Starbucks unveiled a first-of-its-kind app today that lets users pay for in-store purchases using their iPhone, a move that could pave the way for a new generation of e-commerce applications on Apple’s popular phone.

With the Starbucks Card Mobile App, users can sync their prepaid Starbucks Card with the app, check their balance and refill it using a credit card. At some stores, they can also use the app to pay for Venti coffees and Frappuccinos.

When users select the “payment trial” function on the app, a QR code appears on the iPhone screen. A barista then scans the iPhone, deducting the cost from the Starbucks Card balance, and completing the purchase.

The trial is being rolled out at 16 locations in Seattle and Silicon Valley, where there is high usage of both iPhones and Starbucks Cards. But expect the programme to go nationwide soon, and for other retailers to follow. Continue reading "Starbucks app turns iPhone into a wallet"

Robo.to, the  service we highlighted as competing to be your cell phone’s “social address book”, has also launched a Web “TV” version today.

Robo.to lets users record four-second video status updates and these are now being streamed in channel-like themes, several of them started by Justin Timberlake, its pop-star lead investor. Continue reading "Robo.to adds Timberlake TV"

Yesterday Microsoft and Nokia announced an alliance meant to challenge Research in Motion’s lead in the corporate mobile phone market. The FT’s Lex column writes that “the battle is hotting up because this year the smartphone market is the only game in town.”

Shipments of phones that allow web surfing, e-mail and run other popular software applications rose 27 per cent in the second quarter – while overall handset sales remain on track for their first full-year decline. Even during the recession, consumers are abandoning dumb phones when, for just a little more money, they can get a pocket-sized computer instead.

Continue reading “Smartphones”

Augmented reality is a many-rendered thing, a buzz phrase augmented itself by an expanding definition. Some technology applications don’t really seem to fit the description as they jump on the bandwagon.

Take Mattel’s announcement of “augmented-reality technology” being included in its toys at this week’s Comic-Con show in San Diego. Continue reading "Avatar takes toys into alternative reality"

Apple customers may have downloaded 1.5bn applications from its AppStore in the past year for their iPhones and iPod touches, but the service does not represent the future for the mobile industry, according to Google.

Vic Gundotra, Google Engineering vice president and developer evangelist, (pictured centre) told the Mobilebeat conference in San Francisco on Thursday that the web had won and users of mobile phones would get their information and entertainment from browsers in future. Continue reading "App stores are not the future, says Google"

• Twitter is facing death by a thousand cuts - well, at least 310, anyway. That is the number of confidential internal documents that Mike Arrington of TechCrunch says he has been supplied with by an anonymous hacker, who obtained the information from a Twitter employee’s account with Google. The leak has caused red faces both at Twitter, which also revealed that personal internet accounts of co-founder Evan Williams had been hacked before, and Google, which defended the security of its Gmail and Apps services.
• The PC market is looking up. Sales were stronger in the second quarter than industry analysts had predicted, suggesting that the industry could be bottoming out as consumers begin to spend more. Worldwide PC sales slipped only 3.1 per cent by volume from a year earlier, about half the retreat expected by market researcher IDC and less than half of the first-quarter’s 6.8 per cent drop. Continue reading "techfile 16.07.09"

• A Tennessee hospital has confirmed it carried out a liver transplant on Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive.  The Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis said Mr Jobs was “the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available. Mr Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis.”
• Intel and Nokia unveiled plans to work together to create a type of mobile computing device beyond today’s smartphones and netbooks. The move takes Intel a step further towards a breakthrough into the highly prized mobile phone market. Nokia typically works with potential suppliers on joint research for several years before deciding to adopt a particular technology. Continue reading "techfile 24.06.09"

• EMC continues to court Data Domain. Joe Tucci, EMC’s chief executive, today took the unusual step of writing an open letter to Data Domain employees, explaining why their company would fare better with EMC than with rival NetApp. It was an opportunity for Mr Tucci to plead his case, but of course he’s barking up the wrong tree. It is Data Domain’s board, not its employees, who will decide its fate. Data Domain has agreed to a hybrid offer of $30 a share from NetApp. EMC has in a $30 all-cash offer, which looks to be superior. Data Domain said it will respond to the EMC offer by June 16. Stay tuned.
• Google opened up another front in its broadening war with Microsoft today as the search leader made its increasingly popular Gmail, contacts and calendar applications compatible with Microsoft’s ubiquitous Outlook system. Outlook isn’t going away any time soon, but the move by Google means that Microsoft has one more piece of turf to worry about protecting. Continue reading "techfile 10.06.09"