Douglas Bergeron, chief executive officer of VeriFone Systems, talks about the company's mobile payment technology and expansion plans.
VeriFone CEO on Mobile Payments
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
VeriFone CEO on Mobile Payments
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
OfficeMax goes live with Google Wallet at 100 stores
Customers can now use near field communications mobile phones to make payments, redeem coupons and receive rewards using Google "SingleTap" terminals installed at more than one hundred of the company's stores in the United States. Office Max operates about 1,000 retail stores. The new terminals are available in stores throughout the greater New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC regions.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
AT&T Will Sell iPhone 3GS "Free" on 2-Year Contract
AT&T will be able to sell the Apple 3GS to customers in the United States "for no incremental cost" ("free") on two-year service contracts that must include a data plan.Four years ago, the cheapest iPhone cost $400. Today, it's free, at least on the U.S. AT&T network. The move shows that growth in smart phone adoption now is moving rapidly into the mainstream, with most of the sales volume coming from mainstream feature phone users.
AT&T Only U.S. Wireless Carrier To Get iPhone 3GS
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Microcells and Backhaul will Have to be Cheap
Whichever technology is used to backhaul small cells, it has to be cheap, "it has to be massively cheap," said Andy Sutton, Everything Everywhere principal architect, access transport. "We have a financial envelope for small cells and it's challenging."
Cost is so important because small cells will have relatively low usage compared to a macrocell and there will be lots of sites to support. Compared with macrocells, small cells will cover distance of about 50 square meters or 538 square feet. That's an area about 23 feet by 23 feet.
Cost is so important because small cells will have relatively low usage compared to a macrocell and there will be lots of sites to support. Compared with macrocells, small cells will cover distance of about 50 square meters or 538 square feet. That's an area about 23 feet by 23 feet.
One way to look at matters is that this is an area smaller than the range of a consumer's home Wi-Fi router.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Paramount Offers Streaming of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"
Don't hold your breath in expectation that a revolution in online delivery of streamed new release movies is at hand, Paramount Pictures is experimenting with a new digital distribution model for the most recently released Transformers movie. This is just a test, not the forerunner of a new service offering. But like an army gearing up for a battle it expects, without full knowledge of where the foe is, Paramount is probing and testing, trying to gain more experience with a delivery system that could erupt into a full battle at some point.
By offering its own marketplace for customers to purchase the streaming video, Paramount’s parent company Viacom is essentially cutting out “middlemen” services like Netflix, Vudu and others, keeping a bigger cut of the overall revenue.
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon" can be rented in standard definition for $3.99. Windows users have the option of renting an HD version for $4.99. The movie is available to watch for 48-hours after making the purchase.
The promotion was emailed to an MTV mailing list. The offer will last through the end of February 2012, marking the first extended direct-to-consumer online streaming rental offered by Paramount. Paramount to test streaming
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Google has no Ability to Dominate New Markets, Some Would Argue
Legislating and regulating "problems" that are just about to solve themselves is a real problem in either national economic "planning" or regulation. Most of you are too young to remember the real and serious debates and dialogues held by telecom policymakers back in the 1970s and 1980s about how to provide telephone service to "one billion people who have never made a phone call." The daunting problem seemed intractable. But policymakers back then had no idea "mobile service" was about to revolutionize communications, making it now a silly question to worry about how to provide communications service to those billion people. These days, most people in developing regions have, or soon will have, mobile phone service.
Some might argue we more recently, in the United States, thought the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major reform of the U.S. telecom framework since 1934, would introduce more competition in communications, and promote innovation.
That was just about the point that the Internet, broadband, mobility and applications were about to cause wholesale changes in user experience, user expectations and the product life cycles of any number of products, including fixed line voice services.
These days, you would be hard pressed to find a highly-placed telecommunications executive who would argue that voice revenues in the future will be anything but smaller than they are today, both in the fixed line and the mobile environments.
Despite the good intentions, policymakers tried to stimulate competition in voice services right at the point that voice services were about to reach the peak of the product life cycle, and then enter the declining stage.
Some might argue that growing scrutiny of Microsoft a decade ago likewise was misplaced. Microsoft was about to hit a period when Internet-based applications were going to undermine its potential "monopoly" in any case. Regulators honestly worried that Microsoft's dominance of PC operating systems would lead to domination of browsers.
These days regulators seem to worry that Google's presence in PC-based search advertising will give it "unfair" advantage in mobile services, mobile banking or mobile advertising and social networks. There is not much evidence that Google has actually been so successful at dominating the many other potential businesses it seeks to enter, or has entered.
"While it's true that Google's stranglehold on mobile search and associated ad spending is near 100 per cent, according to recent reports, it's equally true that most of the "search" consumers do on their mobile devices isn't the kind that Google controls," the Register notes.
In fact, the common thinking now is that Facebook and other social sites are becoming the way people use search in a mobile context.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
New Features for Apple iOS 5, Due Oct. 12, 2011
Though it will be overshadowed today by news about the iPhone 4S and delay of iPhone 5, Apple's latest version of iOS 5 arrives on October 12, 2012.New support for digital publications, Twitter integration and notifications are among the features.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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