Card.io: Make Paying for Things on the Phone a Snap

Awesome, loved this idea. Card.io is the simple and secure way to accept credit cards in your mobile app.

Card.io is focused on solving a specific part of the mobile payments business — buying things with a credit card on the phone, whether it’s digital goods, like a song, or physical goods from a site like Amazon.

Rather than having to type in the credit card number, users just hold a credit card up to the phone’s camera, which automatically reads the card information and enters the appropriate data.

actface Rhythm: Mobile interface design “experience it”

I’ve recently stumbled upon an interesting interface design by teamlab, the way they designed and looked into the natural dynamics of touch interface is amazing. I liked it personally very much such an amazingly rich, engaging experience that’s just bursting with possibility for further creativity. 🙂

“Actface” is a mobile device designed to create new contents using meta information of users behaviors.”

“Actface Rhythm is not a phone designed to produce music, but a phone that produces an internal rhythm, a moving image that is produced through the everyday use and the rhythm of pressing the keys. We regularly press keys to make a call, and to send a mail, and we considered this to be a natural rhythm. We designed actface Rhythm’s interface to produce an ink painting world that is created by the user, and as the phone is used the ink painting continues to develop and move with the rhythm you create.”

vivek

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Adobe and HTC Bring Flash Platform to Android

HTC hero

Adobe and HTC, a global designer of mobile phones, today announced that the new HTC Hero is the first Android phone to ship with support for Adobe Flash Platform technology. The new phone delivers a more complete Web browsing experience and provides access to a broad variety of Flash technology based content available on the Web today.

“As the first Android device with Flash, the new HTC Hero represents a key milestone for Android and the Flash Platform. With close to 80 percent of all videos online delivered with Adobe Flash technology, consumers want to access rich Web content on-the-go.” said David Wadhwani, vice president and general manager, Platform Business Unit at Adobe.

“The collaboration with HTC offers people a more complete Flash based Web browsing experience today and presents an important step towards full Web browsing with Flash Player 10 on mobile phones in the future.”

Apple iPhone is still missing Flash Player and wish to have it soon.

Watch the video here.

vivek

Azingo to Offer Adobe Flash Lite on Linux Mobile Phones

Azingo Mobile

Azingo has integrated Adobe Flash Lite into its advanced mobile browser enabling the display of animated web content and videos and making Adobe Flash available on a Linux mobile platform. Azingo also announced integrated support for rich mobile applications based on Adobe Flash Lite.

This collaboration enables Azingo Mobile customers to strongly differentiate their mobile devices by offering a richer web experience and dynamic, animated applications that leverage the power of mobile Linux. Based on LiMo Foundation software and leveraging the economies of open source innovations, Azingo Mobile provides a less costly and more flexible platform for designing and deploying mobile devices.

Azingo Mobile now delivers rich Flash-based content offering advanced browsing of most Flash-based websites and enabling the display of animations and Flash Player compatible videos that make the mobile Web experience more familiar and complete. Integrated support for Flash Lite applications means that these applications can be immediately deployed on handsets based on Azingo Mobile.

“The Azingo/Adobe collaboration provides customers with the most complete mobile browsing experience on mobile devices available today. We’re very pleased to be working with Adobe to offer the mobile industry ever richer mobile experiences, incorporating the latest and most innovative applications on Azingo Mobile,” said Mahesh Veerina, president and CEO of Azingo.

“We are committed to providing rich user experiences through Flash across a broad number of devices and mobile platforms in the world,” said Gary Kovacs, vice president and general manager, Mobile and Devices at Adobe. “Azingo has provided a fast and comprehensive integration of Flash Lite, opening the world of mobile Linux to Flash developers and enabling rich web browsing experiences for mobile phone users worldwide.”

vivek

A Cross Cultural Study on Phone Carrying “Where’s the Phone?”

A Cross Cultural Study on Phone Carrying “Where’s the Phone?”

A Cross Cultural Study on Phone Carrying “Where’s the Phone?”

A Cross Cultural Study on Phone Carrying “Where’s the Phone?”

I found this very intresting research paper a Cross Cultural Study on Phone Carrying and Personalisation co-authored by Cui Yanqing and Fumiko Ichikawa which is presented at HCI International 2007 in Beijing.

This essay presents data from a series of Nokia street surveys conducted between 2003 and 2006 that explored where people carry their mobile phones and why?

A Cross Cultural Study on Phone Carrying “Where’s the Phone?”

“Where’s the Phone street surveys set out to document the extent to which people noticed their incoming communication and cross refererence this information to the location where the phone is carried. The mobile phone’s effectiveness as a communication device is partly dependent on its owner noticing incoming communication (though whether someone decides to respond to that communication is another matter entirely) and it was assumed by the authors that the process of deciding to carry an object would correlate with a minimal level of its effective use. Contexts where there was a high likelihood of missing incoming communication presented a design opportunity both in terms of thinking about device redesign and from the perspective of connectivity-related services accessed through that device.

Download this pdf here as powerpoint or pdf (3MB).

Where’s the Phone?

Read as from Jan Chipchase here.

View results of this research paper here

Very Interesting . .

vivek

Nokia and Design, What mobile phone means to you!

nokia global phone design

Nokia Design Studio they calls “open studio.” Works really closer with local experts such as NGOs or even students, Nokia designers went into each city and set up a community based competition asking people to design their dream phone.  Results sometimes lead out some interesting concepts and sometime unusual.

“In the not so distant past, the end game of design for Nokia was the phone, Nokia’s head of design Alistair Curtis says. Now the phone is a springboard to all sorts of services, he says. Developing relevant services, he believes, means creating an open platform. Then consumers can eventually bolt on applications as needed. ”

check out this slide show for some concepts of phone model.

vivek