It uses a technology called NFC (Near Field Communication) to securely send your payments digitally.

The only phone in the US that supports NFC is the Google Nexus S, available with t-mobile and Sprint, and there are high hopes that the iPhone 5 will support it too.

Right now, Google Wallet only works with Citi-Mastercards and the Google Prepaid Card. Visa and Google announced a worldwide agreement to support the Visa payWave app, but it will still be up to the financial institutions and banks to add support.

The “tap and pay” method of payment is cool, but the Google Wallet feature that has the most potential is what Google is calling SingleTap. The SingleTap experience means that users can combine their coupons, loyalty cards and payment method all with one tap. It’s an interesting concept … digital save all your credit cards, loyalty cards, and soon tickets, boarding passes, and more.

Security

At first it might be scary to think you will enter all your data into your phone … what if it gets lost? Well, it’s a lot better than if your wallet gets lost … at least your phone has an initial passcode, a second pin number for Google Wallet, and if you’re smart, a remote format feature to securely delete your entire phone’s data should it get stolen.

Privacy

A big question that many would-be users are sure to have about Google Wallet is “does this mean Google knows what I buy.” The answer, at least right now, is no. Google does record local transactions on your phone, but these transactions are only identified by amount and location and are only viewable to you.

In practice, this means that if I look at my Google Wallet history, I only see a date, an amount and an approximate location. Google says that it is working to roll out a more robust digital receipt system in the future.

Diversity

American Express, Visa, Paypal, Google, and the major carriers are all racing towards raining the NFC arena. Google was the first to go-to-market, and there’s a recent announcement that American Express, Discover and Visa have all licensed their NFC technologies to Google, the next step is to get the thousands of financial institutions and merchants on-board with an NFC system.

Other uses

NFC is going to be one of the key technologies of 2012 … with easy communication among phones and cheap RFID tags, we will not only see seamless mobile payments, but also tap to get additional info on any product, posters, magazines, or socially connect to other phones for gaming or networking. NFC’s possibilities are endless – so expect an innovative and fun year to come.

Google, like Amazon, hasn’t secured licenses from the four major recorded-music companies, according to these people, and is likely to include a system that functions much like a remote hard drive. Users of the service are expected to be able to listen to songs they have uploaded to the service in a so-called streaming mode but won’t be able to download the files themselves.

It’s funny how Google follows every amazon stop … Amazon Elastic Computing (EC2) -> Google App Engine … Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) -> Google Storage for Developers … Amazon Cloud Drive / Player -> Google Cloud Drive / Player …

With Google’s amazing track record (of zero) of building friendly services and applications, I don’t expect their music locker to really take off … especially again if it’s based on Google Storage for Developers, which is not being used by any developer.

Google, do you want to really get anywhere with this? Buy Orb, scale it, embed it seamlessly into your cloud, and offer up the first cloud based full media center.

1. The M&M’s Space Heroes is actually a straight up copy of the Kick Ass bookmarklet by Erik Andersson, also covered by Wired among other respectable publications. BBDO’s code acknowledges it was inspired by it, though it’s just a copy with new graphics. This is a smart move by BBDO, taking into account they probably did not spend more than a day on development of the microsite and new graphic assets, and charged M&M a substantial margin for coming up with the idea. The code was open source has an Apache 2 license, granting anyone full rights to copy, modify, and distribute for any commercial use, thus BBDO didn’t do anything illegal, it was actually smart — not creative, but smart.

2. Deployment strategy: the code was not optimized, minified, or even deployed to a CDN. I would have expected an agency dealing with Mars food to be a little more thoughtful of brand performance.

3. Tracking. Perhaps the most important point I’d like to make. Due to the fact that bookmarklets are simply plain JavaScript code that runs on a browser, it makes it a little less trivial to track, but far from impossible. Technically speaking, they could have modified the code to add pixel images, a JavaScript timer to update it every few seconds, and could have gathered full analytics tracking total games, unique games, geo-location of players, time spent on site, top referrers, etc.

You should always use a simple rule of thumb: if you can’t measure it, don’t do it.

It is not hard to predict that Mars will ask BBDO how many people played this game? How much time they’ve spent? What’s the most popular site where it was played? How many people shared it? How many people talked about it? … and most likely they won’t get any answers.

So what’s the moral of the story?

• It’s hard to come up with purely innovative ideas and you should always welcome creative mash-ups and different uses of existing experiences (full copycat perhaps not so much).
• No matter what you do, always try to improve based on previous cycles, add value, enhance the experience, bring something unique to the table.
• Always, but always, track and measure results.

Why then did desktop applications as brand experiences never take off?

Adobe Air made it easy for Flex and Actionscript developers to create multi-platform desktop apps and yet the world of desktop apps as marketing experiences never went mainstream. There are so many clear benefits including being an ongoing engagement with consumers on one of their most personal devices that they might spend hours and hours a day on.

The reality is that I think there is a natural hesitation to install anything on your desktop as you never really if your computer (which for many of us is holy ground) would survive the experience due to malware, viruses, poor coding, etc. For most the risk just wasn’t worth it – which is exactly why I’ve always recommended to creative teams that they avoid installable desktop apps at all cost because the drop off rate would be too high and stick to in-browser experiences whenever possible.

We’re in a new age though, an age chock full of apps that do pretty much everything, an age when consumers trust the concept of apps and an app store.  Apple’s recent announcement that they will start selling desktop applications through an App store is a major opportunity for marketers. It has an excellent chance to bring in the age of the desktop as a favorite place to provide app based brand experiences and the feared drop off rate might finally plummet.

There is no doubt that apps on mobile devices are here to stay and I think this is the beginning of a major trend in desktop experiences. Mobile devices have been able to install applications for quite some time before the current generation app stores existed – it was just difficult and cumbersome for your typical user.  Expect the same revolution to happen to happen on the desktop and start preparing for a whole new wave of specialists to help agencies and brands alike.

For marketing experiences to be successful on the app store I think we should look to guidance from the successes of apps on mobile devices. Expectations should move away from large blown out applications and games that some might expect on a desktop machine and think about lightweight, focused, and sometimes “disposable” experiences. Consumers have reset their expectations around low risk, short-term, experiences that serve one function very well.

Application developers and marketers alike should be looking at the functionality of desktops and thinking what can I do here that I can’t do in a browser or via streamed content. I expect a lot of more advanced uses of cameras, processing power, your local computer content, and “always on” experiences to be fertile territory for brands to create memorable moments for consumers. These are areas where browser based experiences still struggle and the desktop offers a chance for new creative approaches.

It’s time to challenge our selves to ask “how can brands bring value to the (mac) desktop?” as it’s just about to become another great battleground for the hearts and minds of consumers.

If you’re not aware, the term Internet of Things refers to the interconnection of everyday objects (large and small) via an array of sensors and radio tags that would allow for a vastly “smarter” world empowered through technology. The amount of information that would be generated is staggering, but innovators will find opportunities to leverage this data (in conjunction with data from your social profile) to create amazing experiences in every day life delivered through this new found insight.

Imagine how a person’s lifestyle enhanced through digital experiences might change if devices, applications, or even marketing experiences were able to pull from a massively expanded pool of data delivered by understanding the current state of things they interact with such as their car, their personal electronics and appliances, the buses their kids go to school on, all the items in their refrigerator, and even their clothing. If each of these items were tagged and at minimum reporting their “identity” and location but potentially even sharing their operating status, power consumption, fuel level, capacity, current activity, or history of use computer logic could understand and make intelligent and highly relevant recommendations based on these factors that could be used to enhance any digitally enabled experience.

Let’s re-imagine a great marketing as a service example from recent memory: Fiat’s Ecodrive. Fiats’s brilliant Ecodrive system allowed your car to monitor your driving behavior and via their website was able to make driving recommendations on improving your driving style to increase fuel efficiency. Unfortunately it wasn’t real time or wirelessly driven but it did demonstrate a clear value to consumers and marketers how rich insight into your behaviors could create valuable experiences. Now imagine if experiences like that were all around us and operating in realtime without the need for thumb drives etc.

In a future world consumers with Internet of Things enabled appliances and products could benefit from always knowing the contents of their refrigerator with brands potentially providing services that make recommendations on replacement purchases or new products.

If all clothing was tagged, identified, and classified applications could be developed that could even recommend clothing based on occasions, the weather, or even what to pack for a trip based on your related travel booking and itinerary.

Anyone who thought the speed at which internet based business and marketing is evolving has slowed down since the hay day of the late 90s and 00s is clearly mistaken. The last couple of months alone have indicated that we’re achieving realization of the semantic web and now China premier minister Wev Jaibo has announced a plan to commit fully to national Internet of Things plan.

I’ve been talking about hyper relevance a lot lately. The concept that through your social profile and location based services respectively marketers understand who consumers and where consumers are in a way that’s never been possible before and this is allowing us to deliver hyper relevant advertising. If the Internet of Things came to bear we would also understand what people were doing and how they were doing it in a way that isn’t currently possible. Again our ability to deliver relevant experience only extends exponentially yet again. Amazing, yet probably spooky, experience await all of us as technology continues to develop along these lines.

The Reality of Internet of Things

Unfortunately the IoT is as revolutionary as it would be hard to implement. It would require universal adoption to achieve the type of world changing effect that is possible. These types of changes would require masses of corporations to work in conjunction or the support of a government with enough to conviction to push through massive innovations in a short period of time.

I believe that time is upon us. The Internet of Things reflects the next great evolution of the internet after the semantic web. We’ve just started to see further wide spread adoption of the semantic web and now China will be the country that has the conviction to lead this next great innovation. In 2015 not only will China reflect the world’s biggest internet community, but they will likely be leading the innovation of the web and the west will look to them for inspiration.

That easy enough with a still image, perhaps, but not so simple with video…  Technical University of Ilmenau’s figured it out, just draw a circle around the object you want to disappear and it practically disappears as the image synthesizer reduces the quality of the image drastically, removes your target and re-enhances in just 40 milliseconds per frame, using object tracking algorithms and guesswork to maintain the illusion as a camera moves around in 3D space. The framework’s presently running on Windows, but the team says they have plans to port it to Android soon.

Pretty impressive … I’m trying to figure out the applications where you wouldn’t have to manually specify the object to clear out … like automatically recognizing and removing cans of Pepsi from any video.

Fake is a new browser for Mac OS X that makes web automation simple. Fake allows you to drag discrete browser Actions into a graphical Workflow that can be run again and again without human interaction. The Fake Workflows you create can be saved, reopened, and shared.

Inspired by Apple’s Automator application, Fake looks like a combination of Safari and Automator that allows you to run (and re-run) “fake” interactions with the web.

Power Users will love Fake for automating tedious web tasks like filling out lengthy forms and capturing screenshots. Developers can use Fake for graphically configuring automated tests for their webapps, including assertions, assertion failure handlers, and error handlers.

All of Fake’s automation features are powered by Mac OS X’s native scripting tool – AppleScript. Which means Fake can be used to incorporate web automation into many other OS X scripting tasks.

Watch the video and see how simple it is … imagine how many hours it can save you … I’m trying my next long expense report with Fake.

At its Open Innovation Experiment, Swedish software technology and design company TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) released a spectacular video showing a glimpse of possible screen technology of the future. They predict that we will have malleable screens, screens that are built into mirrors connected with Wi-Fi, e-ink touch screens and several others that can only be imagined at the moment.

Take a look at their video to see this inspired view of what comes next:

[via Swiss-Miss]

Current predictions:

• Apple will launch a new iOS based device priced at $99
• The iTV will only have 16Gb of Flash based storage
• It will mainly stream content from a local computer or the cloud
• It’s only capable of 720p as opposed to 1080p
• Apple is negotiating 99 cents rentals, down from $1.99 to $2.99, or even higher for HD. This will also apply for iPhone, iTouch, and iPad content consumption.
• The device will have a built-in camera, or will be able to connect to one and run FaceTime.
• iOS will run apps

Extending on this last point: Apps … brands, marketers, advertisers, or any experience designer, this is the big question … How will they work? Can you run existing apps in the big screen? but if you do, the big screen is not multitouch, damn, it’s not even touch! You will need a special control just to point and click …

So perhaps you can’t run the same apps in the big screen … and you know, maybe it’s better if we don’t … the screen apps are content companions … the main purpose of the TV is not to run apps, but apps are there to extend and amplify the experience of TV content consumption.

Apps could run on sidebars, overlays, show and hide, or a number of different visual options; but in order for them not to be dump widgets — i.e. a weather widget — they will need to be connected, obviously, but also have contextual information of the content you’re watching. Imagine apps that allow friends to chat about content, possibly with FaceTime, but also interact with other friends watching the same show … enable co-watching experiences. Leave timestamped messages into content, or be pre-loaded with metadata about the content and let you explore more info about actors, places, sets, products … even let you click to buy the products you’re watching … The possibilities are endless.

This is a smart move on Coke’s end. Everyone knows that Coke mainly targets teens, and what if instead of marketing to teens, you get teens come to you, promote you, share, chat, and advocate your brand? Dream came true …

Coke organized this experimental amazing hangout villa they called The Coca Cola Village. They’ve been doing it for a few years, or at least I found videos from 2008 and 2009.

This year’s was a little different though, an Israeli agency called E-dologic — part of Publicis, extended the event in effort to bring the Facebook “Like” to the real world. Not only they invited thousands of teens who talk about this through traditional word-of-mouth, but they used the Facebook Presence-like concept where they distribute teens a wristband, they link it to their Facebook account, and the village automatically digitalize, archive, organize, and share their experience. It makes it easy to re-live the fun, read the comments, see their friends, share activities, and for Coke? instant-massive-ultra-influencing system that leverages teens to promote Coke’s brand among their circles.

Really nicely done. As expected, Facebook will keep penetrating the real-world. Next efforts will probably use the open graph to describe more precise locations and describe relationships among people, places, and objects.