Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a big day for mobile payments. Multiple former Nokia Money veterans have formally launched iKaaz, a two-pronged strategy to phone commece where choice is the order of the day. The first components, M-POS and its accompanying Tap & Pay, are rough equivalents to familiar NFC-based services like Google Wallet that rely on an NFC tag and matching app for in-store sales. A Consumer Wallet for Enterprises occupies more familiar territory for the ex-Nokia crew: it provides a mobile account that doesn’t require NFC or even an app, letting those in developing countries exchange funds through SMS or USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) if they’re sporting basic handsets. Us end users will need to wait for actual implementations before we see iKaaz for ourselves, but the sheer flexibility could have us paying through our phones in some unexpected places.

Continue reading Former Nokia Money crew kicks off iKaaz mobile payments, lets shops go with or without NFC

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Nokia

Former Nokia Money crew kicks off iKaaz mobile payments, lets shops go with or without NFC originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Due to medical reasons, I’ve recently had to give up one of my favorite vices – caffeine – but I still like to drink the occasional cup of decaf and imagine that it’s the real thing. The next time I break my coffee mug, I know exactly which one I’m going to order.

This handmade, wheel-thrown ceramic mug is made from white stoneware clay, and is inspired by the classic 8-bit NES gamepad controller. It’s the perfect place for gamers to keep their joe in between rounds of Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. I just love the dimensional A/B buttons and D-Pad on the side of the mug. I think I’d be trying to push them whenever I picked it up to take a sip.

It was made by Danyelle Butler of ArtHaus Ceramics, with the design by her husband, Jared – a real family effort. If you want one, pop on over to Etsy now, where it can by yours for $24 (USD). I think Danyelle should make a whole series of mugs based on game controllers – though it might be hard to make one based on the Kinect.

If there is one thing that some folks tend to slack out on in terms of personal hygiene, it would be brushing one’s set of pearly whites (maybe it is not that white any more with all the coffee you’ve been drinking and cigarettes you’re smoking) before one goes to bed. Perhaps you need a little bit of incentive, a push, and the Beam Brush might fit the bill perfectly. This Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush will rely on an app to keep track of your brushing habits, and when accumulated, you can pick up real rewards.

Not only that, to make sure that you spend enough time scrubbing the insides of your mouth, the Beam Brush will play back a couple of minutes of music, while a tracking sensor goes to work to track your brushing habits. Among the rewards that you can pick up include video games, movie tickets, deals on purses, shoes and clothes – not surprisingly, there is no free candy. The Beam Brush prides itself in being the first app-connected toothbrush, and its app runs on Android or iOS platforms. Sorry BlackBerry and Windows Phone users, you’ll have to sit out on this one.

Pre-orders for the Beam Brush start from $35 onwards, but when the Beam Brush launches in November, it will cost $50 a pop. This makes the adage of being an early worm catching the worm more true than ever.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung and LG 55-inch OLED TVs delayed to 2013, JVC 3D HDTV wears the Smart TV mantle,

AOC has rolled out the new i2757Fm 27-inch IPS monitor. What makes this monitor special is that it supports MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link), enabling a direct connection with an MHL-compatible smartphone or tablet. The MHL support allows you to easily see your smartphone/tablet content (websites, documents, photos, up to 1080p videos) on a larger screen. The AOC i2757Fm provides a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, a 5ms response time, a 1,000:1 contrast ratio (dynamic contrast: 20,000,000:1), D-Sub input, a pair of HDMI ports, USB 2.0 and integrated speakers. You can purchase the AOC i2757Fm 27-inch IPS monitor for 289 Euro ($378). [techPowerUp]

Mitt Romney’s eldest son weighed in on the second presidential debate on Wednesday, joking that the debate’s contentious nature made him want to “take a swing” at President Obama.

During an interview with North Carolina radio host Bill LuMaye, Tagg Romney said that hearing the president call his father a liar made him want to “jump out of [his] seat and … rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him.”

He continued: “But you know you can’t do that because, well first because there’s a lot of Secret Service between you and him, but also because this is the nature of the process, they’re going to do everything they can do to try to make my dad into someone he’s not. We signed up for it. We’ve gotta kinda sit there and take our punches and then send them right back the other way.”

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