As a technology Near Field Communication (NFC) has been kicking around for a while now -- Nokia's 6131 was the first NFC-enabled phone and launched all the way back in 2006 -- but mass adoption has been slow. All that's about to change. According to a new report from tech analysis company Juniper Research, more than one in four mobile users in Western Europe and the US will make in-store payments using NFC by 2017. That's massive growth, considering that ...

It was inevitable. Google is now letting Orkut users link to their Google+ profiles. This effectively means that people will be sharing their posts on both social networks. Except, the integration goes a little deeper than that. In an official blog post, the internet giant says: After you link your profiles, your Orkut profile photo and name will be the same as your Google+ photo and name. In addition, you will be able to share all your public Google+ posts ...

You may have heard that popular link-shortening service Bit.ly has had a bit of a redesign. Or maybe you were just made aware of that fact when you logged in to your account and everything was all over the place. Ok, so the old Bit.ly wasn't on my list of the top 10 most beautifully designed sites on the web, but it was functional. There was a nice big bar at the top where you pasted your link, it shrunk before ...

Everyone is suing everyone. Everyone is upset with everyone. Everyone is blaming everyone. Get over it. It’s history. The biggest IPO since Google has happened. Some made millions. Others lost even more. Someone got it wrong, and they’re to blame, right? It’s doubtful that this was some deep-rooted, intricate, secret conspiracy by investment banks to overprice Facebook stock. But the mispricing cost it. Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters (and the others) spent billions propping up the stock price to ensure that ...

Trust. The word gets bandied about a lot when talking about the web today. We want people to trust our systems. Companies are supposedly building “trusted computing” and “designing for trust”. But, as sociologist Coye Cheshire, Professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley will tell you, trust is a thing that happens between people not things. When we talk about trust in systems, we’re actually often talking about the related concepts of reliability or credibility. Designing for trustworthiness Take trustworthiness, for ...

For decades, the realm of science fiction has portrayed inconceivable concepts and technologies as innovations just within our grasp. From Jules Verne’s musings on lunar travel, a century prior to Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, to Arthur C. Clarke’s orbital satellites in 1945; fanciful and fantastic literature has helped to prepare us for the technological revolutions we are currently experiencing. Today, this notion has particular relevance to the consumerisation of technology. For years, we imagined a world in ...

No purchase decision happens by chance. Every thought leading up to why you need the product -- from the rational versus emotional arguments about what the product will offer to the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits -- are all weighed up and part of a very complicated decision-making process. It's all about questions Things like: "Do I need it? Why do I need it? Can I afford it? Can I get it cheaper? What will my friends think? What will my mom think? ...

Apple CEO Tim Cook has given hints that the Cupertino-based tech giant wouldn't exactly be averse to scuppering its social effort Ping. Speaking at AllThingsD's D10 conference Cook said that while Apple understood the need to integrate social elements into its products, that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to has to "own a social network". Answering a question raised by ABC's Joanna Stern, the Apple CEO said: Apple doesn’t have to own a social network, if that’s the heart ...

The circus around Facebook's juddery IPO has rolled into Moscow. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Russia's largest social network Vkontakte has postponed its IPO as a result of Facebook's less-than-brilliant market debut. The social network's founder and CEO Pavel Durov reportedly tweeted “The Facebook IPO damaged many private investors’ trust in social networks, and the [VKontakte] IPO has been postponed indefinitely”. Durov is thought to own about 12% of the 119-million strong social network. Interestingly, one of ...

There's a few things most of us know about YouTube. It's fairly common knowledge for instance turned seven this year and that it's the most popular video-sharing platform on Earth. Everybody of course knows that it's great for procrastinating, but there are probably a good few things you probably don't know about it. There may also be some things you really don't want to know about YouTube (especially when it comes to some of the content). These are not those ...