Venmo In Flight

It feels like yesterday that Venmo was taking its baby steps.

Venmo Could Make Moves
Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?
Venmo And Frictionless Payments
Venmo Me For My Charm
2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments

Look at them now, processing 250 million dollars a year.

VentureBeat: Venmo, now processing $10M a month, comes out of beta, offers me the world’s smallest bribe

Related articles

• Re: is Venmo a huge roadblock to Bitcoin?
• Venmo History is Social
• On Venmo and Payments
• Don't Have Paypal? No Problem!
• The Regretsy PayPal Debacle and Online Payment Alternatives

• Will Mobile Devices Kill the Credit Card? (bigthink.com)

Human Bird

Source: TechCrunch

Wi-Fi, Tablets And Smartphones

iPad 3G and iPad Wi-Fi (Photo credit: Yutaka Tsutano)The Next Web: New Wi-Fi roaming initiative could soon allow your smart device to connect to hotspots automatically

... could see billions of smartphone and tablet owners effortlessly switch between mobile and Wi-Fi networks, without the hassle of locating hotspot hosts and keying in passwords....... a technical and commercial framework for Wi-Fi roaming, which will use a device’s SIM card to authenticate a device on a Wi-Fi hotspot without any input from the user ...... the initiative could offload mobile data to a residential or business-owned wireless network

And while you are at it, why not also extend this to laptops? Smartphones make sense, tablets make sense. But if you keep the laptop out, the iPad will have even more of a field day.

Related articles

• GSMA and WBA Partner to Simplify Wi-Fi Roaming
• Roaming: the missing piece to the smartphone-Wi-Fi puzzle
• Mobile-To-WiFi Roaming: A Dream For Carriers, A Nightmare For Users
• New Wi-Fi roaming initiative could soon allow your smart device to connect to hotspots automatically
• Roaming: The Missing Piece To The Smartphone-WiFi Puzzle

• GSMA initiative to simplify wi-fi access (mobile-ent.biz)
• Cell-to-Wi-Fi roaming on the way -- but may come with a price (infoworld.com)
• Cell-to-Wi-Fi Roaming Is on the Way, but May Come With a Price (pcworld.com)
• The GSMA wants to make sure you're using a WiFi hotspot whenever you're near one (intomobile.com)
• Mobile biz bigwigs crack heads over Wi-Fi roaming charges (go.theregister.com)

20 Startups From The London Web Summit

TechCrunch: 20 Startups Demo And Launch At London Web Summit

Reading through this list and descriptions makes you feel like tech startup possibilities are as fertile as ever. It is amazing what some of these companies are attempting.

Related articles

• London Web Summit Startup Winner Will Get A £50,000 Convertible Loan (techcrunch.com)
• Live Stream From The London Web Summit 2012 (alexwivell.wordpress.com)
• Live Stream From The London Web Summit 2012 (techcrunch.com)
• Seedrs Wins London Web Summit, As Europeans Rock Their Ecosystem (techcrunch.com)
• Niklas Zennstrom To Speak At The London Web Summit (techcrunch.com)
• Tradeshift for London Web Summit (tradeshift.com)
• London Web SummitDavid Scanlon (bestconnected.enterprise-ireland.com)
• SxSW Interactive Wrap-Up and Why Most Startups are DOA (entrepremusings.com)
• Who wants to meet up at the upcoming, inaugural London Web Summit? (thenextweb.com)
• Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA (promcoblog.wordpress.com)

England, Get Out Of Ireland

I think England should get out of Ireland.

Photos

Nexus Tablet

Nexus One (Photo credit: pittaya)I am a Google fanboy. How about that! What I don't understand is as to why a good Android phone costs the same as the iPhone. I don't understand why the Nexus phone is not on a Republic Wireless like wi-fi only infrastructure run by Google.

Android and Me: Rumor: Nexus tablet is a “done deal”, to retail for as low as $149

A $150 tablet begs for a $50 smartphone. I don't care if you run ads and have to go below the cost price.

CNET: Google Nexus tablet a ‘done deal,’ claims report
MG Siegler: The Sub-$200 Nexus Tablet
Business Insider: RUMOR: Google Is Getting Ready To Release A $150 Answer To The Kindle Fire

Britannica's Next Step: Go Free

Britannica just went all digital. But that is not enough. They need to go all free as well. The way to do that is to, well, go free. Add the embed feature. So if I want to embed a paragraph from the Britannica at my blog, I should be able to do it. And when I do it, Britannica gets a link from me. Make it easy to share.

Collect data on users. Run smart ads. Offer high school versions of articles.

Going digital is no longer enough. Go free. There is tremendous money in going free.

Well, they are. For a week. They should extend that to a month, then a year, then decade.

Go digital. Go free. Go mobile. Go social. Do the Spotify thing. I want to know what my friends are reading on Britannica.

Britannica Blog: Change: It’s Okay. Really.
ReadWriteWeb: My Adieu to Britannica Print

In my adult years as I moved about from one place to another the 100-plus pounds of books traveled with me, virtually never opened for casual browsing. I guess I just wanted them nearby. The set crossed the country twice as I moved to Los Angeles, then to New York. Finally, after 20 years I realized that I had to give up this totem of my past and thought that I could sell the set to a library or a collector. Alas, they were worthless, even back in the pre-Wikipedia, pre-Web era, and they went off to be recycled...... Normally, access to the online Britannica.com costs $70 the first year. Finding pricing information on their website isn't easy. .... Perhaps it is fitting that we write about this news today, the birth date of Einstein (you can look it up).