Via NFC: Japanese Social Network Mixi First To Let Users âShareâ Real-World Items

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/via-nfc-japanese-social-network-mixi-first-to-let-users-like-real-world-items/

Japan has always been the land of mobile. As such, it’s no big surprise that the country’s biggest social network, Mixi (JP, 23 million members), sees 25 of its 29 billion monthly page views coming from cell phones. And according to Mixi, it’s now the first social network that lets users share information with friends through NFC technology on Android handsets.

Last year already, Mixi added two functions to its mobile site, which NFC is supposed to boost:

• Mixi Check In (which works much like Facebook Places)
• Mixi Check (essentially the same as Facebook’s Share function)

The NFC-powered versions are named “Mixi Real Check In” and “Mixi Real Check”. NFC (Near Field Communication) technology makes it possible to exchange data between devices in close proximity to each other.

Mixi Real Check In allows you to check in to places by tapping their Android phone on an NFC tag in the real world to share your location with your Mixi friends in real-time. These tags, which cost a few cents and can contain any kind of information (i.e. a URL or Twitter handle), can be attached to a wall or poster in a store or restaurant, for example.

As Mixi Real Check In is based on NFC, a GPS signal (which can be weak in certain areas, like underground) isn’t necessary. The tags can also contain information on where exactly the user is located (for example, to broadcast to your friends in which section of a department store the tag was scanned).

Mixi engineer Kyosuke Inoue demonstrates Mixi Real Check In in the company’s HQ in Tokyo:

Mixi Real Check is potentially more interesting: this function allows users not only to share websites with friends but any object in the real world that has an NFC tag attached to it. Tapping or waving the phone near NFC stickers found on i.e. books or posters is enough to share the information on Mixi, in real-time. This could be anything from further information on the products to details on promotion campaigns a brand wants to run on Mixi.

Bringing social functionalities to the real world is a great idea for a social network, but there are two downsides at this point: Mixi users interested in these new functions must own a Nexus S (the only Android device with the necessary hardware for NFC so far) and have Taglet (a special NFC app for Android) installed. The Nexus S isn’t even officially available in Japan currently, which means almost all Mixi users still must wait for the future.

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Zipzoom Raises $2.2 Million To Help Connect Shoppers And Local Businesses

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/zipzoom-raises-2-2-million-to-help-connect-shoppers-and-local-businesses/

Exclusive - Zipzoom, an Ontario, Canada-based startup building an online marketplace where consumers can hook up with local and/or national businesses, has scored $2.2 million in angel funding from a number of private investors, we’ve learned.

The company recently launched the beta version of its service, which aims to connect ‘ready-to-buy’ shoppers with ‘ready-to-sell’ businesses.

Registered users say submit queries (i.e. communicate what it is they need), and are supposed to get a lot of quotes from local vendors they can easily choose from. They can do so anonymously, and completely free of charge.

Of course, this is a tried and tested Internet business model, so innovative Zipzoom is not.

And of course, everything depends on how whether Zipzoom can ramp up both the supply and the demand side of the equation, which I reckon requires far more capital than a couple of million dollars.

Note that they basically have to convince people to stop using Google or Bing to find local businesses and email them for personalized quotes and head on over to the Zipzoom site instead – good luck with changing consumer behavior at significant scale.

CrunchBase Information

Zipzoom

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The World's First Programmable Nanoprocessor Takes Complex Circuitry to the Nanoscale

Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-02/worlds-first-programmable-nanoprocessor-takes-complex-circuitry-nanoscale

Nanocomputers have been around for decades as a concept, but in actual practice they've been harder to come by. Now, engineers collaborating at Harvard and the MITRE Corporation have taken a huge step forward for the field of nanocomputing by creating the world's first programmable nanoprocessor.

Enabled by a series of advances in the design of nanowire building blocks and the way they are synthesized to create completed nanocircuitry, the method allows for far more complex circuits to be assembled at very small scales. Described in a paper publishing today in the journal Nature, these super-small nanocircuits can be electronically programmed to carry out a variety of mathematic and logical functions.

Further, the technology is scalable, meaning that while is is now possible to program a tiny nanoprocessor to carry out simple functions, its architecture allows for the creation of much larger circuits capable of ever larger functions. Coupled with the low power consumption inherent in the circuits' efficient transistor switches, and this new nanoprocessor breakthrough could mark the beginning of a shift toward smaller and smaller consumer electronics and sensor tech, not to mention far less-dense computers with increased capacity to compute.

All that, naturally, is a ways off. As with all big nano breakthroughs (can a nano breakthrough be big?), this tech will take time to smooth out and refine. But the idea of electronically programmable nanocircuitry is tantalizing. Once harnessed, such nanotech building blocks have the ability to create complex circuits at scales and with materials that current manufacturing approaches simply can't achieve. That, in turn, could breed a whole new kind of electronics.

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Bloomberg: Apple working on 'cheaper, smaller' and dual-mode iPhones, trying to kill SIMs along the way

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/10/bloomberg-apple-working-on-cheaper-smaller-and-dual-mode-iph/

Bloomberg is citing -- you guessed it -- "people who have been briefed on the plans" as saying that Apple is hard at work on taking the iPhone downmarket with a new model that's roughly one-third smaller than the existing iPhone 4, possibly with the intent on delivering it midyear using mostly carryover components from the iPhone 4 to keep pricing down. Thing is, Bloomberg says that Apple is looking at launching the "cheaper" model at $200 off contract, which would be the same as the 16GB iPhone 4 on contract currently. Let's not understate the fact that $200 off contract is dirt cheap by modern smartphone standards, which means Apple would have to be using every scrap of its enormous economies of scale to pull that off. In all likelihood, in fact, it'd have to abandon the 3.5-inch Retina Display -- it might be too big for a "smaller" model anyhow. The pub goes on to say that the device could've been delayed or scrapped altogether since its source saw the device last year, but it's something to keep an eye on; after all, Apple's probably leaving money on the table right now by failing to go after the midrange with a current-generation handset, so this could be its golden opportunity.

Moving on, they're also saying Apple's working on a dual-mode iPhone that'd work on both CDMA and GSM -- not a surprise at all, really (if anything, it was a little surprising to us that Apple didn't kill off the existing GSM iPhone 4 and replace all SKUs with CDMA / GSM ones when it announced the Verizon model). There's no mention of whether this model would have any manner of 4G support, but CDMA, GSM, and LTE in a single phone -- with at least five bands, if not more -- would be pretty wild indeed.

Finally, Bloomberg says (and our own sources have corroborated) that Apple's working on a so-called "Universal SIM" technology that would eliminate physical SIMs altogether and make using the iPhone on different networks a simple matter of provisioning, not unlike American CDMA networks today. Of course, this rumor's been through the mill before -- and has already been killed off -- so it's hard to say whether this is something Apple is actively working on or has been shelved. The device independence afforded by the SIM has been one of the chief advantages of GSM networks around the world over the past twenty years, and we'd hate to see Apple succeed in killing that off in favor of some sort of locked-up iTunes nonsense, but let's be honest: if anyone could pull off that kind of coup, it'd be Cupertino. More on all these rumors as we hear it.

Bloomberg: Apple working on 'cheaper, smaller' and dual-mode iPhones, trying to kill SIMs along the way originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC prepping VoLTE-enabled smartphone for MetroPCS

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/10/htc-prepping-volte-enabled-smartphone-for-metropcs/

Hot on the heels of Verizon's completion of a test call using voice over LTE on its LG Revolution, the word on the street is that MetroPCS is hooking up with none other than HTC for its own VoLTE-capable phone -- though it's not MetroPCS making the announcement: instead, the GSM Association's technology director broke the news, which was followed by a swift "no comment" from the carrier itself. As PCMag points out, there's a sense of urgency for MetroPCS to deploy VoLTE in short order because it's using AWS bandwidth for its LTE services -- the same bandwidth it uses for CDMA -- whereas Verizon has LTE deployed down by its lonesome in the newish 700MHz space, which means MetroPCS could open up 4G bandwidth by migrating away from CDMA voice as quickly as possible. No word on when we might see this mysterious HTC device surface just yet.

HTC prepping VoLTE-enabled smartphone for MetroPCS originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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