SCVNGR Unveils QR Code Payment System SCVNGR is introducing a pay-by-QR-code mobile payments experience called LevelUp in San Francisco and New York Wednesday, after an eight week pilot period in Boston and Philadelphia. With the launch, SCVNGR is fully committing to an entirely new direction for LevelUp. The startup previously released LevelUp as a hybrid daily deals and location-based experience. LevelUp, on the second go-around, scraps the experience of old for one centered on offline transactions. Consumers link a credit or debit card to LevelUp, receive their own personal QR codes for payments, and can then scan their codes to pay at participating merchants and opt-in to store loyalty programs. Roughly 500 merchants in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York have agreed to accept LevelUp payments and will be using a provided terminal, running Android software, for scanning codes. In essence, SCVNGR is chucking the pure daily deals play for a romp in the mobile payments hay. Not so, says Priebatsch.
Daemon (technothriller series) Daemon and Freedom™ comprise a two-part novel by the author Daniel Suarez about a distributed, persistent computer application, known as The Daemon, that begins to change the real world after the original programmer's death. Walter F. Parkes, who produced the 1983 film WarGames, had optioned the film rights to Daemon with Paramount Pictures,[1] however these rights likely reverted to Suarez on 8 December 2012.[2] During his investigation, Peter meets and befriends Jon Ross who is a technology consultant. The program takes over thousands of companies and provides financial and computing resources for creating AutoM8s (computer controlled driverless cars, used as transport and occasionally as weapons), Razorbacks (sword-wielding robotic riderless motorcycles, specifically designed as weapons) and other devices. Matthew A.
The Best Tools for Visualization Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Visualize Social Networks Last.Forward: Thanks to Last.fm's new widget gallery, you can now explore a wide selection of extras to extend your Last.fm experience. Last Forward Friends Sociomap: Friends Sociomap is another Last.fm tools that generates a map of the music compatibility between you and your Last.fm friends. Fidg't: Fidg't is a desktop application that gives you a way to view your networks tagging habits. Fidg't The Digg Tools: One more: Digg Radar. YouTube: You can discover related videos using YouTube's visualizations. Visualize Music Amazon
Geolocation: What Art Though to Me? Part VI « Always On! Each day, geolocation has a unique impact on my life as I watch the way it influences my city, myself, and increasingly, my world. A few months after joining foursquare in 2010, I decided to keep a journal of my new life with geolocation. You have now entered Part VI this ongoing tale – tracking the personal, sociological and historic milestones associated with the rapidly growing service/game/application. Thursday, November 10, 2011 Eureka! Just arrived home from a phenomenal meal at a restaurant in Chelsea called Westville – an amazing meal thanks to all the people who left me tips on foursquare, from the scores of them who recommended the four market sides for $14 to a non anonymous stranger named Frank, who recommended the chocolate pecan pie. Wednesday, November 16, 2011 Thursday, November 17, 2011 Have you checked out Square’s Card Case app. Ok, so I’m working my way through Mary Meeker’s 2011 Internet trends and discovering all kinds of treats and terms along the way. (3) eCommerce
David Chalmers David John Chalmers (/ˈtʃælmərz/;[1] born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. He is also Professor of Philosophy at New York University.[2] In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Life[edit] Since 2004, Chalmers has been Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow at the Australian National University. A Rhodes Scholar raised in Australia, Chalmers received his PhD at Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter. He is the lead singer of the Zombie Blues band which performed at the Qualia Fest in 2012.[5] in New York. Thought[edit] Philosophy of mind[edit] With Andy Clark, Chalmers has written The Extended Mind, an article about the borders of the mind.[7] "Water is H2O"
Adam Westbrook: Want to be a Digital Storyteller? Just do it Do you want to tell digital stories that touch people? As a journalist, in marketing or education, or as a personal publishing project? I know that many people do, and that’s why I got quite excited about a beautiful digital book that I came across last week, Inside the Story. In it, 24 master digital storytellers share one piece of advice each, and the result is a thought-provoking and inspiring reference for all digital storytellers. Not only that, all proceeds of the book go to Kiva, which empowers people around the world with micro loans. The whole thing was the idea of Adam Westbrook, a freelance multimedia producer who creates digital stories for commercial and non-profit organisations, and is also a lecturer and blogger based in London. Adam sent hundreds of emails over a period of months getting the best film-makers, journalists and designers to contribute. It was inspired by a project by Seth Godin – an ebook created collaboratively. The key word is authenticity.
Geolocation: What if it’s not all about the money? A number of very smart people believe that the winner in geosocial will be the company that is able to provide the most financial incentives to check in. And it’s not just talk. Many of the leading lbs apps are racing to provide the infrastructure that will allow check-in rewards to propagate. Gowalla just added self serve claim and deal creation for local merchants. It’s hard to dispute the logic. Well, here’s one medium where the paid incentives model didn’t win. The Web. Since the original Internet bubble of the late 1990s, there have been a steady stream of companies attempting to grab market share by paying users to engage. iWon.com was a search engine that paid you to search (a tactic later copied by search also ran Microsoft.) What’s interesting is that none of these companies won their category. Search was won by Google, which doesn’t pay you to search. Nobody’s denying that there’s a murky little corner of the web where “get paid while you surf the web!” So what’s it going to be?
This may sound like a weird question, but if our only premiss was for a person to stay conscious, what parts of the human body could be taken away for the person to still stay alive and conscious? : askscience איך החיידקים שולטים בנו ברוס גרמן, פרופסור לכימיה מאוניברסיטת קליפורניה דיוויס, חוקר זה יותר מעשור את אחת החידות הגדולות ביותר הקשורות בחלב האם: ההרכב המשונה שלו. 21% מהסוכר בחלב אם עשוי מחומר שאף תינוק אנושי אינו מסוגל לעכל. "במשך שנים האמינו שזו טעות אבולוציונית", אומר גרמן בראיון ל"מוסף כלכליסט". "אבל זה לא ייתכן. לגרמן היה רעיון. כמה שאלות נותרו פתוחות: האם החיידק הזה אכן נמצא בגופם של תינוקות? ד"ר ג'רמי קוניג, ביולוג מולקולרי מאוניברסיטת קורנל, הוא האיש היחיד בעולם שחקר באופן מדוקדק איך קהילת חיידקים צומחת מאפס לטריליון בגופם של תינוקות. עתה לגרמן נותר רק לגלות למה דווקא ביפידו. קצת אחרי שגילינו את האופטיקה, גילינו את החיידקים. מאז ועד לעשורים האחרונים ממש, המדע ראה בחיידקים את הביטוי הפרימיטיבי ביותר לחיים. בעשורים האחרונים התבררה גודלה של הטעות. חיידק הוא יצור חי שכולו תא אחד. והם לא רק מציפים את העולם סביבנו. התגלית הדרמטית של השנים האחרונות היא שענן הבקטריות הזה אינו דייר פסיבי בגוף. במחקר שערך עם רות לי ופטר טורנבג הוא לקח שני עכברים שניזונו מאותו התפריט, ושאחד מהם השמין מאוד והאחר היה רזה מהרגיל.
Study: Geolocation Apps Draw Users, Despite Privacy Concerns Nearly 60 percent of smartphone users employ apps that access their location data despite having concerns about risks to their privacy and even personal safety, according to a survey conducted by ISACA, a nonprofit group that focuses on risk and security management. Respondents to the survey, which polled 1,000 smartphone owners by phone last month, indicated that their chief concerns were advertisers' access to their information and potential risks to their personal safety. Concerns about personal safety were piqued this week after sharp criticism of an app called Girls Around Me that became known as a "stalker" app. Researchers don't know why consumers continue to use products that make them uncomfortable, said Ryan Calo, a Stanford University privacy researcher. Location-based applications are booming, but location data is particularly sensitive because it can easily be identified with a particular user. "These apps are really useful, and it's natural for us to be drawn to them.