Square system for card payments via mobile device

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There’s no debating that credit and debit cards are convenient, but typically the only places that you can use them are in businesses, or via the phone or internet. In 2009 the co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, set out to change that. He released a beta version of Square, a system that allowed mobile devices to receive card payments. A small card reader plugged into the device’s headphone port, and an app handled all the 1s and 0s. Two years later, Square is out of its debugging phase and available for general use.

The card reader is sent to users free of charge, and there are reportedly no activation, gateway, monthly, early termination or hidden fees, nor is a contract required to use the service. What there are are transaction fees – 2.75 percent + 15 cents for swiped transactions, and 3.5 percent + 15 cents for keyed-in transactions. These fees stay the same regardless of the amount of transaction, and are taken off as the transaction occurs, so no fee schedule is involved. The user pays nothing at all if they don’t use the service.

Article Source and Further Reading:
http://www.gizmag.com/square-system-lets-mobile-devices-take-card-payments/17769/

Marmota mobile AR identifies landscape features

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Augmented Reality, or AR, is currently one of the hot areas for mobile app development – for some reason, people seem quite smitten with the idea of being able to point their mobile device’s camera at a street, and having information about the buildings and businesses appear on their screen superimposed over the images in real time. Now, a prototype mobile AR device is being tested, that concentrates more on topography than urban exploration. The Marmota mobile AR can tell you things like what the names of those mountain peaks over there are, what their elevation is, and how far away they are.

The Marmota was designed by Michele Zanin, Claudio Andreatta and Paul Chippendale, researchers at the Technologies of Vision Unit (TeV) in the Information Technology Centre of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento, Italy. "The system integrates technologies and findings from different disciplines, spanning cartography to computer graphics, and sophisticated machine vision algorithms,” said Zanin. “Each pixel of the image is associated with information such as altitude, latitude, longitude and distance from the observer”.

When activated by a user, the device locates itself with a built-in GPS, then sends that information via the Internet to the central Marmota server at FBK. Once those coordinates have been processed by that server, a data package of about 50 to 120 KB is sent back to the device, and displayed as a high-resolution 360-degree augmented onscreen overlay. The device itself reportedly only uses a small amount of memory, letting the server do all the heavy lifting.

Besides giving specs on mountains, the Marmota can also provide things like the names and locations of counties, roads, hiking trails, rivers and lakes, and will draw these items onto the screen to highlight them. It limits itself to what’s visible from the user’s point of view, so as not to create confusion with an overabundance of information.

TeV has been working on the project since 2007. The Android-based Marmota currently works anywhere in the world between 60 degrees latitude north and 60 degrees south. "User testing will follow in the immediate future and will involve volunteers from outside FBK and will hopefully identify critical points in the system, thus helping us to transform the current 'prototype' into an application that can be enjoyed by the general public” said Zanin.

Article Source:
http://www.gizmag.com/marmota-mobile-ar-prototype/16081/

WikiReader

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 WikiReader, the palm-sized device that makes Wikipedia entries available offline, has gone multilingual. In addition to being able to store the more than three million English language Wikipedia articles, users can now download any of 14 other language versions of Wikipedia along with the virtual keyboards with characters to support them.

The lightweight battery-operated “Wikipedia in your pocket” was designed to provide access to the wealth of information stored in the online collaborative encyclopedia without the need for Internet access. Now readers of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Norwegian, Greek, French, Finnish, Danish, Dutch, German, Spanish, Welsh, Russian and Hungarian can download those language versions of Wikipedia for referencing on the go.

"Now virtually anyone around the world can use WikiReader to feed their thirst for knowledge," said Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz. "We are dedicated to putting knowledge at the fingertips of inquiring minds from the heart of Manhattan to Madrid, even to remote mountains in Nepal, where WikiReaders are now being used in community centers."

Openmoko, creator of WikiReader, encourages the use of multiple language Wikis on a single microSD memory card or storing them on numerous MicroSD cards and swapping them out in the device’s microSD slot. Versions range from 32MB for the Chinese Wikipedia to 5GB for the English language Wikipedia. WikiReader currently supports microSD cards up to 16GB in size.

The International version WikiReader with an 8GB microSD card is available now for US$99.

Article Source:
http://www.gizmag.com/wikireader-goes-multilingual/16004/

iPhone 4

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As expected, Apple today pulled the wraps off the fourth generation iPhone at the WWDC conference in San Jose. While the phone didn't receive its expected iPhone HD monicker, it's certainly as HD as a phone is likely to get any time soon, with a 960 x 640 resolution equalling a whopping pixel density of 326 pixels per inch. Read on for the rest of the new features.

    * 5 megapixel camera with LED flash
    * Same A4 processor as the iPad
    * Second microphone for noise cancelling
    * 720p (30 frames per second) video recording with tap to focus
    * 802.11n Wi-Fi
    * Quad-band HSUPA (7.2Mbps down, 5.8Mbps up)
    * "FaceTime" video calls (Wi-Fi only)
    * 960 x 640 "Retina" display
    * 3-axis gyro in addition to the accelerometer for PS3-style 6-axis motion control
    * Seven hours 3G talk time, six hours 3G web browsing, 10 hours video playback
    * 9.3mm thick
    * iOS 4.0 with multitasking and folders
    * iMovie app for $4.99
    * iBooks app (free)
    * Official Apple case for $29

Apple is also touting a new and improved build quality, claiming its chemically strengthened aluminosilcate glass is 30 times harder than plastic, and more scratch resistant than previous models. The stainless steel band around the rim is an alloy forged to be five times stronger than "standard" steel.

The iPhone 4's closest competitor is Sprint and HTC's flagship EVO 4G, which debuted on June 4th. At a whopping 4.3 inches, the EVO 4G offers official Wi-Fi hotspot support, micro-HDMI output, and (you guessed it) 4G network connectivity - though early reports claim battery life is the device's Achilles' heel.

The iPhone 4 will be available in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan on June 24, and in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland by the end of July.

Unfortunately we can only tell our US readers the pricing details right now: $199 for the 16GB and $299 for the 32GB model, with that unfortunate two year AT&T contract. For the budget-conscious, an 8GB iPhone 3GS will be available for $99.

Source:
http://www.gizmag.com/