Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

Link to TechCrunch

Visa Launches Mobile Payments Provisioning Service; Teams Up With Vodafone

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 09:20 AM PST

NFC Payment

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Visa announced a new over-the-air provisioning service for smartphones for use with Visa’s payWave mobile payments system. The service will make it easier for operators, banks and even transit operators to link Visa payment accounts to consumers’ smartphones, the company says.

Although perhaps not as exciting as news of a mobile wallet “app” in consumer’s eyes, what Visa is revealing is a key part to the underlying infrastructure that can make NFC-based mobile payments a reality.

By allowing phone to be “switched on” for mobile payments through an over-the-air activation process, the process will become more seamless for users and service providers alike. However, because the system is NFC-based, it’s limited only to supported handset which include an NFC chip. This is nowhere near the majority of smartphones today, and does not include the Apple iPhone. In addition, while there appears to be growing consumer demand for mobile payments, it’s not clear whether consumers will take to NFC in large numbers. (Only analysts’ predictions on that front.)

The new provisioning system was developed in hand with Oberthur Technologies, and allows for Visa’s payWave mobile payments technology as well as other payment applications to be deployed over the air to consumers’ NFC-equipped phones. NFC, or near field communication, is the short-range wireless communications technology that forms the backbone of several mobile payments initiatives, including the carrier-led Isis, as well as Google Wallet.

In practice, the provisioning system will include support for both Visa and non-Visa payment, loyalty and transit applications. That means that consumers could download mobile payment applications onto their phones – for example, a mass transit app for their city’s subway system – and then request their financial institution to activate mobile payments on their phone.

Visa’s provisioning system links to all the appropriate parties during this initial set up process, and handles the authentication of the user account (via a secure passcode), the exchange of secure “keys” to unlock the NFC chip installed on the smartphone (the chip that handles NFC-based transactions), the service activation and the download of the mobile payment account information.

For operators, the provisioning service makes it easier for them to make mobile payments available on mobile phones. Although, at first glance, it sounds like it could be a direct competitor to Isis, Visa's Global Head of Mobile Product Bill Gajda told TechCrunch’s Leena Rao this past August that Visa is licensing its mobile payments application PayWave for integration into the Isis wallet. In other words, the provisioning system is a backbone for mobile payment operations, not a new consumer-facing wallet product.

The only partner being announced at this time is Intel, which has agreed to support the the service on its new Intel Atom-based smartphones and tablets.

In a related announcement, Visa also says that it’s now working with European mobile operator Vodafone on the launch of an NFC-based mobile payments service which will begin with five countries in Western Europe (U.K., Germany, Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands). Initially, the service will involve pre-paid cards, but plans to support for other cards including those from banks, retailers, transit operators and more. The plan is to bring the service to the carrier’s 400-million customer base across the 30 countries where Vodafone now operates.

Intel Announces New Smartphone Partnerships With Lava, ZTE, And Visa

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 09:19 AM PST

Lava XOLO 900 Smartphone with Intel Inside®

We’ve already caught wind of the Lenovo K800 and Orange’s newly-announced Santa Clara but Intel CEO Paul Otellini isn’t content to leave their push into mobile at that.

Otellini has just announced that Intel has entered into partnerships with a handful of companies in hopes of solidifying their place in the smartphone market. Among those new partners are relative unknowns like Lava International, to major players like ZTE and Visa.

Lava’s first Intel-powered smartphone offering is dubbed the Xolo X900 (pictured left), which Intel seems to hope will give the company a stronger presence in the Indian market. It’s a huge growth opportunity for Intel — Otellini noted that India’s smartphone market has recently tripled, and according to Lava International co-founder Vishal Sehgal, there’s a significant difference between India’s smartphone and feature phone customers. Sehgal presumably hope to wow those Indian smartphone shoppers with a bit of horsepower, as the X900 sports a 1.6GHz Medfield chipset and a graphics processor running at over 400MHz

ZTE will help Intel push into China with their own Medfield device, though Executive VP He Shiyou didn’t offer up any specifics beside a vague 2H 2012 release window. With these two new additions, Intel now has four smartphone manufacturers taking significant interest in their mobile platform, a far cry from their stance last year.

Of course, it would be awfully short-sighted of Intel just to target OEMs. The smartphone market rookie needed something else to bolster their status as a contender, and to that end Otellini was joined by Visa President John Partridge to announce a multi-year partnership to bring mobile payments to smartphones that use Intel’s mobile platform. Intel’s current reference design packs support for Visa’s PayWave contactless mobile payment system.

Developing…

Dropbox Who? Apple Demonstrates The Simplicity Of iCloud In Latest Ad Spot

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 09:06 AM PST

iCloud just works. That’s the message of Apple’s latest commercial titled iCloud Harmony. The service took off like a rocket when it first launched late last year. Partly fueled by the massive success of the iPhone 4S, Apple claims to have more than 85 million users on the service. But as awesome as iCloud is now, it’s set to get even better and this commercial is likely just the first of a larger advertisement campaign.

The genius of iCloud is that once it’s setup, the service runs with virtually zero user interaction. But the current incarnation is still pretty limited. What Apple shows in the video above is pretty much all it can do. However, with Mountain Lion, iCloud is set to become a robust cloud service with a feature set rivaling that of even Dropbox. For better or worse, it’s going to be deeply baked into OS X and able to sync most anything between a user’s Apple devices. Mountain Lion is still months away from its release but Apple needs to start getting people excited about iCloud now.



WePay Adds Customizable Invoicing To Simple Payments Platform

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST

we

Online payments platform and PayPal competitor WePay is adding a key new feature to its easy-to-use technology—Invoicing.

For background, WePay is a Y Combinator backed startup that launched in 2009 to take the hassle out of group paying. Unlike some of its competitors, the service was able to dead simple way to collect, manage and spend money for groups. The company has since evolved into a broader offering, allowing any merchant or user a simple way to accept payments beyond just the group model.

Founder Bill Clerico tells be that the new tool was designed to match the simplicity of the payments product. Users can set up an account and start sending invoices in under a minute. Basically, users register with WePay, send invoices via email (for free) and collect payments.

Currently WePay has a ‘Bills’ feature which has been used by individuals, groups and organizations for things like membership dues and shared expenses. But the invoicing tool takes this a step further by offering a more compelling service catered towards merchants and contractors. Users can customize color schemes, add company logos, add late fees, invoice multiple recipients at once, set up recurring invoices, overdue reminders and more. WePay will charge a 3.5 percent service fee for the actual payments.

As Clerico tells us, WePay’s sweet spot has been small merchants, service providers and freelancers, who will find this feature useful.

WePay recently revealed that it exited 2011 at a multi-million dollar revenue run rate and a compounded monthly growth rate of 30 percent since launch. The company also plans to launch mobile apps in the coming year and perhaps raised another funding round.

French President Sarkozy Is On Pinterest. Well, Maybe.

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 08:16 AM PST

313px-Flickr_-_europeanpeoplesparty_-_EPP_Summit_October_2010_(105)

Typically, when I think of an “early adopter,” French President Sarkozy doesn’t come to mind. The man who announced his intention to run for reelection on February 12th didn’t even have a verified Twitter account prior to that date. Fortunately for him and his campaign, he now has a verified account with over 97K followers. He has even made it clear that he signs his own tweets with NS.

After signing-up for Twitter, he went on to reveal his Deezer music playlist. His account reveals his taste for everything from Elvis Presley to Carla Bruni (his wife, duh)…and also mentions that he joined the music streaming platform on February 21, 2012. Talk about a late bloomer.

But even if Sarkozy is finally catching on to social media, his social strategy may need a little fine-tuning. In just hours following his announcement to run for reelection, numerous Twitter accounts parodying the French president were suspended for impersonation. Accounts that had existed since September 2010, like @_NicolasSarkozy, were informed that they needed to change their username and avatar. While some may argue that impersonation on Twitter is an issue – as was the case with @ceoSteveJobs – Twitter offers verified accounts for that very reason. Now that Sarkozy finally has one, I can’t really wrap my head around what all the fuss is about (other than a lacking a sense of humor).

So far, Sarkozy is the only French presidential candidate to take on such an anti-social strategy. His opponents, including socialist candidate François Hollande, are yet to take  a similar stance. Check out one of his parody accounts:

But just because Sarkozy has managed to silence the parody accounts on Twitter doesn’t mean that he’s silenced them all. For one, there are still some remaining accounts on the micro-blogging platform that are still up and giggling (see below) – though I’m sure his team will crush them soon.

That said, he’ll have to go well beyond Twitter if he wants to stop all the impersonation entirely. Here’s a parody account on Pinterest that includes some fabulously-titled, boards including ma meuf or “my woman” (obviously featuring pictures of his wife, Carla Bruni), babioles or “trinkets” (featuring images of fancy pens that he “stole” and expensive watches) and yachts.

The person who is behind this fake Pinterest account knows that it may have a short lifespan – which he or she has clearly noted in the byline. So be sure to enjoy it while it lasts

Credit: Thanks to Pierre Lafon for the tip.

This is a guest post by former TechCrunch France Editor, Roxanne Varza

EPIC Isn’t Taking “No” For An Answer, Files Emergency Appeal In Google Privacy Case

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 08:07 AM PST

gog

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, also known as EPIC, isn’t backing down from its desire to have Google’s privacy policy changes investigated by the Federal Trade Commission. On February 18th, the FTC basically told the organization to “mind its own business” (as The NYT put it), suggesting to the court that EPIC has no legal standing in the matter, and asked the court to dismiss the case. The court later agreed.

Today, EPIC announced its plans to appeal that decision, and is again pushing for a ruling by March 1st, when the new privacy policy changes are set to go live.

PIC says it filed an “emergency appeal” within hours of the ruling where the court stated that it could not require the FTC to enforce a prior consent order against Google. The reason for the emergency status of the new appeal has to do with the fact that the privacy changes Google plans to enact will go live on March 1st, 2012. EPIC is therefore asking the appellate court to overturn the earlier decision before March 1st.

Google announced in January its plans to consolidate more than 60 separate privacy policy notices into one single, simple policy. The company said that the change will allow it to treat individual customers as a single user across all its products which will mean “a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.” Says Google, not only will the policies be in one place, they’ve also been rewritten so they’re easier to read and understand.

EPIC, however, is concerned about what the change means in terms of Google users’ right to privacy, and how Google is safeguarding users’ personal data. Specifically, the organization claims Google didn’t fully comply with a consent order from the FTC which required Google to answer detailed questions about how it protects the personal information of Google users. EPIC says that Google “chose not to answer many of the questions,” and did not explain the impact on user privacy that will take place on March 1st.

While the allegations being made by EPIC regarding the policy change may or may not have merit, the court essentially ruled that it’s not EPIC’s place to get involved. The FTC, instead, has the right to decide whether or not Google violated the consent order and what should be done if so, the court said.

To say that the ruling angered EPIC would be an understatement. The organization lashed out last week, saying that Congress has “clearly told the FTC to enforce its final orders.” And in response to the claim that EPIC’s request for action by March 1st was “arbitrary,” the organization responded:

“If the government is unaware that Google plans to make a substantial change in its business practices on March 1, 2012, it should turn on a computer connected to the Internet.”

Ouch.

Clearly, today’s announcement of the emergency appeal is a hope for a second shot at forcing the FTC’s hand in the matter.

Dropbox Buys Cove To Bring Former Facebookers Ruchi Sanghvi And Aditya Agarwal To The Team

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 08:07 AM PST

Screen Shot 2012-02-27 at 8.12.27 AM

The rumors are true! Dropbox has acquired stealth collaboration startup Cove for its talent, namely the brilliant engineering duo and couple Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi.

Agarwal and Sanghvi were both well-respected at Facebook, where they lead product efforts from 2005 to 2010. Sanghvi, who oversaw the Facebook Platform and News Feed and was the first female engineer at Facebook, recently received a TechFellow award for her contribution. I got to interview her briefly after the awards ceremony.

In a press release, Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston said: "Building a world-class engineering organization is a top priority for us…The team at Cove represents some of the best talent in the Valley and we look forward to the technology, skills and perspective they will bring to Dropbox."

Dropbox didn’t give too many details on what the Cove team would be working on but Aditya said that the “product vision for Cove and Dropbox is very much aligned and the infrastructure we've built at Cove can be utilized at Dropbox.”

This is Dropbox’s first acquisition and from what I heard before the press release went out, the buy was purely for talent — Aditya Agarwal will become Dropbox CTO according to one source.

It will be interesting to see if Dropbox uses some of the $250 million in cash from its latest funding round for more acquisitions in 2012. On the product side, the startup just launched a new version of its Desktop and Android clients that automatically uploads your photos to your Dropbox account.

See What A 41MP Camera Can Do: Nokia Releases 808 PureView Sample Shots

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:54 AM PST

nokia-3

Nokia’s announcement of the Symbian Belle-powered 808 PureView and its 41-megapixel camera took many (including me) by surprise this morning, and there were more than a few demo photos being thrown up during the presentation.

I got the chance to play with the 808 earlier this morning, but the inside of the Fira Montjuic’s Hall 5 didn’t provide the best vistas to photograph (I really wish I could’ve smuggled one outside, as Barcelona’s architecture is beautiful). Nokia has come through a handful of impressive sample shots though, and while your mileage may vary, they’re a stunning testament to the 808′s downright crazy camera.

Hit up Nokia’s blog for a zip file of the full, uncompressed versions.

Click to view slideshow.


Remember Netbooks? Yeah, Lenovo Has Stopped Selling Them Online

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:42 AM PST

asus1000he

Wow. Netbooks. That’s a blast from the past. It’s like listening to a Maroon 5 song again and going “Wait, is that from that short period when they were ostensibly good or was it from the muddy period after that single about the beauty queen eighteen woman or whatever?” Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Netbooks are the Maroon 5 of electronics: still vaguely recognized but quickly losing value.

Anyway, Lenovo has stopped selling netbooks online, citing good sales traffic for the K1 and A1 tablets. The 11-inch X130e netbook is out of stock and probably won’t be stocked again. PC World notes that netbooks accounted for 6.8 percent of PC sales in fourth quarter last year.

While netbook zealots squawk about the value of a “low cost laptop with a keyboard,” the truth is that a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard will give you a more specialized and smoother experience than any copy of Windows shoehorned onto a processor with the speed and processing power of a particularly energetic blender.

I doubt even Chrome OS will save this sinking space, but bless Google for trying.

LinkedIn Adds An Embeddable Follow Button For Company Sites

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:41 AM PST

Find and Follow

As you may remember, professional social network LinkedIn added a follow button for companies, which allowed users to follow a company on the network, and receive real-time alerts from its profile in their news and activity stream. LinkedIn is taking this a step further today with the launch of an embeddable button that companies can add to their websites.

Now, LinkedIn users will see ‘follow Company’ buttons on company sites, as well as on LinkedIn itself. Similar to Facebook’s Like button, as long as you are logged into LinkedIn, you can follow a company automatically by clicking the button. If you are not logged on, a box will appear asking for your LinkedIn credentials.

As mentioned above, following a company will allow you to keep track of company updates, such as job openings, new developments and more via your status update stream. LinkedIn says a number of companies are planning to add the follow button to their sites including American Express, AT&T, Starbucks, Sony, Rypple, DonorsChoose and Kiva.

For LinkedIn, this isn’t the first social button for developers to embed on the web. The company has been seeing major traction with its LinkedIn share button as well. And for LinkedIn, the follow button is more than just a way for users to track company updates. taking a page out of Facebook’s advertising strategy, LinkedIn is using follow data to help serve member more targeted display ads (users can choose to opt out of this).

Hands-On With The HTC One V: This Little Guy Feels Great

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:18 AM PST

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

There’s been plenty of news about HTC of late. If you’ve been following our MWC coverage, you know all about it and I won’t bore you. Instead, I’ll just let you in on a little tidbit that we learned here at HTC’s New York roundtable and give you a few of my impressions of HTC’s One V.

This is a CDMA/HSPA+ device, will be available both on-contract and as a prepaid phone from various carriers. We weren’t all that thrilled with HTC’s decision to offer its flagship One X smartphone on only one carrier (AT&T), but at least the Taiwanese phone maker is spreading out the love when it comes to their more mid-range handset. As of right now, we can confirm that the One V will be available on-contract from U.S. Cellular and T-Mobile, and as a pre-paid phone on Virgin and MetroPCS.

Obviously there’s still no word on pricing and these babies aren’t even available until spring, but if you’re already planning out your next phone this could be helpful information.

I just got up close and personal with the One V, and I have to say it feels pretty damn good. Where HTC is really winning is in that aluminum unibody design with soft-touch. I’ve been noticing that phones from all the big guys — Samsung, LG, and Motorola — are all feeling increasingly plastic-y, something I attribute to their desire for “thin and light.”

HTC’s new phones may not be the lightest, but at least they don’t feel like toys. I’m also pleased with the One V’s size, sporting that 3.7-inch display. The phone itself is almost exactly the same size as an iPhone, and while big beautiful displays are all the rage right now, the One V took me back to a place where phones were actually comfortable in the hand.

The phone sports a little chin, much like the HTC Status or G1, and the black bezel takes over the entire front portion of the phone. Though the screen itself doesn’t go edge-to-edge, it certainly gives off the impression that it does. You’ll notice that there are only three capacitive buttons down below.

HTC didn’t have the software running on the One V, so I’m focusing mainly on hardware here. However, I’m told that the software is the same across all of these One devices, except for carrier bloatware of course. That said, Sense 4.0 is really snappy. You’d expect Sense (one of the heavier vendor overlays) would slow down Android even more than it already lags, but I didn’t find this to be the case.

At least on the One X, Sense only brings a new layer of dimension to the phone rather than bogging it down. HTC’s weather and clock widget are still beautiful, as per usual, but where we’re really seeing some huge UI changes is in the camera app. Sense has brought way more controls into the camera app, along with a continuous shutter mode which takes five pictures a second.

That’s right. The One series shutter snaps pics in .2 seconds, which far surpasses anything we’ve called snappy before. I’d say it just barely beats out the iPhone 4S, but it’s hard to say without a stop watch. The One phones send a snapped picture straight to the little review square on the bottom left, whereas on the iPhone you watch a virtual shutter as the picture’s being loaded into your gallery. This makes it hard to tell which is really the fastest, but it doesn’t really matter since both are super snappy. The One V, on the other hand, has a camera downgrade to 5-megapixels from 8-megapixels.

Hopefully this guy doesn’t go for more than $200, though I’m thinking we’ll see it land south of $150. Truth be told, even for $200 this seems like a worthwhile offering.



Shazam Adds Support For Android Beam: Tap To Share Music, Tour Dates, Offers & More

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:17 AM PST

shazam_android_beam

Mobile music discovery service Shazam has just revealed an updated version of its application for Android users which takes advantage of the new technology in Android 4.0 called “Android Beam.” For those unfamiliar, Android Beam is an NFC-based “touch-and-share” feature that allows Android owners share contacts, links, maps, and other data simply by tapping phones. In Shazam’s forthcoming Android app, Android Beam will allows users to share music, coupons, tour dates and even “TV tags,” thanks to Shazam’s TV advertising partnerships.

The only bad news: the new Shazam app supporting Android Beam isn’t live now, nor is it expected for a few weeks. Boo. The announcement, made at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, was only a preview of what’s coming.

When it goes live, however, two Android users will be able to hold their phones back-to-back in order to share music (well, music samples), offers they’ve received from advertisers (for example, via the Shazam-enabled TV ads), plus info on tour dates for favorite bands and more. If the friend in question doesn’t have the Shazam Android app, Android Beam will instead point them to the Android Market in order to grab a copy.

What’s more likely, though, is that the friend won’t have Android Beam at all. As of today, Android 4.0 (aka “Ice Cream Sandwich”) is installed on just 1% of Android devices, according to Google. And even now as new handsets debut, it’s not a given that a brand-new phone will run Android 4.0 when launched.

Shazam also took the opportunity today to announce plans for “faster tagging” for Android users. Some improvements have already been made in this area, and Shazam promises a few more tweaks will arrive this week, with iOS to follow. When those go live, Shazam says that songs and TV ads will be able to be identified in a fraction of the time it previously took, even as little as one second.

The company’s mobile applications are a cross-platform play, with support for Android, iOS, Nokia, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry platforms. The app, which originally began as a utility to identify the song it hears on your radio’s speakers, has more recently expanded to a TV, allowing users to “tag” television ads in order to receive more information and offers from the given merchant. Today, Shazam has over 180 million users across 200 countries, and is adding new users at a rate of 1.5 million per week.

Proview Could Have Been A Contender

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:17 AM PST

lrg_Proview_Technology

Reuters, usually taciturn in their coverage of technology, has written a nice tick tock about the rise and fall of trademark troll Proview in China. The company, founded around the same time the Mac Portable hit the scene, was once a display powerhouse, producing 4 percent of the CRTs sold during the early dot-com decade and 12 percent of the LCDs. Although it’s probably hard to remember, Proview probably made a monitor you used 20 years ago.

The company began making all-in-one CRT PCs under the iPAD moniker, a move that seemed, at best, quixotic. In the opening years of the 21st century, Proview kept at it, hitting a rough spot in 2008 and never regaining its footing during the financial crisis.

The rest is a familiar story: the company fell into debt and stopped making products and instead generated lawsuits. This tore the company to pieces and now its only refuge is to try to pull more cash out of a trademark lawsuit that was already settled.

This is what gets me most about trolls like SCO, Proview, and the like: that they were once great companies laid low and reduced to trolling for settlements. Like that fungus that infects an ant and forces it to climb to a place conducive to its own parasitic growth – killing the ant in the process – the legal fees strip whatever was good out of a company leave a shell populated by lawyers and hangers on. Even the original creators, in some cases, don’t see the spoils of the legal team’s efforts. All that’s left is a shell company and some letterhead.

Call all you want for patent reform: these companies will still be trying to wring the last ounce of cash out of a failed idea. This is less about reform than about the ease with which lawsuits can be brought, enforced, and scare tactics implemented to cloud the issues of ownership and real value. No one wins.

TC@MWC: Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 Finally Nails The Formula

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:14 AM PST

galnote1

I’m no great fan of Samsung’s 5+ inch Galaxy Note — it’s just too darned big for me to use the way I want to. The Galaxy Note 10.1 on the other hand pumps up size to a more familiar level, and the end result is a tablet/stylus combo that makes a lot more sense.

But first, a few of the basics. The Galaxy Note features a (what else) 10.1-inch display running at 1280 x 720, a 1.4 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, a Touch Wiz-ified take on Ice Cream Sandwich, all of which led to smooth sailing during my brief time with it. It seems to have more than enough horsepower to handle the everyday tasks likely to be thrown at it, though I wish I could say the same for the lackluster 3-megapixel rear camera.

The software that the demo models used wasn’t yet a final version, and it occasionally showed. I won’t go into too much detail here since Samsung is likely working to iron out the kinks as I write, but the bundled Photoshop Touch app initially had trouble detecting how much pressure I was applying with the S-Pen. It eventually caught up though, and didn’t trouble me afterward.

The design and construction is typical Samsung — that is to say, thin, light, and plasticky. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as more than a few people are fans of Samsung’s M.O., though I’m more a fan of HTC’s weightier design choices. The glossy plastic back does make for a mess when it comes to fingerprints, which is much more apparent on the grey model than on the white.

The S Pen that accompanies the tab has also been upgraded a bit — it’s thicker and apparently more precise on the bigger screen, but given my limited experience with the 5-inch Note, I was hard pressed to tell the difference. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

The kindly Samsung rep who held the Note while I took a few photos intimated that she really couldn’t see a difference in accuracy between the 5-inch Note and its big brother. I know, I know, anecdotal evidence, but the most important thing is that the S-Pen worked, and it worked well.

For what it’s worth, I had no trouble at all whipping up a little TC logo doodle, and while the “eraser” on the opposite end of the S-Pen sometimes had a bit of trouble erasing because I wasn’t depressing the nib enough. It’s a more accurate simulation of using a pencil eraser than, say, using a regular capacitive stylus for the job, but I didn’t much care for that bit of sensory feedback.

Personally, if you absolutely had to get one of Samsung’s stylus-friendly doodads, it should certainly be this one. The tablet itself is solid enough — good specs, decent looks, etc. — but overarching concept of the Note line feels so much more appropriate on a screen this size. I can’t say that it’s the most intuitive thing I’ve ever used, but it’s great to see Samsung take an older concept and really make it shine with the right form factor.

The Samsung Galaxy S III Leaked! 1.5GHz, 4.8-inch 1080p Display, Ceramic Case

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:56 AM PST

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Samsung previously made it known that the Galaxy S III would not be announced at Mobile World Congress.

But it leaked anyway. And it might steal the show. Forgot about the HTC One X and Sony Xperia U, the Samsung GSIII will be the Android phone to beat in 2012.

Inside the Galaxy S III is said to be a quad-core Samsung Exynos CPU running at 1.5GHz. It will power a 4.8-inch 16×9 display that’s reportedly a Blu-ray display — whatever that means. A 2MP resides in the front bezel while an 8MP is embedded around back. BGR doesn’t state the target carrier(s) but the phone will rock a 4G LTE radio. An unconfirmed rendering is pictured up top.

The case is reportedly made out of ceramic, which in a world of plastic and aluminum, is a fun change of pace. Ceramic feels great to the touch, can be very durable and since it’s comprised of mostly baked mud, it’s better for the environment. Plus, with ceramic, Apple can’t claim Samsung copied any of its products.

It will ship with Android 4.0 installed sometime later this year. Samsung previously stated that it would hold a launch event for the phone closer to its ship date. I’d expect the phone in late spring/early summer.

Leveraging Zong, PayPal Gets Serious About Mobile Carrier Payments

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:36 AM PST

zong

Back in July, PayPal shelled out over $200 million for payments platform Zong, as a way to boost mobile payments technology. As you may know, Zong lets you pay for things, particularly virtual goods online, via direct billing to your mobile phone. According to an announcement made by eBay today, PayPal is looking to make these mobile carrier payments more available for online merchants.

According to a blog post from Zong founder and PayPal Mobile VP David Marcus, PayPal is launching an initiative to help increase the usage of carrier payments. One of the main barriers to carrier payments are lofty carrier rates. Wireless carriers have charged roughly 30-40 percent to process transactions made via mobile phone accounts, making it very difficult for mobile payment companies like Zong and competitor Boku to scale beyond virtual goods.

These transaction costs are passed down to developers and merchants using the mobile billing technology, which are then passed to the consumer. Carriers also sometimes have a dollar amount limit on payments that can be processed over a specific period of time, which inhibits merchants from using this payments option for larger transactions. In order to avoid these costs, mobile payments companies need to negotiate direct relationships with carriers.

PayPal says that the initiative will require that carriers “revise standards to help optimize user experience, increase flexibility of carrier payments as a payment method, and increase payout rates for merchants.” PayPal adds it will be working directly with carriers to help make lower transaction costs a reality. In turn for lowering fees, carriers will be able to leverage some of PayPal’s own mobile payments expertise and network of users.

It’s hard to tell whether PayPal is making real headway in cutting transaction costs without actual evidence of deals where carriers have actually lowered their cut. Hopefully, we’ll see more deals being struck in the future. Until then, this is still just an ‘initiative.’

Isis Revealed: Carrier-Led Mobile Payments Venture Shows Off Its New App, Announces Banking Partners

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:32 AM PST

isis

Isis, the carrier-led joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today new partnerships with Chase, Capital One and Barclaycard. Under the terms of the deal, the banks will include their debit, credit and prepaid cards into Isis’s forthcoming mobile wallet.

In addition, the organization is revealing, for the first time, what the interface to the Isis Mobile Wallet looks like.

While the Google Wallet initiative simmers, the top U.S. mobile operators (well, at least three of the four – Sprint is teamed up with Google for Google Wallet), have their own agenda for the future of mobile payments. The $100 million gamble that is the Isis platform is counting on the fact that NFC, or near field communication, will become the de facto standard for making purchases using a mobile phone.

NFC, for those unfamiliar, is a short-range, wireless communications technology capable of sending data between devices using a wave or a tap. It’s supported in some Android-based, BlackBerry and Nokia handsets, but not in the Apple iPhone.

Isis has been slowly inching towards making NFC-based mobile payments a reality. In July, Isis forged relationships with the top U.S. payment networks, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. Last September, the majority of leading device makers, including HTC, LG, Motorola, RIM, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, as well as NFC hardware provider Device Fidelity, pledged support for Isis.

Today, Isis is announcing that starting in mid-2012, consumers will be able to load their eligible Chase, Capital One and Barclaycard cards into their Isis Mobile Wallet and shop at participating merchants.

But hang on, before you get too excited about all this: Isis will only be available in its test markets at first, which, the organization says, includes  Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas. The national rollout “to follow” isn’t expected until next year, we’ve heard.

As for the exciting reveal of the Isis Mobile Wallet user interface. It’s, um, OK. I’m not sure it screams “future of mobile payments,” though.

Of course, it’s too soon to know whether Isis, Google Wallet, or even NFC will end up being a major player in the mobile payments landscape of the future, especially when other companies including PayPal, Square and numerous startups have their own ingenious plans. And Apple, whose involvement in the space would surely be trend-setting, hasn’t even shown its cards yet.

mBlox Launches New Cloud-Based Mobile Marketing Platform: Engage

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:00 AM PST

Screen shot 2012-02-27 at 7.24.04 AM

You rarely ever hear someone say, “boy, I sure did enjoy that mobile ad.” In fact, it’s rare to hear someone say they enjoyed any ad unless it’s around Super Bowl time. But I hold firmly to the belief that the only reason we don’t really enjoy ads is because, most of the time, they aren’t under our control.

Relevancy and context are the most important factors when it comes to delivering an ad, and mBlox is aware of this. So in an effort to help brands solidify their relationships to consumers, mBlox has launched a cloud-based system called Engage, which offers real-time location-based analytics and reporting.

Engage works with mobile apps and asks for opt-in consent with the user. mBlox believes there are three things a brand needs to do when interacting with a consumer: “respect, refresh, and refine.” Asking for consent from the user is just hitting on the first of those pillars, but likely the most important one. The platform also has the ability to automatically respond to a consumer interaction, like by adding or removing a limited offer once the time frame has expired.

In another gesture of “respect,” Engage tries to push content to the device through WiFi rather than over a data connection to help users out with their battery life and their bills. In fact, Engage will only push content if your battery can handle it in the first place.

And since it runs in the cloud, brands can be sure they’re seeing real-time metrics on how consumers are interacting with their content, and just as quickly tailor said content to be as effective as possible. Brands also have the ability to wake up their app while it’s asleep, check location of the user, and trigger content based on location or time. Brands can also pre-load content to be delivered at a specified time or location, or sync with other mBlox commerce platforms do perform in-app transactions.



Buddy Media Acquires Social Ad-Buying Tool Brighter Option To Sync Paid and Owned Marketing

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 05:59 AM PST

Buddy Media Brighter Option

Brands are buying more social advertising, and increasingly those ads build off of published content like Sponsored Stories and Promoted Tweets. To absorb this spend, social marketing platform Buddy Media has acquired and integrated the tech and team of Facebook ad-buying tool Brighter Option. Buddy Media started as social publishing suite, but as cheap publishing tools proliferated it needed a way to earn a percentage of brand ad spend.

Now when Buddy Media’s 600 clients including newly signed WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, publish updates to Facebook they can instantly buy ads that promote their owned marketing properties.

The seed-funded Brighter Option‘s entire 21 person team in London and San Francisco will move into Buddy Media’s offices in those cities. Brighter Option’s CEO Peter Goodman is likely to spearhead Buddy Media’s international expansion, while CTO Andrew Craven will join the senior product team. They’re now building ad tools that sync with Buddy Media’s Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and other social channel publishing capabilities.

The price of acquisition was not disclosed, but the value comes from the synergy offered by a single tool that can publish owned, monitor earned, and buy paid marketing. Previously it was fine for brands and agencies to use standalone solutions. But social ads are on the rise. Right now they’re primarily on Facebook and Twitter, but the high click through rates of Sponsored Stories and Promoted Tweets could inspire Tumblr, Instagram, and maybe even Pinterest to build out content-based ad products.

To efficiently repackage and amplify owned marketing like Facebook brand page updates and application usage stories as ads, the silos must be broken down. The Brighter Option buy continues the trend of consolidation between the social media marketing and advertising industries, following Efficient Frontier’s acquisition of Page management company Context Optional, and Experian’s purchase of Ads API tool Techlightenment.

I spoke yesterday with Buddy Media’s founder CEO and founder Michael Lazerow, and he told me that a year ago it became obvious that his company needed to offer ad buying. Buddy Media began assessing its compatibility with over 20 Ads API tools that let clients efficiently buy large scale ad campaigns on Facebook. It decided a partnership wouldn’t be sufficient and it could take months to a year to build its own tool.

In August Buddy Media took a $54 million Series D round bringing it to just under $90 million in funding. With growing revenue that may have reached $50 million in 2011, Buddy Media had the firepower to acquire a top tier ads tool — it just needed to decide which one.

When Buddy Media took its Series D, I wrote about its glaring lack of an ad buying tool and suggested “it could acquire one of the smaller brand-focused Ads API developers such as Brighter Option, GraphEffect, or XA.net.” Lazerow told me he found that “Brighter Option was the only Ad API company that offed a tech solution without a managed service, and was incredibly easy to use.” As a pure software-as-a-service that was well received by agencies, it was a superior fit for Buddy Media.

Last quarter, Brighter Option served 92.5 billion impressions for more than 291 advertisers in 42 countries including game studio Wooga, and agencies Blowfish Digital and Mediacom. The acquisition will roll these clients into Buddy Media, which will charge them a very competitive single digit percentage of total ad spend with a two-week free trial and no set up cost or monthly minimum. Many other ad buying tools and services require a minimum spend and can charge around 15% of spend. Buddy Media will also offer a transition service to allow advertisers to switch to it from other tools or manual ad buying.

“Going forward, the best advertising will be born from consumer engagement with compelling content and experiences”, not generic content designed to be annoying and interruptive, Lazerow writes in a blog post this morning. As the first and largest Facebook brand page management tool, other social marketing platforms and services are likely to see Buddy Media’s acquisition as proof of the importance of social ads, and look to build or acquire their own ad buying solutions. Lazerow tells me “I think this is the beginning of community managers and PR firms controlling part of the marketing budgets. The same person who writes the post will be trying to get people to show up by buying media that amplifies content they think is awesome.”

Payvment Leverages Social Data To Help Merchants Optimize Sales On Facebook

Posted: 27 Feb 2012 05:45 AM PST

payvment

Payvment, a startup that allows anyone to create and operate a retail storefront on Facebook, is debuting a new feature today that allows merchants to monitor key social commerce metrics to help drive sales.

Payvment's Facebook App, which launched in November of 2009, lets anyone create a retail store on the social network. The app lets you set up products, categories of products (i.e. shoes, T-shirts, sweaters), import photos, list terms of service and shipping options and more. Once you set up your online shop on Facebook, it will show up in a separate tab on your profile or page under "storefront". The company also offers a virtual shopping mall of all of its storefronts on Facebook.

Basically, Payvment’s Social IQ technology analyzes merchant data and delivers a daily set of customized actions to help sellers who are new to social commerce grow fans, traffic, and sales. Payvment's Social IQ also makes it easy for sellers to try social commerce campaigns such as running a Twitter promotion or offering a "Like" discount for fans, while being able to measure exactly how those actions improve product discovery and sales.

With a new Social IQ dashboard, merchants will be greeted with a Social IQ "score", which provides a benchmark of how effectively the seller is promoting their store and generating engagement relative to other Payvment sellers. Social IQ will tally the deals, promotions and polls a seller has run in the past week; show how shoppers engaged based on the social actions, shows the other sellers who are most active and socially engaged and why.

Based on performance data, sellers will be recommended campaigns such as creating and posting a product poll, or running a seasonal promotion. The seller's Social IQ score climbs in direct correlation to their growth in fans, reactions (Want, Like), conversations, and product sales driven by these actions.

While Payvment is trying to help more retailers and businesses sell on Facebook, there have been reports of major retailers jumping off the platform because attempts at social commerce have failed. But founder Christian Taylor explains that there's just too big of an opportunity for product discovery and engagement on Facebook for big brands to stay away for long.

He explains further that it's actually not surprising that some of these brands didn't see initial success, as most of them just cloned their retail websites on Facebook. “For F-commerce to drive real product discovery and sales, retailers must have storefronts and conversational tools that are a part of the social fabric of Facebook. When stores are built for product discovery, for sharing, and for authentic conversations, the results are phenomenal,” he says.

Taylor says that in his observations, small retailers and brands have been much quicker to embrace social commerce, and are implementing it much better than large retailers. He thinks it’s only a matter of time before big retailers figure this out and head back to Facebook for commerce.
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