Google, PayPal and major credit companies are all making land-grabs for the emerging mobile payments industry. Mobile carriers — used to controlling profits made from mobile phones — want to avoid being squeezed out.
Now, thanks to a startup called BOKU, there’s a mobile payment solution that could satisfy all sides.
The product, BOKU Accounts, works like a debit card issued by your mobile carrier instead of your bank. Users receive an NFC-enabled sticker they can attach to any phone — as well as a mobile-carrier-branded MasterCard.
The financial management of Boku’s product works a little differently than its earlier offering, direct carrier billing. In that product, any purchases made with mobile phone numbers show up on mobile phone bills. The system lets people who don’t have credit cards shop online.
With BOKU Accounts, however, users deposit money into a separate account with their mobile carriers. Credit card providers aren’t cut out of the process. Everybody’s happy.
“[Credit card] networks rely on banks as issuers to attract, retain and manage users,” explains BOKU SVP of Product & Marketing David Yoo. “Banks have limited access to users — well, in relative terms.
“There are only 2 million credit cards, according to Nilson Report. However, mobile operators have access to 6 billion users. If the right solution can be worked out, mobile operators can become one of the largest issuing partners of credit card networks in the world.”
That sounds great for credit card companies, but why would a consumer transfer money into a separate account instead of opening a credit card with a bank? BOKU’s value proposition is this: it’s a mobile payment system not tied to specific phones or terminals.
Unlike Google Wallet, which requires an NFC-enabled phone, or the PayPal wallet, which requires merchants to install a software upgrade in their terminals, BOKU works with whatever hardware each party in the transaction happens to have. If the retailer’s terminal isn’t NFC-enabled, that means the customer is just swiping a regular credit card.
What is different is that merchants can communicate with customers before and after the transaction. A BOKU-powered rewards program lets merchants target deals at people who fit specific demographics within a certain proximity. Each time they do so, they pay those customers’ mobile carriers.
Users can set their phones to be alerted when certain types of deals are pushed out. They can also set budgets and be alerted when they approach their limits. If they’re using a feature phone, they get text messages instead of push notifications.
It’s not dissimilar to the deals programs in the Google and PayPal Wallets, but it’s viable on existing hardware.
Beyond that, everyone involved in the payment should be satisfied. The carriers, and BOKU, get paid when merchants send offers; credit cards (for the time being, MasterCard only) get their usual transaction fee from the merchant. And users get something like a real-time Mint with coupons — but not yet.
Not a single carrier is currently offering Boku, though one of them in the UK is running a pilot program. Through its direct carrier billing product, the startup does, however, have relationships with more than 200 of them.
If your carrier to offer Accounts, would you sign up? Let us know why or why not in the comments.
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, mevans
More About: Boku, mobile payments
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1. Alarm Clock Plus
You can start every morning with this alarm clock app. If waking up is tough for you, this app lets you set several alarms, each with its own ring tone.
Are you the type that sub-consciously turns your alarm off in your sleep? There's a math feature that makes you solve a simple equation to dismiss it. This way, you know when it's really time to get out of bed.
For $.99 more, you can also get the app with no ads.
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From the moment you wake up in the morning to the second you close your eyes at night, your smartphone is probably the first and last thing you touch. Mobile tech helps you stay organized, productive and entertained.
Because Android works seamlessly with Google products, you already have Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps and your calendar installed when you activate the device. These services are great for managing your daily routine, and there are a number of apps you can grab to supplement them.
SEE ALSO: Did You Get a New Android Phone? Do These 5 Things Immediately
Here are ten free Android apps that will make your life easier. You can download them from your phone or through the Android Market on the web.
More About: android, Android apps, features, Google
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Young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are even more connected to their mobile devices than you might think.
Nine in 10 young adults spend between one and five hours on their mobile devices daily. Nearly one in 10, meanwhile, are on their gadgets between five and ten hours each day. Just under a third would actually like for brands to send them promotions via smarthphone and tablet, but more than half say that it’s “extremely important” to be able to opt out of such come-ons.
This is all according to a study by mobile interaction and payment agency mBlox, which commissioned a December study of more than 4,000 young mobile users in the United States and United Kingdom. According to mBlox’s chief marketing officer Michele Turner, the research provides important insight as advertising and marketing to people on the go continues to proliferate.
“With 2012 largely being seen as the advent of mobile commerce, this research helps validate the huge revenue potentials for brands and an appetite by consumers for mobile marketing,” Turner said in a statement.
In just one illustration of mobile’s importance to advertisers and marketers, Google reported that mobile devices accounted for 41% of searches for Super Bowl TV ads during the game earlier this month.
But brands need to be careful about how they target those mobile users and how much knowledge they reveal about them. While 30% of survey respondents said they want offers to be located nearby, two-thirds said they don’t want brands knowing their whereabouts. More than half worry about their credit card information being stolen, and nearly half fret the risk of signing up for fake websites.
Check out mBlox’s infographic below, and let us know what you think in the comments.
More About: infographics, Marketing, Mobile
Like many artists before her, global pop star Adele experienced a post-Grammys album sales boost, selling 730,000 copies of 21 in the past week. Unlike every other artist in history, however, Adele is the first person to sell 2 million copies of one album on iTunes in the U.S.
The album, which has been out stateside since Feb. 22 of last year, reached double platinum status on the heels of Adele’s Grammy appearance: She won six awards and performed for the first time since being sidelined by vocal cord hemorrhaging and subsequent microsurgery.
SEE ALSO: Adele Finds Her Voice on Twitter | Are Artists Luring Grammy Votes Via Social Media?
The new figures, posted on the Columbia Records Tumblr blog Wednesday, mark the biggest sales week for 21. The album has hit number one on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart 21 times and has sold 7 million copies in the U.S. and 18 million copies globally.
BONUS: Adele Inspires Crop of YouTube MusiciansA long list of musicians have covered Adele’s smash hit “Rolling in the Deep,” which she performed at this year’s Grammys. In the following gallery, you’ll find acoustic, beatbox, choir, duet, garage rock, guitar, live, mashup, military and piano versions.
Acoustic: Boyce Avenue
Click here to view this gallery.
More About: Adele, celebrities, Columbia Records, Entertainment, grammys, itunes, Music
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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Splash
Quick Pitch: Splash offers a simple way for event planners to manage and share events with guests.
Genius Idea: Splash users can track RSVPs and post event photos on a customizable event website.
Planning the perfect event can be a lot of pressure — ordering the food, booking the talent, picking the decorations and, of course, how to get the guest to the party.
Ben Hindman, the creator of an event planning startup, thinks he has the answer: a Splash page.
Splash launched this week and offers a simple way for event planners to invite guests to events. It helps with every step from pre-event promotion and production to reliving memories with photos. Guests can RSVP on Splash by entering their names and emails, and they can find everything they need to know about the event at the same place. Directions to the event are provided via Google Maps.
Splash features Twitter chatter about the event, and event planners can moderate what tweets are posted. The idea is that guests will also share the event with friends on social media to create buzz about the party. After the event, the Splash page manager can post pictures to the Splash page for guests to look at.
“I discovered something peculiar about successful events: They never die,” Hindman said. “As an event planner, you have two equally crucial jobs: generate excitement leading-up to the big day and capture memories from the event that will live on forever.”
Splash is powered through One Clipboard, Hindman’s four-month-old event planning startup that allows planners to plan, budget, schedule, brainstorm, share files with team members, and more. Splash event pages can be created quickly with a template. You just plug in a photo — or chose from stock photos — and add the who, what, when, where and why details.
Hindman started developing Splash in early 2011 to add on to OneClipboard, which has about 300 event planners budgeting millions of dollars. As a former director of events, Hindman knows how difficult it can be to keep track of every little detail for a huge event. His goal was to make event planning easier and more organized. Splash is free to use. Try out Clipboard, too, with a free 15-day trial, and after that pricing plans start at $24 per month.
“Our goal is to enable anyone, novice or pro, to create an experience that their guests will never forget,” he said.
To get a better idea of what Splash is all about, check out one of Hindman’s events.
Photos courtesy of Splash
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
More About: bizspark, event planning, spark of genius series
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The Samsung Galaxy Note, a so-called “superphone” that has a massive 5-inch screen, gives quite a first impression. Not only is it huge, but it sports an accessory that has waned in popularity over the last few years: a stylus.
Those odd physical qualities are why we took it out to the streets to see what real people thought when they were suddenly confronted with the gargantuan, pen-toting Galaxy Note (you can see our video below). It seems Samsung’s people thought the idea was good enough to do themselves, and they created a “street challenge” for the Galaxy Note, pitting the company’s quasi-tablet against an iPhone.
Sure, with challenges designed to highlight the Note’s unique features, the video contest is certainly rigged (Spoiler alert: the Galaxy Note wins). But it’s an effective way to highlight the Note’s interesting and sometimes-useful ability to draw on screencaps via the stylus. Can users crop images and then draw on them or even combine them? Yes. Will anyone actually do that? Perhaps. Is it a game-changer? That’s for you to decide. At least the exercise feels more real than that nutty Super Bowl commercial.
SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy Note Up For Pre-Order Online At AT&T
Can’t get enough of watching people on the street reacting to the Samsung Galaxy Note? Something tells us this isn’t the last of the street challenges. And of course, you can always check out our review and unboxing to tide you over.
Does Samsung’s new video make you want to take another look at the Galaxy Note? Share your excitement (or whatever) in the comments.
More About: android, samsung, Samsung Galaxy Note, stylus
An advanced camera could help save the lives of U.S. soldiers in combat. The new camera was developed to navigate dangerous war conditions — darkness, bad weather and obscure surroundings.
The camera was developed as a part of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) AWARE program — or the Advanced Wide Field of View Architectures for Image Reconstruction and Exploitation. The goal is to continue to provide more capable tools for soldiers to use that overcome size, weight and power barriers.
“Increased standoff distance can help protect warfighter lives,” DARPA said in a statement. “This is especially true when an infrared scope is needed for nighttime action.”
The new infrared camera is lightweight, so it can be used in many situations on the ground and air. The camera can be used for target identifications, multiple target tracking and surveillance of a scene.
The new gadget utilizes advanced infrared capabilities to help U.S. war fighters see more clearly than other cameras have allowed. Soldiers on the ground can use the camera instead of trekking into unknown territories to determine what’s ahead. The camera can be used day or night in any weather conditions.
Tell us in the comments what you think of this new imaging technology. Can you think of other technological advances that can be used to keep soldiers safe?
More About: DARPA, U.S. Military, Video
Tweets, apps and status updates will join the usual barrage of dunks, three-pointers and no-look passes more than ever this weekend at the NBA’s annual All-Star event.
For the first time, fans will be the sole dunk contest judges via Twitter, SMS and website-based voting. The league is also partnering with the social app Shaker to create a one-stop forum for fans to interact, chat and watch exclusive content.
Updates to the NBA’s GameTime mobile app bring new channels for fans to stream the 90-plus hours of video content the league has planned for the weekend — ranging from on-court highlights to off-court fun in Orlando.
League executives say this year’s will easily be the most digitally and socially connected All-Star function to date.
“All-Star Weekend has really become a celebration of basketball, attracting a global audience and bringing together the best players from around the league,” Melissa Rosenthal Brenner, the NBA’s vice president of marketing, told Mashable. “Given the global nature of social media, it’s the perfect time to ramp up our efforts in the social space.”
The NBA has long been at the forefront of embracing social media among pro sports leagues. Many of its players were early adopters of Twitter, in particular. Today the NBA claims more than 240 million fans of the league, its teams and players across Twitter, Facebook, and Chinese social networks. But the NBA’s social drive fits into a larger strategy, too.
“We are committed to delivering great content to our fans 24/7. More and more we’re using social media as the lens for that, so to speak,” Rosenthal Brenner said.
The tweak to the Sprite Slam Dunk event, an enduring fan favorite, is the biggest change in store this year. Fans will be able to vote by tweeting the hashtag #SpriteSlam along with a letter corresponding to their favorite dunker, as well as through text message and the NBA.com website. One contestant, Paul George of the Indiana Pacers, even invited fans to submit dunk ideas to him via Twitter.
The league is also brining back its popular All-Star Pulse feature, which tracks trending topics on Facebook and Twitter throughout the weekend. And a similar, but new, social initiative this year is the Social Spotlight, which will showcase top tweets, photos and videos from fans on NBA.com. The spotlight is part of an added effort to “really visualize” the NBA’s social offerings this year, said Christina Miller, who manages the league’s digital efforts.
But the video options through the Game Time mobile app and a host of exclusive written content on NBA.com show a digital engagement emphasis beyond just social media.
For a league keen on new technology, the slew of digital offerings is what Rosenthal Brenner said will make this year’s “the biggest All-Star Weekend yet — at least until next year.”
Do you think the NBA is doing a better job than other pro sports leagues of leveraging social and digital technology? Let us know in the comments.
More About: Facebook, Social Media, sports, Twitter
Google is looking to get into the paid TV business.
The company filed an application last week to provide video service to residents of Kansas City, Mo., according to The Wall Street Journal. If approved, the service could launch as soon as a month from now, according to the article, which cites a “media executive currently involved in negotiations to license channels to the service.” Offerings in the video package would include live TV as well as on-demand and online access to TV channels, according to the report, which was based on an earlier article by The New York Post.
The source told the WSJ that Google plans to look beyond the Kansas City market and into other areas where Verizon’s Fiber Optic Services (FIOS). Controlling the pipes to TV subscribers would offer Google a new revenue stream.
Reps from Google could not be reached for comment.
The Kansas City application coincides with another request to put a satellite antenna farm near the company’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. That addition could allow Google to receive movies and TV shows that could be bundled with a new Internet service in Kansas City that promises to be up to 100 times faster than the average Internet connection.
Google chose Kansas City for its ultra-fast service last March. Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., beat out about 1,000 other municipalities for that honor. That fiber-optic-based Internet service is expected to go live there this summer.
This isn’t the first time that Google’s ambitious plans for TV service have been exposed. The Wall Street Journal also reported in November that Google was in talks with Disney, Time Warner and Discovery Communications about providing content for its fiber-optic based video service in those cities.
More About: Fiber Optic, Google, Media, trending, TV
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What is it about video game worlds that etch themselves so vividly in our mind’s eye? A fun new user-generated blog aims to unearth the latent digital cartographer in you.
Mapstalgia is the brainchild of Josh Millard, a self-described “nerd-type” from Portland, OR. It’s a Tumblr where readers submit video game maps they’ve drawn from memory. The idea for the site came out of idle discussion on the message board Metafliter, where Millard works as a moderator.
“It occurred to me that there’s millions of people walking around with potent memories of common fictional game worlds,” Millard tells Mashable. “I asked a few friends to draw some maps, started up a simple blog for it, and here we are.”
The response since he launched the site in January has been substantial. “I was banking on a few dozen [submissions] by the end of the first month. Instead, I’ve received more than three hundred so far and they’re still coming in,” says Millard. “Folks [realize] this is not just neat to look at, but something they can actively participate in. Total lightswitch moment: ‘Oh, hey, wow, I bet I could do a map of Mario/Zelda/Doom/Zork…’ ”
SEE ALSO: 10 Classic Video Games You Can Play Online for Free
The site currently has 3,245 followers on Tumblr, according to Millard, and the submissions — sometimes several dozen a week — keep coming in. And the content is varied. “Everything from the world maps to single-screen vignettes, from rough folk art to serious draftsmanship. It’s wonderful seeing all the different ways people can approach the same basic idea. And to approach what is essentially improvised amateur cartography at the same time — few of us are artists, but fewer still are mapmakers.”
One might look at some of them more impressive offerings and question whether they were really produced from memory, as the terms of the site suggest. Right now, Millard is working on the honor system. “Someone certainly could pretend to remember … [but] I don’t lose sleep over it,” he says. “I’ve known enough people with remarkable visual or spatial memory (and spent enough time replaying specific video games myself) that I have no trouble believing the more ambitious renderings are the genuine article.”
That may be why a project like this tickles the fancy of gamers. There’s something about world immersion that allows us to recall spatial details of games in very precise ways. “In a game, you’re not just going for a walk — you’re exploring with a purpose,” Millard says. “There’s an instinctive need to keep yourself oriented. And there’s a cost to getting lost or being surprised — you get hurt, you die, you have to start over and do it again.”
“After the third rock is the bad guy, so you count rocks. The secret weapon is two screens over and one screen up, so you draw a map in your mind,” he goes on to explain. “You’re not just looking at a map, you’re living through it. That’s a potent experience.”
If Mapstalgia continues gaining readership and submissions, Millard says it may outgrow Tumblr. “Tumblr has been great for the zero-effort launch of this, but it’s not really designed to accommodate the museum sensibility that I think would serve Mapstalgia well in the long run.” Millard is also thinking about options for creating posters or coffee table books, but acknowledges the hurdles in securing the rights to user generated content. For now, the Tumblr-based DIY museum continues to feed gamers’ appetites for nostalgia.
What’s your favorite classic video game? Do you think you could draw the map from memory? Check out a few of Mapstalgia’s best submissions below for inspiration.
1. Metroid - Zebes
The seminal sci-fi platformer for the NES was full of secret doors, passageways and hidden items.
Click here to view this gallery.
More About: Entertainment, features, Gaming, tumblr, video games
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