Wed, 11 Jul 07
Posted in Mobile Technology, New Tech Meetup at 9:58 am by moore
Dean Rizzuto spoke about Feed, which is a mobile payment technology. Officially 3 months old, they already have 200 merchants signed up. Any phone that can send text messages can use the technology, so the potential market is huge. Basically, you sign up on the Feed website, and give them some money. Then, when you are at a merchant that accepts feed, you SMS your pin to the Feed number. You recieve an authorization code good for 15 minutes. The merchant can then enter that code into either their POS system or a standalone, Feed provided and maintained terminal. The Feed system then makes sure you have enough money in your account, and tells the merchange yes or no, and, if yes, withdraws the sum and gives it to the merchant.
What does the merchant gain? Feed charges a flat fee of $0.19 a transaction, which is much cheaper than typical credit card transaction fees. Feed doesn’t provide the consumer the same protections as credit card companies, as the transaction is treated as if you had paid cash. Additionally, once someone has bought something with Feed, the merchant can send them special offers (in the future, possibly focused to the SKU level). I wasn’t clear about how a user could opt out from those offers.
What does the consumer gain? Dean was honest that they are targeting the youth market (the millenials) who use their cell phones all the time, and are interested in quick transactions. For someone with a credit card already, it might not be such a win.
I wonder how secure SMSes are, especially if you’re sending a pin that can be used to retrieve money. A quick search of the internet seemed to imply that SMSes are relatively secure, but that is a definite issue to me.
But, if you want to try Feed, text ‘pickle’ or ‘noodles’ to 39598 and you’ll get a one time credit to buy lunch, at the Spicy Pickle or Noodles, respectively. I think this might just be in Boulder, but I’m planning to give it a try. (I have worked with Dean in the past.)
Technorati Tags: feed, mobile payments, millenials
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Tue, 24 Apr 07
Posted in Mobile Technology at 10:30 am by moore
It’s been a few years since I’ve done any mobile development, and it seems like things have moved on. But one of the hardest problems I faced was finding out what devices supported what APIs. It looks like WURFL is trying to solve this problem:
The WURFL is an XML configuration file which contains information about capabilities and features of several wireless devices.
The main scope of the file is to collect as much information as we can about all the existing wireless devices that access WAP pages so that developers will be able to build better applications and better services for the users.
Via the good folks at SitePen.
Technorati Tags: open source, mobile devices
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Fri, 28 Oct 05
Posted in Mobile Technology at 10:07 am by moore
Here is an interesting outline of some of the issues faced in making mobile user interfaces work well with today’s technologies. What’s old is new again–browsers on cell phones are dealing with the same standards compliance and diversity issues that desktop browsers were faced with 10 years ago. The difference is that there’s no one (yet) with large enough market share to rule by fiat (like Navigator and then Internet Explorer did).
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Wed, 15 Jun 05
Posted in Mobile Technology at 6:33 pm by moore
A town in Florida has started to allow folks to use their cellphone to pay for parking meters. Full story here.
I think it’s pretty cool and definitely is more efficient than coins–I don’t have to pay for a minute more of a meter than I need. I signed up and didn’t find the process too onerous, though it has some of the harsh, but standard, “we have an option on your first born child” clauses in the Terms and Conditions. Here are some of the choicer terms:
They can change fees anytime they want:
Amendments to Fees. Mint may, in its sole discretion, amend the Mint Fees from time to time. The Customer shall be notified of any such amendments, via e-mail, no less than five (5) business days prior to the date such amendments become effective. Any amendments to Parking Fees are in the discretion of the operator of the Parking Facility and Mint disclaims any responsibility for notifying the Customer of any such amendments.
They can lock you out at any time:
…Mint reserves the right to: amend, suspend or discontinue any aspect of the Service at any time; impose limits on certain features and aspects of the Service; and restrict the Customer’s access to parts or all of the Service without notice.
They can verify your credit:
The Customer hereby authorizes Mint to make such credit, employment and investigative inquiries as deemed appropriate by Mint in connection with the use of the Services and the Credit Card Account.
There’s some ‘Fee Schedule’ referenced to determine how much you’ll pay for the service, but I couldn’t find that. I did find the list of supported parking lots, which hasn’t been updated to include Florida yet. They also have posted their privacy policy, which doesn’t appear too draconian, except for the ubiquitous “we can change this whenever we want, and you have to visit our website periodically to know” clause:
If Mint decides to change this Privacy Policy, changes will be posted on the Website, so that you will always be aware of what personal information is collected, how it is used, and under what circumstances it may be disclosed.
I do think it’s cool that North America is headed in this direction. (Japan has a wider variety of services payable via cell phone, see this flagrant marketing flash presentation for more.) Cell phones are an easy alternative to credit cards, which charger merchants a percentage of the cost as well as a fixed fee (though the card companies still get their pound of flesh from Mint, don’t you worry).
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Wed, 08 Jun 05
Posted in Books, Java, Mobile Technology at 3:28 pm by moore
I just discovered wikibooks. They look pretty cool, will be interesting to see if they succeed like Wikipedia or fall by the wayside like many other wikis (Bruce Eckel has some comments on this phenomenon). Of particular interest to me is the J2ME wikibook.
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Mon, 04 Apr 05
Posted in Java, Mobile Technology at 9:27 pm by moore
My J2ME article, previously posted and discussed at The Server Side, is now available on this website, sans TSS CSS.
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Thu, 03 Feb 05
Posted in Technology, Java, Mobile Technology at 10:52 am by moore
An article I wrote about Networked J2ME applications is up at TheServerSide.com. This was based on the talk I gave last year.
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Tue, 07 Dec 04
Posted in Technology, Mobile Technology at 12:25 pm by moore
It looks like there’s another third party deployment solution being touted. Nokia is offering deployment services for distribution of wireless applications called Preminet Solution (found via Tom Yager). After viewing the hideous Flash presentation and browsing around the site (why oh why is the FAQ a PDF?) this solution appears to be very much like BREW, with perhaps a few more platforms supported (java and symbian are two that I’ve found so far). Apparently the service isn’t launched yet, because when I click on the registration link, I see this:
“Please note that Preminet Solution has been announced, but it is not yet commercially launched. The Master Catalog registration opens once the commercial launch has been made.”
For mass market applications, it may make sense to use this kind of service because the revenue lost by due to paying Nokia and the operators is offset by more buyers. However, if you have a targeted application, I’m not sure it’s worthwhile. (It’ll depend on the costs, which I wasn’t able to find much out about.)
In addition, it looks like there’s a purchasing application that needs to be downloaded or can be installed on new phones. I can’t imagine users wanting to download another application just so they can buy a game, so widespread acceptance will probably have to wait until the client is distributed with new phones.
It’ll be interesting to see how many operators pick up on this. It’s another case of network effects (at least for application vendors); we’ll see if Nokia can deliver the service needed to make Preminet the first choice for operators.
Anyway, wonder if this competitor is why I got an email from Qualcomm touting cheaper something or other? (Didn’t really look at it, as I’ve written brew off until a J2ME bridge is available.)
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Thu, 02 Dec 04
Posted in Technology, Mobile Technology at 11:31 pm by moore
I think that NextBus is a fantastic example of a mobile application. This website, which you can access via your mobile phone, tells you when the next bus, on a particular line, is coming. So, if you’re out and about and have had a bit much to drink, or if you’ve just forgotten your bus schedule, you can visit their site and find out when the next bus will be at your stop. It’s very useful.
This is almost a perfect application for a mobile phone. The information needed is very time sensitive and yet is easy to display on a mobile phone (no graphics or sophisticated data entry needed). NextBus has a great WAP interface, which probably displays well on almost every modern phone. The information is freely available (at least, information on when the next bus is supposed to arrive is freely available–and this is a good substitute for real time data).
And yet, there are profound flaws in this service. For one, it abandons a huge advantage by not knowing (or at least remembering) where I am. When I view the site to find out when the 203 is coming by next, I have to tell the site that I’m in Colorado, and then in Boulder. The website is a bit better, remembering that I am an RTD customer, but the website is a secondary feature for me–I’m much more interested in information delivered to my phone.
Also, as far as I can tell, the business model is lacking (and, no, I haven’t examined their balance sheets). I don’t know how NextBus is going to make money, other than extracting it from those wealthy organizations, the public transportation districts. (Yes, I’m trying to be sarcastic here.) They don’t require me to sign in or pay anything for the use of their information, and I see no advertising.
So, a service that is almost perfect for the mobile web because of the nature of the information it conveys (textual and time sensitive) is flawed because it’s not as useful as it could be and the business model is up in the air. I can’t imagine a better poster child for the mobile Internet.
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Wed, 10 Nov 04
Posted in Technology and Society, Mobile Technology at 2:08 pm by moore
Here’s an interesting 20 page paper examining some of the issues surround context and computing.
A few choice quotes:
“…answering the telephone has something of a moral compulsion.”
“…as much of this problem [a phone that understands context] reduces to that of building an intelligent computer.”
“…it is better to have machines which act in predictable ways so users can understand how they work” rather than unpredictable machines that ‘do the right thing.’
“A technology, like mobile phones, with its combination of voice mail, text messaging and the like, is something we dwell with in that it becomes part of the fibre of our practices and lives, even for those without(sic) reject them.” As someone who swore off mobile phones for a long time and now doesn’t know how life continued without them, I can sympathize with that sentiment.
“When people use a technology over time, and get used to seeing other people
using the technology, the actions of the technology come to be seen not as actions of technology but of the user themselves.”
Interesting reading.
Via Mobile Community Design
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