Posts by Kristian Walsh

Nokia takes NFC phones to New York subway

C7 will be able to do payments.

"There is also the C7, branded Astound in the USA, but that lacks an embedded secure element, and even appears to lack support for the Single Wire Protocol "

C7 has no embedded secure element, but can access an external secure element. Given that Nokia have said that C7 is payment capable*, and that this feature will be rolled out in 2012, I'd guess that the hardware for Single Wire Protocol is present, but the software is missing, pending finalisation of the SWP spec.

*source: http://www.nfcworld.com/2011/08/29/39462/nokia-symbian-nfc-phones-to-support-mobile-payments-in-2012/ ("[...] The upgrade will also be available to users of the Nokia C7, a spokesman confirmed.")

Google report reveals YouTube takedown requests... by country

Is there a similar list for copyright infringement takedown requests?

... It'd be interesting to see the compliance rate.

Apple gets patent for ‘unlock gesture’

N9 and swipe

Nokia had patented the swipe gesture to move between screens of content long before the iPhone arrived. Apple breached this in the first iPhone (swiping between icon grids), and paid a settlement earlier in the year as one small part of the $450m (plus future, recurring per-device payments) it stumped up to Nokia.

This patent is bad news for the "maze" lockscreen on Android phones, and maybe like Nokia's now-defunct "Bubbles" lockscreen (although that didn't use pre-defined paths), but the N9's lockscreen, and that Android one where you just "slide off" the dark layer over the screen should be fine, because they're a swipe of the whole page, not a drag of an object along a path.

(I'd agree that Apple have some grounds for a patent here, but not anything as broad-reaching as they've just been granted)

WTF is... Bluetooth 4.0?

A few reasons

PS3 and Wii both use Bluetooth controllers, but for typical domestic equipment control, an IR interface is sufficient, and far, far cheaper in component, IPR and Power terms.

Wireless keyboards use proprietary links because these protocols are much more power efficient. Bluetooth LE comes close to these systems, but has the added advantage of driver-free operation* and greater robustness from other ISM-band equipment (not because it's better, but because its popularity means it's more likely to be taken account of by a developer of any new ISM-band application).

* driver-free on non-Windows platforms, of course...

Bluetooth RS-232 adaptors are expensive partly because RS-232 is now a very specialised technology, but also because RS-232's +/- 12V signalling requires additional voltage multiplication, and as a niche interface, it's not practical to combine this function onto the cheap single IC that handles the rest of the Bluetooth interfacing.

Bluetooth's 10m range is inadequate for room control in large houses, and large houses are more likely to feature such automation. Plus, X10 is dirt cheap to make (if not to have installed) and has an installed base, a good range of equipment and large pool of installers. As a wired system it's also immune from ISM-band interference that increasingly plagues domestic settings (e.g., my "wireless" doorbell gets knocked out by, I think, a neighbour's security camera system).

OBEX is still part of Bluetooth 4.0, Apple.

The air-interface is only one part of the standard.

But hey, I just love to use my data allowance to email media files from my phone to an iPhone owner who's standing in front of me. It's the future, etc., etc.

Somewhat schizophrenically, Apple's implementation of Bluetooth on OSX is really top-notch.

App Store groupthink is bad news for small devs

Not quite

What I was saying is that the "Long" tail illusion is only visible when you look at the sales from a monopoly retailer, whose sales include everything, because in a diversified market, retailers would specialise in "narrow catalogue, fast turn, low margin" or "broad catalogue, slow turn, high margin", or anything between. I suspect it's only the presence of a monopoly that causes a "long tail", because in this situation, publishers have no other choice than to place their works with the monopoly, even though they could make less per sale than if they had the option of a specialist channel.

This doesn't mean specialist retailers are thriving: far from it. As the online monopoly sucks in more of the entire trade, the specialists will eventually be squeezed out (but not before the general retailers are). Specialist producers are eventually forced to sell through the monopoly retailer, which will undercut the specialist retailers on price, because unlike the specialist, the monopoly can spread its overheads across a much higher volume of sales.

Long Tail, or just one company handling everything?

The "Long Tail" was never a hymn to diversity, and it was never that long either. It needs a monopoly distribution channel, serving an enormous market. It's no "bazaar", and it's not a "cathedral" either - think of a giant Wal-Mart.

There's no evidence to suggest that internet commerce or app stores or music download services have a longer tail than their real-world equivalents - Once you normalise the figures.

That last bit is important. If the "tail" contains only 1% of all sales, but is 80% of the catalogue (numbers off the top of my head; the real situation is far worse), then it is only viable to have a product in this tail if the total number of sales is so colossal that your tiny share of that 1% is significant. In this aspect, Anderson was right, but he didn't explore the reasons why this works, because nobody likes to be seen to support monopolies.

Amazon have a dominant place in bookselling, and generate just such a colossal number of sales as a result. Similarly, the Apple and Android app stores can produce this number of sales, as does iTunes. But these are monopoly or near-monopoly providers of their goods. Perhaps the only reason there's a viable tail at all is because, in a non-monopoly provider, these more esoteric parts of the catalogue would be carried by specialist retailers, and so would not appear in the tail of the monopoly distributor.

But this "specialist lists" is still happening, although indirectly and informally. Magazines, blogs and user groups (like online forums) maintain their own informal "collections" of apps, complete with direct links in to the store. This, like buying from the Top 10, is another form of aggregation, but it's not one that's visible from the storefront. (I haven't worked with iOS in years, but I think putting such a referral service into an app may even be a violation of Apple's Terms of Service).

Lets just hope that Apple/Amazon/Google don't start behaving like other retail monopolies. App developers would then have to pay "hello money" just to be listed, as is common practice with large supermarkets.

Why so shy on pay-by-wave, Nokia?

"Once NFC is in phones you will be surprised by the number of applications people will invent for it."

That's my own opinion too, and Nokia in particular have done some cool stuff using NFC to automate Bluetooth pairing, streaming and sharing. To me, as a user, that's worth something now, and it's a reason to look for an NFC phone next time I change. Only when there is a critical mass of handsets with NFC will it be any way practical to consider using them for payments - and that includes low-end devices too.

But the "instant" part of "instant payment" can be done today with chip cards. The Belgian Proton or Dutch Chipknip cards allow small-value instant payments right now, today, and don't require an online merchant terminal. Change the comms interface to use NFC, and it's tap to pay. And, unlike a high-cost smartphone, everyone with a suitable bank account can have this facility included on their credit/debit card. However, the poor take-up of these systems may be a warning of a fundamental flaw of instant payments: no authentication; and I don't see how any of the proposed phone-based systems would improve this without becoming some kind of ersatz Chip+PIN terminals.

- not that they'd be recognised as that. It's worth remembering that a lot of the hype over NFC payments comes from within the USA - the one developed economy that hasn't moved to some kind of Chip+PIN credit card payment systems. Yes, compared to the magswipe (or even zip-zap) that persists in the US, NFC is a lot faster and easy and secure; compared to chip+PIN, though, it's less secure, and only a little faster.

"Wave-to-pay" is not a technology problem..

... as Google will discover. (I suspect Nokia already know this, as they've been trialling NFC payment systems since 2008, and have been reluctant to press ahead with it). The exchange at the payment terminal is the easy bit; after that, any operator will need to provide the same trust, accountability and security that an existing card-payment processor does, or, as Google have done, farm it out to such a company (Citi in Google's case). But now, Google are just another middleman in an industry with too many middlemen. If I were a bank, why wouldn't I just commission the software myself, and keep the margins? And I think this is what will happen.

The banks have another advantage here too: In most jurisdictions, the cashless payment systems used by merchants are owned by the banks, and provided to merchants as part of their payment service contract, so it's the banks who decide which standards are adopted, not the software companies.

In the meantime, the payment tokens that customers already hold (credit and debit cards) can be easily augmented with NFC functionality. With a transaction value cap and a rate limit, it's quite possible that banks can allow transactions without PIN (as a precedent, there are "electronic wallet" Chip cards widely used in Belgium that operate without a PIN). If this happens there is suddenly no market for a phone-based NFC system, except as an application from an existing card issuer, and even then there's a public trust battle to be won.

In surveys, people are most worried about losing their phone when asked why they don't like the technology, and this has some sense in it. Right now, if you lose your wallet, you can at least phone your bank and cancel the cards; with everything rolled into one device, that option is no longer open to you.

[ On a final point, there seems to be some misunderstanding about what Nokia's NFC phones can and can't do. Just because the current OS release does not allow payment applications, it does not mean that the hardware is incapable of this feature. The software to enable payments will be in place next year, and will work for all current phones, according to Nokia ( http://www.nfcworld.com/2011/08/29/39462/nokia-symbian-nfc-phones-to-support-mobile-payments-in-2012/ ). ]

Silicon Valley's social tech formula doesn't add up

You're only bitter...

... because you missed the opportunity to get in on the ground floor before webhamster.com made its IPO :-P

Reasoning from a flawed premise

um... Who told you Groupon was a successful company with a viable business model? ...apart from Groupon, that is.

They're technically insolvent thanks to the founders syphoning away the working capital, they're gaining pariah status amongst their customers, and they're big expansion (into China) has been a resounding failure. Definitely a new way of measuring success...

Nokia's NFC-stocked Symbian smartphone surfaces

Competitive at this price

Having seen Belle in action, and having used the typical Android fare at this price, the Nokia is ahead here. This phone is also far more adventurously styled than that opposition.

Android does well at the top of the range, but Google are ignoring the next wave of smartphone users by not getting Android's minimum hardware requirements under control, and there's room for either Bada or Symbian to capitalise here...

Ten... earphones for mobiles

Thanks for the tip

I had the same problem, but Nokia give you three sizes of earbud in the box - the smallest ones fit me near-perfectly, but other options would be nice. Not bad headphones - much better than I'd expect from a free pack-in - but quite fragile, sadly.

World+Dog goes bonkers for iPhone 4S

Woz always buys his Apple stuff retail...

He says he can afford it, so doesn't see why he should be getting it for free.

... but there is another point about "gratis" handsets: More and more of those first-day queues are actually iOS developers in a desperate race to get their hands on test hardware before their most intolerant and vocal customers do.

Apple's cult of secrecy means that there's no advance hardware programme, so you've just got to get in line with the fanbois because it's the only way to be sure your software runs okay on the new thing.

C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead

}

Title says it all, really. A true technology pioneer, and someone whose invention really did change society.

October hasn't been a good month, has it?

Sutter: C++11 kicks old-school coding into 21st century

+1,000,000 (all instantiated into the same reused block, of course)

Garbage collection is pure, distilled and concentrated evil for interactive or real-time systems. The best it can offer you is a statistical value for event latency, but with such a wide deviation that you need to run the software on a grossly overspecified platform in order to make sure that even if your event occurs during a GC run, you'll still get to handle it in time.

And I still haven't come across a good argument for why you'd need GC, let alone one that would make me give up "Resource Acquisition Is Initialisation". Most arguments for GC grossly overestimate the amount of direct dynamic allocation a typical C++ application programmer does, and never fully take into account the deferred cost of cleaning up later.

Fifteen years later, you can *still* tell that an application was written in Java. It's got that "sticky" feeling, like a watching a machine with a slipping gear, as that wonderful GC jumps in at the most inopportune moments. It's fine for quickly building client/server applications that can hide behind network latency, but you'd need your head examined to write something like a real-time embedded operating system in Ja--- oh, never mind...

On C++11 itself, while the memory model work is great, very few will notice it, and while that does sum up most of the new features, there are some standouts: As someone who had to teach C++ many years ago, I welcome the new meaning of the "auto" keyword with open arms: it sure beats typing "std::map<std::string, std::map<std::string,std::vector<std::string> > >::const_iterator" . On that note, the official recognition of what the two characters ">>" together should mean when found inside a template declaration is a small, but also very welcome, addition.

Other high-points for efficiency are the introduction of move construction and rvalue references, both of which remove the spurious extra objects that can occur when passing by value. Sure, they're mostly of interest to library authors, but they've been added in a way that often won't require rewrite of client code.

Before complaining, I'd suggest a read of the FAQ (http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/C++0xFAQ.html) might be in order. Of course, if you're already convinced that Java or C are the world's best languages, there's not a lot that would convince one otherwise.

iPhone 4S pre-orders obliterate sales records

Agreed: last year the same Anandtech systematically dismissed Apple's excuses about the iPhone 4 reception issues and showed that it was misconceived antenna design at fault, and they did it without resorting to name-calling or gloating. Just someone with actual knowledge of how stuff works applying that knowledge, rather than regurgitating what Apple's PR handed out to the faithful.

So if this year, they found the iPhone 4S to be twice as fast as the Galaxy S2, then it probably is twice as fast.

... and there's the reason

This is the first iPhone model to have a wide-ranging launch, covering all of the US's major carriers (iPhone 4 was AT&T only; 4S is on Verizon and Sprint too). The iPhone's core market is the USA, but over half that market was closed to it until Summer.

So, now that 80% of the US market's customers can get an iPhone (if they want one) as opposed to 30%, it's not really a surprise that preorders are up compared to the previous launches.

Is the pre-order number up in proportion to the enlargement of the population who can make a pre-order? Well, that's the question that would have been useful to ask (and answer) in the article...

Meltemi is real – Nokia’s skunkworks Linux

Life before 2007...

Motorola sold a series of mobile phones in 2003/2004 that used Linux as their OS. These, like Meltemi, were targeted at the low/middle end of the market. There's nothing inherently resource-hungry about the Linux kernel; it's all the crap that gets loaded into a typical distro that Nokia are trying to avoid with Meltemi.

Android is perhaps the worst example: it might be Linux underneath, but it's crippled by the bytecode-based application stack.

Qt, unlike Android/Dalvik, is native machine-code, which means the CPU is immediately more productive. The same benefits of course apply to Samsung's Bada, and this is why Samsung are keeping Bada as an ongoing product. Despite directly costing them money to develop, Bada is actually cheaper than Android. Android might be free, but the CPU and RAM it needs to run adequately most definitely are not. When you're shipping hundreds of millions of devices in a product family, the higher bill-of-materials costs for Android are more significant than the single, upfront R&D cost.

Meltemi, Harmattan, Chinook, Freemantle, Sirocco...

Nokia's been using winds as codenames for years. Volkswagen also discovered them recently too (Sirocco, Passat, Bora), and let's not forget the well-travelled "Ghibli" - used by Maserati, but before that, the WW2 Italian aircraft maker Caproni, whence the renowned filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki adopted it as the name for his animation studio.

On the topic, this is good news. The problem with MeeGo was that it was a "Linux distro" for mobiles (and other platforms, I know). This meant that there were many ways to write applications and services - a native widget set, and also Qt, and a browser for web apps too, and myriad installable packages that you had to support... a lot of complexity that needs to be maintained at every release. This is what is killing Symbian - the need to maintain compatibility with APIs that are well past their sell-by date.

Series40 has been successful because it exposes only one API to developers: J2ME. Underneath, the "Domestic OS" is free to change to adapt to new hardware... it might even be a Linux kernel (but I don't think it is).

Similarly, I expect that Qt/Meltemi will be Linux-based, but it won't be a Linux like Debian or Fedora, or even MeeGo: there would be no "native UI toolkit" exposed. Istead, *all* application development will be via the Qt APIs, and the exact mapping of these features to OS functions will be free for Nokia to play with as they see fit. (Again, my guess) only the core functions of Linux, like the POSIX libraries and things like sockets, will be available.

Using Linux greatly speeds up base-porting; using Qt greatly improves applications' resistance to a change of the underlying OS.

For a parallel, think of MacOS/iOS - they're BSD underneath, but almost none of the applications are written to the BSD APIs.

If you consider that what smartphones do today, featurephones will do in two years, then there's a major explosion in mobile applications coming...

What's not in the iPhone 4S ... and why

No, the N9 could not have been out last year

... the reason why it wasn't is why Nokia are in this mess.

The hardware was ready (what is now given to developers as N950), but there was no software to run on it. Maemo had been abandoned when MeeGo was born, and MeeGo wasn't moving fast enough, having spent the first year of its existence arranging the plumbing.

Intel didn't help by constantly missing their goals on silicon, but by the end of 2010 there was nothing in the MeeGo software bucket that was remotely good enough for a consumer product. As evidence of this, It was only last week that the MeeGo 1.2 mobile ediiton was finally released, and when you see it running, it's a far cry from Nokia's N9.

The attacks on Elop are drivel. I don't like Microsoft's products, including Windows Phone, and I'm annoyed by Nokia's decision to go with Windows Phone rather than the API that I liked (Qt) but it was the only rational choice. As CEO, Elop works for the board of Nokia, and if they weren't happy with a Microsoft deal, there wouldn't have been one. Are they also Microsoft plants?

Jesus... What is it with nerds that everything they don't like has to be the result of some kind of unjust fucking conspiracy...

What's with this constant conflation of NFC and contactless payment systems? That's only one application of the technology, and when we do get it, I suspect it will be via "very smart" cards from your regular credit card issuer, not embedded in an app on your mobile phone.

To have NFC "pay its way", Nokia use the technology for Bluetooth pairing and wrap it up in a neat user experience (tap the devices together than they pair, or your music streams to it, or your chosen files are pushed to it). When you see this working, it really looks cool.

That's the sort of "magic" feature that you'd expect Apple to do, and it needs no payment infrastructure or supporting services - they could have called it "AirShare" or something equally fatuous, and the press would have been all over it.

(incidentally, NFC-pairing is also part of the Bluetooth 4 spec, and Apple claim that iPhone 4S has Bluetooth 4.0)

The iPhone 4S in depth: More than just a vestigial 'S'

CDMA+GSM - not as useful as you'd think

", if you happen to hop from country to country, the ability to switch protocols [CDMA and GSM] is a real convenience."

No, it isn't. CDMA (CDMAone/CDMA2000) roaming is of very limited use. Besides the fact that the system is not widely deployed, in the one major market outside of the USA that that does use CDMA, South Korea, the carriers don't allow roaming.

But that's not the killer, this is: in the small-print it says "CDMA available only if iPhone is sold with contract to a CDMA network". So, this is basically a feature to allow Verizon customers in the USA to use their phones while abroad.

Meanwile, the GSM-3G (WCDMA) system is still only quad-band, which locks out T-Mobile USA customers.

This is Apple dressing up a good piece of logistics management (reduction of SKUs and combining BOMs) as a customer benefit, when it's nothing of the sort.

iTunes beta, Vodafone flag up iPhone 4S

"They will all make and receive phone calls."

Ooh, a new feature.

Nokia punts cheapo NFC dev kit

Symbian is very much optional

NFC support is provided via Qt (Qt Mobility), so you could write full NFC apps without ever needing to look at Symbian APIs.

Away from the hoo-ha of the "OS wars", Nokia are consolidating their own platforms around Qt, so Symbian is rapidly becoming "the stuff that runs Qt for you behind the scenes".. eventually, it and the feature-phone Series 40 will go away, replaced by a single stripped-down Linux OS (Nokia's "Meltemi" project is apparently this OS, and not Windows Phone as previously thought) with Qt as the primary API.

HTC reckons 'WinPho will give Android a run for its money'

Slightly baffled by the implication that Android is somehow a model of efficiency...

Whatever its other flaws (and don't start me on "managed code"), at least WP7 is native machine-code, and doesn't make the CPU move pixels around.

Nokia rolls out N9 across Europe, avoids UK

... but was wrong :P

It's a subtle point, and won't matter much to users to be honest, but it really isn't MeeGo - it's compatible (to a degree) with MeeGo, but the N9's core OS is Maemo. The most visible sign of this is that N9 apps are packaged as .deb packages, where "real" MeeGo uses RPM.

It's well documented that MeeGo was not in any fit state to give to consumers, and wasn't going to be for at least another 18 months, which left Nokia with a problem - they were spending money to develop a handset, and had no OS to run on it (afaik, Nokia don't have a version of Symbian for ARM Cortex devices, so be grateful that that option wasn't open). The solution was to revert to a known-good OS build, Maemo, and port the Harmattan applications to it. The result is officially "Maemo 6 Harmattan".

The objective wasn't to produce a MeeGo device, but to produce an OS capable of running Qt and the Harmattan UI, which is why the N9 was only ever described as "MeeGo 1.2 compatible", and even that was buried in the small-print.

(btw, I'm male, but you're not the first person to mis-assign my name, and there was no offence taken in any case)

Different, not better, but beats N8 in a couple of things

The N9 camera is 8 MP, but it's 8MP *regardless* of the aspect ratio chosen by the user. N8's 12MP camera drops to only 9MP when used in 16:9 mode; for 12MP you need to use 4:3. There's also a much wider field of view in 16:9 on N9 than with any other camera. Switching to 16:9 really does give you a wider field of view.

Also, the lens maximum aperture is now f/2.2, which is a nearly a stop brighter than the N8's f/2.8. 2.2 in a mobile camera is unheard of, and will go a long way to overcoming any low-light issues from the N9's slightly smaller sensor (shorter lens-to-sensor distance means a smaller sensor).

LED flash is a downside, even a "20% brighter" LED can't match a Xenon unit, but you get the advantage of having a flashlight, I suppose...

Details here:

http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/06/27/damian-dinning-on-nokia-n9-imaging/

The one-sensor/two-aspect-ratios thing really is one of those "why didn't anyone else think of that" moments...

It's not MeeGo - most of what you see is Nokia's work

This is Nokia's own Maemo, with Nokia's own Qt framework, with Nokia's own Harmattan UI on top. The Harmattan UI that everyone raves about was never part of MeeGo.

There are MeeGo compatible packages installed, ported to Maemo, but it's not MeeGo, and Nokia were very careful NOT to refer to it as a MeeGo device, right from its announcement.

As for availability, Nokia approached the UK carriers, but only one (I heard it was O2) was in any way interested, and even that wasn't a viable proposition. If N9 becomes something that customers start asking for by name, those carriers will change their mind, because they really don't care what device you use, as long as it keeps you on contract with them for another couple of years.

Zombie mobile Linuxes mate

Well, an iPhone costs more, is less cool, and does less.

... but iPhone is available with subsidy, whereas N9 has to be bought outright.

N9 is pretty well priced, it's just that unless your operator is letting you pay it off over your contract period, any of these phones will look expensive.

Apple confirms iPhone event on 4 October

There will be disappointment

Such is the maniacal fervour that has been instilled in the faithful, and the wild flights of fancy entertained by the physics-illiterate tech media, I think there can only be a deep (but never to be told) disappointment after the launch when:

The "MindBoard" thought-control function chooses only the filthiest thoughts of the user (but that's just like the regular iPhone keyboard, I guess)

The revolutionary "AirCase" amorphous mist construction makes device impossible to pick up.

The improved "TimeWarp" clock compensation system only bends time and space in a radius of 10 km as a correction when it screws up your wake-up alarm. again.

The quantum battery is not only not user replaceable, but cannot be accurately located within the enclosure, which is just as well, because it's impossible to add a second one.

Apple's magical "RealLife" projected holographic immersive 3D chat system requires other party to not just be on WiFi, but also be in line-of-sight of caller, and in audible range (but at least it works when the phone's off)

The "TruthHound" built-in polygraph doesn't work with within the 95014 ZIP-code.

People still don't talk to you.

Android outsells Apple 2:1

US data. Nokia's share is pretty much as it was...

These are US figures, where Symbian hasn't been a player for about five years. It wasn't iPhone that killed Nokia in the US, it a combination of a long-running dispute over CDMA patents with Qualcomm and then Samsung and HTC's willingness to do whatever the US carriers wanted (feature-stripping, lockouts, custom hardware), at a low cost.

Apple's arrival was well timed, as lots of makers were scrambling for the 30% share that Nokia was shedding in the US, but before you give Jobs credit for that, remember that 2007 was the first time that off-the-shelf silicon became available that would allow a non-phonemaker to make a complete GSM-compliant mobile phone (and that's also why the iPhone 1 wasn't 3G-capable).

Windows Phone 7 doesn't seem to be too hot, but last year's "other" included Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7. Luckily Nokia are only commited to WP7 on "smartphones", and we all know how slippery it is to define a smartphone ;)

Google+ chases MySpace for second place

Activity is exploding because it's been opened for anyone to join...

... all those new users are in the "new" phase of using the site, with lots of frequent visits to update or add contacts.

Personally, I found a rapid exponential decay with my own G+ usage. Initially, I checked in about every day, until now I don't think I've looked at it for over a month. Actually, let me just check it... oooh, one post; maybe it's not just me.

PayPal's 'delightful' intrusion into meatspace: You wish

How about comparing PayPal's idea with an existing system?

A "Mobile Money" service launched recently in India, allowing cashless payments for anyone with a mobile phone:

http://mobilemoneyservices.co.in/index.html

The initiative is backed by Nokia and two Indian banks, but as it's SMS based, it will work on any mobile phone, and it seems to be up and running right now.

The other big difference compared to PayPal's plan is that this is a partnership with bricks-and-mortar banks, not some solo run by a tech company. So, amongst the other bill pay and cashless payment options, one of the available options is "Withdraw cash" (it generates a payment order that you can collect at any of the banks' branches). The ability to cash-out easily is essential for building trust in a new system like this.

or a QR label, and no need for translation

Add a QR-code block to each label, encoded with a URL like "http://mystore.co.uk/productpages/<product-SKU-number>", print them out, and hey-presto! Instant future!

On another comment about PayPal's userbase being reluctant, yes I'd agree 100%.

Also, many paypal accounts are attached to credit-cards (not least to avail of the fraud prevention and transaction reversal services you get as a customer from your credit-card issuer). I don't see why adding another middleman in the already too complicated electronic payments sequence would add any benefit to customers or merchants.

PayPal to move into the shop - without cards or NFC

@auburnman, these systems are not permitted in Europe (and other regions). Magstripe is too easily forged, and merchants must use Chip+PIN for card-present transactions. Submitting lots of swiped transactions will get you your merchant account suspended.

For mobile card payments, you can use a CNP (Card Not Present) interface hosted on a mobile app. One example I know (haven't used this, but have been a satisfied customer of theirs for a regular online card acceptance system): http://www.worldnettps.com/feature-tour/iphone-virtual-terminal It even takes debit cards.

PayPal are not a good choice for a small business. They're far too quick to refund purchases, even when the buyers are obviously acting in bad faith or actively trying to defraud the merchant. They're not even cheap once you're beyond the "kitchen table" stage of your business - you can get set up with an properly certified online processor for less than £40/month, with a big bundle of transactions thrown in for free.

Still, even PayPal is better than Google Checkout..

Apple pulls smartphone slavery app

Maybe their next game could be called "Phone Developer Story"?

Oooh, that's got promise.

How about "Wheel of Approval"? Click "Play", then the screen whirls around for a random number of days, before finally displaying "Sorry, you lose. Play again". In the meantime it generates angry emails from your client asking where the f_ck their promotional app is because they're supposed to be going live tomorrow with the campaign that its a critical part of. If you win, they only dispute half your invoice.

If you get past that level, you can play "Customer Support: Idiot Extreme", where you get random messages of spite and abuse because the free software someone got doesn't make them breakfast every morning.

Or, how about that "Negative Review Bingo" mini-game, where you get assaulted by hostile reviews from people who can't read product descriptions, and/or have no concept of how much time and effort goes into a piece of software, and therefore can't understand why you want more than $0.00 per download.

Android editions could include three bonus levels: "Where the F_ck's my Money You Big Green Metal Bastard?" where you chase your distributor for payment; "You sold it for WHAT?", where you have to guess when one of the storefronts is going to decide to give your app away for free, landing you with thousands of whinging freeloaders and no income to pay for the time their incessant support costs will suck away from you, and "Pugwash Whitewash", where your distributor stonewalls you when you complain about rampant piracy.

On Nokia version could have a bonus round of "Installer Roulette", where you never know if what you're selling to the customer will get onto their phone, and "Simian Signing", where you throw balls of money at a gang of monkeys until they reveal the secret power-up that lets you do what you wanted to do in the first place.

Still, it beats writing middleware...

"People buying the device already knows the work conditions and the devices draconian end user/developer agreement."

Not at all. They probably think that buying the most expensive phone is a guarantee that it's made in an ethical manner. After all, sweatshops only make *cheap* toys and clothes, right?

This isn't a margin-squeezed product; customers are paying a lot of money for iPhones and those margins deny Apple many of the normal excuses, so how come these stories keep hanging around? Sure, Apple are hugely successful and everyone wants a shot at them, but that can't be all of it. Nokia used to pretty much own the mobile business, but never attracted this kind of consistent bad press.

Apple has always had a pretty "right-on" left-leaning culture and their direct hires were always treated well, so it's hard to imagine them deliberately seeking out sweatshop manufacturers. But... they don't refuse business from suppliers they know are engaged in these practices. The stock defence of "our supply chain is complex - we can't know every step" is a bit disingenuous, because they're able to police that supply chain when it comes to preventing leaks.

Intel, Google 'optimize' chips for Android

Optimise for what, exactly?

Java* VM , or the Linux kernel? Both of these are already used for profiling CPU designs. Beyond

that, there's not a whole lot of "unique" inside Android.

Mostly this looks like Intel putting a few engineers to work getting Android working okay on their chips. Like what they did with their own MeeGo.

Oh.

Never mind.

* yeah, yeah, call it Dalvik if you want, it won't stop it being a Java VM.

Unlikely contender tops rankings in Nokia ringtone quest

... here you go, but it's your funeral

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/audiodraft-public/c/0/123/ec/5404_degilquz.mp3

Actually, Brian Eno wrote the Windows XP startup and shutdown jingles.

First look at Toshiba's Portégé Z830 Ultrabook

Less Resilient? I don't think so.

If you drop a laptop with a plastic case, the plastic mostly rebounds, or cracks for excessive force. If you drop a laptop with an aluminium case, the case dents permanently.

I've had a few of the Apple models over the years, and to be honest, I found the white polycarbonate MacBook to be the most resilient of all; the Aluminium models retain the evidence of every time they've slid of a chair (brushed aluminium has much lower friction than gloss polycarbonate), or been dropped, or had something fall onto them, and look like crap once they've been through a year of actual outdoor use.

My Macbook Air was the wost: it had a nasty dent in the corner of the lower half after an encounter with the floor of Heathrow T5 security; the only way to get the unit to close afterwards was to take a heavy pliers to the revolutionary unibody enclosure and bend it back flat. (The casework is so expensive on a MBA it wasn't worth replacing)

Apple didn't adopt metal enclosures for toughness, it was purely to make the units thinner. The metal-skinned units were a lot more fragile than the plastic ones they replaced.

Google abandons tradition to bring you this Important Voucher

Won't be sad to see Groupon go. Hope Google get burned too...

Talk to anyone in a small business and they'll tell you stories of Groupon overselling deals, or not following the agreed schedule. One place I heard had nearly all of the 3,000 coupons it had agreed to presented in the first week of what was supposed to be a six-month campaign. The result was chaos - supply costs for these offers destroyed their cash-flow. They couldn't fulfil all the orders at once, and as most users of Groupon are already customers of the business in question, the business ends up disaffecting its most loyal customers. Sounds hot, where do I sign?

Also, less of a problem on this side of the pond, but in the US, there's a tendency for customers to tip on the basis of the post-coupon price, rather than the value of goods. This is a major issue for service staff, who rely on these tips for their income.

The sad thing is that when they go (and it is "when", not "if" - they're technically insolvent as it is; if they miss their growth targets they're dead), they'll take a lot of small businesses with them.

I just hope that the experience will prevent other businesses getting burned by the coupon scam.

First Ultrabooks surface at IFA

I suspect you didn't own one of Apple's "leading" MacBook Airs then

There's a reason why other manufacturers didn't launch Air clones: the Air was an inadequate computer. Badly designed, with insufficient cooling, it couldn't do anything as complicated as watch a YouTube video before the CPU's thermal throttling kicked in and reduced the whole system to a crawl. This is not a manufacturing fault; I had the unit tested several times, and compared it with a friend's model too.

I know how stupidly cold they keep the offices in Infinite Loop, but it would have been nice if just one person had tried the case prototype in an environment where the ambient temperature is *above* 20°C - you know, like a typical European living room?

A stupid design overcomes any clever manufacturing. It's only now that there's genuine low-power Intel chips that you can make something like the Air and not be laughed out of the market (Apple avoid this by charging so much that their customers won't ever admit they bought a lemon; the more you charge, the less likely it is that your customers will complain)

I had a MacBook Air, and I had only ever bought Apple laptops, but my current laptop is a Sony Vaio. It's nowhere near as sleek as the Mac, but it actually works, which is something the Apple product never did.

I'd be tempted by one of these Ultrabooks once someone hacks MacOS to it.

Coders howl over Google's App Engine price hike (natch)

You can't do a Google on Google...

... it's perfectly okay for them to leech off the work of others without paying, but if you thought that this was a two-way deal, you've just had a valuable lesson.

Schmidt bewails Blighty's boffin-v-luvvie culture clash

Apologies..

Seems I was wrong to trust info on the Internet (Yahoo Finance in particular). It is indeed Mobility who make STBs, and not Solutions.

Google has to a major contender for "Great Satan" for cable companies, so it's hard to see how the STB business could thrive under Google ownership.

Interestingly, competitors Pace and Arris have both risen after the acquisition (Scientific Atlanta is buried in Cisco these days, so it's hard to see what affect it had on them)

You can't be both?

I know a lot of very literate, sociable, creative people ("luvvies") who are also very technically able. I'd count myself in this category too - I've coded in everything from 68k assembly up to Python, and make my living from writing software, but it's not the totality of my life. Given a choice between tinkering with a Linux box or reading a good book, I'm afraid the book wins every time.

The Internet is great at magnifying small facets of people's personality, but we're all a lot more multi-dimensional than it ever appears here.

Wrong Motorola

"They now own Motorola - a large producer of Set top boxes - this changes the game..."

No, it doesn't. Motorola *Mobility* Holdings (NYSE: MMI), recently acquired by Google, makes smartphones and tablets.

Motorola *Solutions* (NYSE: MSI), is the company that makes set-top box equipment (and 2-way radios, and network equiment, and.. and...). This remains an independent entity.

Nokia dishes out $10m in developer prizes

Need a venn diagram...

... or better yet, a map. Canada is one of the component nations in the landmass known as North America. Therefore those winners were Americans, if not US Citizens.

Still, good to see a Californian who is aware of the existence of other nations; even awareness of the other 49 States is the US is rare enough.