Hasta La Gadget!

Just a day after we published a feature about smartphones accelerating the development of augmented reality, Yelp sneaked a secret AR feature into an update of its iPhone app.

Exclusive to iPhone 3GS owners, the feature is accessible through an Easter egg, which is activated by shaking the handset three times. A message will appear reading, “The Monocle has been activated,” and then a Monocle button will appear in the upper-right corner. Tapping that button will launch your iPhone camera, and digital overlays of business listings, accompanied by star ratings, appear on screen. The app presumably draws its geo-aware powers from the iPhone 3GS’ digital compass and GPS. Mashable demonstrates the feature in the video above.

We use the word “sneak” because Apple doesn’t provide an open API to access live video from the iPhone’s camera, making it impossible for developers to provide AR apps without hacking the software development kit. We’ve put in a query to Yelp requesting clarification on how its developer coded the AR feature.

If Yelp submitted a hacked version of its iPhone app and Apple approved it, it’s unlikely this victory will last very long. In May, Wired.com reported on the first developer to use an Easter egg to trick Apple. Apple had rejected his app Lyrics because it contained swear words, so he filtered them and added an Easter egg enabling users to remove the filter. That app is no longer in the App Store. The developer said Lyrics was “pulled temporarily” due to licensing issues, but the app still has not returned.

However, even if Apple pulls the Yelp app for sneaking in AR, it would likely become available in the near future. Brad Foxhoven, co-founder of augmented-reality company Ogmento, said Apple has told him the next version of the iPhone OS (3.1) “would make [AR developers] happy,” implying the live-video API will become open, and legitimate AR apps will become available very soon.

Yelp App Download Link [iTunes]

See Also:

• If You’re Not Seeing Data, You’re Not Seeing
• At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry
• Augmented Reality and atemporality
• Augmented Reality: Ogmento
• How it Works: Augmented Reality
• Blink-182 Rocks ‘Augmented Reality’ Show in Doritos Bag …

You can talk, play, surf the web — and now you can pay for stuff with your cellphone. Nokia announced a new mobile payment service Wednesday, called Nokia Money, that will allow consumers to send money, pay bills and recharge pre-paid phone cards–all using their cell phones.

The Nokia Money service is likely to debut in Asia and Africa in early 2010. The company hasn’t commented whether it will offer the service in the U.S.

Mobile payments are a big business in emerging markets where there are more cellphones than a PC, and where many users still don’t have a bank account. But paying by phone hasn’t caught on in the U.S.

“With more than four billion mobile phone users (worldwide) and only 1.6 billion bank accounts, global demand for access to financial services presents a strong opportunity,” says Mary McDowell, an executive vice president for Nokia.

The widespread use of credit and debit cards and easy access to banking services has meant few American customers are clamoring for mobile payments. That’s changing, says Bruce Cundliff, director of payments research and consulting for research firm Javelin Strategy.

“Mobile payments in the U.S. market are still very nascent,” says  Cundiff.  “But there are a lot of pilot projects that are currently being developed.”

Smartphones are the key to the growth of mobile payments here. The devices are a fast growing segment in the cellphones business, with U.S. sales growing nearly 47 percent in the second quarter. The increased capabilities of these phones mean that they are potential new platforms for commerce. And as handset makers battle for consumer attention through app stores, developers have greater incentives than ever to create services that customers can pay for through their phones.

Though American consumers may have to wait a long time to try Nokia Money there are a few other projects that users can try out. Mobile payment services currently in trials in the U.S. include a project from social networking giant Facebook, banks, and credit card service provider MasterCard.  Here’s a quick rundown on some of the mobile payment options available currently to American consumers.

Banking apps: For the last few years, banks have been trying to offer mobile payments as part of their online banking solutions.  But now these financial institutions are using smartphone apps as a way to popularize the service. For instance, Bank of America has an iPhone app that lets its customers check their banking accounts, pay bills or transfer funds using their mobile phones. Users can download the app for free through Apple’s app store. Other banks such as Well Fargo and USAA also have iPhone apps available that lets users schedule payments and tranfer money using their accounts. About 26 million users in the U.S. are likely candidates to use mobile payment services, estimates Javelin Strategy. “Mobile payment may finally be ready for prime time,” says Cundiff.

Facebook mobile payments: With more than 200 million users worldwide, Facebook is the most powerful social networking platform today. Facebook users are willing to spend real money to shower their friends and family with virtual gifts.  Earlier this month, Facebook started testing the use of mobile payments for its virtual currency, Facebook Credits. Facebook has partnered with mobile payments service provider, Zong, to let users buy Facebook credits using their mobile phone. Users are then billed to their account with the mobile carrier. The service is still in its very early stages and it is more expensive to pay using the mobile phone compared to a credit card. But as more users buy into the idea, Facebook and Zong hope mobile payments will become more competitive.

MasterCard MoneySend: Who doesn’t have a MasterCard in their wallet? MasterCard is now hoping it can achieve that kind of iconic status on the mobile phone. In June, the company launched a mobile payment platform enabling customers to transfer money to another person, and all they need to know is the recipient’s mobile phone number. Currently, customers use the service through a prepaid card issued by The Bancorp Bank and then link it to their mobile phone number to send or receive money.  But as more issuers enroll into the program, says MasterCard, mobile phone users will be able to take just about any account and link it to MoneySend. MasterCard is working with Obopay, a Redwood City, California-based startup, that is also powering the Nokia Money service.

Special-purpose smartphone apps: One of the significant announcements from Apple this year was that it would allow developers to charge users for goods and services purchased through their apps. The move could turn out to be an important boost for mobile payments, because it will get people used to the idea of paying for things within special-purpose apps. For instance, the Taxi Magic iPhone app allows users to call a taxi through the app and then pay for the ride using their phone.

See Also:

• Shopping by Cell Phone? No Thanks
• 4 Years After TJX Hack, Payment Industry Sets Security Standards
• Buy Xbox Live Points Through Japanese Cell Phones

Photo: (whiteafrican/Flickr)

Let’s take our minds off all this nasty Google Voice business for a minute, and focus on the apps that we do have. Google may not make an appearance this week, but how about Wikipedia? NPR? The Discovery Channel? Simplify?

NPR News: The unaffiliated Public Radio Player was great great great, but this is somehow better. It brings twice as many stations, adds written news content along with offline reading, on-demand NPR shows and a surprisingly navigable interface. Guiltily free, since you don’t even have to sit through pledge drives.

Wikipedia: I just assumed this app already existed, but Wikipedia somehow didn’t have an app until this week. Weird! It’s sort of a website-wrapped-in-an-app snooze for now, though it’s open source and Wikipedia would very much like you to help make it into something decent, that people might actually want. Free, and quite.

Fluent News (Update): A personal favorite news aggregator of mine, Fluent now supports Google News-style searches across sources and emailing from within the app. The search feature is more useful than it might sound, especially if you want to dig right into a news story right after hearing about it. Free.

WHOA: You know Telephone, the group game where you pass a complicated, whispered message around a circle of people until it turns into something about penises, usually? This is that, with writing and drawing, on the iPhone. Here’s what you do: You write a word, the next person draws it, the next person writes what he thinks the drawing is, and so on. A dollar.

Aha: Crowd-sourced traffic, with a big-buttoned, simple interface intent on not causing you crash into other people. It’ll let you see how traffic is on your preferred driving routes based on input from its users, who can literally yell at their iPhones to record short voice messages about how bad (or awesome, I guess) the roads are. It’s only available in a few cities for the time being, but the concept is promising, as are the early reviews.

Discovery Channel: Better than your average dedicated station or publication app, though it follows the same concept: This is video, audio, photo and text content from the Discovery Channel, home of Mythbusters and LOTS OF SHARKS, in a nice little packaged news-style app. No full show episodes—gotta buy those in iTunes—but lots of decent clips and plenty of meat for DC nerds, if there is such a thing.

Simplify Photo: Simplify’s other app lets you listen to your home music library from anywhere with a sort of zero-setup server app, and it’s absolutely indispensable. This one does the same thing for photos, letting you access your entire home photo library wherever you are, without taking up much space on your iPhone’s dinky drive. The experience is surprisingly seamless considering how much it depends on the iPhone’s data connection, and the app is only a dollar.

This Week’s App News On Giz

• You Can’t Read the Good Part of Google’s FCC Response

• Apple and AT&T Answer FCC About Google Voice Rejection: It’s All Apple

• App Store Approval Process Slowly Getting Less Horrendous?

• iPhone’s Sonar Ruler App Measures Distance Using Sound

• Native Twitter Location Data Means More Stalker Power With Every Tweet

• Blow Virtual Kisses with Happy Dangy Diggy

• i.TV iPhone App Grows a Remote Control Framework, TiVo Gives It a Whirl

• Apple Exec Phil Schiller Reaching Out to Rejected App Developers

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a swell weekend everybody.

Neer. Let’s put on our super nerdy caps for a second and explore this iPhone app called Convert. It’s a gorgeous unit converter and calculator, and it’s as simple as that. It makes unit conversions for everything from money and time, and from air pressure to energy.

Because of Convert’s flexibility, there are plenty people who should find it useful. When cooking, for instance, if you’re trying to triple a recipe and need to convert tablespoons into cups, you can simply punch some numbers into this app. Or if you’re traveling to Japan and need to convert dollars into Yen, this should come helpful, too. You select unit types with a slick scroll wheel; a built-in calculator spares you the need to leave the app to crunch numbers.

There have been plenty of unit-conversion apps in the App Store, but this is the first we’ve seen to address so many types of units in an elegant, intuitive interface. We love it.

Convert is currently a buck in the App Store. See a video demoing the app at developer Tap Tap Tap’s website.

Download Link [iTunes]

Palm Pre’s app store is moving forward, slowly but steadily. Palm has started accepting applications from developers who wish to charge for their apps in its app store.

Palm’s App Catalog e-commerce beta program will begin in mid-September and the full program will be launched in fall. So far, all the apps in the Pre app store have been free.

Palm launched the Pre June 6 on exclusively on Sprint’s wireless network. But its app store known as the App Catalog got off to a slow start. About a week after the device’s launch, the store has just 30 apps.

Palm said the low number of apps initially were because it had been offering its Software Developers Kit (SDK) called Mojo only to a few select developers. On July 16, the company  made its Mojo SDK available to all.

Now with the App Catalog e-commerce beta program, Palm has taken the next step towards having a complete app store. Developers will receive 70 percent of the revenue from their apps, with Palm collecting the rest 30 percent. The split is similar to what Apple charges for iPhone apps. Pre users will be able to purchase apps using Visa and MasterCard credit cards, said Palm.

See Also:

• Palm Pre Lags iPhone in Satisfaction Survey
• Nothing Unusual in Palm Pre Return Rates, Say Analysts
• Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
• Palm Pre: Wired Review
  
• Palm Pre Scores a Modest Hit, Despite Problems
• Palm Pre App Catalog Makes a Slow Start

Photo: (Flickr/rhastings)