets are protected.
4. Aim for “invisible elegance”. Above all, NFC functions must be designed to be unobtrusive. The best NFC deployments will be virtually unnoticeable, weaving themselves undetectably into the functionality of the device, reducing user interaction into a single “magic touch”.

Andrew Till is SVP and head of smartphone and consumer electronics for Symphony Teleca.

Fruux grabs seed money to sync contacts to the cloud

Münster, Germany- based Fruux announced today it raised an untold amount of seed money for its “Dropbox for contacts, calendars, and tasks” service. With a recently launched web app, Fruux helps sync contacts, calendars, and tasks across different devices, much like Dropbox does for files. Its aiming to collect and organize data stored in multiple applications, such as iCal and Google Calendar, so you can have it one place. German investment firm High-Tech Gründerfonds led the round.

Opscode raises $19.5 million to automate servers

Instead of manually bringing servers online when your company needs the computing power, Opscode automates the process. The company’s tool, called Chef, uses a recipe metaphor to help IT people set up servers to run automatically. Monday, Seattle-based Opscode announced a $19.5 million third round of funding from Ignition Partners, with Battery Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson participating.

Mobile payment system ViVOTech gets some stealthy cash

The company behind Google Wallet and Isis, ViVOTech, announced a new round of funding Monday. The company, which develops hardware and software for digital wallets and mobile payments, didn’t disclose how much money it raised in this internal round, but says the new funding brings its total to $96 million.

Web-app analytics service Tracelytics gets $5.2 million

Monday, Tracelytics announced its first round of funding for $5.2 million. The company helps track the performance of web applications with its application performance management (APM) software. Bain Capital led the round, which included participation from Google Ventures, Battery Ventures, and Flybridge Capital Partners, which led Tracelytics’ seed funding.

If you’ve got funding news to report, send it our way at tips@venturebeat.com.

Mobile payment image via Shutterstock 

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Chances are, if you’ve shopped at Home Depot or gone to McDonald’s lately, you’ve seen one of ViVOTech’s credit card readers. The company, which develops hardware and software for digital wallets and mobile payments, announced a new round of funding Monday.

Near field communication (NFC) technology makes paying for purchases with your phone possible. You can transmit credit or debit card information from any mobile phone with an NFC chip to a compatible credit card terminal with a tap or a wave, allowing you to quickly pay for purchases like you’re a magician. ViVOTech is responsible for making most of these sensors and the software that handles the transactions.

The company’s technology also powers Google Wallet, Google’s NFC payment system, and Isis, the payment network AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have set up.

ViVOTech isn’t alone in its NFC endeavor; other companies such as Sequent and PayPal have developed their own NFC systems and software.

ViVOTech is keeping quiet about the amount of money raised in this internal round, but says that the cash brings the company’s total funding to $96 million. Looking at previous funding the company has raised, my best guest is this round is about $22 million.

Founded in 2001, the company has been backed by Alloy Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DFJ Gotham, First Data, Miven Ventures, NCR, Nokia Growth Partners, Motorola Ventures and Citigroup, among others.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last year, I wrote an article for VentureBeat about how mobile phones and near field communication (NFC) technology could enhance the payments experience. I included a couple of important caveats:

• NFC technology, in and of itself, is not compelling enough to change consumer behavior away from using credit cards and cash.
• Credit cards have an install base with consumers and merchants that NFC will not see for years.

Has anything changed over the past year? Certainly, there are an increasing number of NFC enabled phones on the market. Although, according to The Yankee Group, less than one percent of all phones shipped in 2011 included NFC. When you consider that there are more than 6 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world, there is obviously some significant ground left to cover with consumers.

What about the merchants? There are more than 6 million merchants in the U.S. that accept “traditional” payment methods, while only 150,000 are equipped to accept NFC payments, according to recent figures from Crone Consulting. Of course, this isn’t terribly surprising, as upgrading merchants’ terminals to accept NFC (called “merchant reterminalize”) is a lengthy and expensive process that includes installation of new hardware and software, as well as the retraining of staff on how to use the new checkout system.

Think of consumers and merchants as two circles in a Venn diagram, with the intersection representing when a consumer with an NFC enabled device happens to find a merchant that accepts NFC payments. The overlap is incredibly small. This isn’t meant to say “NFC will never change the way we pay,” simply that it isn’t here yet.

Given both the incredible potential presented by mobile payments at the point-of-sale and the significant adoption challenges facing the technology, we are left with this question: “Why are we waiting for so many friction-laden events to happen?” Or, put another way, “Why are we waiting on NFC to deliver mobile payments with real value to merchants and customers?”

Smarter phones. Smarter cards.

No matter how long it takes to realize the potential of NFC, for the foreseeable future we know that most consumers are going to leave the house with two things: their phones and their wallets (likely with at least one card in them). This creates an incredible opportunity to completely change the customer experience of the card-holder by creating an immediate interaction point between consumer, merchant, and a host of value-adding apps.

The true power of mobile payments lies not in separating the card from the phone, replacing the card with the phone, or letting the card live inside the phone, but rather in using the apps, SMS, GPS, HTML5, web capabilities, and a host of other mobile technologies to enrich the consumer’s experience no matter how they choose to pay.

When credit cards were first introduced, they were seen as “cash killers” and sold to customers on the idea that they would no longer need to carry around clunky cash or watch a teller slowly count out correct change. For merchants, the original value proposition of credit cards was they would increase the number of customers who would pay and the transactions made by consumers.  Despite the fact that there are over 30,000,000 credit card acceptance locations, and despite its value, the card is seen as something of a “tax” to merchants, and governments are even stepping in to decrease this “tax”.

How to make phones catch on for payments

How do we change this dynamic and restore the value proposition of cards for merchants and customers by using the technology embedded in phones? We’ve examined this problem closely and believe there are a few guiding principles that any mobile payments provider should adhere to in order to deliver the best possible solution for merchants and consumers:

1. Deliver real value, above and beyond tap vs. swipe: The phone in your pocket can do so much to change the way consumers and merchants interact and communicate with each other before, during, and after the purchase. From giving consumers real-time spending alerts and budget controls, to allowing merchants to create highly targeted (even geo-fenced) marketing campaigns that send deals and rewards directly to a mobile device. Consumers look at their phone 150 times per day on average, according to Nokia’s 2010 MindTrek study. There is no limit to what the future may hold for mobile payments. We actually included all of these value-added services in our Accounts product, with many more in development.

2. Don’t force the world to reterminalize: A critical characteristic of any merchant offer platform in this system is that it must require no hardware, software or infrastructure modifications at either the merchant POS or the acquirers’ processing systems. With less than 1 percent of all merchants locations currently accepting NFC payments, building a mobile payments solution that requires NFC acceptance is a long, expensive uphill battle. One solution is to combine NFC technology with an established, card-based payment system.

3. Go to the customer, don’t force them to come to you: By “go to the customer” I really mean “work with partners to leverage existing user bases.” Whether that partner is a mobile carrier or a bank with hundreds of millions of subscribers, it will always be preferable to work with that partner and give them an easy solution that they can immediately distribute to every one of their customers rather than forcing customers to pick up a new phone, a new case, a new app, or any other high-friction behavior in order to use your service.

The Bottom Line

The payments industry is witnessing more innovation, and in some cases creative destruction, than in the previous 10 years.  Change is coming rapidly and, as is the case with most products and services, delivering real value to merchants and their customers must be the primary focus (offers, control, communication, etc.).

As an industry, we can and should be proactive in bringing the value of mobile payments into every transaction today, not five years from now. The tools, the networks, and the customers are already there, we just need to tap into what’s here while still building for what’s coming to deliver the best payments experience.

Ron Hirson is the President and co-founder of BOKU. Ron brings over fourteen years experience in product and general management in the consumer Internet space to the BOKU team. Prior to joining BOKU,Ron served as VP of Product at AT&T Interactive,  VP of Product Management at Ingenio, and was co-founder and CEO of The Digs Network.

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit conference this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Near-field communications (NFC) payments are off to a slow start here in the U.S., but Juniper Research believes that they will reach a whopping $74 billion by 2015, and in the process will help to spur on the mobile payments revolution.

“Our report demonstrates the spectacular growth we see across all segments of the mobile commerce market,” Juniper’s David Snow, and the author of the Mobile Commerce Markets predicting the NFC explosion, said in a statement today. “Four of these segments (money transfer, physical goods, NFC and coupons) will more than triple in transaction value over the next three years, whilst digital goods, banking and tickets will still on average, double over the same period.”

The figure adds some granularity to Juniper’s past prediction of the mobile payment market totaling $670 billion by 2015. Juniper’s prediction on NFC is a sign that the technology won’t end up dominating the mobile payment market as some would hope — the mobile payments firm Isis and Google Wallet are both banking heavily on NFC.

NFC was initially the hot topic for mobile payments, but with so many other methods of payments available, including SMS, carrier billing, and QR code scanning, it’s now being approached as just one tool among many for mobilizing purchasing.

Juniper also notes that SMS will help to spur on banking, something that’s already happening in several countries throughout Africa. The report also indicates that mobile coupons area will see the highest growth during the next few years, even though it’s the smallest mobile commerce segment right now.

NFC payments image via Shutterstock

VentureBeat is holding its second annual MobileSummit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of themobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.