London Underground: NFC mobile payments ’too slow’ for the tube

NFC Mobile Payments has been tested several times in the past, London’s Tube system won’t be getting mobile-based payment technology any time soon. Customer Experience Director Shashi Verma said that existing NFC technology wasn’t able to drop below the 500 millisecond barrier – something which Transport for London demands from its high-churn Oyster card-based turnstiles. Verma added, “The concerns are only around NFC technology and not EMV. We are keen to see any progress the industry can make in this area.

Firefox Shows Off Its Upcoming Browser For Tablets

In a blog post published Tuesday , Mozilla user experience designer Ian Barlow previewed the user interface their Mobile Team is in the process of building for a tablet version of Firefox. Firefox for tablets, which does not yet have a release date, will be optimized to run on Honeycomb Android tablets. The browser will include features from the desktop version of Firefox such as tabs, themes and the Awesomebar, an adaptation of a feature launched with Firefox 3 that enables quick access to bookmarks and browsing history.

The Future of Mobile Payments [Infographic]

As smartphone vendors and mobile operators shift their strategies to incorporate wireless payment technologies into mobile phones, consumers will soon be able to drop their wallet and carry every piece of important payment information on their handset. NFC is already starting to be built into a range of Android smartphones, RIM and Nokia have committed to the technology and Apple is reportedly adding the contactless technology to its new iOS devices.

Future of Mobile Advertising

The mobile phone is a personal computing device – totally intimate to the user, which makes it perfect to run an OS from a company that makes all their money selling advertising. Google, nether shy or laid back, gave a preview or their Android 3.0 OS that will bundle versions of visual voice mail, maps, and a totally revolutionary voice add-on that will mine conversations in real time and provide amazing unintrusive personalized recommendations.

Apple App Store Economy / Android and 4G thoughts

Thank you Gigaom So I’m an iPhone user, and so are most of my friends … but I really think the new gold mine is Android; I was playing with the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment today, Droid Eric over the weekend, and can’t wait to get my hands on a Nexus One … With 50 new Android phones coming out this year, an open app eco-system, and 4G coming out this year, I really can’t wait to see the outcome …

What does it take to make a successful iPhone application?

**What does it take to make a successful iPhone application? **

Before answering what does it take to make a successful iPhone application we have to define what makes an application successful. Sapient always asks why are we building something, what are we trying to achieve, and how are we going to measure it; so starting from top down, what are the business objectives, the key performance indicators, and all metrics. iPhone applications usually serve one of two purposes: drive brand or drive revenue.

**Objective: Drive brand **Applications that drive brand most likely are free since they have to target a broad reach. Objective is usually increase awareness, brand recall, or word of mouth, and is traditionally measured based on simple downloads, usage, and extended with how many share with friends, stickiness, and engagement levels. A good way to take it one step further is tie in social media monitoring and analyze share and velocity of voice, general sentiment, and overall impact of the application within social conversations.

Now that we understand how to measure it, what will the application do? Nowadays brands cannot push messages to the consumers, they have to provide value and we generally call it brand as an enabler. Applications that drive brand usually fall under one of two categories: be entertaining or be useful. Entertaining applications usually have a wider adoption, more downloads, but less engagement as users open it just a few times before they get bored. Useful applications have a smaller reach but higher engagement; less users will download the application, but they will use it much more than simple entertainment applications. However the key for both types is simplicity.